Stop Doing Everything Yourself - Do THIS Instead

I am a firm believer that you need to outsource as soon as possible. And if you are finding this video in a search for is it time to outsource? It's probably already too late. So many people wait way too long because they might not have the money to invest in it. And I totally understand that. But the big thing about outsourcing is there's so many ways that you can outsource. We're not even talking about employees or contractors here either. Either. So many people get caught up in the fact that they have to hire someone full time to outsource and create more time, and that's totally false. When I was in my 20s, the first things that I outsourced that I could actually afford to outsource was my laundry and taking care of the lawn. Okay? Because we had a big yard, and it would take hours to take care of the yard. And I'm like, why am I wasting time mowing lawn, trimming bushes, and doing all these things? But I can just pay someone else to do it. And I think it cost us, like, 50 bucks. All right, so $50 is probably like $15 an hour at the time. Maybe $20 an hour. I don't know how long it took them to do it. They probably did it much quicker than I did because they're professionals. But it saved me a lot of time. It gave me three extra hours, you know, twice a month or once a month, depending on how often we did the lawn, to work on my business, to grow things, to actually find time to sit down and create a webpage or record a video. Because this is when I was just kind of getting started with doing online stuff, and I'm like, I need the time. I need the time here to actually do these things. And then kind of in my early 30s, we started outsourcing laundry, which was a big one, but that was a hard one for my wife to wrap her head around. She's like, why are we paying someone else to do our laundry? We are perfectly capable of doing our own laundry, but there's nothing like having your laundry picked up outside your door. Someone comes and picks it up, and then it comes back to you a few hours later, clean, neatly folded. You just open the bag, you open your drawers, you put everything away, and you. You have done your laundry in about five minutes. So we're talking about five minutes of laundry versus. I mean, and we would usually do, you know, it probably be like, two or three loads, maybe a couple loads. Because it was about, like, $40. It was about $40 to do our laundry. And that was every week. And we would do a couple loads and they would come back and so 40 bucks. But how long would it take you to do a couple loads of laundry? Have to put the laundry in the washing machine. Okay. Then you switch it over, then you put in the dryer. And then sometimes I would forget to switch the load over so then I'd have to wash it again because I left it in the washer too long and it smelled like mildew. So for me it was a complete waste of time. So, you know, it was a weird thing. And I just told my wife, I was like, let's just try it a few times. And the first time it came and she just opened the bag and just put everything in the drawer and was like, that's it, we're done. We got our laundry done for a very, very long time. And that was super, super helpful. So again, when you're talking about these things, we're talking, you know, $50 a month for them to come in and cut the lawn a couple times and, and then, you know, 40 bucks a week. So we're talking maybe 150 bucks a month. Okay, for me to free up hours of my time every week or bi weekly or whatever it was. Now it's worth doing this if you are going to invest that time into your business or on the other side, it's worth doing if you're going to invest that time into your family. Okay? So those are the two things where it's worth investing the money. And some of you may be like, well, I don't have $150. Lauren, start with something simple. Okay, maybe you only get your lawn done once a month because that's what you can afford, but you're going to free up that time and that time has to go towards income producing activities. All right, so we're not talking about answering emails unless you're trying to close a deal or something. You know, you're trying to do income producing activity activities that at some point are going to create income. So that could be recording a course, that could be putting something out on social media because that's marketing, getting your brand out. It could be maybe, you know, I had a brick and mortar business at the time. Maybe it's handing out flyers. Okay? That is, you know, you could pay someone else to hand out the flyers. There's delegation for you, but you want to create time for yourself to work on your business. Now these are just little simple things. Usually people come in and they're like, Lauren, when do I have hire my first employee? Okay, when do I start outsourcing? And, and in the beginning, you know, do you need an employee? Probably not. A lot of people can get a lot done by just hiring a part time virtual assistant or even an admin. Okay. Just someone to help you out with emails, customer service, because, you know, as the business owner, you're wearing all the hats in the beginning, right? You got to do everything. You're the salesperson, you're the marketing, and you need to free up your space again to put as much time towards those income producing items. Okay? You need to spend as much time on that as possible because that's where you're going to get the most bang for your buck. So everyone thinks they need to hire a full time employee. You don't have to do that. You can go hire a virtual assistant on upwork. You know, I know in Massachusetts here the minimum wage is $15 an hour. You can go on upwork and hire someone for about half that, maybe even less. All right. There's, there's some really great VA companies out there. Or you can hire a virtual assistant, you know, that lives in, in India or the Philippines or Singapore where you could pay them what is a good wage for where they live. But it's much cheaper for you being in the United States. You know, if you want to hire a US based person, that's awesome too. Just understand you're going to pay a little bit more. There's also services. So if you have a brick and mortar business, you could get a service that answers the phone for you. Okay. This was something that was very tricky for me. When I first started teaching. It was just me and, you know, I had a website and people would call to inquire about lessons. And if I was in a lesson, I couldn't answer the phone. That was kind of rude. Or, you know, I'd very quickly say, hi, my name is Lauren. Can I get your name and number? I'll call you back. I'm just in the middle of a lesson right now and I wish that I had the foresight or know what I know now to say, man, during those hours that I was teaching, because I used to teach, you know, about 2:00 clock in the afternoon, sometimes till 9 or 10:00 clock at night. Like, man, I wish I had the foresight to hire an agency just to answer those calls, get the information so that I could follow up. So there are agencies out there that can do the sales calls or at least Collect the information because no one's going to sell your business better than you. But sometimes if you, if you equip them with the right information, a lot of people just want to know, like how much does it cost? What's the process? You can train people to do that for you. And so instead of hiring a full time person or even a part time person, you could hire an agency and they usually have different packages. It's usually based on the number of hours that they'll be on the phone for you. And you could hire someone to help you so that you're not missing the sales, you're not missing the calls, you're providing good customer service because you're answering the phone, but also they're collecting the information for you and you can follow up. Now, a lot of people today aren't calling on the phone, they're texting a lot. And there's a lot of great softwares out there. We use a centralized software. In my online business we use Zendesk, which you can incorporate email, phone calls, you can even connect your Facebook messengers in there as well. So it's a great way to centralize communication since a lot of people are moving away from the phone, but they're doing in text form. Okay. We still get a lot of people at our brick and mortar who do call us, but we've noticed, you know, in the last five years or so, a lot more people are reaching out by text. So you want to be able to at least respond to people in some form of text. All right. And there's a lot of great softwares that incorporate text. Like for the brick and mortar, our scheduling and billing system, we use Square. And Square has a built in text messenger and you can just message and email your clients right in square. This way that you can see all the conversations. So there's so many great softwares out there. Like I said, Zendesk is another one, probably a little bit more expensive for. It's good for people. If you, if you've got, you know, a lot of stuff, like my online business, we have a lot of customer service stuff coming in to tag people. You can forward things to different administrators, but that's a great way to save time is just to stop. Start by handing out some of the customer service stuff you're doing in your business. And if you can do that, you'll free up your time to really focus on those money making activities. Because for me it was always distracting. You know, I'd be working on something and I get a phone call and then you're like, you know, you have to answer the phone, because if it's a sales call, you want to make the sale, and I make the sale. But then it kept pulling me away from the work that I needed to do. So if you're feeling like you keep getting pulled away from the stuff or you're not getting the. The things you need to get done, that's probably telling you that. That you're overwhelmed and that you really do need to invest on outsourcing some stuff. And I know it costs money in the beginning, but if you can bite the bullet, it'll make your life a lot less stressful, and it'll make you a lot more productive, and you will be able to focus on making more money, which will allow you to hire more and more people. Let me just tell you a story about me on YouTube. Okay? So I was editing my own videos through 2020. I think I started editing my first videos 2017. And through 2023 years, I edited my videos. And I was making money online at that point. And my business coach that I worked with, he's like, why the hell are you still editing your own video? He's like, that's a waste of your time. You should not be editing your videos. Like, video editing does not make you money building the courses, recording the content is what makes you money. So record the content so you can put it out there in video format or record the courses. That's what makes you money, not the actual editing of the videos. He's like, you're going to go hire a VA And I was like, okay, so I hire a VA Hi, Mark. Mark still edits my videos, so I hire a VA and he's like, you got to. It's 20 hours a week minimum. And I'm like, crap. I was like, okay, I can hire someone for five hours a week, right? I'm like, shoot, 20 hours. Like, Sam, I don't think I have 20 hours of work to. To give a virtual assistant. He's like, when you hire someone for 20 hours a week and you're paying them, you will find 20 hours of work to give them. And I don't think a week has gone by that Mark hasn't had something to work on. So we do. You know, you. You get your creative juices going because you're like, I have this person. I have to give them stuff to work on. What can I do? And it kind of holds you accountable as an entrepreneur, because when you're editing your own videos, you're like, Oh, I could do this next week or I could do this tomorrow. But when you have someone else that's counting on you to get the work done, it provides a little accountability for you to be like, crap, I gotta get this video done. Cause I need something for Mark to work on next week. Or I need. My editor needs work next week. What am I gonna do? I gotta edit these videos. So it really forces you to sit down and get those important tasks done. I'm a huge procrastinator, totally do a lot of procrastination. But I'm trying to get better at pre recording and I'm trying to get better at turning my phone off when I'm recording. Let me just turn that off. See, this is like real life. Things happen. I should know better that my phone should be on silent. It's not. We're not going to edit this out because I'm a real person. That's real life. But the big thing is if you're feeling overwhelmed, you haven't outsourced enough. And that's how I know I need to start outsourcing more. So because I start feeling stressed, I feel that stress coming in and I'm getting into another one of those cycles. You know, when you free up time, it allows you to bring on and do more projects. And I've brought on a lot more projects to fill the time I outsourced. I'm feeling a little bit of that stress and that strain. So now I need to sit down and I need to say, okay, what am I doing? Can I create systems and can I outsource this to someone else? So it becomes a cycle. You free up your time, you give it to someone else. You. You use your time to do better things. Or again, maybe you're going to use your time to spend with your family. It's up to you, the business you're trying to create, the lifestyle you're trying to create. All right, I love working. It's great. But I also take time off too. So get into outsourcing as soon as possible. Now, if you're someone like me who creates online courses and educates people online and here at YouTube, I highly recommend that you go check out my video over there where I share tips for on how to run a successful online course business. Go check out that video right now.