Work Less and Make More With Outsourcing

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To see our full income disclosure, please visit our website at www.empowernetwork.com forward slash income.php. Hello, this is Lawrence Tam. I want to thank you for attending this Inner Circle audio. I have the special privilege of actually coming to you and teaching you something on this Inner Circle audio. Now, Inner Circle audios are geared to helping you build your business.

Say your business is offline and you're looking to get more customers. Say it's online and you're looking for ways to get more traffic. There's a lot of cool different things that we cover in Inner Circle audio, and I'm going to give you something today. Check this out. But before we go into that and what topic we're going to cover, I'm going to give you just a small, simple bio of who I am and how I'm going to be helping you what I've gone through.

My name is Lawrence Tam. I hail and was born and raised in Houston, Texas. Graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a mechanical engineering degree. Did engineering for over a decade. Retired from engineering.

Retired my wife from accounting using pure marketing. Now, primarily most of it was internet marketing, and the thing I'm going to teach you that helped me get out of that, a big part of that, is outsourcing. Yes. What is outsourcing and how I can help you build your business with outsourcing? Now, before I dive into what the true benefits and how do you do outsourcing or how I actually applied outsourcing to my business and how I retired from engineering with it, I want to actually show you by doing.

I'm going to bring out someone who actually shows you that I'm using outsourcing. How? Using tools, using services, but how about using other people's time, other people's experiences, other people's skill sets. I want to introduce you to Andrea Saravia, who I met on the internet, and I'm going to actually maybe dive into how I got her on to working with me as my project manager and how we are using outsourcing to build our business. Andrea, are you here?

Hey, hey. Thank you, Lawrence. Yeah, my name is Andrea, and as you stated, I am his project manager, operations guru, chief happiness officer, whatever you want to call. And I used to work at Google, and I have experience with online, having online presence, understanding it. And my parents were entrepreneurs, so I grew up helping them in growing their business.

And I feel like this is what I'm meant to do, and I'm here to provide for people like Lawrence, and anybody can really find somebody like me and, you know, grow and help and build a team. So, yeah, thanks for letting me be a part of it. It's exciting. That's awesome. That's awesome.

And, yes, I am lucky to have a Google employee come and run my businesses with me. And so that really wraps the single concept of outsourcing. What it is can you actually do more without using your own time or your money? It's like when you understand the business of scaling your business up, it is not trading your time but trading your money for more time. See, time is a thing that we all have a limited quantity of.

We don't get more of it. Everyone gets 24 hours in a day. But being able to use money to trade for someone's expertise like Andrea, who actually understands project management and has Internet experience, trading my money for her time and her expertise, that's how you basically grow bigger and faster. And I'm like, I don't know how to do that. I could, A, learn how to do it and do it to my ability, either good or bad, or I find someone outsourcing that task.

Hey, I don't know how to build a marketing website. Oh, wait a minute, I know Andrea does. I then task her. I pay her for her time, her expertise. She comes in and fixes that.

That, I believe, is one of the fastest ways you can duplicate your personal time to scaling up. Now, what is really scaling up? A simple definition of scaling up is how do you take something that you're doing specifically and doing it well, how do you do more of it faster, bigger? So an example is, let's say you're able to sell five units of a hairspray can. Maybe you sell hairspray.

And you personally, with your spare time, you can sell five units of this every single day. Your goal is, how can I sell 10 of these, 15 of these, 20 of these? If you run into the point where, well, I can't because it's using too much of my time, then it's time to go look for other people who can actually act on your behalf or maybe even improve on your own process. That's like someone, a business consultant, can come in and clean up your work or actually grow you bigger, right? Remember, you're only one person.

You yourself might represent a company, but if you're doing all the work, that's not how a business grows. Traditionally, like a restaurant, you can't be the chef. You can't be the cook. You can't be the dishwasher. You can't be the guy who fixes the holes in the walls.

You can't be the guy who does the extermination. You can't be the one doing the advertising. You can't be the hostess. You can't be the waiter. You can't do all the positions.

Now, in the restaurant, you automatically know, of course, you hire other people. Exactly. You hire other people to handle those jobs, to free you up to do what you do best, or just to free you up so you don't have to do everything because you only have 24 hours in a day. And it's not as expensive as you may think. We'll go over a couple of topics, a couple of scenarios, and different ways into doing it.

And Oliver, do you have any input on, you know, maybe how you've helped me or maybe some examples of how one can expand a business, maybe in a more general sense because I know there's a lot of business owners out here or people who are getting into business who want to know, you know, yes, I understand a restaurant. I know that metaphor, but how do I do it if I sell hairspray cans or if I'm a dog trainer? Well, it's really about understanding what your business is, what you want to focus on, and how you want to grow. And the good thing is that you can outsource things that maybe you don't know how to do or you just don't want to do because you want to focus on bigger things like a project. So, for example, in our working relationship, there's a lot of things that only you know how to do that you want to focus on or you have great ideas for and you know what it looks like that maybe I can't fully contribute.

So, in turn, you've given me projects to handle and take over why you do that and why you start building that piece. So we kind of complement each other. Having somebody that's providing a service to whatever it is you need is part of a complement so that you can take that off your plate, know what's still being worked on, and then you can keep growing. Exactly. And not to say she can't do it.

A lot of times when you have a specific vision, a specific direction for your business, even in engineering, sometimes it's like, well, it might not be the best thing to teach someone something you know you can do faster because you're really good at it. But there's other parts of your business that still needs work to be done, that needs help, right? And an interesting point in your business and a question you should definitely write down if you have a pen or if you're jogging, remember it, timestamp, look at your phone at the actual time that we're talking about this so you can bookmark it, when you should start outsourcing. And one of the questions you ask yourself is, what are you physically worth? And the answer is you're actually worth more than you think.

Well, how do you quantify that? You know, why is that important? Because the thing is this, if you're only one person and you, let's say you're part-time, right, you have a part-time business and you only work five hours in the night, and you have aspirations to making, I don't know, a couple thousand a month, right, and you break down the numbers, what are you actually worth? Now, if you're continually thinking, well, I'm only worth $10 an hour, what is your business actually generating? If it's way more than that, you can find another employee, a partner, or an outsourcer, someone who can take on that load for $10 an hour.

Perfect example in internet marketing is if you're doing a lot of blogging and you need content written, and your content's really good, but maybe you have other websites that are, like, selling whatever. Say I have websites that sell vacuum cleaners. Instead of myself going in and actually typing out a blog about a vacuum cleaner so I can sell a vacuum cleaner, I actually have a writer. That is considered outsourcing. I'm giving the task to someone who probably can spell, has better grammar, and can do it faster than myself for the price I'm paying to outsource.

An article can go anywhere from 500 to 1,000 words, could be $10 to $100, depending on how good their ad copy is and their copywriting is. But the goal of that is what are you physically worth and what do you want to achieve out of it, right? So do you have any input on that, Andrea? Because I'm tasked with a lot of different things, and the reason I do it, just to be blunt, is just I want to see, you know, maybe you can do it better. I'm going to put my pride aside.

Well, if Andrea can do it better, why am I even messing with that? Let me focus on something else. Right, yeah, I think it's important to know first why outsourcing is worth it and why people should consider it for business or personal. It's really awesome what you can do with it, but like you said, you are worth more than you think, and just because you can do it yourself for cheaper doesn't mean that it's going to make sense, because like you said, there's other parts of your business that need to be focused on and built on and managed as well. And one of the reasons that I like to do what I do is because it gives me flexibility, and I also have a business myself in trying to grow this as much as you do.

But I'm pretty sure it feels awesome for you to know, hey, I'm going to go have lunch with my wife or I'm going to go spend time with the kids while I'm working on the projects that I like to work on that are challenging and are part of the services that I provide. So that kind of gives you a little bit more happiness, for sure I know that, because you post pictures, you're all having a good time, but we have meetings, we get together and we get things done, and it gives you, again, the time to do what you want. It provides less stress for you as well, because now you can focus and not feel like you're so spread thin. I think all those things are really important to keep you productive. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So in engineering school, we're always taught, especially mechanical engineers, because we do so many things from biomedical from thermo to – there's just so many different hats we wear. And plus, we do law and accounting, and it's just ridiculous, and they're teaching us do it all. Basically, you should be jack of all trades. And I'm going to tell you, as a business owner, when you first start, you have to be. I mean, you're doing your own accounting, you're actually doing your own traffic, you're doing your own programming, you're doing your own sales and consulting.

It's all of you. There's going to be a point in your career, in your business, you're going to go, okay, am I treating my business like a business, or am I treating it like a job? See, in a job, your boss tells you this is what's expected of you, this is your job description, you need to do it. In a business, you do whatever it takes to make you profitable. But what does profitable really mean?

To me, it was, yeah, I want to make some money, but not at the expense of killing myself. Now, we all go through hard, like I'm going to go hard as I can, I'm going to crunch it. Like, you know, when you're slamming for a test and you're crunching time for a test and studying, that's fine, we go through these hard spells of working really hard, but it's not forever. That's when you switch your mindset from being an employee to an employer. See, an employee goes, I come in for 10 hours, and if I have the work, I'll do it.

If I don't, I do filler work. And we're all, we're all, it's like a virus, we're all plagued by this, right? How do I go into work and spend 10 hours a day, but really do you really work 10 hours a day? There's a difference between performance and just being there, right? Now, every employer thinks and hopes that their employees come in and work a full 10 hours or 15 hours, however many hours you work in a day, but let's just be real.

People go through, you know, hey, I'm in a groove, I can do these four hours before I get tired and have a coffee break and then I just chit-chat with friends. You've got to be able to switch that. And once you switch your mentality, you go, well, I'm not being productive. I'm doing these things that I can easily pay someone else to do, and I'm just being, you know, prideful that I have to do it. But you don't.

And once you flip that, then you go, okay, now I, maybe hiring employees really scares people. Why don't you think of that, instead of that, think of outsourcing contractors, people who are paid on a per-job basis. And when you do this, the one thing that has really expanded my mind, something I learned a couple years ago, and this one principle that lies right into outsourcing, this principle will help you grow, okay? So, again, if you look at your phone or if you're taking notes, take this note. I will always be making money, regardless if I'm sleeping, eating, playing with my kids, swimming in the oceans of the world, or just watching football on the telly.

It doesn't matter. Now, the average employee, the one who has a job, the one who gets paid for their time, the one who works, you know, I work in a cubicle, that person goes, yeah, I mean, the only time I get paid is if I go into work. The only time I get paid is if I clock in. I don't get paid if I don't show up. But when you're a business owner and you switched it, you could physically be anywhere you want to be, and if someone else is working for you, you don't have to be there and your business makes money.

That single principle of you will always be making money, regardless of what you're doing, no matter what you're having for dinner, and even if you want to sleep 12 hours in a day, you will still make money. Now, what does it actually do? Interesting byproduct of that, when you first really understand that idea, and you say it to yourself, like look at yourself in the mirror and go, no matter what I do, no matter where I am, no matter how I'm doing today, if I'm sad, I'm happy, or I'm stuck in traffic, if I'm outsourcing, someone in my company is making me money, and the byproduct of that is happiness. It's not worry, right? There's so many of you listening to me right now, and maybe it's you, directly you, you're listening to this and go, I am worried sick, because if I don't wake up and work, the business makes no money.

If I don't wake up and make a phone call, if I don't wake up and write this article, if I don't wake up and close this sale, my company, myself, eats nothing today, makes no money, and I go broke, and I'm hungry. That's the scarcity sadness, basically, we want to avoid, because your business should give you happiness, and happiness comes from removing that worry, understanding that you will grow because you are planning for the future. And the best things for me is like, hey, I tell Andrea, don't call me around 3 o'clock because I'll pick up the kids. I just don't do it. I go pick up the kids.

I focus on picking up the kids. Just a pure example, even though I'm stuck in a line with 100 other people in picking up our kids from school, Andrea could be typing out a really cool e-mail broadcast, could be consulting one of our clients, can be sending out a really good ad copy, could be working on one of our marketing funnels. It's working. That allows my mind to be a dad, to be someone who's with my kids, taking them, asking them on their school day and quizzing them on their spelling words versus worrying I've got to send this e-mail, I've got to build this funnel, I have to make sure that ad copy is correct, I've got to make sure I get on this call with this client. No, that gives you happiness.

And Andrea's seen this, and for Andrea it's actually helped her a lot too, understanding this principle because she has her own outsources for her own businesses. You want to tap into that? Yeah, totally. Everything you just talked about is really on point. Providing happiness, it gives you the stress-free mentality to be a dad or work on other things because you're gaining a lot of the missing time.

And like you said, you want to work with people that are experts in what they do that can complement what you're trying to accomplish so that things get done in a short amount of time. For example, me, I outsource as well. I've helped to hire people and train them and just kind of manage them to do everything. And the thing is that this is easier than you think. So many people tend to believe that right now outsourcing is not something they can afford or that it's something that is for bigger companies, but this is really for anybody.

And I think we're going to talk about all the types of things you can outsource and how inexpensive it can be and how surprisingly easy it is to set up. Everything we just covered is a really good reason as to why we should outsource. And I think you should talk about, you know, what the things are and probably things you don't even consider. And you would be so baffled that when you do it, you're like, why didn't I think of this sooner? You know, I want to do it now.

Exactly. And no one really told me that, right? And like no one really told me, Lawrence, you can accomplish so much more if you just remove yourself from the equation. Like I always thought the equation was I have X amount of time, this much attention span before I physically pass out and have to wake up and go to work again. Like literally I built my business part-time from 9 to midnight, right?

And people ask me, Lawrence, how did you make that much money part-time? Like how are you making that much money when you had to go to work and wake up at 5 a.m. and do all that? Because when I'm at work, other people were running my business. And there's a lot of different things we'll tap into and how we can do that.

The main principle of that is you actually cannot, well actually double negative this, you cannot not afford to do this. You actually must, right, and if you want to be able to grow, you probably need to figure out what you're worth per hour right now. That's a pretty good, you know, starting point. Like if you know right now the way, you know, you're making money, and let's say a lot of businesses, you know, when we first start out, we make no money. We're actually losing money because we're actually spending more time not making money.

I've been there. My wife has gave me the look, why are you spending so much time on that and you're not making money? I feel you. I feel you. And we call that sweat equity.

You get into it because we're learning something new. My goal, Andrea's goal in this call, in this Inner Circle call is to help you dive past that because really you're probably just a little tweak, you're around the corner and you're profitable at that point. Why? You're spending your time where you need to be, not where you think you need to be, right? And so, let's go on to what can you outsource?

This is a, you know, it's like one of those, it's like one of those hidden gems. It's like I didn't know where to look. I didn't know that place existed. Where can I find it? And this is one of the things probably you can't really find unless you ask the specific person on how you build your business.

So, we're going to really dive into your business first because we're going to actually have a personal section. If you're not outsourcing personally, many of you are probably outsourcing more personally than on your business. And I just want to. More than they think, for sure. More than you think, exactly.

And you're assuming, oh, I can't outsource my business. But a lot of you are outsourcing your personal more than your business and you should probably do a lot more for your business because your business pays you, right? So, number one, of course, one way you can outsource your business is marketing, right? Marketing. So, in marketing, there's a lot of different things you can do.

Tons of different things you can do. And simple rules for outsourcing anything, you know, just ask a couple questions to yourself. Will it help you make money, right? Does it help you save some time? Does it prevent you from pulling your hair out?

Does it help your business grow, you know? Does it help your brand become more established? Stuff like that. But let's go into some specifics. Andrea, you want to hit some specific marketing things that they could be doing just off the cuff?

You know, there's a couple we have right now. But let's say just specifically marketing. What are some small things right now a single business owner can use or maybe a small business of, you know, less than 50 employees they should be outsourcing right now? OK. Well, any business should always have a good online presence and think on especially platforms that are free like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, things that millions and millions of people are on every day.

And more than likely, the business owner already does on a personal time. They understand how it works. So, because you are comfortable with it, it's a really good way to start. And also, it's familiar and everybody else is on it. So, it's a really good starting point.

That's one of the easier ones. And then it gets heavier where, you know, there's more SEO type of stuff, graphic design, web development. And the reason you want to outsource that and not try to learn it all again is because at the time their expertise, they've mastered a skill and a craft and you just want to boom, hit it and go. And, you know, again, the easier stuff. So, you can even do phone call.

If you're trying to just say thank you to your customers, you can hire people to call them and say thank you for being a customer and that's it. And people would love that. You know, you could do video editing, research, data mining, number crunching, everything you could possibly think of. And like I said, things you can't do and things you don't want to do. So, be selfish there if you want.

Yeah. And let's really dive into this. So, in business outsourcing, there's so many small things you can do right now. An example, let's say you're a blogger. You own a blog and you write content.

But what if you don't know a specific type of content? Let's say you don't know anything about search engine optimization but your clients keep asking you, is there something you can send me? Is there something I can just reference? Because I believe in what you do. Because let's say you're a really big Pinterest guy.

You're huge on Pinterest but people keep asking you, how do I use it with Facebook? How does that bridge to Facebook? How does Facebook work with Pinterest? And you're like, I'm not even on Facebook. But your clients request it and demand it.

So, number one, you outsource someone to research it. You're a researcher. Literally, a researcher. I remember in college, we're interns and then there's actually lab assistants. And then I remember my first internship, all I did was research.

I worked for a PhD and that's all we did. We actually researched the information that they gave us, gave them the data points, and that was that. Same thing, if you're not an expert in an area, you know there's other people who can either do it right now or you're just going to be someone who can find out how to do it. Research. After that, you take that research.

Let's say people are asking, well, how can I help you with Facebook? You get that researcher, either that person does it or you pass it off to another outsourcer who's an ad copy, a copywriter or an article writer, someone who can place that information in a form that your guest, your client, your prospect, your lead, the person who comes into your website can digest it. What does that mean? You can't give the average person, say on a blog, like 50 pages of research. You can't give them all this stuff to digest.

It's like it's too much, like reading a manual. They just want something quick. Can you just give me like a quick, like, everyone wants cliff notes. Like, you all remember like reading like Moby Dick and The Great Expectations, and these books are huge, like, really? No.

We're always like, just give me the cliff notes. Give me the short, what do I need to know so I can be using whatever you believe I can use with Pinterest or Facebook as an example. The researcher passes the data to an article writer or a copywriter. That person then collects and puts into information that a human being can then read it. Then they can digest information and go, wow, I get it.

The reason Facebook works with Pinterest is because they're both social media platforms. You can actually link Pinterest straight to Facebook. I get it. Since they're both people-oriented social networks, not robots, you can actually have people coming and going from both sides. Oh, Pinterest is a lot of videos and images mainly.

Facebook loves images. So, you're basically giving them something to chew on, and you have really nothing to do with it. This then starts to look like a business. What does that mean? You don't have to know everything, right?

You're now building a brand. You're now building a brand. You're building, you're like the professor, right, of, you know, linear calculus. And everyone just expects you to know everything about linear calculus. And what you can do is you can use your knowledge about certain parts of linear calculus to help other people digest, even though you don't know a specific part of a new type of linear calculus or something that's parallel to linear calculus, like imaginary functions or whatever.

Imaginary numbers with infinite cycles or something like that. Some crazy, off-parallel type of math. You can then go, well, I don't know 100% about it, but I know enough to go, oh, if I get a researcher, I get an article writer, I get someone to package it so then that my students or my prospects, my consultant clients can digest it. You can then overlook and go, oh, okay, I get it, right? We're not saying know nothing, right, because then that's the other issue.

Why do you need to know something? You need to know something so you can check it, right? You need to be able to know a little bit so when someone does come in and writes your, then out, sort of comes in and writes something, you can easily look at the cliff notes and go, that's a bunch of BS, rewrite it, or go, wow, awesome, that's great, let's package it up and get it ready to run on the press or publish on your blog post. And primarily, you want people to come to you as the source, and that's what we call building a brand. So, whatever your brand is, let's say you have the best cupcakes in southwest Houston, but people want to know, do you make kolaches?

Well, yeah, they're both baked goods, but it doesn't mean they're similar, right? But what you can do is actually bridge the gap between all baked goods. Well, why not? Not that you make kolaches, you're a cupcake maker, that's okay, you make cupcakes, not a big deal. But when people come to you, they're like, who would you recommend?

Because people just straight up assume, whether they're pastries, they're desserts, you know, they're doughy. You can then be, instead of just being the cupcake maker, now you're maybe the dessert person, now you're then the baker. Then you start to expand your reach to then the chef, right? You actually expand your reach, even though you're a chef who specializes in cupcakes, people come to you because you have a wide knowledge of everything in your niche, even though being a chef, a niche is giant. I mean, do you have any other examples of this, of how you can be very specific in one area, but as you continue to grow, you build influence, you build a brand, people are like, well, ah, you're now associated from, instead of being the small niche, the big one.

Yeah, totally. For example, like even a personal trainer, usually they're just known for being able to pull out a schedule of movements for one hour that you should just do, and they can branch out from being a personal trainer, these are the movements you got to do, to this is the kind of food you should eat that ties in with your body. This is the science behind the food. These are the different types of diets that you can choose from. These are recipes for these different kinds of diets that you would rather have on.

So you could do paleo, you could do the zone, you could do Atkins, right? And then you could start providing like recipe books. Here's 50 recipes that you can cook, you don't have to think about it. Here's a list of grocery items that you can go and buy, you know, and eventually you start growing under that umbrella, everything that you can be a go-to person for. It's not just, oh, these are five movements, this is a machinery, it's now this is that, this is how you lose weight, this is how diet works, this is how you get healthier, this is how you have more energy, these are recipes, you know, it's like a whole plethora of options.

So you could totally grow that way. Yeah. And that's kind of like the bigger vision is you'll know what you know, but then you'll know a lot more once you expand your vision, like where your parallel types of businesses that you get into, like I've seen health coaches or fitness trainers go into life coaching, right? Because it's like that authority. Motivation, psychology, and inspiring people.

Yeah, yeah. So a couple other cool things you can do with business, and I've seen this, it's the best. So if you're in business, people make money by having a transaction of money. And some people go, what? Like, yeah, you get paid when someone pays for your service or product, right?

Or your expertise, right? So when someone actually wants to spend money, that's what happens, right? And be very okay with that, be happy with that, because if someone does not want to pay you for his product or service, your product or service probably is either not good or you're non-profit, pick one. And if you're a business that is for profit, you must be okay with that. So that being said, you can use business as another way to connect with your potential buyers, right?

We're always looking about our potential buyers. If you're an accountant, you're looking for something, how do you get another potential accountant customer? If you're in the car detailing business, how do you get another potential buyer or repeat buyer, one of the ways to do this is through marketing, of course, and multiple points of contact, getting to your prospect in different ways. So we're going to talk about phone calling. Can you imagine if Bill Gates had to answer every single phone call that Microsoft got about, hey, how do I upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows, was it Windows 8?

Like, where do you go? You have a tech support team to do that, right? And the thing is, tech support teams have tech support teams at different levels. I'm a level two, I'm a level three consultant. I can help you with this, blah, blah, blah, blah, not about that.

So get an outsource, but phone calling can be for support, but it can be like Andrea said, to thank your customers. Can you imagine how good you make someone feel just by saying, hi, my name is Andrea. I represent Lawrence Tan, blah, blah, blah. And we noticed you bought something recently and we just want to say thank you. And if you have any questions, you can contact us here, here, and here, and you can reach us on Facebook.

Thanks. That's it. That person who gets that voicemail, maybe gets a text from you, gets a text from, or in our case, us, there's multiple ways you could have sourced someone's time, like Andrea, to call your buyers right now. And then, so you then increase your retention, right? In business, depending on how you run your business, most businesses you run with your existing customer base, or you're looking to expand your customer base.

Number one, you better make sure you have your metrics down to what does it cost you? It's always a much higher to acquire a new customer than to sell to your existing customer base, right? Example would be our cable companies and like satellite companies. They will pay an arm and a leg to get a new customer. But I don't know, maybe you haven't experienced this, but I get this all the time, at least once a quarter, they call me.

They call me, thank you for being a customer with blah, blah, blah, satellite company, we just want to give you a special gift, or we just want to just say, we wish you a Merry Christmas. You as the owner can't do that. Now you can, if you have two customers, you can do this in the very beginning, but if you want to aspire to become bigger, want to have more sales, I'm going to have more customers. One way is connecting with your current buyers. Another way is to reach out and just say, Hey, we've noticed you came over and you tweeted about us, like you're on Twitter.

You tweeted about us. I've seen this done firsthand and I think it's amazing. Number one, having someone retweet them and saying, thank you for speaking about our brand. Prime example, true story. I was talking about a specific movie I just saw and I recommended it on Twitter and the actual movie, they had a Twitter account.

They connected with me. Hey, Lawrence, thank you for tweeting us and we appreciate it. Like to me, that, it wasn't even a verbal like call or a text, it was just a tweet, right? And they just said, thank you for talking about our movie. I think that is how you gain customers and how you retain them and how you want someone to feel because people buy emotionally.

They don't really buy really if people didn't buy emotionally, if people buy because of the factual numbers, no one would buy a 400 horsepower vehicle. No one would buy a monster truck. No one needs that. No one needs that. No one.

We could all fit in the economy, you know, airplane, right? But why sit first class? What's the one that makes you feel? Why you have, you can experience, it's the user experience and you can give that without sourcing. Another example is like sending like Christmas cards, birthday cards, saying hi on Facebook and thank you for friending us or liking our fan page.

Thank you for repinning our Pinterest image. Thank you, you know, for inquiring on our website. We wanted to send you just a quick hello in a postcard. Tons of ways to do this can all be automated so you don't have to do it. I remember I had like 70 customers one time and I wanted to connect with them and I wanted to send each of them a Christmas card.

Can you imagine me licking each Christmas card? Like there's a TV show that actually showed a person licking their wedding invitations and they licked too many and she died. That was what was ingrained in my head. I don't want to be that girl who died from looking too many wedding invitations or sending out thank you cards. So I outsourced it.

It's a practical thing you can do. Outsourcing, connecting, building a relationship. So when someone buys from you or is potentially a buyer, they don't feel left out and true story when I'm talking to Andrea, one way to ruin a relationship is not going the extra mile. Like Andrea was looking for a service. We want to explain this.

You're looking for a service and how do they respond to you? Yeah, actually this happened a few days ago. I was looking for webmasters, website maintenance and I reached out to four different companies and I each gave them my email, my phone number, very specific needs and all just except for one company actually called me and they called me within the hour right away, super attentive and the rest they didn't respond until later in the day and it was like a one-liner email of, hey, I got this. What do you need? And I automatically chose the person that called me because they took time to inquire about my needs, get a better picture of what, what it is I wanted.

And the other three lost out. I mean, they lost out on business just because it was really obvious to me how unimportant I was, right? Cause it's, it was a one sentence email is, you know, give me a call. I'm a buyer, I'm hot, I'm ready to, I need stuff, you know? So yeah, it's important to have the experience and to provide it.

it made me think of a story I read about Timex. Everybody knows Timex, the watch companies have been around for years. One thing people don't know is they have awesome customer service, kind of like the Zappos people, the Zappos guy, but there was a story that got picked up because a gentleman, he was on his bike, he got ran over and he broke his collarbone and his precious Timex watch got all messed up, cracked and whatever, he emailed them and said, Hey, I got in a car accident and my precious Timex got, you know, messed up. I want to know what the cost would be to, to fix it because I really love it. And I've had it for a long time.

And they wrote back and said, you know what? You have way too much to worry about. We'll fix it on us. Not only that, but they also tweeted him. They called him out in a tweet and said, Hey, hope you're feeling better.

Have a great day. And a little smiley face. And that just got picked up and it went viral and people do appreciate and they notice that stuff and they'll definitely share with the world, so keep that great outsourcing. Now, like the president of Timex, I mean, maybe he saw it across the desk, but I'm pretty sure. had systems and processes in place to be like, look, you know, some project manager or support manager is like, this guy, for social media, let's just go ahead and help them and tweet.

Because they're about not treating people like numbers, right? And your business should not be treating people like numbers. People are people. They have lives. They have interests.

And the reason they're spending their money is because they trust in what you can provide, a product or service, right? So you can totally think outside the box for this too. A buddy of mine, Toby, he sent a, I believe it was a happy birthday. I don't think it was a Christmas jingle. It was a happy birthday video.

Now, obviously, Toby, he makes a lot of money in internet marketing. He could totally, well, actually, he does it part-time. He's actually a musician. He's literally a rock star. He's a musician in a band.

Yeah, it's his passion. And he does marketing because he outsources stuff. And one of the things he outsourced was a happy birthday video of a guy wearing this ridiculous costume to one of his buddies. And he put it on Facebook and sent it to him personally. And just that is like, you didn't have to spend money to send me this ridiculous happy birthday.

It's like a singing telegram kind of deal, but it was ridiculous. But the idea of you thinking that person, that seals the deal. So if you're doing business to business or business to, you know, however, business personal, any kind of business, once someone knows you're always thinking of them and the ability to always do it, because really, I mean, come on. If you have, you know, I have over thousands and thousands of customers. How can I think of everybody?

But I have enough in place where people go, wow, Lawrence is like watching a movie right now and having popcorn with his kids. But he's still having people emailing me, calling me, sending me a letter. How is this possible? He really does care, right? That's the way you build trust.

That's how you build a long-term customer, right? And so this is a good segue to go into personal. Because maybe some of you are still like, man, I'm never going to hire someone to sing a jingle or I'm never going to, you know, I will do my own accounting on TurboTax or whatever. It's not needed. Okay.

Fair enough. That's the business side of outsourcing. A lot of you do personal outsourcing. Andrea, you want to hit up a couple? Because I know you do a couple.

I mean, all women do a lot more than they know. And it's funny, we wrote these down. We wrote these down. She did a couple and I did a couple. Okay.

And this is a good way. So if you are thinking, I'm never going to outsource for my business, I can do it all, or I don't need that right now, or it's just not something for me, then maybe consider outsourcing your personal stuff. So instead of you doing some of your personal stuff, you gain that time to apply to your business if you still want to do everything in your business. So yeah, it's a really good segue. Some of the stuff would be cleaning your house, right?

The majority of the time, it's always the moms, the wives, they get stuck doing that. They got kids, maybe their kids are too young, they can't contribute to cleaning the house. But who wants to do that? Usually it takes four to five hours, depending on how big the house is. You can use that time to do other stuff.

Build a business, go work out, get healthier and more energy, go spend time with people that matter, right? Dog walking is another one. I mean, you think, oh, my dog is part of the family. I could totally do it. But sometimes you only do it for 10 minutes and they need more than that.

So why not get somebody to do it for a good hour, take them to the park, and you just have a happiness. There's a whole happiness concept, right? You know, your dog's happy, they're being taken care of. And you could, again, focus on what you're going to do. Babysitting is another one.

People think, oh, that's just, everybody does that. But it's really outsourcing. You think about it, right? You have someone come, take care of something that matters while you go and do something else. So maybe that's a really good way of thinking and framing and understanding how we do it more than we think, and how it can also help you save time to apply in other areas.

So those are some of the few I know you have. Yeah, you hit it, saving time, right? But it really, it's that and the bonuses, freeing up worry in your mind, right? Like, in fact, my kids are literally 20 minutes away from my house to go to school. It takes us 20 minutes each way to go to school.

If I wanted to, I don't, because I actually don't work a job. But if I was working a job, I would have someone pick up my kids, be it a friend. We used to do this. We would pay a friend to pick up our kids and drop us at home with grandma. But, you know, now that I don't have a desk job anymore, I actually go and pick them up.

And I like it. I like waiting there, walking in with their backpacks. And it's a really happy time. So you get to have the decision to do the things you really want to do versus things you don't really want to do. I don't like mowing the lawn.

I know some people like to do it. I get it. But I think the reason they do it is because they want to get away from something else. I say, pick up a good hobby, not a hobby that drains you, especially in Houston. You don't want to mow a lawn when it's over 100 degrees with mosquitoes.

It's humid, having to bag it, having to edge it. It will literally, my lawn will literally take about an hour or two hours, depending on how well I want to do the job. But then I'm wiped out the rest of the day. Now, if I'm the only person running my business and I'm not outsourcing anything, that kills my business. I'm like, I'm exhausted.

I don't want to shoot a video. I'm exhausted. I don't want to get on the phone anymore because my arm hurts. Can't do that. Got to be able to outsource that.

And it just frees up that peace of mind. Maybe you haven't really thought about what is your happiness? What is it really worth to you? Like some of you might go, dog walking, dogs. Are you serious?

I just throw my dog outside. But I know a lot of you, like the person who's a realtor, she has someone go to her house and all they do is just play with the dog. Let them out and play the dog. Not walk it because she likes walking the dog, but since she's in the office, showing houses and stuff, she can't come home and walk the dog. She just wants someone to come to her house to just play with the dog.

Why? Her dog is family. And for her to know that her precious doggy, even though the dog's like 100 pounds or whatever, this precious dog is being taken care of so she can then release that anxiety, that worry, so she can focus on her job to sell some houses. You need to figure out where do you need to be so you can do other things. For this realtor of mine, she needed to be at work.

She couldn't be strapped at home. So she goes, well, if I'm going to be at work and to run my business because I can't outsource that, I have to be the face, the one who sells the house. I need to figure out a way to outsource me and take care of my dogs. And that's just one of many different things. Babysitting is another one.

How about like those of you who have a P.O. box? Some of you, think about it. P.O. box isn't in front of your house.

You can't walk outside of your house with flip flops to go to your P.O. box. Like my P.O. box is literally like 15 minutes away at the post office. You have to drive there.

But that's kind of inconvenient knowing you could get someone to just pick it up whenever you tell them to. Mail collection. How about a personal chef? How about someone just come over and just grill you something? So like catering.

Think about that. If you had a party of say 25 people for a Super Bowl party and you had someone to set up, cook, and clean, how well would that make you and your guests feel? I mean, that is the type of impression. And it doesn't cost a lot of money to do that with your friends. It will make your friends like, this is some VIP treat.

And it's just a catering service. It doesn't have to be big. A catering service to come by. And I've done these for our kids' birthday parties. You know, having balloon artists to come by versus just buying a bunch of just balloons.

No, we have someone make balloon animals. Like why not? Right? Having an ice cream truck sit in front and park so the kids can have ice cream. I mean, why not?

And that's the stuff you open your mind to. It's like, it's not that hard. And it would make your day not knowing, well, if I did that, what would happen here? I'll be late to this. I'll be late to that.

I couldn't attend. And you can't be everywhere every time. You can't. You're stretching yourself thin. You're going to give yourself a heart attack.

Can't do that. Enjoy your time. Right? What else you got? Yeah, that's a really good one for to gain, you know, freedom, stress-free happiness.

And I like to use the cleaning the house thing. Because the one thing we all have is a space. We all need something that's just comfortable. Our home is our getaway from life, from work, from everything. We want to come to a place that's just awesome.

Right? So you could ask for somebody to clean your house, save you four or five hours. What can you do with five hours every two weeks per se? Let's say it's a hundred bucks to clean your house. I'd pay for that.

Right? Five hours, I'd catch up on my bills. I can do my yearly taxes. You know, if I want to be more productive, I can do the kids science project with them. I can do so much more stuff that I can focus on that.

We all have a list on things that we need to do. The kind of list that keeps us up late at night. That's not even business related, just personal. But it goes back to shifting your time to things that are more important to projects you need to finish and make you happier. So yeah, for sure.

Yeah. I don't know if this is still around. Is there still a, like gift wrapping services around? I know the back in the nineties, those were popular while I was, while I was a kid. Yeah.

I think there, you know, some, some locations, that's another really good one that takes time. Like you got to buy this. Oh man. Sometimes you rip the paper. You get smashed.

Jessica, my wife totally knows that I wrap a gift under a Christmas tree. It's like, that's daddy's. This is like mangled. Right? Like, I don't, I don't, personally do outsourcing my, my gift wrapping.

Cause I, I like doing it. Like for my brother, I wrap it in newspaper and that's just the thing I do. Like I wrap it in newspaper. Like, Hey, you know, this is for me. Here you go.

He's like, Oh, I got it. You know, and you can do, I remember we sent out, I think two to three of these floral arrangements. You don't want me picking flowers. Cause I don't have a clue what that is. I don't know how they're shipped, how they're supposed to look, how much water for the gift.

I will kill the flower before I give it to somebody who needs it. You know, we had someone who had their husband pass away. We had someone who got married, you know, and guess what? I didn't do any of that. I actually had someone special named Andrea.

Hey, Andrea, these people need some loving. Can you help them out? And she took care of it. That's like, I knew it had to happen. I knew we needed to do it, but it wasn't me doing it, but I knew it had to happen.

I had the, I had the, you know, the vision. Hey, these people would, would love just a little bit of just like additional care and love. Andrea, can you help that out and turn and turn that in? And she did. She did.

Totally. And one good thing to also consider with this is if you think any of this doesn't apply to you, you don't have the money, you can totally trade time for time because time is an asset just like money is. Right? So you can say, Hey, to your friend or somebody that's trying to learn something that maybe you're, you have available, but don't necessarily want to do. You guys could trade time.

Like, give me three hours of this and I'll do three hours of that for you. And it's totally doable. And it's not as stressful because some people can't handle it financially. They don't have the money or you just have to budget. So I'm going to Starbucks every day and I'm sure you can do this, right?

But think about that too, outside the box, like trade time for time. And it's totally possible. That's a really good, good point. So, another sneaky way we've done outsourcing, we didn't really realize it until later. so my wife, she'll go grocery shopping and let's say there is a sale of a specific item or something and her, her, her girlfriend can't get off of work or whatever, and don't have time to go get it.

Cause it's a really good deal. Like, you know, Asians, I'm not speaking for all Asians, my family and let's just say Chinese people, let's just be blunt. The Chinese people we know in Houston love a good deal. All right. This is the, I haven't found a Chinese person that I come in contact with who doesn't love a good deal.

We love good deals. And so when there's a good deal, we jump on it. And so we, we come in droves when there's a good deal. One way to outsource, hey, why don't you go buy some of that for me? Because I don't have time to go pick it up.

Whatever it is, a TV set, Hey, the TV set 500 bucks off, go buy me one. Even though it isn't an actual money to time transaction, it's more of a good faith transaction and it is outsourcing. Now you might not say, no, it's just a favor, but guess what? I didn't do it. Right.

So, so a prime example of this, of how I outsourced my, my fiance at the time, actually, no, we weren't engaged yet. My girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, I go, Hey, I have finals right now. Can you go wait in line for Star Wars? Cause it's going to probably in Austin, we were in Austin and I'm like, everybody, me, my brother, my sister-in-law, my everybody, all our friends wanted to watch, but all of us had finals except for my wife. She went, she had to wait around the building, but by the time we got there, you know, she's, she's been waiting like eight hours or something to watch Star Wars because Austin people are freaks, but we outsourced her time, but really we made a deposit.

She made a deposit and tell us, Hey, look, I, I did a favor for you guys. Just let you know, I was out of here with a bunch of crazy people dressing up Darth Vader, but I'm out here to save you a spot. Do you get that? And, but that was me not being there that I had a test. And so you have to start thinking about that.

It doesn't always have to be about time. It could be trading your expertise or your ability to do something. My wife had, or my girlfriend at the time had the ability to stand in line. We did it. She treated that, you know, we took her out, make sure she didn't have to pay for anything.

Cause Hey, look, you, you basically sat out here more than twice or double everyone else has, has done. So trading that time, getting to a point where you can, you can get more just because like black Friday stuff happens all the time. Crazy deal at this store, but I'm not the other store that takes me five hours to check out. How about you buy a couple of those and I'll buy a couple of these and then we can just hash it out later. Being able to clearly think outside the box, you can't be everywhere at the same time.

Right? That's the next phase of how you grow. And then eventually you're like, I don't want to do that. I can't do that. I'm not good at that.

And then that's how you grow from there. Yeah. Trade and gain. Another good one is, for example, I love working out. And for those of you do know about CrossFit, it's pretty pricey monthly, right?

But I made a deal with the owner. If you give me free classes four times a week, I'll give you three hours of my time to help you with some business stuff because he's too spread thin and I like doing business processes. I like helping. So I get free courses and I helped to build something and he gets more time to do some other stuff. So yeah, always, it could be right under your nose and things you're already a part of and you don't even consider.

So think about, keep an open mind. Yeah. And once I heard you did that, I asked my personal trainer, if I can get you new customers that, you know, you know, that came from me, I would like you to train me for free. Negotiate. Everything's negotiable.

As Donald Trump says, everything. Exactly, exactly. One of the things, internally to the House of Tam, right? I don't do any vacation planning. Like to me, vacation planning is, I don't know what it is.

Like, I'm just like, I know my wife does it better. Why even fight it? Like, and she enjoys it. So I offload all that anxiety, pricing, dates, where should we go? Where should we stay?

Vacationing to my wife. Vacationing to my wife. So I can focus on my business, right? Because if you're going to do everything, literally, your brain gets so segmented that you don't get enough time to, I wouldn't say meditate on something, but really like simmer, like really sit on an idea. You will get that idea when you brush your teeth or driving somewhere and you're like, oh, I never thought of it.

But you had enough time to let it like simmer. You're like, now I get it. But if you're thinking about everything, we're all good at multitasking, but to a point, some are better than others. But if you can really focus on one idea, how do I get more traffic? How do I get more customers?

How do I get that customer to buy more versus where are we going? Which Disney cruise are we going on? Hey, should we like, we're going on a Disney cruise with my wife and I let her handle all of it. I don't care. I just pay it.

And she's like, well, should we stay on the, you know, on the above the water, below the water, front of the deck, back of the deck? Should we say inside or outside? You know, should we upgrade and do this? Should we do character? I'm like, honey, if the kids are going to be happy and you're happy, you go ahead and do that.

And that's that whole lifting off the shoulder being asked a million questions. You need to be able to release yourself from that because really, number one, you don't get paid from your personal time. You get paid from your business time, focus on your business. And that's how you create more time. Time is an asset that you get no more.

It's just, that's all you have. Everyone gets 24 hours in a day and depending on how you use it, that's the key. Where do you use your time? You can't generate more time, but you can generate more money. It's a timer.

Get it? It's when it's done, it's done. And that, once you realize that, once you realize you going into work and trading your time for your company, not your company, the company you work for, if you have a job, that's where they're getting you. And that's where they go, I will trade you for your 40 hours for a salary. That's okay to a point.

That type of income generation can't be scaled up. That type of time placement, what can you do with that? You're stuck there for 40 hours, but in your business, I can work zero hours and still make money. Because remember, we're going back to the thing we were teaching, no matter what I'm doing, no matter what I'm eating, no matter where I'm in, no matter what movie I'm watching, no matter if I'm stuck in traffic or playing with the kids outside, I'm always making money. Because you're outsourcing.

Right? You have something to add about that, I believe. Right, Andrea? Yeah, it's, this whole conversation is really about understanding how valuable you are. And as you said, time, once it's out, it's out.

And the thing that I do know, and many should know, is that we are all born with the same amount of it. And like you said, we just have to decide how we're going to spend the time. Because in anything you do, your assets are your time and your mind, right? And how you choose to utilize them in your life. And you just, money will come, but time will not.

So you have to take advantage of that. Especially building a business. Initially, you always trade a lot of time. You don't get too much money, but the more you keep building it, you work less in the future, but you make more. It's just a given.

You know, it's the science of it all. Yeah. Yeah. So, for me personally, back in 2009 when I started outsourcing a lot more stuff, my level was 40 bucks an hour, right? And so, that was the level.

If I could do something and it was more expensive than 40 bucks an hour, well, I'm only worth about 40 bucks an hour. I'll just do it. But if it was less than that, if it was like a $5 an hour gig or a $10 an hour gig, I would outsource it. I would train myself, look, I get it. Maybe I could do it a little bit better, but I free up my time and I'm just happy, you know?

So, we're going to go into where you could outsource, right? Because you're probably wondering, well, I mean, I get it. I get it. Okay. I need to outsource.

It's personal or business. I understand, you know, once I flip that, I can make money regardless of if I'm sleeping or eating. Here's a couple of places. You want to start with that, Andrea? A couple of outsources.

Sites. Yeah. The one and first and most easiest place is always go to Google and just type in freelancers, outsourcing, virtual assistants, service providers near me. It's super easy. That's just really the only place.

From there, you're going to get tons of search results and then you just pick accordingly based on your needs. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And the more specific the need, you're probably going to find the better provider.

So if you're looking for someone who has a really good, like, knowledge of website databases, right, and you type that in, looking for a local Houston website, you know, database manager, you're probably going to find a person who's local, closer, and who specifically, like their resume or whatever, is actually keyword targeted specifically for that task versus someone who just goes, I work on the internet, like, you don't know what they do. So asking is very specific to what you want. I want an SEO article writer. I want someone who can do videos with, you know, transitions and editing and cutting. You know, there's a lot of different ways to do that, but Google definitely is one way.

Right. Yeah. As I looked for those businesses four days ago, you know, I typed in Website Maintenance Houston, and boom, I had those, you know, those people. Yeah. Okay.

Very specific. They answered my question exactly what I wanted on their site, and it just cut my time. I got it done and moved forward. Let's have a true case study. I believe people want to have a true case study.

How did I hire Andrea? How did you hire me or how did you find me? Well, I didn't find you, right? I found you, actually. Yeah.

So it was the opposite, right? So we're teaching how to get outsourcers. You can physically find them, or why don't you explain how we came to working together? Okay. So, yeah, I actually did find you by going to Google and typing in a specific keyword, which was online business or making money online, something along the lines of online business.

And boom, you appeared on your website. You had an article. The article had a training. It was a how-to specific to that need that I was in search of. So I contacted you, emailed, communicated, and then we stayed in touch, right?

And again, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier is how you made the person feel. Well, when I emailed you, that same day you called, again, you called, you didn't just write a one-liner email like most people do. You took an hour of your time, which now it's not recommended because if you do want to feel it, you want to have somebody to do that with you or for you. But you made me feel a certain way, and it made me stick around. From there, I added you on Facebook, and I was just cognizant of what you're doing.

I was watching you. I was following you. I was commenting on the stuff you were doing. I was just interested, right, just because you gave me some time, and I found you online. So from there, one day, you just had your Facebook post that you were needing help with helping and growing your business, and these were the specific needs.

This is exactly what you were wanting, and if you feel that you are a good fit, cut a video as to why I should hire you, what you have to offer, how you're going to help me achieve all these tasks, and see if we can work together. So it was kind of a process level, but it just worked out, and you knew what you wanted. I knew what I was looking for and what I had to offer, and you knew that your time was valuable and you wanted to scale up. I knew that I wanted to grow and learn and be a part of it. So it's totally doable, and obviously, we're now here.

We're talking about this and helping other people to be able to do the same. Yeah, so essentially, what I did was I treated my business like a business, right? I wasn't chasing people, you know, and the thing is, once you get to a point where you're comfortable with yourself and you have a specific goal in mind and you have a specific need, I used marketing. Odd, huh? Yeah.

I love it. Marketing actually works. Yep. So I just posted it on Facebook using a social media outlet, and I had a specific need. I didn't know you were going to respond.

I had a lot of applicants, you know, file in, and that's when you start treating a business like an interview, positioning. That's a whole other inner circle audio we can go into, and, you know, what I'm going to say is you can go actively looking for somebody, or you can go actively positioning as, you know, you're looking more for mentorship and a way to get in, right? And learn. Right. And learn, right?

And learn how to help me grow because I wanted to outsource, and I knew, you know, I needed someone with a specific skill set plus someone I could train because, obviously, the things that I do, it's kind of not really learned in textbooks or in schools because I learned it, but I would teach it to you, and that was kind of the, you know, the payment in that case. Agreement. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So now from going into the ability of being able to search or be found, you know, how do you outsource and what do you look for, all right? You want to start off? Yeah, totally. The first thing anybody should do before doing this is know exactly what you want and need done because if not, you're just going to go in it blinded, you're going to have negative experience, you're going to be confused, and you're just going to want to give up. So always be clear on what it is you need and want done, things you can't do and things you don't want to do.

You know, be a little selfish. If you don't want to do a data entry, if you don't want to write emails, have an outsource. You know, it's always about your time and growing. From there, I think a really good thing is to determine how many hours you need from the provider, whether it's how many hours a week or how many hours a month or per day. And you know, that way you understand you can then set milestones and goals and just kind of have a good flow and have a good team, you know, work together.

So those are a couple of the beginning things. The next thing would be that you should totally determine if the rate that they're offering is within your budget. But remember, as I said, it's always negotiable. So you can negotiate with people on their rate exactly what you need, the task and whatnot. But you have to have a budget, you have to have a vision, an idea of what that's going to look like because you can't just do it just to do it.

Again, it's part of having goals and some milestones, making sure it all comes together at the end. So those are the beginning things before you start the project. A lot of people I consult with, they're always stuck about, well, how much should I pay and blah, blah, blah. I was like, well, it's a moving target and you got to kind of figure out where the market is and you put out bids. And if you don't have bids, just be very open with, you know, the outsourcer.

I am going to be adjusting as we go, right, versus saying them thinking that's the hard number that you to pay too much or too little. You want to have a working relationship if it's project-based or if it's an hourly, ongoing based kind of deal, right? So you ideally want to set up a project, be very specific to what you need, what you want, and this is how you gain, you know, the attention of freelancers. So specifically if someone's a video editor, someone who's really good with, you know, PHP or someone who's really good at database management, someone who's really good at building, you know, marketing funnels, whatever it is, the more specific you are and what kind of project need that you have, you'll be able to solve that need faster because someone actually has that skill set, okay? And you want to be, you also want to be looking for specific types of freelancers to give that.

An example would be I was looking for, me personally with Andrea, I was looking for a project manager, basically that does everything. But we also have web developers, we have a couple of traffic people, we have a sales floor, we have a lot of different things. And being very specific, sometimes you could have one of jack of all trades, like an Andrea or you have something that's just, hey, all they do is write articles for us, right? An easy way, of course, just like in any business, review them, right, references, testimonials, review their profile, look at their past gigs and jobs, are they still working? Do we have the, I guess the mental capacity to run like you?

And one of my fears was I would hire someone and they would not perform to my expectations. And we all have different expectations. But the goal of someone who's the employee, you know, the employer, right, is be flexible. Not everyone is like you, and hopefully they'll exceed your expectations, but you need to be open and honest that you will be training, right, and if you don't know what to train on, just say, I think I need this, would you be willing to work with me to achieving this goal, right? So resume, me specifically, I don't really like resumes.

I like basically what have you done and do you learn fast? And that's one of the key things for me. If you're teachable or you're trainable, can you learn quick or, and the thing for me is I like to have a 60-day window. If it's going to work, it's going to work. And if it's not going to work, you lost 60 days, that's okay, but the learning experience, I would highly recommend building some type of procedure.

So let's say you have an article writer. You have specific things you want the article writer to write on, maybe it's on-page SEO setup, maybe it's keyword research, whatever. If you teach this one person how to do that, and you have a document or a website that teaches this, and if that person were to get pregnant, I've had this happen, I had my article writer get pregnant and she fell off the face of the earth, but I had the things that I needed because I knew what I wanted from her, and I just moved that to another writer. It wasn't like, oh, I've got to do it all over again. No, I had videos already set up.

I had pre-written things that I really wanted just from the experiences that we had. So you build like this working document to rehire quicker, right? In some instances, there'll be some language barriers because, you know, obviously hiring overseas is going to be much cheaper than the U.S., you know, Canadian rate. And if you do hire someone from another country, you know, you can test them just by sending an email. Right, right.

Send them a Facebook message and just see how they carry themselves. Now, don't judge a book by its cover. Don't say, oh, this person's CEO, this person's hair is too spiky. Yeah. It's the work.

It's the work. Now, of course, unless they're like, you know, they're the brand of your business and you don't want that brand of that look, but generally they're working behind the scenes. They're working for you to build into your brand, right? Well, go ahead. Go ahead and take the next one.

What should you not do? What should I look for? Things that I look for and things I try not to do is, you know, I do like giving people a shot and being fair, but if they don't really have history or any clue for any kind of referral, maybe resume isn't the best because people can fib or whatnot, but you can't make up a testimonial and you can't try to fake making up, you know, referrals by people and whatnot. And every time that I look for someone, especially if we're hiring somebody for our team, I make sure that they have proof, they have past projects they worked on, they have recommendations from clients and a good outsourcer or a good business project manager, anybody understands the importance of building their own reputation because they know, they think for the long term that what I'm doing now is going to help me in the future, so I'm going to collect and document everything I do and how I learn what skills I have so that I can present to future potential clients. So by far, people that have that set up and they're the ones that are ready and are probably a better choice.

So always keep that in mind, but it's up to you if you want to hire someone who they don't even have a picture up and barely any skill sets written, just because maybe they're a little bit cheaper, just keep in mind, you might have some struggles, they're a little bit more training, more handholding and whatnot, because they should know better, you know? Yeah. If you screen in the front, yeah, if you screen in the front, you're not going to have as much issues when you're doing the training or actually having the work done. So actually doing a better background check, doing a little more work in the front, like you have a saying, Andrea, about being lazy, I guess. What is the saying you have?

The lazy man works twice as hard. The lazy man works... Because you have to fix mistakes. Yeah, you're going to rework what you already went through. It's like, oh, I got to do this again, just because I kind of...

Just because you do something to do it doesn't mean it's done well or good enough. Like you got to do it right from the beginning and then boom, it's done, knock it out, you know? So for example, I've posted jobs on sites where I'm looking for someone and I get bids and I get, you know, I get the people with full-blown profile that's awesome. And then the one people that's kind of a random pick, I can't even see their face and it's a one-liner sentence, hey, hire me, I'll do this work for you. And I, believe it or not, emailed those people back and said, look, thanks, but you should work on this, this, this and this before you're even considered, so hopefully in the future it'll help you as somebody else.

So some of them write back and they appreciate. And surprisingly, they don't know, but those are the people that I want to be fair with and give them a chance. So I try to educate them in a way and hopefully they'll get it, you know? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Because I mean, some people are, maybe you're so used to having a job that you're not good at sales. Well, if you're going to be an... Let's say on the flip side, you want to become an outsourcer, like you're a good writer, you're a good video editor, maybe you're really good at getting traffic, whatever it is. You need to sell you, right? And a lot of that actually reflects on your skill set.

And you just, I mean, yeah, sometimes you find a diamond in the rough for someone who's brand new. But, you know, having past experiences, like not really a resume, but working experiences, maybe a project they've worked on in the past, if they're an article writer, let me see a past article. I know for me, for myself, sometimes when I have a big article, like 20 articles I'm going to write, I'll ask someone to write me a test article. Like write me 300 words on this topic with this keyword based on-page SEO and with a turnaround time within 48 hours, because I want to know speed, accuracy, current working knowledge of English, current working knowledge of on-page SEO, and is it structured properly? And if they want to do this with me, I go, that's just how I want to work with you.

I need to know if you're good or not. And they have to come out and actually work before I pay them. Like I'm not even going to pay them, I just want to see what you're about. Here's my background. Here's what I've hired.

And if they want to work with me, it's kind of like, you know, it's kind of like, I remember going to a job for engineering, they made me take a test. Like, dude, I already graduated college, I know, they made me take another test, an aptitude test. And that's just kind of how it is, depending on what it is, right? So for us, I mean, what are some of the locations? We have a girl in Pakistan.

We have a guy in the Philippines, we have a traffic guy in San Diego. We have another writer in Seattle. I think she's in Houston now. We have another writer in Florida. I think there's a couple more.

But the idea is this, I believe the business of the 21st century will be run this way. Performance based, not sit on your butt for eight hours a day based, right? Let's think about it. We're actually paying people for outputs. We're paying them for turnaround time.

We're paying them to get things done, projects met. Not so much are you in the office, so I can see you behind your computer screen full time. That makes no sense. It's about performance. And that's the way you should be going, that's the way you should treat it.

And with the way the internet is, you can have an international team. I think that's awesome. Totally. Even like Dell, they've gone down in their buildings, because they're now allowing employees to work from home because they can digitally be connected still. And now they don't have to worry so much about paying, building costs, rent, ownership of all that, because A, their employees are happy, they can work from home.

But as long as, like you said, they're producing, it's not about being in the office, it's about getting the work done. And you can now, in this 21st century, do it from anywhere, in any context, so. Yeah. Okay. So now with, you know, maybe you've got a couple of outsourcers, maybe you've got one.

The ways I've done it, and me personally, and Andrea will chime in on this too. For me, it's being very clear with how you want things done the first time. Lazy man, you know, has twice as much work. So communication is critical, however you want to do it. For me primarily, I know there's a couple ways to do it, but for me primarily, I like to do emails, and I like to do Facebook chats, right?

Now we do have a project website, we do some work on that. I'm not a big fan of Skype. You can use Skype. I actually do some Google Hangouts, but I try not to, because it actually takes time. See, if it takes time away from me doing something now, that's too time intensive.

That's why I like emails. I can write it, I can go have lunch, and then email is being sent, and then people reply to. I don't like text so much, because, you know, if I'm somewhere, I don't want my phone blowing up, like in a movie theater or whatever. But as I pick two, you know, figure out, you know, what's comfortable for you. Do respect that most outsourcers don't live in your time zone.

I'm just lucky enough that Andrea does live in my time zone. She actually lives in the same city, so she works in my office, right? I have an office that she can come in and work anytime she wants. I actually give her the desk. She actually has the desk.

I sit in the guest chair, because, I mean, she's... Hey, I'm asked. Hey, you want to sit here? No, I'm good. So, like, I want her to feel, you know, feel like she's important, because she is important.

And I want her to feel like, you know, she's the project manager. She gets it done. She's sitting in the big leather chair behind my living desk. With the view. With the view, with the glass view on the seventh floor.

And all you see restaurant options downstairs. Yeah. Tallest building in, like, blocks and blocks in Houston, and I give her to there. And that's just the park. As me, as an employer, I want her to feel good.

And when she comes in, she has a key, she can do whatever she wants. So for me, talking to Andrea, I usually do Facebook chat. I usually do a Hangout if I can't get to the office. I'll do a text if it's something really urgent. But besides that, maybe sometimes email.

I know she's inundated by emails, because she does our support also. I don't know if you want to chime in on that or move on to frequency. Yeah, it's very important to pick a form of communication with your outsourcer, your provider. For example, we have one in Pakistan. She does not like doing video Hangouts.

And her method would be Skype. And then also email, so there's kind of a paper trail and reference. And then we have another one in the Philippines, and he loves doing video hangouts. We do screen shares. We walk through stuff together.

He's really open and receptive, so it's really what you two can handle. But again, max it to at least two because then you're just going to have a Skype pop-up, a text, a Facebook, an email, and it's all going to be spread info, and you don't want that. So keep it to two. It's really good. And then with that, also the frequency.

Frequency. Okay, so frequency, you handle most of that, and I'll add a little bit to that because you actually communicate with our teams more than I do. Okay. So frequency-wise, we have two people that are overseas, and I'll check everything they do in the morning just so that I can keep on top of making sure they get what they're doing, if there's any missing pieces. But usually I communicate.

If there's some kind of an error, I'll communicate with them instantly right when I check it. But normally I meet with them once a week, again, via video hangout or just send out an email to update the previous week and then the future things that we learned went over and want changed. So it's usually once a week for our scope. But again, depending on your project, if it's a much larger project, it's probably best for you to make it into smaller ones, hit those, and then determine, again, your goal, your timeframe. So if it's, like, a four-month project, it might be better to meet every, you know, three days or every Monday and Wednesday just to get it done.

Sometimes you might not need to meet until every two weeks. So for me personally, I actually have – sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. As long as it's consistent because you can't – and you've got to maintain that for both of y'all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

So for me, I actually have a project manager like Andrea who handles all that and takes care of our outsourcers, and I just give her ideas. So it's really one point of contact. So at that level, you're getting bigger. You have multiple tiers. But until then, it might just be you and then maybe one other person.

I started collecting more outsourcers because, you know, I need different things done at different specialties. But then it got to a point where, like, it was just too many emails coming back to me and deadlines and payment. So, like, Andrea does payroll. And, like, say when, you know, it's time to pay, she does the checking, she pays it. Or let's say we travel.

Andrea and I, we travel a lot with our teams and stuff, and when we travel, she handles all that, like, you know, from all the expenses and, you know, this is what we're charging. Like, that frees up my mind with worry, and it's just – it clouds your mind. You can't have that if you're working on your business, right? But one thing I did do was I anticipated turnover, right? And one thing you should do with anticipated turnover is have, like I said, like that sheet that your wants and desires on a sheet.

So, for me, it was a big outsourcing page with, like, the four to five needs that I want a specific person to have, and it had videos and pictures and examples. So, if that outsourcer would ever get pregnant or whatever and leave, like the last one did, I have something that I can show the next outsourcer, here, here's the rate, here's what we expect, and we expect you to be up and running within the first two weeks. We have a clear expectation of what you can and cannot do, and we get it done. Here, watch this. And then we have this big manual, basically.

It's a little short, but it's very specific to your own business and to my own business, right? And there is a learning curve. We understand that. But you'll notice really quickly those who can adapt quickly will adapt, and those who can't, it's like they say, it's not personal. It's business, right?

And we've been sold out. Yeah, I mean, be wary of hiring your friends, but I hired a friend who worked with me for, I think, almost three years doing two to three odd-end things, and he was like, you know, I've had enough. I'm going to go back to my job. I totally respect it. But I truly believe that had to happen to align, to open up a position, which Andrea had then filled, right?

So, it all worked out. But I knew exactly what I was doing, and I just wanted to expand it, grow it bigger, and, you know, he was highly intelligent. I had to find someone who was also highly intelligent, right? So, go ahead. You've got the next requirement.

Yes, talking about requirements, your project is only as good as your requirements. So, like we said earlier, lazy man works twice as hard. So, take the time to clearly define what you're doing. And like you said, have a page, a training page, and it can be super simple. It can be a Google Doc that you both have access to with all the how-tos, the training videos, and your requirements, so that you don't have to duplicate it, rewrite it, re-email it for somebody new if that comes into play.

Think smarter, not harder. You know, work smarter, not harder. So, do it once, and it's set forever. That's a really good point. And also, like you said, you had somebody that was super highly intelligent, and he just was ready to move on to something else.

And, you know, in our case, I feel lucky to be a part of this, and, you know, we built a great working relationship, and everything is smooth. We've grown a lot. And if you're listening, and you think you want to start hiring and getting a team, always remember that you can't expect your providers to go above and beyond, because that is rare for it to occur. You know, it's up to you to set the tone, be clear and specific from the beginning and what you want, and then the rest will come. You're not going to be let down, but you can also know what you're going to get into.

Andrea is a little different, right? So she didn't come in just for the money. Most of the people you'll hire, they want a job, right? And so they'll come in, and their full intention is I get paid for something you give me, and I get it done, and that's it. Even like what they say, it's in my job description.

Andrea is a little different because she actually wants to learn, so she actually does go above and beyond. It's a little unique, but if you do have someone who's in your business, that's not so much an outsourcer, right? I don't treat Andrea as my outsourcer. That's more like a protege. Like the working relationship is a little different, and so in that respect, she doesn't do what is just caught up on her.

She actually does it like it's her business, and that was very clearly stated in the very beginning. I'm looking for someone to help me reach my goals, not just fill out hours and do a specific task. It's specific in that. It's good. And doing this in mind, keep this communication.

It will occur. Don't tap it. Oh, this is yesterday. Oh, man, I posted that. It happens, right?

Multiple people running multiple accounts, and it just happens. And just say, hey, you know, this is what it was. Let's document it. Let's move on. It's not the end of the world, right?

Yeah. Have a paper trail. Have a paper trail. Definitely have a paper trail. My paper trail is generally email, or our project sites will have a project labeled that.

But a lot of it is email, too. Right. Or the training page, like you said. For example, with our officer, they missed a few things. I called them out and said, number two of this states we wanted that.

And they're, oh, okay, we're sorry. And, you know, because a majority of the time a lot of people react, and maybe they do oversee it, and there's a learning curve. So there's no reason for there to be miscommunication if you have it all on paper. So that's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

All right, so let's go into project management. You want to start with this? Yeah, totally. So, again, this sounds like a lot, but we're here to help, and it's super simple and super easy. And once you finally know what you want, and then you finally get people interested and you think they'd be a good fit for you, now it's time to know how to just manage your day-to-day with them, the project, the tasks that you need.

So it's always good to be organized, again, know what your requirements are. And like we were saying, you can start with having a project management tool or online document, like I said earlier, with like a Google Doc. You can have your trainings on there, ideas, frequently asked questions, previous conversations, just so they have a point of reference. Instead of going to you all the time, asking you the same thing over and over, it's all right there. It's done, and they can just focus on that.

Yeah, Google Docs is a very, very good tool because you can reach it from PC or Mac, right, free. Most of us have Google Gmails anyways. Plus, it's mobile. You can use it on your phone. So if I'm out and I need to pull up a password or, you know, Andrea's like, hey, can you look at this real quick, this thing I'm working on, I can pull up Google Docs straight from the phone.

Exactly. Another. Secure. Good, good. It's really important.

It's secure. User friendly, so don't be afraid of it. It's all tied together. Another example you can use, and I've used it in the past, is Facebook. Now, it's not the Facebook you would know or are familiar with, but a Facebook group that's private and secret.

So what that means is it's non-searchable, only people that you specifically invite to this group. The reason I use Facebook is because, well, it's like the second largest website in the entire world. Almost everyone we know, even all of our outsourcers are on Facebook. So we can add them onto a Facebook, and in a Facebook group you can add files. It's chronologically ordered, like a forum post.

Everything is pinned on there. You can notify and tag people, hey, I just updated this. You know, you can have events, like, hey, we're going to have a hangout tomorrow. Make sure you attend it. A lot of it's tied on the Facebook group, and it's completely free, right?

Yeah. And that way you can clear your ideas, your requirements, your FAQs, your trainings. They can all be focused, depending on where you want to put it. I would definitely maybe even use Dropbox. The reason you want to use Dropbox, maybe on top of Google Docs, is to have just a giant cloud-type storage facility.

So let's say you're working on different revisions of an article, or maybe you're working on a project that has specific needs or documents. You would then take the Google Doc and just have another place to back up or share videos or whatnot. You can use Dropbox, which is free also. I've used my personal business. I use Dropbox.

I use Google Docs. I use Facebook groups. There's a lot of different project-type businesses. Some are free. Some aren't.

The main thing is, for me, I like to have milestones. I like to have the actual requirement or the actual task at hand that I want done, being very specific, but having the milestone. Did you complete this at this point, and is it done? So I know that I can continue moving on. So my goal is, if I have 20 ongoing tasks, they're there, while I'm working on a new task or a bigger task that I can't outsource yet.

And, yeah, just be ethical and fair. Everyone's a human being. Okay, this is a good one for Andrea. Pay it on time. Yes.

With our providers, we discussed before, you know, when do you want to be paid? This is what we can do, what we want to do, and they'll agree or they don't, or negotiate. And, you know, for me, it's at the end of the week. I review everything, pay them out, and then I still, on Monday, I'll check in and review and, like, talk about future stuff. So paying on time is so important.

They know that you care, because these are people that are freelancers, they're really good ones, they're experts, and they take it serious. And if they deliver time and work for you, you know, it makes your life easier, helps you grow, makes you stress-free, you've got to do the same. So build a relationship, keep the trust. If you want them to work for you out of, you know, learning and passion and drive, then do that. And that way they're not bitter and they hate working for you and they don't even want you in the future.

You've just got to give and reciprocate both. So that's a good thing. We're all human, like you said. Exactly. And so, you know, be creative.

You know, let's say you can't afford the $20 an hour or whatever it is, you know, for a really good outsourcer, and that's fine. Just be creative, you know. You know, one way is to – if they know you're a marketer or if they know they want to get – let's say you're a franchisee or a franchisor and you run a really cool fast food joint or whatever and you're looking for someone to scale up your marketing, but they want to learn your inside of your business, you know, your tradeoff is, well, I'm not going to pay you this amount because, you know, I have a specific need, but what I'll do is I'll let you in. I'll basically work with you, mentor you. So there's a different way to do that.

Another way I like to do it is while I have outsourcers or people on my team, I'm not going to pay them, like, 50% more than market to retain them. How I retain my workforce is to show them that I care about them. You know, I'll send them a birthday card or I'll take them out to a really nice dinner. You know, I just let them know that I'm thinking about them, even though I'm not always hitting them up. Like I'm not a big fan of micromanaging, right.

I feel like people who are hungry and they want to excel and exceed, they'll do it, right. And if that's not the type of person you are and you want something like that, hire that type of person. Fill the void that you have, right. And, you know, just reward positive feedback. Always give constructive criticism, not just criticism.

You are a team. You are a company. You need awesome services. So, I mean, if you want to provide awesome services and products, you're actually going to need an awesome support team and a good marketing team, right. And when you do find a good one, keep them.

Stick with them. Work with them. Hey, they need to go on maternity leave. They need to go on vacation. Just now you're a boss, you know, and it's pretty cool.

It's pretty neat. I never thought I'd be a boss of anybody. Just, you know, part of being a boss of myself. And, you know, remember not, like Andrea had said, you know, remember not to expect over-delivery. Most people on planet Earth are not over-achievers.

And when you do find one, that's probably a keeper. But, you know, there is a drawback. Most over-achievers don't want to stick in one place, right. They're generally, hey, I think I've learned enough here or I need to make more money and be over-achieved somewhere else. So, you know, if you want to have a long-lasting relationship with somebody, you definitely want to, you know, make them feel good and make them really want to stay not just for the money.

They're staying because of your vision. And that's when you become a leader, right. They're staying because they see what you're doing and they want to be a part of it. And this is why Andrea sticks around. I mean, she's here because she's learning from me personally.

She sees my vision. She sees why I'm doing it. I want to help people who are in my position working a full-time job. How do you make money on the Internet and how do you make it big, right? And I'll let Andrea close it out.

I believe she has something to say. I just want to say thank you for listening to us in a circle. Apply what we've taught you. Don't just listen to it and go, oh, that's great, and, you know, switch to another channel. Listen to what we're doing.

Apply it. You can outsource anything right now. Go ahead, Andrea. Yeah, I just want to close out with a story. I'm not sure if many of you guys know who Charles Schwab is, but he's back from the 1800s.

He was in the American Steel Corporation, one of the first big, you know, booms that exploded the U.S. and the economy and just kind of kick-started other future things to come, like automobile and, you know, all that. But this guy, he came from nothing. And like Lawrence, he has a really good story. He became super successful.

And one of the things that he always talked about, especially in a book that Dale Carnegie wrote, if you guys don't know who that is, you should totally look both of these people up. And Dale Carnegie asked, how is it that you have made millions, that you created this from nothing? And he said, it's all because of people. I did this because of people in my team, not because I did it by myself. And he understood the value of leveraging, scaling up time, and also treating people as if they're a part of it, you know.

He considered them. He would ask how their day was. He knew what their mom's names were, just to make them feel good. Because, like Lawrence said, you want people to work for you out of passion and vision to help build, and not just for the money. And so I wanted to close out with that.

Somebody that's super successful, just like Lawrence, and has built something from nothing and set the tone. But it's really his people, it's the team. I'm grateful to be here, and I'm sure that you need time to grow. You need somebody to help you, and there's people out there that want to work with you. So consider outsourcing, consider how valuable your time is, and make it happen.

Awesome. Thank you, Andrea. Thank you for listening, and see you on the next call. Bye. Awesome, guys.

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