Once an online marketer gets to a certain income level, that marketer almost invariably gets stuck. They can’t seem to make any more money, even when they pour more and more of their time into their business. Why? Because they are working IN their business rather than ON their business.
That’s why it’s so important to begin outsourcing as soon as you can afford to, which is actually a whole lot sooner than you probably think. If you believe you need to be bringing in a hefty six figure sum before you can get yourself some help, think again.
The fact is, the sooner you begin outsourcing some of the more mundane and time consuming facets of your business, the sooner you can begin growing your business in a truly substantial way.
You’ve only got a fixed number of hours in the week. Do you spend them doing:
A: The tasks you don’t like to do
B: The tasks you don’t mind doing, but they could easily be done by someone else
C: The tasks that you’re brilliant at doing and that you enjoy performing
D: Planning and strategizing to take your business to the next level
Obviously you want to delegate A and B as fast as possible so you can focus on C and D.
Are you doing your own support? Are you answering your own emails and phone? Is it taking your entire morning just to do support, answer emails and so forth?
Next question: Exactly how much do you earn each time you work your own support desk or answer your own emails and phone? What’s that? Nothing? Maybe it’s time you hired someone to do it for you.
In fact, if you do it correctly, hiring someone to perform your support tasks for you can pay off from day one.
That’s because it frees you up to do the things that MAKE YOU MONEY.
Ah-hah! Imagine that – devoting nearly ALL of your working time to those tasks that make money, rather than doing support.
In the military there are two distinct areas of operation: Front line and support. The front line wins the battles while the support does just that – support those who are out there winning the battles.
In sports, you’ve got offense and defense. The defense is crucial for stopping the other team from scoring, but they generally DON’T SCORE any points themselves. The offense does that. If you’re spending all of your time on defense (answering emails) then you’re not devoting any time to offense (making sales.)
Here’s how to hand the bulk of your email tasks off to your new assistant: If you don’t already have a private email address, create one. This is the address you give to JV partners, fellow marketers and your mother. The people who matter most to your business and your personal life.
Once a day you check this address and answer these emails personally.
Everything else – EVERYTHING else – goes to your support address or support desk where your support person checks it daily or even several times a day.
This includes payments, autoresponder emails, hosting emails, questions from customers, complaints, testimonials, affiliate requests, etc.
Your support person has access to your accounts, too. Your hosting account, autoresponder account, PayPal account, etc. I know – it seems like a big leap of faith to give access to your PayPal account to someone else, but no worries. You can limit the PayPal functions your support person has access to. For example, they can issue refunds but not withdraw funds.
Your support person or team is basically going to run the day to day operation of your business for you.
When training your support staff, you can write out step by step procedures on how to do things, record videos or audios, or simply have them contact you when something comes up they haven’t handled before. In other words, there is a learning curve. But after the first week you shouldn’t have to spend much more time on training, especially if you’ve got the right person for the job.
You can also have your support person or team do all those other things you don’t like to do such as analyze stats, clean email lists, install websites, social media, etc. Whatever it is that you prefer to hand off, go ahead and do it.
If you hire someone for 2 hours a day, that frees up 2 hours of your own time. If you pay them $12 an hour, that’s $480 a month – quite possibly more than you currently pay for programs and how to info.
And it’s 40 hours per month that you’ve just gained. Imagine if you use that 40 hours each month to create and market a new product – that’s 12 new products in a year. If each product were to make you just $3,000 initially, and then just another $500 a month – well, you do the math.
If you’re still hesitating, then think about this: If you strike a deal with your support person to pay them monthly, then you’ve got 30 days to use your new found time to make more than enough money to cover them for the first month.
30 days and 40 new found hours. But that’s not even the biggest benefit of bringing someone in to help you with your business.
The biggest benefit of all is what it will do for your mindset, because suddenly you ARE a business person. There’s no more wondering if you’re just dabbling in a hobby. This stuff is REAL and you are now responsible for someone else’s income. This is the motivator that will kick you out of bed each morning and ensure you have a productive, successful day.
Use one of the freelance sites to find someone. Yes, it’s going to feel like a big step, because it is. A big step in the right direction, that is. Because the rewards are going to prove that it was totally worth it to take this next, logical step in your business evolution.
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