The Problem.
There I was, knowing I needed an internet strategy, knowing I needed to do fortnightly newsletters, knowing I needed to add more products on the website, have more blog articles, more Youtube videos. The list just went on and on.
Every day and I’d have great new ideas for the website and everyday I would just think, “Well, there’s no point. I’ve got no time to do these things.”
The obvious answer is get help, but how to find affordable staff on a tight budget when you’re completely flat out? Furthermore, if I could find affordable staff how would I find the time to write systems so I can train them to do these tasks for me?
Not only that, I would have to find time to write systems to things that I’m not yet doing and haven’t yet learned how to do.
Today, in my businesses, I do have time, I’m not overworked, and there are systems in place. This is how I got there.
The Search
It wasn’t just a matter of me working harder. I needed to learn how to leverage my time so that I could achieve all these things. And not just achieve them once but achieve them on an ongoing basis so we could deliver a consistent message and reap the benefits of engaging with our market.
I started reading books on efficiency. Some old favorites like “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People” and “The Emyth”
I listened to some podcasts. John Jonas was one of them from ReplaceMyself. And he talked about his inspiration from Tim Ferris in his 4-hour work week book. He talked about creating systems and automation. And this automation did not necessarily have to be a machine. That automation could be people. You could train people to do things and they could do them for you.
This was all great but I thought, “Where was I going to find the time to train people? How was I going to train people?” Some of the things I didn’t have time to do I didn’t yet know how to do.!
I continued my search and found “Getting Things Done” This one was a game changer. The main premise of that book was not keeping all the information in your RAM (relating the RAM of a computer to the memory in your brain). Every idea you you had, had to be written down. And not just written down anywhere, but in a systemised process where I could review it later. He described them as buckets, different buckets of lists that have a priority and if one doesn’t need to be attended to today then it didn’t need to be thought about.
So every time I think of something I need to remember it gets written down in Evernote. It goes in my tasks list called “INBOX”. And the next morning I go through my Tasks “INBOX”. Anything I can do it in under 2 minutes, I do it, otherwise, I put it into a list called “ACTION” with a date it needs to be done so that it is prioritised. Once a week I review and reprioritise with new dates.
Within a few weeks I had myself organised. My next task was to find some staff and train them. Some of the things I wanted them to do, I didn’t know how to do myself. And that was the quandary – how could I train people to do things that I didn’t know? So there was a challenge.
The Solution
I hired a number of people at once as I thought that if I hired a few people (3 or 4 at one stage) for the same job then I could compare them and the best would keep the job. I was employing through the OnlineJobs website which is a Filipino outsource website. Because the wage was really a lot less than Australia, I was able to afford to hire a few at once to test.
The work that came back wasn’t great. But I was able to test their communication skills and test who I wanted to work with and who I didn’t. I was able to keep some staff and know that they could be trained and they would be reliable and diligent. But I wasn’t able to say, “Do SEO on my website.” It wasn’t as simple as that.
I had to change my mindset to what can I outsource? What tasks do I have today that I can give to someone else? And having a VA there, it’s in the back of my mind, “I’ve got to find work for this person.” I was able to start finding small admin tasks and before long start to change my habits and start to delegate. If something came up like I had to go through my emails, update a database or do user testing on the website, I was starting to pass along to one of my VA’s. Having some success with that, I was starting to free up some of my time.
Some Success
I discovered the biggest leverage point were the recurring tasks that I had to do weekly or fortnightly like invoicing, approving wholesale customers, e-newsletters, after sales email support, posting blog posts.
Before long I had shifted a little bit off my plate that gave me some time to write systems. The best way to write a system was to do the tasks myself and document it. It would take 2-3 times as long that way, but if done well it may be the last time I had to do that particular task. For me I use word and copy and paste screen shots into MS Paint and then crop and highlight and then copy and paste into word.
Then I email it to one of my VA’s and they upload it into dokuwiki. It takes a bit longer to upload it to dokuwiki because of the screen shots I use (hence why I have someone else do it) But once in dokuwiki it is very easy for me to make edits. The beauty of a wiki is that it has a navigational structure like a website and makes it very easy to find things. For a while we had an “instructions procedures” folder with word docs in it, but this became cumbersome as it grew so the dokuwiki was a great way to get these organized.
As I write this I realise that I have not written a process for over 6 months. Now the team does them.
Freedom
Once I had found trusted and reliable VA’s and let them cut their teeth on some simple admin tasks and graduate to following more detailed processes I grew in confidence with them. I was able to say “I want to you to learn how to do this and then write a procedure on it” As an example, we recently did some client work that included an online product catalogue. Once implemented I asked my VA John to write a process for it.
And the process he wrote was great, I reviewed it only superficially, but I know it worked because we are able to refer it to a new employee as a training manual and they were able to implement without much assistance. And to top it off we were able to deliver this process to our client as a pdf instruction manual that their internal team were very impressed with. And I was even more impressed because I didn’t get support phone calls asking me questions on how to update the catalogue.
Nickj Ecommerce Entrepreneur 