She’s Got Systems

Find the systems you need to grow your business

Evaluate Tasks to Only Do Things You L.O.V.E.

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The holiday season is in full swing and that usually means family; mine is visiting this weekend! As I worked on cleaning up all the half done projects around my house (half wrapped Christmas presents included) I was thinking about our businesses. We do the same thing in our businesses, don’t we? Work on a few dozen things at once and only really “clean house” when there’s a deadline.

If you’ve used a launch date or conference as an opportunity to push yourself to complete half finished tasks, it’s no different than me inviting over friends for dinner so I will finally clean the living room.

I have a theory about why we procrastinate – even when we know the task is important – and here it is:

If you don’t L.O.V.E. the task it’s going to linger like a bad habit. As I shift to be more productive with my time and effective in my business I have four basic criteria to evaluate.

L – Leverage

Would you spend $1 to save $100? How about investing $1,000 to earn $20,000? While most people will say yes enthusiastically, there is a limit we each have. How much time, energy and money we’ll invest to get a return and that number is impacted by how quickly we’ll see results, if there’s a guarantee, and how much we desire that outcome.

When I’m using this to evaluate a task I have to ask if I am leveraging my time, energy and money effectively. Sometimes that means paying for coaching so I shortcut my learning by years. Other times I’ll spend time researching and investigating before making a decision.

Once you realize that most time is wasted and doesn’t produce any returns or such low returns that it’s not worth the effort, you’ll gravitate toward the tasks that help you achieve your goals quicker because they best leverage your efforts.

O – Overhead

Just like my vacuuming and dusting around the house, there are a lot of “maintenance” tasks we do in our lives and businesses. Like moderating blog comments, sending out social media posts, article marketing, invoicing, writing status updates for clients or paying the bills.

So many things just have to get done but don’t directly bring income to your business. These overhead tasks are prime opportunities to outsource once you create a system (which will leverage your time) and hire some help. And it’s not just limited to your business life – what would your personal to do list look like if you hired a local teen or a college student on Winter Break to scan your family photos, do your laundry, mow the lawn or clear snow from your driveway? Would you have more energy and time to give to building your business and enjoying time with your family?

V – Value

Does this task bring me more value to make the time I’m investing worthwhile? You probably use this criteria unconsciously all the time when buying products. Is the delivery pizza worth $15 or should I make my own? Do I want to pay $997 to learn Secrets of Successful Teleseminars if my business model doesn’t include teleseminars? How much more value will a $400 webcam bring over a $150 one?

To shift and use this criteria in your time and services you’ll want to evaluate the short and long term impact of your task.

Yes, I’ll get on the phone with a colleague, potential joint venture partner or someone who wants to work with me privately. In each of those tasks I can directly track and measure results.

No, I’m not going to attend every free call offer, read every eBook or join every LinkedIn networking group. I may do some of these tasks if they leverage my time and bring value but not every one.

Sometimes you’ll need to put a lot into a task knowing that it will provide value to your clients later such as developing a new service offer or product. And other times you may need to face the truth that some tasks you thought were important bring no value to you or your clients and should be discontinued.

E – Enjoy

My final criteria goes straight to the heart of why I’m in business, why you’re in business. Do you honestly love working with your clients and serving your community? Is it enjoyable or simply tolerable?

I love coaching my clients and co-creating the systems that will serve their businesses. I’ll sign on for that all day every day. But I don’t love figuring my taxes, filling out forms that read like a game of BINGO and writing checks to Uncle Sam. So I have an accountant for that. I enjoy taking a program or product launch and developing the milestones, action steps and accountability to ensure it’s a success. I don’t really enjoy changing the oil on my car, although I know how, so I pay someone to do it for me.

Think back to that list of tasks which you’ve been meaning to do for ages and find the items that don’t seem to ever graduate from your to do list. Are they things that leverage your time, are not just business overhead, add value to your business and to your clients and do you actually enjoy them? If you can’t answer yes then you have a great start to begin creating systems so you can successfully outsource and use your time to focus on the right tasks to grow your business and bring more value to the market.

Why Systems Matter – Outsourcing

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Why do some businesses seem to grow and expand every time you blink and others wither and stagnate over time? Have you watched other entrepreneurs with amazing messages and programs suddenly hit a ceiling and burn out or shrink to playing small?

Building a healthy six or seven figure business takes a lot of work but even more importantly, it will take more than one person.

Last month I issued a challenge to start documenting the tasks that you’re doing every day in your business. Today, we’ll start looking at how systems can enable you to outsource the right way, and I’ll give you the next tactic in the journey to building a team that will enable you to have the successful, thriving business you want.

One thing I’m always asking myself is “why?” Why should you care (at all) when it comes to this information? Try finishing this statement:

“No one has ever said on his deathbed I wish…”

You know it, don’t you? “I wish I’d spent more time at the office.” If you’re spending all of your time in your business, running things, you’re never going to have the reach you could with a team, you’ll probably burn out very soon and your legacy ends when you stop working.

Outsourcing isn’t about working four hours a week so you can sip mojitos in the Virgin Islands. Outsourcing enables you to build a company that serves more people thus making more money and without your constant supervision. So you *can* have that mojito on the beach without shutting down your business or feeling guilty.

If you have that list of tasks you’re currently responsible for in your business I want you to highlight all of the tasks which generate revenue. So highlight time spent serving clients, marketing, networking, speaking, developing content.

Those are the tasks you need to do more – market more, produce more, serve more clients. You’ll be able to make time for more when you outsource all those things which are not highlighted on the list. Like bookkeeping, website updates, scheduling appointments, updating your blog, formatting your newsletter, sending invoices, booking flights for a trip.

Non-revenue generating activities are not unimportant – they provide the foundation for many of the revenue generating tasks that you do every week. Which is why I’m not suggesting you stop doing those things, but find someone else who can manage them for you.

Recently I met with a potential client in a Get Acquainted Session and was surprised to learn that over a year ago this person walked away from the business he’d built. Web domains expired, the list was stale and nothing was produced, developed or delivered in over a year. What was this entrepreneur’s goal? To turn a comatose business into $100,000 in revenue in mere months, a goal which was not realistic for the level of business building that needed to take place to regain lost momentum.

It was heartbreaking to see such a successful, thriving business which had suddenly stopped producing, killing the momentum in a way that would take years to recover. How I wished I could go back in time and suggest, kindly, that the overwhelmed owner bring in a support team, outsource many of the tasks and refocus his time on getting out some content until the time he was ready to give it more attention and energy.

You may not foresee a time when you’ll want to take a break from your business but it’s still important to have the systems in place to make it an available option. Start by identifying the tasks you’re performing and then note the ones that you can give up.

Next time I’ll share why the typical VA is underutilized, confused, and doesn’t provide you the leverage you need (to take on more clients or a well deserved break).

Systems for Recording Interviews with Mixergy

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During my recent interview for Mixergy, I referenced a system that I put together for Andrew Warner and his team regarding video interviews. Below I’ll share the flowchart I prepared for their team for setting up the interview and then posting the interview on the site.

When I share this with my private coaching clients I walk them through:

emails that need to be set up
filters to put in place
emails to be drafted
documents to create

 

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Through our work together my clients are able to create complete systems like this for every thing in their business. Some are creating teleseminars, programs, events or developing a product. Others are marketing, promoting, teaching, speaking and coaching and all of these tasks require systems to operate the business with maximum efficiency.

I don’t know about you but when I need to do something for the first time (such as write a difficult email or reach out to a colleague) it can take me hours to create from scratch. With systems I can recreate and improve on the work I’ve already done, saving me time and money.

It’s not enough to create one system for part of the process, with my clients we go from A to Z and document the way they work. Here’s the process once the Mixergy interview has been recorded:

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Can you tell which steps Andrew Warner can outsource? Also take into consideration the elements of each post you see on Mixergy. There’s typically a picture, some copy, links within the article, sponsorship intros, the audio file, a transcript, a headline and the video itself. How would each of those elements show up on the page for each and every post? Either Andrew would manage it himself or create a system like this one and teach a team member.

This isn’t a complete, teachable system but an overview. To be complete you’ll want instructions for sending and editing a 40-60 minute video file, copies of all those draft emails mentioned above as well as a link to the publishing calendar, the scheduling calendar and possibly even the log in details for Mixergy’s twitter account and website.

I hope these flow charts help you open up the possibility of what systems you can create in your business today. Remember to take just 3-5 minutes every day and work on one. And if you haven’t watched my Mixergy interview yet you can do so here: http://mixergy.com/azevedo-azevedo-interview/

Outsourcing 101 – Find the Right Tasks

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One of the primary challenges that entrepreneurs face is deciding how to get support in their business, who to hire, what work to give them, how to train and how to manage their work.

I’m not going to sugar coat it, there’s a lot of work involved.

Sometimes the advice about outsourcing can be more confusing than helpful, it seems that there’s a lot of opinions and most conflicting.

The first challenge is to know what tasks you’re going to outsource.

To really understand how to build your business starting with outsourcing you’ll have to take stock of your business. The reason that much of the generic outsourcing advice you read is so conflicting is that different things work in different businesses.

Do you know how your time is currently spent in your business? The tasks that you do every day give great insight into how you’re using your time and will enable you to understand how to create leverage in your business.

The first step : beginning today track your time throughout the week and note all of the tasks that you do personally.

Your list might include:

writing website copy
loading photos or testimonials on a website
coaching clients
setting up appointments
answering emails
updating files
posting on twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook
reaching out to colleagues
talking with leads

And dozens of other routine tasks.

You must do this work to understand what are the tasks that you can outsource so that we can move on to the other concerns such as:

What if they don’t do things my way?
How do I know they’re doing the work?
What happens if they do a horrible job?
Isn’t it easier to do myself?

We’ll be covering these in the next few weeks so be sure to subscribe via RSS and join my newsletter to get all the updates, special offers and my free toolkit: Play a Bigger Game Business Playbook.