Hey everyone. This is Stefan from projectlifemastery.com.
In this video, I'm going to share with you how to grow your business by
outsourcing and hiring virtual assistants.
Now, if you have a business right now that you want to grow, you want to scale
it up, you want to earn more money, you want to impact more people, in order to
do that successfully your are going to need help. You see, you can't do
everything yourself.
Oftentimes, that's one of the biggest mistakes and the biggest roadblock that
a lot of entrepreneurs face, is they try to do everything by themselves. Sure
enough, they're limiting their growth, their stress,
they're overwhelmed and they're not able to make as much and automate and have actual
freedom in their business.
Now, when you're first starting a business, as an entrepreneur, for the most
part you’re going to have to do everything by yourself. I understand that. I get
that. That's what I had to go through and that's what most people have to go
through when they're first starting a business. When you're first starting it,
you're going to have to play all the positions on a team. That's
how I always view it. Almost as if, at the beginning, you have to work
in the business. You have like a sports team, let's say it's like a soccer team,
and you're playing every position. You're playing goalie, you're playing
forward, you're playing defense, and you're having to do everything yourself.
That can be useful at the beginning because number 1, you might not have
the money to hire people
so you're going to be forced to do a lot of things by yourself. Then,
hopefully, once you start making money, you can reinvest that money to hire help
and have people help you to do a lot of the other positions in your business
and help you grow more. Also, it is useful, I think, at the beginning stages of a
think you learn a lot by doing it that way.
I know for myself when I first started my online business, I used to write
books myself. I used to design covers. I forced myself to
learn graphics design and marketing and SEO and WordPress and blogging. All these different
skills. I found that even though it was very
challenging to do that and it was a really huge learning curve,
the skills that I learned actually were very useful for me.
More importantly, when I got to a point where I started hiring and
outsourcing different things,
I understood these skills and I could effectively train people in my business
to help me grow my business and do a lot of that stuff for me. I totally get it,
I've been there but, at a certain point in your business, if you want to grow and
scale up, you are going to need help.
You can't do everything by yourself. You are going to need to hire help.
There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of issues that a lot of entrepreneurs
face. A lot of entrepreneurs, they're control freaks, they need certainty. They're
afraid and they feel like other people can't do things as well as
they might be able to do it themselves. To some extents that is true but
to another extent it's not true because, oftentimes, you can hire people that are
better than you at doing certain things. They've specialised and mastered their
craft and they can really help you grow even further.
In order to effectively scale up and grow your business,
you're going to have to switch from working in the business to on the
business. Being a business owner not a business operator. Again,
going back to the analogy that I shared of having the soccer team,
I always view it as, at the beginning,
you're the one that's on the field. You're the one that's grinding it out.
You're the one that's in the trenches, that's actually playing the game.
You're doing everything. You're are playing every position. At a certain point though,
you want to be in the position where you're the manager, you're the coach,
you're the person that is managing the players on the field.
That's a much better position to be in because now you're working on the
business and not in it. Even better than that is actually being the manager
and eventually the owner. Actually having a whole team in place for people
to manage and run the operations, the marketing, the customer support and the
different elements of your business. That's always the end goal, is you want
to remove yourself from all the majority of the operations in your
business and you eventually want to be in a position where you are focusing on
your strengths,
what you're good at and what you personally enjoy in your business.
That's the position that I feel privileged to be in right now in my
business. You want to remove yourself from it as much as possible.
To throw another analogy at you, another way of looking at it is building a house.
If you're trying to build a house as a contractor and you're trying
to do everything, you're trying to do the plumbing, the flooring, the
foundation, the drywall and the roofing and the electric, you're trying to
do everything yourself, you're then going to be limited.
It's going to take you forever, number one, to build the house because you're doing
everything yourself. Also, you're going to be limited in your freedom,
you're going to be stressed, overwhelmed. You're not going to be able to do much else.
If you focus on working smarter and not necessarily harder, and you
think to yourself, you know what, I'm going to work on the house not in the house.
I'm going to hire a plumber. I'm going to hire a electrician.
I'm going to hire the painters and the roofers. I'm going to be the one
that manages it. Now, you're in that position of the contractor, you can now
build 5 houses at the same time because yore leveraging yourself.
That's a much more powerful position to be in if you really want to
effectively grow and scale up your business.
All right. I've already shared a few analogies and my philosophy with it.
Some questions that I get is how do I find a virtual assistant or how do
outsource things for my business?
What do I outsource first? There's a number of different
questions with that. I will mention number 1, I've actually got a virtual assistant
training program that goes into a lot of details. I'll have a link below in the
description. Right now it's primarily for Kindle publishers, for those of you
that are publishing on Amazon, selling on Amazon. There is a lot of great
advice and tips that can be applied to any business in that program. I am
working on, maybe, re-releasing that program for any online
Number one, I think it's very useful at the beginning stages
to hire freelancers that are based on certain projects in your business.
There's freelancers on certain projects and then there's actual
assistants and employees that you might have.
I prefer freelancers or actually companies and services that have a team
in place because then you don't have to spend as much time managing employees.
I'll give you an example of this, my customer support team that I have form my
business,
do an amazing job. Instead of going out there and trying to find VAs and
train them on customer support,
I found a company that especializes in that and I hired that company and they handle
my customer support. That company now, I'm dealing with a manager
who trains and manages the customer support reps and I can
integrate that in my business. I found that to be a very useful way as
opposed to having to train people and manage people because managing people is
full-time job. A lot of people don't realize that there's a lot of time spent in just
managing people. Personally, for me, that's not really my skill.
I'd much rather work with a company that can do that for me and manage it.
Another example might be is you want to get a website design or graphics. Instead
of working with individuals, you can maybe find a company that has a web
design, the programmers, the graphics people. Work with the company. You're
going to pay a little bit extra because of that but oftentimes it can be a lot
easier because you're working with a company that already has a team in place.
They've already found the talent, hired them, trained them, et cetera. They can deliver
better, more reliable results for you.
That's one strategy of outsourcing. I love that, it's one of my
favorite ways.
It will always cost more money that way because you're working with a company
and you're working with the manager and they already have everything in
place.
Same thing with like content companies like if I want to get books created,
I’d much rather work with a company that has a bunch of writers and I just deal with
the manager. I order from them and they have the writers, the editors, the proof readers.
They do everything for you and then they send me the book back. Then I can
publish and market that book. As opposed to finding a writer and
having to train them and work with them and manage them.
I found that to often be a lot more work. Working with subcontractors,
freelancers,
that's one great way of outsourcing. To find some of these companies,
I'll share with you a little bit later. It's actually really the same
way to finding the individual virtual assistant. The other way is
virtual assistants. These are people that you might hire as employees. People that
can do certain tasks for you.
You're going to find them, hire them, train them, interview them et cetera,
manage them. It'll be a lot less expensive doing it that way but it is
going to require more of your time to train them and get them setup et cetera.
Both are effective ways. Some of the sources that I use for my business
are number 1, upwork.com. Upwork.com,
it's one of my favorite places to find virtual assistants, freelancers all over
the world.
That's what I've used since the beginning. It used to be Odesk, now it's
Upwork.
They also own elance.com which is another website as well. Upwork I've
used for years. I've got all my team through that website. Basically, with
Upwork, you can post a job on the website. If you have a certain task that you
outsource or your looking for someone, you post a job. You put in a
title, a headline for the job and a description of what the job's about.
For example, if you're looking for a social media manager in your business,
you post the job say, I'm looking for a social media manager.
I'm looking for someone who has experience with Twitter and Instagram
and Facebook. Here's what the job includes. You got to be reliable et cetera.
Whatever you want to share about the job and what you're looking for. When you
post up the job, you're going to have people from all over the world that are
going to bid on that job.
You're going to have people from the US, from Canada, from Australia, Europe, in
Southeast Asia, in China. All over the world that are going to bid on the job. and
They're all going to say, I can do this, I can do that. You're going
to be able to see their profile. On their profile, they're going to have feedback
and ratings from other people they've worked with. They're going to be verified
by Upwork. You're going to be able to see their portfolio and a lot of
stuff from them. Their references et cetera. That's a great way to find and outsource
things because you're putting the job up there,
you're attracting all these people to your job. You can then screen through
and see and interview, the top candidates and filter them as
well.
To find the best ones that can help you grow your business. The same
process can be done for graphics designers or web designers,
programmers. I've always used Upwork for that.
If I'm looking for a web designer, I post a job.
I share a little bit of details about the project. I'll have people that'll
bid. When they bid they're going to say. I can do this for you for 500
bucks, I can do this for a 100 bucks. I can do this for 2000 bucks.
They're going to bid on what their rates are. Again, you
can see their feedback and everything as well. Upwork or Elance,
these companies, they work as a third party. You're hiring them through the
website and so they take a fee from what you pay the
freelancer and stuff like that. The benefit of using a website like Upwork
is number 1, they have what's called a work diary.
If you're paying someone on an hourly basis, the work diary will take a
screenshot of that persons screen and their activity every 5 to 10 minutes.
Every 10 minutes you're able to see their screen. You can see their activity
level and see if they're actually doing the work that they're billing you for.
That's very valuable because oftentimes when you hire an employee
and you're not there, their virtual, you can't see what they're doing.
They're billing you for hours in their time but you
can't go to see if they're actually doing the work that you said. Upwork
gives you a feature to look at the work diary and see the work that
they're doing.
Also, Upwork acts as a third party to help protect you as the employer.
For example, if there's any issues that you might have with your employee, which
everybody faces at some point when you have employees. Whether they steal from
you, they scam you,
whatever it is. These are things that do happen. Basically , Upwork will
protect you.
Upwork acts as a third party. If there's any issues you can report
them to Upwork. For example, I had an issue with an employee that
was stealing money from me, my business. I didn't realize it for a few weeks.
Caught it. Reported him to Upwork. Upwork took immediate action. Suspended him from
Upwork.
Reversed payments that I'd paid to him so I got reimbursed payments as well.
Sure enough it got sorted out. Also Upwork's great because your
freelancers, the employees you hire, they don't want to jeopardize their
relationship with Upwork. They don't want negative reviews.
After each freelancer you hire, after you've done working with them,
you leave feedback. You leave reviews. You can recommend them et cetera and
that's their business. I've always found it worth the extra bit of money
and fees that you pay Upwork because they protect you in so many ways.
They side with you. I just find the peace of mind, everything has been
really great.
Upwork is a great site for that. I'll have a link below.
Elance.com is another great one, similar to Upwork.
There's other sites as well, I'm not too familiar with, but there's like
Freelancer.com. Even Craigslist, I've found employees from Craigslist. You
can post in different locations on Craigslist as well. Attract people to
you that way also.
Again, depending if you're looking for local or virtual, but for example, if you're
looking to hire people in the Philippines,
you can go to the Craigslist in the Philippines and post jobs there. You
can be able to attract people that way as well.
When I hire virtual assistants my favorite country to hire from is always
the Philippines.
I found that Filipino people, number 1. They're very loyal. They're very honest.
They're hardworking. They've got a lot of great skills. Also,
because the exchange rate, the currency in the country and everything, you can
hire people very inexpensively there.
I think the minimum to hire on Upwork is $3 an hour or so. You
can hire people there for $3 an hour so very inexpensive as opposed
to hiring in the US or Canada or Europe, you might
have to pay $10 an hour for the same job, the same work.
I'd much rather hire someone in the Philippines that is
offshore, much more inexpensive and I'm not going to have to pay
certain taxes and
have them on a payroll and deal with all those issues because
they're virtual. They're in a different country. They're freelancers. I like hiring
in the Philippines. Personally, I've had bad experiences with other countries. Certain
other countries have bad reputations, unfortunately, like India or Bangladesh.
Some people have that little bit more challenges with freelancers in those
countries. However, I'm sure there's great ones everywhere in the world.
I'll share with you guys a little strategy, a little tip that you guys can
utilize to help you outsource as well. One thing that I always do. Right now,
you're running your business, right. There's things that you're doing
everyday. You're doing stuff everyday. You're taking action. You're growing your
business.
One question I get is how do I know what to outsource? What do
I hire out?
Well, what you could do is track everything that you're doing right now in your
business on a weekly basis. All throughout the week keep a journal, put it next to
your desk.
Write down everything that you do. I'm posting this
to social media. I'm submitting my book to these directories.
I'm publishing blog posts. I'm creating videos.
I'm interviewing this person. I'm doing these sales calls. I'm doing this, this,
this. All the stuff that you're doing, okay, make a list. Everything. Then, what you want
to do is you want to take that list after a week or 2 and,
first of all, put a dollar value to everything that you did on the list.
Everything that you do, all the actions on your list, they're not equal
in the sense of the results their going to produce in your business.
Somethings that you're doing are maybe things you could probably outsource to someone
else for $3 an hour.
Other things that you do, maybe, if you were to outsource it might cost $100
an hour. Maybe it's very specialized skillset. Out of the
list that you have, you want to put a dollar amount on the value of what it
cost, that it's worth to hire someone else to do that for you. Very
repetitive, mundane things that don't require much thinking. Whether it's
submitting to databases, directories, and
data mining and posting things online. Promoting things and back linking and
SEO. All these sort of things.
Those are things that you could probably outsource for, maybe, $3 to
$5 an hour.
Other things, maybe like video editing and editing a podcast or
transcribing or proofreading and stuff like that, graphics design,
maybe those things, if you were to outsource it, it might cost $5-$10
an hour.
The again, maybe it's copy writing and recording videos and writing
blog posts, those things they might be worth $20 to
$40 an hour.
There's maybe somethings that are worth $100 plus per hour.
Whatever it is, you want to do the best you can. Obviously, you're not going to be
perfect but you want to basically identify what are the things under the list
that are the things that I'm doing that I could easily outsource. That, by me
doing them, I'm losing money. If there's things that you're doing on your
list that you could outsource for $3 an hour or $5 an hour or $10
an hour to someone else, and you're still doing it,
well, now you're valuing your time at $3-$5 or $10 an hour.
You're losing money by doing because you can hire someone else to do that for
You want to take the list. Usually, out of a list of things that you have,
really, 80% of the things you can outsource to someone else.
20% of those things you want to continue doing yourself, become better
at and focus most of your time, energy and attention doing. Out of the list, take
20%. You take those, you say, okay, these are the things only I can do or they'd
be very expensive to outsource. I'm going to continue doing them. The other 80%,
I'm going to outsource that to other people. I'm going to find a virtual
assistant.
I'm going to find people that can do this for me. You're going to do that.
Ultimately, the position you want to be in in your business, again, is working on
the business not in it. You're the business owner not the business operator.
You're the one that's doing the things that only you're good at, that you're the
strongest at, that you enjoy, that you're passionate about. For me, in my
business, the only things that I really do is I create content, exactly what I'm
doing right now. I'm creating videos. Creating products,
content for
my members areas and my courses et cetera. Creating new courses.
That's something only I can do. I could outsource this. I could outsource people
to create videos. If I were to pay someone to do what I do and create
really high quality videos and content like this,
well, to have someone who's an expert and an authority might cost a couple of hundred
dollars an hour for their time or even a couple of thousand dollars an hour. I'd
much rather do these things myself because that's a very expensive
thing to outsource and I enjoy it.
I enjoy this. This is fun for me. I'm sharing. I'm helping people. This is my mission.
This is my purpose.
It doesn't feel like work. I could do this all day, all week, every day.
That's an example of one thing that I do all the time in my business.
Also interviews. I get interviewed, I interview other people.
Coaching, to coach other people and host webinars and my coaching groups.
Those are things that only I can do. That's a really core thing that I've
decided, you know what,
that's something that I've got to focus on as much as possible to grow my
business.
Another thing is coming up with ideas, the vision, the strategies. Also,
learning as well.
Learning reading books, go to seminars, coaches, mentors learning as
much as I can because the more that I learn and the more ideas I produce,
the more my business will grow. That's something that you can't really
outsource.
Maybe you can hire managers and people that can help you with that but
that's a very important thing that, really, you've got to focus on in your business.
There's other creative things that I do like keyword research,
writing emails and copy writing,
these are very high leverage things. Copywriters will
will be very expensive to outsource. That's another thing. Another thing that I
do is I work with my team. I train them or I manage, oversee them. Honestly,
that's something I'm trying to get away from more in my business.
I do less of it now but I'm still looking to bring in more managers that
can run my team.
Everything else though, I don't do. I record videos.
I put it up on Dropbox. I've got a video editor who edits my videos, optimizes
it, puts it on Youtube et cetera. They put together a blog post, the thumbnails.
They put together all that stuff
for me. I'm not the one that's doing that. Put that together.
I've got somebody that transcribes my videos. My blog post we
have a transcription.
I've got that outsourced. I've got somebody that's editing the blog post and writing
things up and publishing them. I'm not the one that's publishing my blog posts.
I've got an audio engineer that takes the videos and turns them into a
podcast and publishes that on my iTunes podcast.
I've got my social media manager that's promoting my content and all of my social media,
on my Instagram, my Facebook, my Twitter et cetera.
I've got that outsourced as well. I've got someone on my team that's
promoting my content in other ways also. Doing some search engine optimization
and writing content on other websites that can help promote my blog, my
platform as well. I've got my customer support team. They deal with all customer, all
emails, all that stuff goes directly to them.
I'm not the one that's ... I get hundreds of emails and messages everyday.
No humanely possible way that I could respond to everything everyday because
it would be more than a full time job.
I've got a team that does that. I've got a team, they moderate my comments on my
Youtube channel, on my blog. They deal with all that sort of stuff. Then, I
can go in once a week and I can respond.
All the negative trolls and negative people and stuff that
nobody wants around,
they're all filtered out. All the comments are deleted and not approved.
I can go in once a week and I can respond and engage with my fans, my
followers and do the parts that I enjoy like that. I don't want
to be the one that's moderating everything because that'd just be way too overwhelming.
If I spent all my time doing that, I would not get anything done.
That's an example. I outsource that part of my business.
Same thing with other businesses that I have like my Amazon FBA and my Kindle
publishing business.
I realize for me, those are businesses that I built when I got started and
everything. My Kindle publishing. The potential of that business isn't as
great as the potential of Project Life Mastery.
I decided, you know what, I'm going to automate that business. I'm going to have
someone to hire a manager that can run that business for me. That business
can still grow or maintain itself. I'm going to focus more of my attention,
again, on the things that only I can do.
Same with Amazon FBA. Talking to my suppliers
and getting reviews, all these sort of things, I can outsource that to someone
else.
I need, again, focus my time as an entrepreneur on what really matters that
only I can do.
That's a little bit about how I run my business. It didn't happen
overnight.
Took time. It all started with outsourcing. I think it's one of the
most important things. Number 1, once you're building your business, you've
got to invest some money into that. Once you start making money,
you've got to invest it into getting help and building a team. You're not
going to do everything by yourself. Software could help too. Technology.
I utilize those as much as possible. Definitely having a team in place has
been a huge game changer for me because even if there's little things that I
could do but I could outsource it, it's going to free up the mental energy. Even if it
takes me a minute to do something,
it's not worth the thought because I want my focus, my energy to be on creating the
highest quality content possible to help as much people as possible.
Everything else guys. I'm creating my Affiliate Marketing
Mastery course. I've got editors and transcribers and my programmer.
Everyone's handling everything for me.
I'm investing the money onto that and everything but I'm the one that
creates the content and, again, focuses on what only I can do.
Again, this has what's allowed me to create more freedom. Automate different
parts of my life and do what I enjoy. Everyday I do what I enjoy in my
business which is the really fun part. I don't really want to take a break
from my business because I love it.
Everything I do I love. It's fun for me. I'll wrap up soon. One
other important thing to understand is that when you start hiring people,
it's a process. When you first hire the first employee ... The first employee,
the first VA, virtual assistant you hire isn't going to be the best one because
you're going to make a lot of mistakes. You're going to mess up. You're going to
hire the wrong people. Really, it's going to take you failing a few times
and hiring different people, to really get it and to know what to look for.
It's almost like dating.
If you've only dated one person your whole life, you don't have
anyone else to compare that person to. When your first dating you don't
know what to look for, you don't know the signs or anything like that when
you're meeting people and dating and stuff like that. When you go
through a breakup. You meet someone, you go on a date,
it doesn't work out.
That's how you learn what you're looking for in a relationship. It's really
the same thing in a business as well. You're going to have to go through a few
different virtual assistants to really identify the
best talent for you and your business. I've been through hundreds of VAs
over the years and freelancers. Some of them have sucked. Most of them have
sucked and didn't work out. Now, I've got an awesome team. My awesome
team,
it's like when you've got that, you want to keep that. You want to protect it. You've
found amazing A-level players in your business that can help me grow.
I want to take care of them. I give them bonuses. I try to help them as
much as possible with their life. We're like a family. I'm so grateful
for them because they help me be able to do what I do.
Everything you guys see me do here, on my Youtube, my blog, wouldn't be possible
if it wasn't for my team. It wouldn't be possible if I didn't have these
products and services that you guys
purchase and buy because you're supporting me to make a profit in
my business. That profit allows me to invest so I can have more of a team which
allows me to create more free videos. Creating free videos on Youtube, a lot
of people get upset when someone tries to promote or sell something to them
but you have to in a business. A business has to make money.
I can't just put out free videos forever and spend all my time
doing that, because people would love that, and not sell or promote anything because I
need to be able to make a living.
I need to be able to afford expensive camera equipment like what I'm shooting
on right now. I've got to be able to afford video editors and all
these people in my team that can allow me to do what I do here on Youtube
and be able to help as many people as possible for free.
Again, the team is really what's allowed me to grow and
scale my business. Again, there's a lot of stuff I could share with
you that I've learned. I recommend a great course. I've got a course that can
help you, again, it's my virtual assistant training program.
It's more specifically to Kindle publishers right now but I 'm going to
create a new one.
I'm going to relaunch that course. I want to make it more for everybody.
Any business. The principles are the same, really. Finding and hiring,
interviewing, training, managing et cetera.
It's the same for any business. The program can help if you are looking for
virtual assistants. You want to outsource. Especially for a Kindle publisher.
That's what that program is more geared towards. Check that out I'll have a link below.
I'll notify you guys when I have a new course available on that. I've
learned so much on this, so much I could share.
I'm really excited to work on and develop a new program for this.
Anyways, hopefully, this was helpful for you and will help you
to start to grow your business and scale up. Create
more freedom and better lifestyle and automate things. Really, again, just
remember what I shared about working on the business and not in it.
Very important. That's it for this video guys. Thank you so much for
watching. Leave a comment below. Let me know what you guys think.
Subscribe for more videos. I'll see you guys in the next video. Take care.
Hey, this is Stefan. Thank you so much for watching this video. If you enjoyed
this then please hit the like button below, leave a comment to let us know
what you think and make sure to subscribe to our Youtube channel for
more great videos like this.
Now, if you want to take your life to the next level then I want to offer you a
free gift.
It's called my Life Mastery Toolkit. It literally has the best of the best of
what I have to offer in terms of videos, articles and resources for taking your
life to the next level and living an extraordinary life. To get access to this,
all you have to do is click the link that will appear right here on this video.
If you're on a mobile device then click the link in the description below.
Then head on over to that page, enter your email address and I'll send you
immediate access to the Life Mastery Toolkit.
I want to thank you again for watching this video. Until the next one,
I'll talk to you soon.
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