Check out this link from Jason Fried from 37signals. Every wonder why you don’t get much done at work. He pretty much hits it on the head. Very interesting stuff and great concepts for productivity.
http://bigthink.com/ideas/18522
Shoot me a comment if you liked it as much as me.
So you want to work four hours like Tim Ferriss, or hire full time virtual assistants like John Jonas at www.replacemyself.com to do all the mundane tasks of running an Internet business? Well, I can’t vouch that these two are working the hours they claim, but with the proper preparation, you can definitely make your journey as a Internet entrepreneur much easier. Don’t fool yourself into thinking this will be easy, because it will not. It takes hard work, dedication and the ability to take risks to succeed.
You need to face facts now, there are things that you are strong in and others that you are not. Recognize the positive traits you have and don’t stress about your weaknesses. The beauty about the Internet is that it has opened a new world of collaboration, and in order to take advantage of it, you need to plan. Oh, no John, not planning, I like to react to circumstances, move with the action. You mean I have to sit down and write out a plan for a few hours. The answer to that my friend is an unequivocal YES! Don’t fret though; this few hours will save you hundreds of hours down the road. In order to live the four hour work week. You need procedure lists to leverage your time.
These procedure lists will document all aspects of your business. In an earlier post I touched on the fact that improving your communication with virtual assistants is crucial to the success of your business. Procedure lists are a large part of that communication. You will be wasting money if you hire a virtual assistant without having directions documented for them to follow. Unless, of course, you hire them to create the procedure lists! Hey John, that’s a great idea! I’ll just have them do it. EEENNTT, wrong, now your being lazy again. Didn’t I tell you in the beginning that this wasn’t going to be easy.
All right, so what exactly is a procedure list? Those of you that have served in the military will recognize them as “Standard Operating Procedures” or SOP’s. They are step by step procedures that show new hires how to perform the job you need them to do. There are many ways to create them; I prefer to have a written one with screen shots. But, you can also utilize tools such as Camtasia screen capture for video ones, these video’s will shorten the new hires learning curve even more. These procedures will also enable you to leverage your time tenfold. They give you the ability to hand them off to potential hires in order to perform tasks that you either don’t like, or waste way to much time doing. As an Internet entrepreneur you need to understand that your time is the most precious commodity. How much do you value your time? I can bet it’s not enough.
I utilize two forms of saving procedure lists. The first is that I have a Google documents account dedicated directly towards procedures for new hires to follow. This enables me to give access to anyone I want throughout the world and Google provides the space for free. Residing inside of the Google documents account is a hierarchy of files that contain all pertinent background information I require all of my virtual assistants to know about my business. They start at the first file in the account and move down the list concurrently. This serves the purpose of training, training that was in my head and now is in procedures located in these files. Training that I no longer have perform myself. When they are done with the initial review of the training, they now have an overview of;
All of this information in this account took me days to complete; it paid itself back after the first time of not having to train someone. It enabled me to leverage my time to work on my business, not in my business. I have worked with four virtual assistants in the last six months, each one has gone through this training and I now have four people that fully understand my business without me having to take the time out of my day to train them. Procedure lists are a pain to create, but are the only way for you to leverage your time to get more things done.
I mentioned that I had two forms of saving procedure lists, and the other has to do with personal information. Bank account numbers, personal items, etc. these have to be handled with a little more security then I am comfortable with leaving on Google. So, I have these securely stored in a separate area that I only grant access to VA’s I trust. How do you get to trust a VA? Over time.
If you would like a copy of a procedure list that I created, leave a comment on my blog. I will send it to you. Sometimes, seeing the format helps. Just remember, you have to be in this thing for the long haul, and eventually you want it to pay off by being able to fulfill you definite major purpose. In order to do that, you need to be outsourcing as many facets of your business as you can. You will be surprised, once you start outsourcing, the possibilities become endless on what you can accomplish.
I read the four hour work week by Tim Ferriss a little over a year ago and the book influenced my life immediately. For years now I have concentrated on improving myself by reading and taking courses to increase my knowledge. This has helped build my confidence. Confidence, is a major portion of anyone’s ability to succeed. I find that once you feel comfortable with understanding a procedure or how to do a function, you are not afraid of failure. Risk aversion is not something that I liked doing throughout my life, but with constant practice and positive reinforcement I have become better acquainted with the dreaded demon of risk. In a way, I can thank Tim Ferriss for this, without the 4HWW I would not have traveled down the road of internet business.
Although I have always been a successful in my career, it was like a light being turned on after reading “my Bible” as I like to refer to the 4HWW. Those of you that read Entrepreneur magazine Joel Holland has an excellent article about going “virtual” with your work force. Joel mentions how Tim Ferriss is “an avid proponent of virtual operations,” and of all the gems that I gathered from the 4HWW, the knowledge of using a virtual assistant or “VA” has helped me tremendously. You can read the article here http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2009/may/201180.html
A primary function of my job has always been to manage people and the procedures that they perform. To do this well, you have to make sure that you have a system for follow up and constantly monitor benchmarks and metrics. Communication is a key component to managing anything and I foolishly felt that utilizing a VA would be easy for me. I was wrong, and the reason for that was I did not communicate expectations in writing clear enough.
Tim gave me the tools, I needed to implement them. As I began to start my online businesses, I hired my first VA to do research for me. Using the link in the book, I immediately started on elance (www.elance.com). I opened my account within minutes and began my search for a research assistant. A strange thing occurred during this first hire, I felt alive and almost giddy. I couldn’t help but feel that I could now consider myself a true internet entrepreneur. For those of you that are not familiar with Elance, it gives you the ability to hire anyone for basically any service and since my first hire; I have continued to use them on a regular basis. What I learned with my first hire was that although, I felt my communication was clear. It was nothing compared to how I needed to communicate with a VA.
See, the thing you need to remember is that communicating through e-mail and chat rooms takes a little getting used too. Tim details this in the book by setting clear boundaries for the VA’s to follow and I completely agree. Clear boundary’s and what is expected is not only a good practice to adhere too while dealing with “VA’s” it should be something you strive to do each day. I recommend the following steps when putting together information needed for a job bid.
“I need you to research for three hours, stop and send me the results in an excel spread sheet properly formatted with column headings. Do not continue until I give you the go ahead for the next stage of the project.”
When you do this, it gives you the practice you need on giving direction. Something every good manager/entrepreneur needs to be able to do. You would be surprised how many people do not like to do this because they feel that it may hurt someone’s feelings. However, to be successful, you need to be clear and understood.
Once you feel comfortable, post your job for bidding. If you want to keep costs low, I suggest you post your job to the Philippines, and India. There are some very telling differences between the results you will get from the two different areas, replace myself.com explains this much better than anyone I have heard so far. Once the bids start rolling in, the fun begins.
Check the feedback on the people or companies bidding. Read the scores they receive, also, look for how much repeat business that a bidder has retained. It is a great barometer for how happy the previous customers were with the quality of work they received. Once you weed out the bad from good, really interview the bidders. See how they respond to particular questions you pose. Also, have them repeat the scope of the project and the benchmarks to make sure that they clearly understand.
After I hired my first VA, I couldn’t stop. All of the things that I thought I had to do myself, gone. By utilizing VA’s for starting my internet business, I was able to maximize my time and expand the reach I had to get things done. Once you get rolling, there doesn’t seem to be anything that you can’t job out to these people. The key is finding one or two that you trust. This way, you can teach them your procedure lists for running your business.
I like to describe working with VA’s as being the ring leader at a circus. You have to check and verify different aspects of the work they are doing, pull a string here, adjust something there. All while sipping a pina colada on the beach. It’s a beautiful thing. I hope this helps you on your journey to financial freedom that doing business over the internet can bring, it’s a beautiful thing.