Ep. 319: How I Built My Business Differently

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing. This is episode 319, how I built my business differently based on other people doing the work. Nobody gets into business to say, oh, I'm going to work 60 hours a week. That's, that's not what any of us think when we start. And I've had a driving force behind this area of my business since I was in college. So I had this, I had this conversation with a roommate of mine and, and he, you know, we were talking about what we want to do when we grow up. And he was studying pre med, he was going to be a doctor, which he is a doctor now. And I told him, I want to own my own business so that I can have freedom. And his response was, don't you know that small business owners work more than anybody else? And I said, well, I think I can do it differently. And that statement right there of I think I can do it differently was really a driving force for me figuring out outsourcing. I didn't want to be the one working 60 hours a week. I wanted to figure out how to get the help needed in my business. And when I had that conversation in college, I had no clue. And even after starting my business, I had no clue. So I kept trying things. I kept trying and trying and trying. Hiring locally, hiring on Elance, hiring in India. None of it worked for me. It wasn't until I finally started hiring in the Philippines and hiring full time people that really made all the difference. So do you want to build your business differently? Build it based around other people doing the work, the business? Here's my advice on how to start that process. So if you'll pick one task that you do that you think you could get someone else to do, and hopefully that one task is something you don't like doing, but you know how to do it. You could probably teach someone else to do it if you could sit down with them or if you could create a video that taught it, which is how I did this. I open up a screen recording software. You can use Loom or I use Snagit. You can use Tiny. Take whatever, open up screen recording software and just start talking to your computer explaining that process. Then you hire an OFS to do that one task. Now, since it's something you already know how to do, hiring someone to do that thing is pretty easy. You know what to write in your job description, you know what kind of questions to ask of people. You know what success looks like you already created the training. It's just you talking through doing the same thing. So now here's where to start. Go to onlinejobs ph and look at some profiles Workers like search if you want someone to do data entry. Search data entry. You want someone to do SEO for you and you know some SEO, you know the SEO task that you want them to do. Search SEO or search for that task. Link building and look at some profiles and see what kind of people you find. Then post a job posting. The job should be super simple. It doesn't have to be a complicated, long, detailed job description. It can be just a couple lines. Be sure to include something that asks them to do something in the application. I always use will you make your subject line include something? I include a carrot there so I know if they read the job post and if they don't include whatever it is that I'm asking them to include, I know I can just disregard that application from there. Hiring the right person, if you're hiring them to do something you know how to do is really, really simple. You'll find the process is actually a lot easier than you thought. It's very different than hiring a local employee where you have to do face face interviews and you have to make decisions. You negotiate about salary. This is so much easier. Then when you hire someone, get them working on that task. Chances are it won't work out correctly the first time and you'll have to go and create more training and you have to record another video. But once you get them working correctly on that task, that's something that you will probably never have to do again. It's such a big deal to get something off of your plate permanently. And once you do, you'll never go back to working the way you you were the day before. Then when they're doing that task really well and it's been a little while, you can ask them, hey, can you take on another task? And then without needing to hire someone else, hopefully you can get a second task off of your plate. And now you're starting the process of building your business differently based on other people doing the work. What happens next is really amazing. The next time you have something you're thinking about a process in your business, something you need to do, you'll think, huh, I wonder if someone else could do this thing for me. And then you'll think, of course someone else could do this. Let me go find the right person. And from there on, things are different. You're more effective in your business, you're working less, things are getting done better because you have dedicated people doing those things. You're creating business growth. Everything runs more smoothly when you get the right people doing the work for you in the business and you're able to step away and be the CEO and understand the big picture. So if you're drowning in your business right now and you want to do things differently, take a chance on hiring someone, you have to leap. It's a leap of faith. I can help you at 1vaoa.com.