Why you doing all this yourself? Yeah. Good question, what do you mean though? What I mean is why you doing all this yourself without asking others for help? People can help.
“Ah, but I am on my own, I work from home.”
Well maybe so do I. But I have plenty of people to help me. Why do everything yourself? I know we’re all control freaks and we want it done properly. We start the business and we know how best to do it. But do we really?
If Richard Branson started a new business today, do you think he’d say “We’ll, save some money so I’ll open the post, and I’ll learn Quickbooks”?
Hmmmm, probably not very likely.
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There are a number of jobs in your business that can be outsourced, or in-sourced (You don’t have to employ freelancers.)
Go to the biggest site in the world, called Freelancer.com. There’s also Elance.com that merged with Odesk.com, but you can still get the both of them. Then there’s Fiverr.com for simple little tasks.
Say, for instance, I advise you to start video podcasting, and you go headlong into it. Are you going to read books on podcasting and figure out how to edit your podcasts?
Are you going to figure out how to setup an intro and outro, when you can just get them done by experts? Why learn it?
Do you want to learn Photoshop, so you can touch up your images, or you would rather give them to someone on Fiverr.com for five dollars who’s an expert, who’s just doing this in his spare time for a few bucks?
Or it could be ten bucks for all we care. It’s going to be fantastic. Just don’t do it all yourself.
However, there are number of things you should never outsource.
- Financial planning
- Marketing planning
- The voice and tone of your social media
I’m not saying you can’t outsource parts of your social media, but anything that involves your voice and tone should not be outsourced if you’re talking directly to people.
You cannot have someone else pretending to be you.
Very important, don’t have someone pretending to be you.
But there are plenty of things you really should outsource to someone else, such as opening the post or doing your bookkeeping.
Most of us use a bookkeeper. It’s automatic. So, why do the other thing? Why learn new skills?
You are good at certain things. So stick to doing the thing you’re very good at and find others.
You may say “I’m better at doing this”, however you’re only better at doing this because you’ve been doing it for so long, and you’ve not yet taught someone else how you want it to be done.
Don’t think they going to do it correctly instantly. Teach them how you want it doing, no matter how you outsource it to them.
Weekend Challenge
That’s going to be part of my Weekend Challenge, so you’ve got all weekend to think about this.
I would like you to get a pen and a pad or a piece of paper, and I want you to draw three columns with the first column being the thickest one.
Now, be warned, as this is a longer list than usual.
First of all I’d like you to write down ten jobs that you do in your business that you enjoy doing. It doesn’t matter how seldom or how often you do them, ten tasks. Write them down in the left column.
Secondly, write down ten tasks you do not like doing, but you do do, still in the left column. So, ten tasks you do like doing and ten you don’t like doing.
Then we going to come up another ten. These are ten little five-minute, one-off, hardly-ever-done tasks. In this, you can include opening the post, opening the mail.
Ten things that only take five minutes or take one minute that you occasionally do once in a blue moon and are not worth getting someone else to do. Jot those down.
In the second column, I would like you to write down who else could do each of those tasks. That could include say a member of staff, an existing member of staff, a new member of staff, a part-timer, a local student, or a freelancer.
And yes, it includes those one and five minute tasks, such as opening the post. And yes, it does include all the things that you enjoy doing.
You have thirty things on that list, thirty jobs. In the third column, select ten tasks that you are going to try to outsource in the next four weeks.
Set yourself a deadline of January 31st 2015, and outsource those ten tasks, at least once.
See how it feels, see how easy it is, give it a go.
You never know, your life may be about to change.
Have a fantastic weekend. I look forward to meeting with you again next week.
Get on iTunes. Go listen to Ray Edwards. And then, start getting people to send emails to you. Look at their signatures. See you soon.