Hey guys! I’m so glad you’re here because today we are going to talk about outsourcing. More specifically, I’m going to show you how to 10x your business growth, skyrocket your profits, and buy yourself more time to do the things you want to do. Sounds pretty great, right?

​The first time outsourcing really hit my radar was when I read The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Tim is one of the biggest thought leaders in the business world right now, and his best selling book was a major boost to freedom seekers everywhere.

The second time I really thought about outsourcing was when I came across Chris Ducker’s blog and podcast. Ducker is the go-to guy today for everything related to outsourcing business work. If you want to dive deep into the world of outsourcing, I highly recommend checking out his podcasts.

​In the entrepreneurial world, stress is viewed as a given. Everyone has it, it’s not a big deal, and trying to change that fact seems ludicrous.

In fact I would even argue that being crazy stressed is sometimes considered a badge of honor in our world; a sign that you are hustling and your business is hurdling along at breakneck speed.

The problem here is that stress IS a big deal. Not only is it terrible for your health and mental well-being, but stress kills your creativity. Have you ever tried to work on a creative project or come up with fresh new ideas when you’re stressed to high heavens? Yeah, it doesn’t work. At all.

When you’re stressed out, your brain stops forging new neural pathways that are necessary for creating patterns. These new patterns are the ones that result in those “lightbulb moments”.

Enter outsourcing. When Burnout the Business Killer hits, you need to share the workload to preserve your brainpower for doing what it does best- powering the heart of your business. Dumping off smaller tasks and repetitive time suckers on an eager assistant is the solution.

​Time is the only resource on earth that we simply can’t get more of (aside from bettering your health and living longer, but that’s for another post!)

Everyone gets 24 hours in a day to live their lives. Isn’t that amazing? Inspiring leaders like Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, Tim Ferriss, and Elon Musk get the exact same amount of time as YOU do every single day.

The part that makes us successful or not successful is our choices. You have a choice in your business. When it comes to outsourcing, you can buy yourself time to improve your business astronomically by only doing what you do best.

Think of it like this. You are the heart of your business. You know it in and out, you are the personality, the life, and the engine that pushes everything forward. Why would you spend a ton of that genius on basic tasks that suck your energy away?

Your brain has only so much energy and inspired genius each day to put into your work. Pay the measly $10/hr to someone else so you can spend your time on the $100/hr work or $1,000/hr work that only you can do!

​Hiring VA’s from overseas has become incredibly popular in recent years, and for good reason. No matter where you live in the world, you can find virtual assistants that live in a timezone that is opposite from you.

This can be a huge benefit in the world of small business, because your assistant will be working during the hours you are typically asleep. When I hired my first overseas VA, it was amazing how efficient I felt.

I would get in touch with her right before I went to bed around 10pm, which coincidentally was around the time she would start working.

We would go over any details for the workday ahead, and then I would go to bed. When I woke up, I’d have an email in my inbox detailing all the work she had done, and I would be able to take that work and do what I needed to do with it for the rest of my day.

This schedule proved to be very rewarding and efficient overall.

​When you are working on your own, it’s easy to fiddle around and not really have a plan in place for your business. When you hire someone to help you, all of that changes. You must create a work plan if you want anything to get done.

After all, what are you going to have them do while you are paying them? What is the most effective use of their time? What work can they do that will return the highest dividends to your bottom line? These are all questions you will have to answer for yourself when you decide to start hiring (and that is a GREAT thing!)

​Leverage is the ability to 5x, 10x, or sometimes even 50x the growth of your business. Leveraging your work is like putting your business on steroids. It pays you back in time, in efficiency, in impact, and in money.

There are many things you can do to begin leveraging yourself for the benefit of your business. Outsourcing is a big one, because it is a tool that maximizes the amount of $1,000/hr work you can put in your business while minimizing the amount of $10/hr work you do. Simply put, it maximizes your impact.

​Before you start outsourcing, you’ll need to look before you leap. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself before  hiring:

• What is your goal in hiring a virtual assistant?
• Will hiring a virtual assistant earn you more money? If so, how?
• How will a virtual assistant afford you more time? What will you do with that time?
• What specific tasks do you plan to hire out?

Before you hire help, you need to know what work they’ll be doing, WHY that work matters to the growth of your business, and HOW the work they’ll be doing translates towards more time and/or money for you.

​​Another important thing to ask yourself before hiring is whether or not there is software available that can do what you need done. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of automation programs out there that can streamline your business and put many tasks on autopilot.

Autoresponders, email sequencing, bookkeeping, social media automation, scheduling, and many, many other similar tasks can be completely covered by buying a simple program to do it for you. In the long run, this will likely be both cheaper and more time efficient.

Once you’ve narrowed down exactly what you need help with, you can search around for any software that might work too. If you come up empty handed or find the program has a learning curve that is way too steep, then you should continue on the virtual assistant path.

​The last thing to consider before hiring is, of course, the money aspect. Is your business turning a profit right now? And if not, are you willing to spend some money to get to that point faster? In my experience, there are two important things to consider when assessing the money situation:

1) If your business isn’t yet profitable, it’s a good idea to be very realistic about when you can expect it to start making money and how much money it will likely earn in the next year.

Also consider whether or not you really know what you’re doing in the industry you are in. If you are still just getting your feet wet, it may be wise to do the work yourself for a while until you understand how to make yourself valuable in your space.

If you know what you are doing and understand exactly how you will make money and what specifically needs to happen to get there, then I would say you should dive right in!

2) The second point I want to make is that there is no benefit to a scarcity mindset when it comes to your business. This may seem contradictory to the point I made above, but bear with me. It’s a great idea to be realistic about your skills and knowledge.

But there is also something very powerful about committing yourself 100% to your work, even when you don’t know it all yet. Chances are if you already “knew it all” in your business you would already be making your millions.

So don’t be afraid to take a calculated leap. Plan to learn quickly, commit completely, and focus only on the aspects of your business that further your mission.

​So you’ve decided now is the right time to start hiring. Great! The next step is to figure out who you should hire. There are a couple of different ways to outsource your work. Check out my free outsourcing template below to see the pros and cons of each outsourcing type!

​​Part of the planning stage for hiring a virtual assistant is figuring out what they can help you with that will massively impact your business in a positive way. Generally speaking, there are two big ways a VA can help that will give you the time and space to do the work you do best.

Repetitive, time consuming, entry level tasks.

​This is the $10/hr work you should NOT be doing. As the brains of your business, you should focus nearly all of your energy on the tasks and projects only you can do. Outsource any tasks that are entry level, repetitive, and time consuming.

Examples: Transcribing, video editing, bookkeeping, social media, customer service, email, podcast editing, proofreading, invoicing, etc.

Complex, specialized work where you don’t have the knowledge or experience needed.

When you’re running a business, there will undoubtedly come a time when something needs to get done that you simply don’t know how to do. If the task is rather complex, it is best to hire a pro upfront. Don’t spend dozens of hours trying to learn how to do it yourself, only to do a subpar job and then realize you need to hire someone anyway. Just start by finding the right person to do the job for you.

Examples: Web design, programming, video intro/outro creation, accounting, tax prep, etc.

​Chris Ducker goes in depth about the idea of super VA’s in his podcast, and it’s an important point I’d like to share with you here. Just as there is no business owner who can do every task, there isn’t a virtual assistant who can handle every task either. Most VA’s will specialize in 1-3 tasks maximum.

General Virtual Assistants tend to do what your typical office secretary would do for a brick and mortar company:

• Emailing
• Basic reports
• Booking appointments
• Setting up basic autoresponders
• Publishing to your website
• Managing your personal and/or business calendar
• Putting together slideshows
• Research
• Recruiting other team mates

For tasks with a specific skill set needed, you’ll need to hire someone who has specialized in that skill. Some examples of specialized virtual assistants include: copywriters, graphic designers, web designers, writers, video editors, SEO managers, and social media marketers.

The truth is that you may need to hire more than one virtual assistant as your business progresses. You can also try a combination the types found in my chart above!

For example, maybe you hire a general virtual assistant to help keep your business flowing smoothly, and you head over to Upwork every once in a while to get a freelancer to produce some graphic designs when you need them.

Or maybe you just really need to hire a call center service to manage your huge customer service department, and then you get a virtual assistant who specializes in web design to keep your website up to date and looking great.

​Either way, my best advice is to start with just one task first. Try delegating a single task on Upwork so you get a feel for talking with potential assistants. It won’t be long before you graduate to a full time personal VA!

Alright you guys, that wraps up Part One of the virtual assistance series! Definitely check out Part 2 below, because I’m going to show you exactly how to actually find the right assistant for you and how to officially hire them. Here it is: 

​Continue on to Part Two: The Step-by-Step Guide to Hiring Your First Virtual Assistant

Question: How do you think outsourcing could benefit your business? What are your biggest concerns about outsourcing?

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