Keywords

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

In this chapter we’re going to learn how to outsource our processes to other people. Outsourcing has become much easier, but with that it has made people sloppy about their hiring process. If you want to keep standards high, your outsourcing needs to follow its own process.

Take the Day Off

What should have been done? That’s your first process. As an exercise, take a day off from work. Just go and do something else that isn’t delivering projects, replying to e-mails, or doing usual work stuff. One day isn’t going to make or break the business. What you’re doing is seeing what activities need completing on that day. At the end of the day, go over what should have been done. Those items are the processes that you should write up.

Writing blog content, e-mailing customers, handling social posts, and replying to customers: All the items that needed to get done today are what you should focus on writing up the process for. Everything can be systematized. There are other people who can take work from you. If literally no one else can do it, it’s not scalable. If you can’t teach other people to do it, it’s not scalable. What would have had the biggest impact on your day if you didn’t have to do it? Interviewing guests for a podcast? Writing to sponsors or suppliers?

If you think you can’t afford to pay other people, that’s where you need to look at scalable products first, products that allow you to scale and reach more people. We need to deliver more results to more people, with less effort. We’re going to go over the steps needed to hire VA staff and outsource more of your work.

Brickwork India is high quality. High quality comes at a price. We use brickworkindia.com ( http://www.brickworkindia.com ) for our VA services. They’re based in India and are one of the more premium VA services out there. I’ve found they’re worth every penny. They do have a cheaper $5 per hour service, but, as we’ve explored already, it’s better to leave that level to pure process tasks such as data entry.

Some of the VA team at Brickwork have master’s degrees; they’re polite, fast workers and I rarely have to correct their work. They have a research team, SEO team, and some very affordable packages. On average, I’m paying $15 per hour for my VA. Although this might seem expensive, it’s as we talked about earlier: If you have to correct someone’s work all the time, how much is that really costing you?

Other Options

There are plenty of other options for VA and outsourced work.

Fiverr.com ( http://lp.fiverr.co.uk/ )

Fiverr is on the lower end of the scale when it comes to cost. Blog posts might be advertised at $20, but you get what you pay for. Having said that, it’s a perfect place to test your outsourcing process. For data entry and copying text over, we’ve used Fiverr to start with, hiring a cheap VA to see if they can do the job and how much instruction we have to give.

Upwork.com ( https://www.upwork.com/ )

Upwork can provide workers for almost any task: development, VA, design, content, and so on. Like any marketplace, you get what you pay for. We’ve found Upwork’s system easy to use and we’ve found some great long-term partners through it.

Freelancer.com ( https://www.freelancer.com/ )

Freelancer.com is another marketplace for freelance work. We’ve used them to find designers. They provide good customer service, one-off hires, and a nice system for managing projects.

Studio Envato ( https://studio.envato.com/ )

Studio Envato is Envato’s freelancer marketplace, which is the company behind Themeforest. We often use Studio Envato for WordPress and theme-specific work. However, we’ve found the marketplace flooded with copy profiles recently.

99 Designs ( https://99designs.co.uk/ )

99 Designs is an interesting change to the process because you submit a brief and whittle down the winners each round, offering feedback and design changes as you go through. They have various price levels and have some pretty good designers. However, be careful to notice that the submissions are public. We found we had a lot of copies and similar designs. We also found people to plagiarize other logos unless you paid on the higher end of the spectrum.

OnlineJobs.ph ( https://www.onlinejobs.ph/ )

I’ve never used OnlineJobs.ph, but I’ve heard great things about them. They are similar to other marketplaces, but they specialize in Philippine VAs and workers.

Google ( https://www.google.com )

You might have heard of Google. It’s a search engine. You can search for anything on the Internet. Try using Google to find VA services in your local area. You’ll be surprised at how affordable and efficient local VA teams can be.

Interview with a basic task . When hiring people for outsourcing work, if you’re planning on adding a permanent member to your team, don’t hand the job over to one person straight away. It might sound like a hassle, but you have to interview a few people. It will save you hours in the long run. First, it’s worth mentioning that we pay for all our interview candidates. The task should take two hours at most and will cost you a few bucks. You’re only interviewing –two or three candidates so it shouldn’t cost a lot. They don’t even have to know they’re being interviewed.

Interview candidates with a basic task, something you’ve written up and doesn’t require a huge investment. Try to choose a task that can go wrong, too, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if you had to ignore or correct them. Ask them to carry out the task and report back to you when they’re done. Ask them how long it took them, if they were comfortable with the task, and if they have any questions. You’re absolutely interviewing people. It’s imperative that you hire once and hire right. If this is a long-term arrangement, you’ll want to run an interview as few times as possible.

Ask candidates what their working hours are, how they communicate, and then check this with their interview task. A few years back, I was interviewing for a VA position on my team. It boiled down to someone in the United Kingdom and someone in India. The candidate from India was a lot cheaper, but I was concerned that her English might not be so good. The UK candidate had all the right checks and talked about daily updates and shorter time scales. With the task (uploading YouTube videos, adding metadata, and creating social content to promote it), the Indian candidate not only followed my instructions perfectly, but e-mailed me after the first upload to check she had done it properly. She also e-mailed me when the task was complete, gave an estimated completion time, and offered some feedback on the process. The UK VA was nowhere to be seen until that Friday when she sent an e-mail saying the task had been completed, but there was nothing else: no updates throughout the week, and very little communication. We went with our Indian VA and haven’t looked back.

Don’t accept the first candidate . Ask to see a few. If you’re using a VA agency, ask for a few candidates and read over their profiles. Ask to interview them all with a simple task. Some VAs in other countries won’t want to talk on Skype. They also might be unsure of their English skills (most of the time they’re fluent). If they want to call you Mr. or Mrs. Surname, don’t tell them to call you by your first name, as they’re more comfortable calling you by your surname.

Ask them how they’ll do it. Asking someone to repeat back a task and asking them how they’ll complete a task can prove to be very insightful. It sounds like a stupid question, but it shows you their level of experience and if they’ve done similar tasks before. Even if you’ve got a written-up process, ask them to repeat back the task and ask for steps of what they’ll do.

If they’re competent they’ll give an overview of your steps. They’ll also include when they’ll contact you and if there is anything that isn’t covered by your process. They should also mention whether they’ll contact you if they need help. The problem is that most people don’t ask for help straight away. Encourage them to check in every day for the first task to give an update on where they are and if they’re struggling with anything.

Ask for a list of tools they can and will use It’s important to understand two things:

  1. 1.

    If they’re pulling the wool over your eyes.

  2. 2.

    How experienced they are.

We’ve all embellished our resumes a little, but I’ve lost count of how many people have told me they’re proficient with HTML and PHP or graphic design software, only for me to give them a simple task at which they utterly fail. It’s important to me that I know what their capabilities are. In a weird way, I’d rather have someone admit to me that they have no idea how to use Photoshop, but that they’re keen and willing to learn.

On the other hand, I find more experienced VA and external staff are more specific about the tools they use. My operations manager and project manager both have very similar skill sets and tool sets: Asana, Trello, Quip, Workflowy, Zapier, Process.st, Kissflow, and so on. At no point do they mention Photoshop, Sublime Text, WordPress, or something that isn’t pertinent to their requirements.

They might be the greatest PSD wizard in the world, but that’s not what I’m hiring them for. Lots of VAs will tell you they’re good with Excel, Word, Outlook, WordPress, and the other standard packages, but if you’re looking for a specific person to fill a specific role, it’s better to see some tools that they’re going use. On the other hand, make a list of the tools you use and would expect them to get comfortable with. Our social media coordinator hadn’t ever used Google Docs or Postcron before, but she was very willing to learn. Combined with my written process on uploading, editing, and scheduling social content, she came to grips with it very fast.

Check their English. Ask them to repeat back their understanding of a task. When you work with nonnative English speakers, it can be tough to make sure they understand the task. The simplest way to lower this risk is to ask them to repeat back, in their own words, the task. It might sound laborious, even patronizing to both you and them, but it’s imperative to see if you can leave them with the task.

Over time you’ll ask for this less and less. My VA has been working with me so well, for so long, that she can even interpret what I mean with certain instructions. For example, let’s say you’re asking a VA to upload two Google Docs to WordPress for blog posts. You’d like them to keep the formatting of the headers and run a spell check through Grammerly. You’d also like them to find two suitable images from Unsplash, Pexlar, Picxel, or another stock image source and then set those as featured images with suitable alt tags and descriptions.

Finally, you’d like them to use SEO, social, and search engines as categories for both posts, but one of them needs the laptop and software categories, too. You’d expect the task to be completed in less than two hours and to check in with you when they’ve uploaded the first one. You’d like it completed by Thursday at 5 p.m. and for them to contact you at Thursday at 9 a.m. by the latest if it will take longer.

This is the level of detail most of your tasks will require. Combine them with a written process and video screenshot and you won’t go far wrong.

Ask them to repeat the task back to you, in their own words. This will show their interpretation skills and language skills, and they’ll have to ask you what a certain section means if they don’t understand it. It’s actually an important process to ask even native English speakers to do this. When people repeat back tasks to you, it cements in their mind what they’re going to do. They’ll start to visualize their task. Finally, the reason we use slightly more costly services like Brickwork is because I have never had a problem with their English. In fact, some of it is better than mine!

Give detailed e-mails and instructions . Take the time to write them. As I mentioned previously, the more detailed your e-mails and communications, the better the result. Take the time to write the right amount. Don’t dump everything in the e-mail. This is a time investment. Spend 20 minutes writing the perfect task e-mail and prevent hours of chasing later.

Feel free to use the following template.

  • Intro. Quick hello and ask how they are.

  • Task and results. I need you to upload five videos to YouTube and create five new WordPress blog posts per video. This means we’ll be publishing five videos over five weeks and a new blog post each week. Each video needs to be scheduled from the 24th at seven-day intervals, with the 31st being the next. The posts are to be scheduled for the day after each video goes live.

  • How to. Here is where we’d usually include a screencast or Process.st of what we want them to do. This might seem like a lot of work, but trust me when I say the more you invest up front, the less work you need to do later on. I’ve included a Process.st of the steps here, as well as a video. You’ll find the videos in the Google Drive folder. Each video is labeled 1 to 5. This spreadsheet here shows what each title, blog title, categories, and tags are required per video.

  • Time limit. This task should take no longer than four hours.

  • Deadline. I need this task completed by Thursday at 5 p.m. at the latest. Please confirm that this is fine. If you’re unable to do the task by that time, can you please let me know by Thursday 9 a.m. at the latest.

  • Repeat back. Can you repeat back to me the task, in your own words Outsourcing:e-mails and instructions, just to make sure I’ve given you clear enough direction?

  • Thanks! Mike

Give a time limit . Time limits are critical to managing VA and outsource staff. I once asked a VA to carry out keyword research, some high-level, Google keyword planner stuff. It wouldn’t have taken longer than two hours. When I checked in, after not hearing from him for a few days, he sent me a report that had taken him eight hours to complete. He was researching depths that I didn’t need and spent a lot of time trying new techniques. I’m lucky that my current VA always completes things faster than I expect anyway. However, the first time was entirely my fault for not giving a time limit. Time limits mean three things:

  1. 1.

    Your VA will know they have a limit to how much they can invest in the work. They’ll know how important the task is. If it’s a 10-hour project including research, that gives them the space. Smaller one- and two-hour tasks can be process oriented.

  2. 2.

    If a task is going to go over “time budget,” they’ll have to contact you. It might be there were unforeseen problems and you failed to take other things into consideration. As a rule, something usually takes four times longer than you think. However, don’t give too much time allowance, as some VAs might take advantage. If they come back to you and tell you it’s too short a time, tell them to get done what they can and you’ll assess their results when they contact you.

  3. 3.

    Time limits begin to tell you how skillful your hire is. Someone who knows what he or she is doing will exceed your (reasonable) expectations on task completion. They’ll ideally be better than you, but this comes at a price.

Give deadlines for 48 hours (maybe 72 hours).

Deadlines, on the other hand, are important to tasks because they prevent Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. If you don’t give a deadline, don’t expect your VA to see it as important. There’s nothing wrong with asking for a deadline. It’s critical to task prioritization. If your hire thinks that next Friday isn’t going to happen, you need to know. Similarly, if you need the task by tomorrow, it might not happen. If you don’t give a deadline, it won’t happen fast. It’ll keep getting pushed back.

Offer examples of results . Results examples are a great way to show what’s expected of a task. Sometimes people need a visual goal to work toward, like an example of a task that’s previously been completed. For example, if you do a screencast of performing the same task, include a link or image of what the final result looks like. If you’re asking them to execute process or data entry tasks, fill out the first row, post, or paragraph for them.

Make sure there is no way to misinterpret a sentence. Clear instructions are an important part of running any business, but it’s surprising how easy it is for people to misinterpret what you say. Even to other English speakers it can seem like there is a disconnect between what we want, what we say, and what other people hear. This is why clarity of instruction is so important. The misinterpretation and disconnect can be magnified when speaking with nonnative English speakers.

Don’t leave anything to chance. Use 5 p.m. instead of 5. Give dates, days, months, and years when you have a deadline. Don’t say “head to sellyourservice.co.uk for the blog post on landing pages”; instead say “go to https://sellyourservice.co.uk/2016/06/the-definitive-guide-for-creating-outstanding-landing-pages-in-wordpress-with-copy-and-content-that-generates-more-email-sign-ups/ ” and include a link.

Levels of Outsourcing

I’ve briefly mentioned that there are different levels of outsourcing, depending on where you are within your business, the model and structure you use, and what needs to be done. Different levels of outsourcing suit different tasks. It’s important to match outsourcing levels with two things: your budget and the task.

Anyone can find VA staff for $5 per hour, but if you have that VA handle a content creation task, you’ll get what you pay for. On the other hand, more valuable VAs at $15 an hour are perfect for research tasks, customer communications, and more complex processes. Finally, some tasks, like logo design for a customer, for example, only need one-off hires. Even hiring a great UK designer could cost as little as £600 and it’s something you don’t have to do. One-off data entry from handwritten bookkeeping to an Excel spreadsheet might just need to be done once.

Small, repetitive process-driven tasks that don’t require skill. Tasks like social media bulk post uploading, copying content from Google Docs to a WordPress blog, or entering customer e-mail addresses manually from forms into MailChimp are all repetitive tasks. These kinds of smaller, process-driven tasks don’t require a huge amount of skill and are perfect for lower end VA staff:

  • Social post uploads

  • Data entry

  • Data transfer

  • Copying text and posting

  • Scheduling blog posts

  • Sending prewritten e-mails

  • Scheduling e-mail campaigns

  • Following processes and instructions

Lots of VAs at this level either aren’t skilled enough, starting out, or they don’t want to do more complex tasks. Some hires are genuinely happy just performing low-skill tasks. They’re usually polite, timely, and get jobs done quickly.

Medium-level tasks that are frequent or require education and experience. Some tasks (e.g., video editing) require a little more skill and practice and are better suited to VAs who can execute complex tasks with fewer instructions. I created a template for editing and uploading videos in Camtasia. My VA was not only able to follow those instructions, but also took content from another spreadsheet and included it in the video.

Finally, if I gave examples of where we should cut things or make small edits, he was able to easily take that example and apply it to other videos. When the videos were uploaded to YouTube, another VA was able to create thumbnails, YouTube captions and end screens, tags, and descriptions. She was also able to schedule the videos to go out and create a series of tweets and Facebook posts for each video and schedule those. We did have written and video processes for all those tasks, but they were more complex, as they required some creativity and initiative. Combined with instructions, the tasks were carried out perfectly. Other examples include the following:

  • Booking meetings

  • Booking networking events

  • Customer services

  • Simple image and content creation

  • Scheduling complex content

  • Report creation

  • Maintenance and security

One-off tasks that only need to be done once for a specific result. Sometimes there is a task that needs doing that you don’t want to do or don’t need to do yourself. Here are some examples:

  • Logo design

  • Landing page design

  • One-off graphics or images

  • Data entry

  • Research

  • Security upgrades and installs to web sites

One-off tasks are great for freelancer marketplaces. Stick to the same rules as hiring regular VAs and you won’t go far wrong. Give specific instructions, have a process, and give timings, deadlines, and example results (even from other businesses). Don’t hire the first person who bids. Ask candidates how they’d complete the task and what tools they will and can use. Never fall into the trap of “Well, I’ll just do it myself, it’ll be quicker.” The first few times, this might be true. What you’re trying to do, though, is learn how to push more work to other people.

Personal tasks that aren’t part of the business. The final tasks that you can start to outsource are personal tasks: booking restaurants, ordering gifts, and booking flights and travel accommodations. There is so much potential in getting other people to do low-value, low-intensity work. Think about how you can grow your time if other people are organizing travel and leisure activities.

I don’t book flights anymore, hire cars, or book hotels. My VA does it all. I’ll give her very explicit instructions, such as “My partner and I need to be in Phoenix by March 6, 2017. Please book me a flight from London Heathrow using the company card. I have a budget of around £2,000 in total. Please find the cheapest flight possible, flying with BA, AA, or Virgin. I want a direct flight to arrive in Phoenix, Arizona, before 9 p.m. on March 6.”

Often she’ll come back with car hire, hotels, and activities , too, which we sometimes book also. The point is that I could spend hours searching the Web for deals and an extra $100 off here and there, but that $100 is not really worth all the notes and saved tabs. Spending thrifty is not the way to grow your business. In the time it takes my VA to book all my travel arrangements, I’ll have done an entire day’s work.

Pay per result , not per hour. Overall, what we’re trying to do with outsourcing is pay for results. It’s important to focus on that when we’re looking at costs. The idea of paying per result, not per hour, helps us with two aspects of the process.

First, when we’re comparing prices for individual hires or VA staff, it’s tempting to look on the cheaper side. How much can the difference be between $5 and $10 per hour? What we want to avoid, though, is paying $5 per hour for six hours’ work on a task that should take two hours. Believe me, it happens. Seemingly simple tasks can balloon in scale. Before you know it, that two-hour task has cost you $30. In addition, the $10 per hour VA might have completed it in two hours, meaning you’re overpaying by $10.

Second, a task that requires you to fix it or make changes costs you time and money. For example let’s say the $5 per hour VA completes a keyword research task in two hours. $10 is pretty good! However, they’ve only included 30 keywords when you asked for 100. They’ve forgotten the target market and location. There are no estimated monthly traffic statistics in it either. You now have to complete part of the task, provide feedback to the VA, and manage the task yourself going forward. If it takes you another two hours to complete it, that’s $200 or $600 or $2,000 that’s been wasted.

Note that I’m absolutely not saying that $5 per hour VAs aren’t worth looking at. You need to be clear, however, about what their role, capabilities, and expectations are.

On the other hand, a $15 an hour VA gets the job done in the same time, two hours. $30 is still pretty brilliant, I think. You check over the results and sure enough, everything is there. They even have a few suggestions about some other tools and other keyword topics for future research. When you have trouble with outsourcing work, it can feel cheaper to just do it yourself. You’re partly right, in the short term. In the long run, though, you’re using up your most precious asset—time—to complete tasks that can be taken care of by someone else. It’s tempting to go back and do it yourself after a bad experience, but work out what’s going wrong and allow yourself to push past that.

Use Process.st to manage repeated tasks. Process.st and Kissflow are two great tools for managing repeat tasks. For example, our social media process for taking posts from our blog and sharing them via Twitter is repeated every week. It was a perfect thing to outsource, because we knew it happened every Thursday and it would give me back two hours a week, every week. You can use Word, Google Docs, Google Sheets, or Quip, of course, but I’ve found Process.st to integrate wonderfully with many other applications.

Automate the start of tasks with Zapier ; go and investigate Zapier ( https://zapier.com ) to see how you can start automating all sorts of tasks. Zapier is a cloud-based automation program. It connects applications together that don’t usually connect. For example, whenever I publish a new blog post, I’ve built a zap in Zapier that sends Facebook posts out as tweets. It also creates Twitter content for my social process.

I have another zap that every seven days sends out a curated RSS feed of important articles for me to read over, combining all my blog reading into one session. One final example is that my Calendly app (a calendar booking application at https://calendly.com ), whenever someone books a certain meeting, will create a meeting room in Zoom (or webinar software) and send both me and the guest a link. It also reminds them a day before and an hour before the call. All this is automated from Zapier for about $20 a month. Start playing around with Zapier and see which of your tasks can be taken care of by a cloud application.

Always offer to guide and help , but people rarely ask. A note on assisting your new hires: I’ve found that no matter how often I offer to help or check that they’re okay, they won’t ask me for help, sometimes until it’s too late. Always offer help and assistance or guidance, but don’t be surprised when no one (not just your VA staff) takes you up on it.

The key is to ask questions, rather than just ask “How are you doing?” Ask how a specific task or stage is going. You might have to rotate each stage you’re asking about, otherwise you’ll seem like you’re interrogating them. I’m lucky that my VA will clearly state when something is unclear or when it’s not working. However, we have had hires try to figure out the solution and spend hours working on the problem, rather than working on the task.

Be clear and sure about tasks . If you’re asking someone to do something, make it crystal clear you want it done and be clear about the results. We’ve covered being clear about getting the work done, but you’d be staggered at how many people outsource tasks, or ask for a process to be run, that they themselves are unsure what to do with. I had a customer, the manager of a telco team, ask us to create a content marketing plan. It was pretty in depth and the entire team got involved with customer personas, content funnels, and remarketing—the works.

After we presented it and handed the guide over, the customer wasn’t really sure what to do with it. “So what do we do now? How do we use this?” Despite literally having two content members on the team, the manager refused to implement the strategy because he wasn’t really clear on what he’d do with it. Sure, part of that is down to us maybe not being clear enough on how to start the content marketing, but why would you ask for a task to be completed, costing time and money, when you have no idea what you’d do with it?

Unfortunately, this “dog chasing a car” characteristic of running a business is all too common. Sometimes, people have no idea what to do with results when they get them. Make sure that’s not you.

Don’t let people up the price after you accept their bid. This has only happened once to me, but it sent me into a near homicidal rage when it happened. We commissioned a logo t-shirt design, and a few other branding things, to be taken care of by a freelancer. We used Freelancer.com (which we’ve never had a problem with since) and found a freelancer willing to do all the work. They put a bid in, just like everyone else, and we selected them. They weren’t the cheapest, but they also weren’t the most expensive. However, after they won the contract, they upped their price. I was furious.

Freelancer: Hey, I would like to complete your project for £xxx GBP.

Me: How quickly can you turn the project around?

Freelancer: When do you need complete this work?

Me: Before Friday 30th?

Freelancer: Yes. Sure will do.

Me: Can you tell me what you plan on delivering please?

Freelancer: Yes. I am sure we can finish this work by Friday and give you editable source file.

Me: What formats please?

Freelancer: I will give you AI, JPEG, and PNG.

Me: Can you do PSD as well?

Freelancer: Yes. I will do.

Me: Will the graphic be symmetrical from left to right for both the front and rear design?

Freelancer: Okay.

Me: You need t-shirt front and back and sides for sleeves.

Freelancer: Okay.

Me: I’ve awarded the project.

Freelancer: Can you please tell me what is your budget for this work? Yes. Thanks for awarding me.

Me: You bid XXX, that’s the budget.

Freelancer: Yes, that was my basic bid. Can you increase your budget a little bit?

The project was a total disaster later on, too. The work wasn’t up to par and I ended up getting a clothing designer to do everything in the United Kingdom. I thought I covered all my angles with the brief and the messages, but then I was hoodwinked. I could have just complained, I suppose, or demanded a refund, but I figured I could increase the budget a little bit and get the work done. I learned my lesson.

Never release funds until you’ve received the result. Also, this particular freelancer refused to hand over the files until I had completed the final payment (she also tried holding out for more money again after that). Pay only when you receive the final goods. Simple as that.

Ask for weekly “time used” updates . To keep on top of your available resources, ask for a weekly time used update and report. Most VA businesses will supply this anyway, giving you a breakdown of how many paid hours you have left, or how many you need to pay for. Most VA businesses I know will ask you to buy time up front first, then give you a certain number of hours for that sum.

After each task, ask for a report on how long it took. Then at the end of the week, ask how many hours you have left. Don’t worry if you use all your hours in the first week, if you’ve bought a month’s worth. The truth is that’s pretty hard to do and if you’re told what each task “cost,” then you should be able to manage that.

Have a support or backup VA or team . What happens if your VA can’t work and all your weekly tasks get left undone? This is a common objection I hear about why you shouldn’t rely on VA staff. If you’ve got someone doing 10 tasks a week and they disappear (it happens, but not often), what happens with your business? Brickwork has a team of VAs and my VA herself has a backup team. This means that if she’s away (holidays, sickness) another member of the team can take over. Ask if your VA has a backup team. Ask what happens if they’re ill or can’t complete the work.

Ask them to keep you accountable. In the same way that we mentioned in Chapter 5, people pay to be kept accountable. Use your VA in the same way! Ask them to send you an e-mail every Monday morning asking what you’re going to do. Ask them on a Friday to e-mail you, asking what you’ve completed. You’d be amazed at how writing down and sending accountability e-mails to your VA is a productivity boost. I don’t want my team to think I’m lazy or unproductive!

Ask for a weekly repetition as soon as you can. If I had to give one piece of productivity or outsourcing advice, I’d say outsource a weekly, repetitive task as soon as you can. The first job I got someone else to do was upload and schedule all my social posts. It was paramount to me being able to move off the tools I use.

I was tired of social scheduling and creating tweets. I needed to get rid of that task fast. Look at your weekly, repetitive tasks and see what you need to move off your plate. If you’re not willing to do this, your business will never grow. I can promise you that. Even if you can only afford two hours a week, choose a weekly, repetitive task that should be handled by someone else. First, it’ll give you your time back, the most valuable asset you have. Second, it’ll give you fantastic experience managing VA staff and outsourcing. Give freedom of intelligence . If there is a problem that can be solved for under $100, let them solve it. As I mentioned in Chapter 8, if my team encounters a problem with a customer and they can solve it for under $100, I have them do it. This was one of my biggest takeaways from The 4 Hour Work Week, by Timothy Ferriss. So much time is wasted when we insist on getting involved with customer issues.

Don’t get me wrong: Customer communication is a perfect time to help people and solve another problem. Just because they’re unhappy doesn’t mean it can’t be turned around. However, calling me, texting me, messaging me, and so on, just because the customer needs something, isn’t productive.

First, all refunds are guaranteed at my business. If the customer wants a refund, give it. We’re not even that precious about the time period. We do have a refund process, asking what was wrong and can we move them onto another product instead. If they insist on a refund, though, we’ll give it.

Note, however, that we hardly ever give refunds. In 2016, out of almost 500 sales, we gave only two refunds: one to someone who didn’t understand what they were buying and another to someone who accidentally bought twice.

If there is a problem that someone is struggling with, with our software, apps , or content, and we can solve it for under $100, we’ll do it. I trust that my team is smart enough not just to give $100 to every complaint. However, if someone has being trying to log into their coaching account for days and all sorts of things go wrong, we’ll give them $50 back and get them something from Amazon. Small things like that go a long way.

Summary

Outsourcing your process is when your scale really begins to take off. It becomes exponential and brings its own new problems. Whenever there is a problem with an outsourcing hire, you have to accept 100% responsibility and prevent it from happening again.

  • Take a cut of your revenue and invest it in outsourcing.

  • Outsourcing can help run your personal life as well as your business.

  • Create a management role where all your outsourcers talk to your manager and your manager talks to you.

  • Accept that things will go wrong, but they can always be fixed.