photo by Rob Shenk

When something needs to get done in my life, for the most part, I have been a do it your self kind of guy.  In fact, I am the kind of guy who enjoys fixing things.  In a former career, I worked as a professional carpenter.  So I am pretty handy around the house.  When I first started out as a carpenter, a lot of people would ask me how I learned what I knew.  They were always surprised when I answered that I watched a lot of DIY TV shows and I read books.

Even when it comes to getting other types of things accomplished, I usually have tried to do things myself.  I am pretty good at reading a book and applying what I have read.  However, doing everything yourself has 2 very major drawbacks.

• It is very time consuming to study and acquire the skills necessary to do a job right.
• I will never be as good as the person that does what he does everyday, day in and day out.

Very recently, I have had a bit of a revelation in my life.  I have learned about the power of outsourcing.  Let me tell you, once you learn about what can be done with outsourcing today, a whole new world of possibilities can open up for you and your business.  I know that sounds like a lot of hype, but I am not exaggerating.

In the May 2009 issue of Success from Home magazine, well known author of Rich Man, Poor Man Robert Kiyosaki uses his Cashflow Quadrant to illustrate the 4 types of people that make up the world of business.  I am not going to go into great detail here, you can either read the article or pick up his bestselling book, Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant, for more detail.  However he states that the 4 types of people are usually:

1. Type E- employees, these people find safety and security working for someone else and building someone else’s dream.
2. Type S – self-employed or small business owner, these people have their own businesses but because they are usually uncomfortable delegating many tasks to others, they fail to grow.  Many times these people may be heard saying, “if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself”. Many of these people have simply traded employment for a job.  That means that even though they don’t report to a boss, their business still does not give them any time freedom.  So in effect, their business is a job.
3. Type B – big business owner, these people learn to develop systems to manage and effectively delegate tasks.   Because of their systems they can more effectively leverage their time and money to create large enterprises.  These large enterprises can then run on autopilot, rewarding the owners without their having to having to be there all of the time.
4. Type I- stands for the investor.  These people leverage their money to create passive income from real estate, stocks, and other direct investments into businesses.

Robert Kiyosaki recommends that you position yourself to become a member of group B or I.

Mike Dillard, a well known highly successful MLM’er, said recently that you should wait until your making at least $5K a month from your business before you do this, but I believe that you can do it sooner because it is so inexpensive.  I use a company called Odesk to find highly skilled people to help me (Odesk calls them providers), but there are several other companies out there that do the same thing.

Here are 3 things that I recently outsourced:

• I was running a marketing campaign recently that required funneling a high volume of calls to a voice mail service.  I did not have the time to collect the calls from the voice mail and weed out the tire kickers.  So what did I do? I hired a virtual assistant (VA) out of the Philippines to do it for me.  I paid around $2.00 an hour to get that done and the person did a fantastic job.
• Bookkeeping – I have always been the guy that waited until the last minute to do my taxes.  Throughout the year, many legitimate deductions were lost because they were never recorded.  Well I solved that problem by hiring a bookkeeper through Odesk for a very reasonable price.  From now on when tax time comes around it will take me about 10 minutes to get the report from my bookkeeper to my accountant.  In addition, I expect to save a boatload of money on taxes this year because all the legitimate deductions that were being flushed away because of my poor record keeping will get taken advantage of.
• Programming – this one was huge for me.  I wanted some pretty sophisticated changes made to some websites that I run.  In the past I might have bought the book and tried to do it myself.  But no longer, because I am a reformed (and smarter) man today.  I outsourced the work to skilled programmers on Odesk.  The changes were done in about 2 hours.  Now I can even think like the big boys because the way I see it,  if I want something sophisticated done I am only limited by my imagination.  The sky is the limit.

Those were just a few examples but you are limited only by your imagination.  Here are 5 more ideas for you:

1. Hire a VA to follow up on the leads that come into your business.  Think of the impression that your prospects will have if someone contacts them to follow up and says “Hi, this is so and so, and I am following up on an inquiry you made with Mr. Johnson’s business.  How can I help you?”.
2. Don’t like to blog, but realize the need for one?  Hire someone to write one for you.
3. Do you need an e-book written, perhaps as a give away to get people to opt-in to your list?  You can outsource that to a freelance writer.  Lot’s of people do that.
4. Do you need some SEO (Search Engine Optimization Done)?  Some people hire a small army VA’s to do nothing but write comments on other peoples blogs with links back to their blogs.  These trackbacks cause the search engines to pay more attention to you, pushing your site to the top of the organic listings.
5. Need to do the social media thing to promote your business on Facebook, Twitter and My Space, but don’t have the time?  Believe it or not, you can outsource that too.

So in conclusion, the best piece of advice that Ican give you is to not wait, and to outsource what you can now.  It will free your time up to do the more profitable tasks in your business, like marketing.

If you need a link to Odesk, click here.

If you like what you read here, please use the comments section to leave a comment.  Thanks.

This August would have marked the 12th year that Patrick had worked for Veritas Telecommunications.  But, like many big companies today VT was exporting more and more American jobs overseas.  Countries like India, the Philippines and Mexico were experiencing a hiring boom of sorts.  Patrick allowed himself to become another unprepared victim of the times.  He had often thought about working one of those pyramid things; he had been approached many times by friends to join them.  He had even investigated some opportunities on the Internet.  However he always thought that he had no need to do that.  After all, he worked hard and always got very high marks on all of his reviews from his supervisors.  He was too busy coaching little league and had felt he had too many other activities to be bothered.  He was going to put in his twenty and be done .  Then he would be free to do what he wanted, travel with his wife and see the world – just like his parents had done.

But this time, he wasn’t able to dodge the pink slip like so many times before and Patrick was truly afraid this time.  After all, the top story every night is how many jobs were just lost.   Patrick had 3 mouths at home to feed along with a mortgage, utilities, car note(s), the kid’s tuition, etc.  The few months of severance was only going to go so far and that was it, unless he was really lucky.  Oh, well – if it really came down to it Walmart is hiring.  Patrick really wished now that he had prepared with a “Plan B” , because now he had many reasons to be afraid…

You know the sad thing about the Patricks of the world is that they all see it coming.  At many companies, lay offs and RIFS are so common place that it is just like the freight train with its lights and horn on coming right down the tracks straight for you.  But stand frozen like a deer in facing a pair of headlights, hoping that it will pass them by, only to get run right over, smashed and bleeding.  

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

If you are reading this, you are probably considering how you can work a “Plan B” for your self.  Perhaps you are now considering a home based business as a hedge against what could happen to your family. 

The big question that you need to answer for yourself is which home based business are your going to put your stakes in.  There are so many to choose from.  I can’t answer which one is best for you but I can give you some points to consider:

• Choose a company that has a solid reputation.  Avoid ground floor opportunities.  The failure rate with those is too high.

• Look at the industry competition.  Do you really want to sell a product for $100 that you can get down at the vitamin store for $20?   Even if the product is unique, how long do you think that you will be able to do that before Walmart  steps in with a copy?

• Make sure that the product is something that you can get excited about.  Selling a product for which you have no passion for never works because the lack of passion shows.  The product has to be something you would be comfortable telling a friend about even if that is not how you plan to market it.

• Does the compensation plan make sense to you?  Does it seem doable?

• Finally, the most important thing.  Look at your leadership.  Do they have an understanding of how to use the internet to market your product, or is “belly to belly” the only thing that they teach?

For more tips, use the subscribe to my newsletter box and get your free copy of “7 Great Lies of Network Marketing“.