Do Smart Business Owners Ask For Help? Yes, they do and everyone should realize there would always reasons to seek help to expand expertise and opportunities.
For me, I admit I've been through all the hassles of handling things by myself but since I have started outsourcing say, my Dragonboat business, I've had the best relief of having the chance to communicate with the suppliers and plan ahead of time to develop my Dragonboat service while my customer support staff stays responsible in answering queries, processing orders and payments as well.
If you're thinking I've been spending too much as a start, no! Generally I've decided to outsource since it's just a cheaper part of investment overseas while receiving a high quality of work in less time and effort.
Now, let me show you how I've been able to realize that outsourcing while starting up really works: What to Outsource? Get to this mindset: Think of the things that you've done during the day and what actually gets done in the long run when you outsource it.
I'll draw an example to make this easy - emails for instance has always been part of your daily routines in the business and if you thought you have always checked on the new ones, then try to realize how your virtual staff can even filter, organize and respond to them in less time in daily basis.
See? That's a big break.
Start to outsource anything that goes around a routine which cuts off at least 2 hours of your day administering to friends, customers and the likes.
When to Outsource? There are just two things: when you know everything that has to be outsourced and when you know nothing about the tasks that you are currently outsourcing.
As I said earlier, outsourcing can help you maximize the expertise in the business through the expanded efforts of your virtual staff all done at the same time.
When you're not good at graphic design for example, let an expert do that for you then it's up for you to decide on a good, better and best outputs.
Secondly, you can outsource the things in which you already are good at to give your virtual staff the right information and get things done the way you wanted.
Also, checking on minimal errors on your part can be a lot easier than to implement the whole project yourself.
Why to Outsource? It's simply because you can do other things outside of your business but can think of more ways on how to increase profits as well.
Outsourcing gives you enough time to plan, draw more targets and set better strategies for your earnings.
Thus, the less work you do, the more it frees up your mind to activate your plans, grow profits easier and also enjoy the rest of your weekends.
Where to Outsource? Since I hired my virtual staff in the Philippines, I can say I've never had any issue with their work yet because if there are problems coming in, they'll be able to honestly inform me beforehand about it to prevent wasting time.
Also, there are no culture barriers so they can easily cope up to my approach, understand my instructions, and be more productive of their time effectively.
Not only that they're really are the most cost-effective, but also they are the ones that you should be working with full time through their best efforts.
If you want to hire staff from the Philippines, take a look at these two websites: Bestjobs.
ph and Onlinejobs.
ph which I highly recommend for quality resumes.
How to Outsource? Definitely, you cannot automate the work if you don't have someone who can do it for you.
Hire your first virtual staff by starting to target on small yet repetitive and essential roots of the business to be completed throughout the day - someone to handle your administrative tasks from customer service, checking your email, and all the data entry which free up enough time for you to prepare their training videos useful for their other routine tasks in the future.
Another thing is to train them in a direct, easy and efficient way through the use of tutorial videos.
Visually, it's a way better for them to follow when they see how the instructions are applied "live" and that way, they can always view and review it if there's something that they're missing.
Some of your time will be spent creating these videos at first but once they've learned through all your systems, you can just sit back and see how they're applying your concepts.
I use both Jing and Screenflow for easy recording.
Jing Project is a way easier tool that allows you to capture what you want to say with a picture or a video instantly and you can download it free.
Although if you like it much advanced, you can also download Screenflow to do screen captures and share multimedia presentations in HD quality training.