Just Outsource It
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
The answer to all your solutions in business is simple: outsource it.
This might be a overly cliché, but…
You can’t do EVERYTHING!!
You are not an expert at everything. You cannot expect to BE an expert at everything. Most importantly, I’m sure you don’t want to DO everything. Am I right? Running a business requires so many hats. Too many hats. If you happen to be one of the many people who run your own physical business (as opposed to a virtual, online business), then your workload is even heavier.
Store hours, employees, actual dialogue with customers.
YUCK!
Atlas would be proud. You’ve held up your business for a long time.
Does your back hurt?
Are you exhausted?
It’s much different in the virtual world. My applicant list for employees isn’t confined to one town, give or take how far a person wants to drive.
My applicant pool is worldwide.
What store hours? I work when I want to.
Talking to customers? Let me reiterate this one more time.
YUCK!!!
As my virtual business grows, there are going to be things I can’t do very well. Even worse, there are going to be things that, to be honest, I just don’t want to do. We have all experienced that feeling.
AWWWWW MAN!!!! Do I have to?
Can’t somebody else do it?
But I don’t wanna!!
We revert back to our childlike selves and mope back to the task, begrudgingly.
BUT WAIT…
I’ve got the solution!!!
Outsource it.
Your time is money. You could be doing other things. Better things. Or better yet, nothing. (Maybe someone else can sympathize with me when I say sometimes you just don’t want to do anything.) The most successful businessmen hire the best people to do the jobs they can’t or don’t want to do. Some people LOVE accounting. Some people LOVE writing articles. Some people LOVE talking to other people. And you can tell when a person loves what they do. It emanates through the work. There is pride oozing from that work.
Outsource that task and let someone happily do it for you.
Richard Branson, the owner of Virgin Group, is an amazing man who I admire. Reading his autobiography, I learned so much about his drive and how he built his business empire to what it is today. One of the key points that I picked up from his book, and it still resonates with me today, is to hire great people to do the things you are not great at. One of Branson’s shortcomings is his dyslexia with numbers. The man runs a billion dollar company, but can’t read the numbers to know if it’s a million or billion.
BUT WHO CARES!?!
Hire an accountant who knows that stuff. He focuses on the big picture.
This is key to keep in mind running a virtual business. If you’re thinking about a virtual business, it’s not because it’s the most amazing job ever. (But sometimes I think so.) It’s because the lifestyle gained from a successful online business is untouched. If you haven’t automated and outsourced all the small details of your business, then you’re working too hard.
BE SMART!
My goal is to live like Tim Ferris. You’ve heard of him. Wrote that book over there. He’s living the life. If you haven’t read it, READ IT! He’s outsourced his life so well, he picks up random hobbies.
What do you want to learn? What would you rather be doing? If you try and do everything, then you end up being a slave to the business instead of having the business work for you. Isn’t that the ultimate goal?