I have been lucky enough to work with very driven, intelligent, capable, talented people in my career. There is a weird side-effect of this. Often, due to a wide range of talents, these teams often find themselves building everything themselves. “We can do that, and no one can do it as well as us,” is a phrase that comes to mind.

As I see it, the problem with this philosophy is one of opportunity cost. In most cases the statement above is pretty much accurate – we can build it, and we can do a damn good job of it. In doing so, however, what have you not been able to do? That is, in the time you’re building project B, how much time has been taken from your primary project A?

Just because you can do something is not a good enough reason to actually undertake the work. Even if there is a small quality hit you take by outsourcing (which, by the way, likely won’t happen assuming the people that you enlist to help you are experts in their field), it is worth it to outsource in order not to rob time, energy and focus away from your primary goal. In everything you undertake, you should always be asking yourself, “Is this the highest value add work that I can be doing right now? By doing this work, am I taking away from work where I am truly the only one in the world who can do it?”

After answering those questions, hopefully there’s not an arbitrary cash flow reality that gets in your way of doing the right thing.