Tens of thousands of online entrepreneurs every year decide that it’s time to get some help and hire an ***istant to become more productive and outsource tasks. The challenge is that a new team member means managing their time, output, and nurturing a relationship that will last for years. Continue Reading →
Stop Feeling Guilty for Outsourcing
When I work with clients on hiring I find that there are some common problems that hold us back. One of the biggest struggles is feeling guilty.
Most of the time we feel guilty because
- I don’t want to be a “boss”
- I should be doing it myself
- This task isn’t fun, it’s not fair to ask them to do it
- My coach/friend/aunt can run her business without help, what’s wrong with me?
The truth is, hiring and outsourcing your tasks (whether they’re fun or not), gives your team member income, a skill to learn, a productive task, and enables them to contribute to your business.
I won’t waste space telling how how unproductive guilt is as an emotion, so let’s dive right into the solution. Addressing your guilt for outsourcing and moving forward.
Truth #1: As a business grows, more support is needed
No founder can run all the pieces of the company on his or her own indefinitely. You need to transition and become the coach, not all the players on the field. And if your business is going to help more people then you need depth of support.
Take time to consider: Do I want my business to grow beyond where it is right now? Will additional team members help me get there?
Truth #2: Wanting to “do it all myself” is a trick of the ego
Why do we want to do everything independently? Because then we can take all the credit, show up to that class reunion with pride, finally show our ex that we became something!
Question to ponder: Why does it mean less to me that I had support along the way to building my dream business? Is it okay to share credit?
Truth #3: Ask before you assume a task is unsavory or unwanted
Often I would apologetically hand over a job to my assistant, almost taking it back because I felt bad only to learn that she loved that kind of stuff! And even if the task wasn’t the most fun ever, she loved learning, understanding how the business ran, and making money. So my guilt was unfounded and counter productive.
Question to ask: “I’d like you to do this task and return to me by Friday. Will you let me know if this is something you’d like to do more often?”
It’s time to stop feeling guilty for outsourcing when you are building a business to serve others because you will necessarily need some support yourself.
How to Truly Relax On Vacation
Have you ever experienced a vacation that you looked forward to for months but wasn’t relaxing at all?
Even the planning process of a vacation can be stressful, combine that with packing, traveling, unpacking and you need the time with family or friends, to relax, unwind, sleep in and enjoy unscheduled days.
But then, you’re checking email constantly and worried about your business. If you find it difficult to unplug from work mode and enjoy a vacation – or never take a break for the same reason – then you need to make a change.
Just a short time ago I booked a trip to New York to see more of the city and visit friends. But every day I found myself out of vacation mode and back into work mode!
I completely take ownership of having not properly set boundaries with my clients and was also unwilling to say no when work beckoned me – even if I was rushing to catch my train or spending time with a 12 year old hearing about her day.
One day I found myself squeezed into a corner at the Natural History Museum, charging my cell phone and laptop and trying to answer emails. I stared up at a fossil of this prehistoric turtle and thought to myself, “what am I doing?”
I hope you don’t have to ruin your vacation to recognize what I did: if you don’t have systems and structures in place then you can’t take a vacation, go visit a museum or board a flight without chaos following you.
This is not about replacing you so you become irrelevant – you may still be the linchpin of your business. But if your company cannot run without you for a few days you do not have a business, you have a job. And your boss is crazy.
Also you can never get the flu, be with a loved one in the hospital or get seriously ill yourself. Don’t even think about traveling the world or starting a family. Not exactly the life of freedom you envisioned?
Systems for your business don’t just ensure delegation happens so you can take a break but gives you freedom to leverage your time and work with more clients now.
Come on now, no one wants to bring their clients along on vacation and email should not be your number one concern when traveling. You work hard and deserve rest, relaxation and all by knowing that your business is running smoothly in your temporary absence.
Train and Manage Your Team with Systems
There are a myriad of challenges when it comes to hiring and training a team to support your business. Eavesdrop on just a few of the conversations I’ve had with busy entrepreneurs about their challenges:
I have some people helping me and now realize that one can’t keep up/doesn’t know enough and the other is across the world and is too far away to do spur of the moment stuff.
…
If there is a miscommunication, or in my case my VA failed to listen, communicate and made too many assumptions, as a result she spent hours working on a project that I couldn’t even use in the least. The end result was, she sent me a beautiful, well designed document… however, it could not be edited. And time again throughout this process, I repeatedly asked her if it was a template that I could edit for each client’s needs and goals.
…
When I had a VA set up my 1shoppingcart, she claimed it was her specialty and that she was an expert at 1shoppingcart. However, the job was finished about 3 weeks later. Right after the job was finished, I received a call from 1shoppingcart stating that I needed to have a return policy on the shopping cart. I called my VA letting her know she missed adding the returned policy, to which she responded I had to pay her an additional $55. I was floored because she was “the expert” and charged the according rate. How could she have missed that?
And on the flip side I hear complaints from the support professionals that usually center around lack of clarity, working with entrepreneurs who give unclear instructions or are ambiguous about deadlines and expectations.
The final piece of the system, after writing a clear job description and testing contractors before hiring, is to train and monitor the work of your team to ensure you’re getting the support you need. Without a process to monitor and evaluate your team you’ll still be wasting time, money and energy.
You’ll need to accept that even the greatest support team can’t read your mind and without oversight and clear instructions you might experience the problems entrepreneurs shared at the top of this article. To get the team that does tasks the way you would do them so you don’t have to is an investment of time.
If you’re serious about building your business with team support you need systems to train team members on the specific tasks to be completed, enable open communication and monitor progress long term.
My own system uses a combination of two project management tools: Backpack and Asana
Backpack is where I take the job description that I’ve created and write out details on the task along with pictures, video tutorials for longer tasks, resources and deadlines. Because Backpack enables you to create thousands of pages, each task or resource can be housed on its own page and you can give access on a page by page basis.
In Asana I track the tasks given to each VA along with the deadlines – it’s a back and forth system that enables the VA to ask questions and report when the task is done.
Of course, you can write down a bunch of information and never reference it again so you’ve got to stay dedicated to communicating with your team about the results you need and following up to ensure tasks get completed. It takes commitment and discipline to both set up the system and continue to work with your team but the benefits far outweigh the hassle.
With a trained team in place and partisan record of your requests you’ll be able to:
track tasks, time spent and cost of outsourcing
leverage your time so you can work with more clients
replace team members who are not working out and train new people faster
maintain a high quality of service
evaluate the results against your instructions and make focused improvements
reach more leads as you get your message out in a big way
be able to take time off without your business halting
Sounds too good to be true, right? It’s not out of your reach and if you haven’t begun here’s the start of the series on hiring and training support for your business.
Part 1 here : Hiring Support in Your Business with the Right Job Description
Part 2 here : Testing the VA before paying a dime
Hiring the Right Team the First Time
When I talk to entrepreneurs who are overwhelmed with doing too much in their business, the conversation often turns to hiring an assistant to lighten the load. For those who have worked with a team in the past, there are often horror stories galore and legitimate fears to overcome. Last week I shared in the first of this series how you can get clear with a list of tasks and then write the appropriate job description to find the assistant you need.
Today let’s take that a step further and test, or vet, the applicants that will come in when you clearly define your business and share your opportunity with the world.
First, there are a few reasons that I suggest using a service such as oDesk (the one I use) to secure a VA. You’ll have more candidates and typically more qualified candidates when you’re fishing in a pool full of people who want jobs. Besides, you’re busy and need help so why add the job of posting your position all over the internet to your to do list? oDesk enables support professionals to log their hours manually or, as I prefer, while doing the task including screenshots of their computer. This ensures you’re paying for the time they spend on task, not watching Lord of the Rings on Netflix. A service will also manage the payment account and, in the case of oDesk, allow you to set the price you’ll pay per hour and hours per week so there’s no risk of a task going hours beyond what you’re willing to pay.
As your VA demonstrates skill and responsibility you can raise or lift the hour restriction.
Test Before You Hire
I’m a big fan of testing because in most situations the only way you’ll know how someone will respond is to put them in the situation. Of course you don’t want to give dozens of people access to your website admin panel or database so here’s the next best thing to testing capabilities. Instead of simply outlining the principles I want to show you exactly how I test and evaluate candidates.
When a candidate responds to your job description your first response to them should include a test. Here’s the email template I use:
Hi (first name),
Thanks for applying for the position, I have a few candidates to look over and so I’ve put together some additional information and a request. Please send it back soon as I’ll be making a decision in the next day or so to get started with someone.
*Note the timeline is in the very first paragraph. This is the first test and eliminates all the candidates who write and send a response weeks later.
Immediate Tasks include:
(insert tasks from Job Description)
More data will be given on how to accomplish each of these tasks and the time to deliver the projects is not yet determined. I will not, however, expect this to be done without training or in just a few hours.
*note the second test here, hours are undetermined, training is expected and flexibility is required.
Later/Ongoing Tasks include:
(Insert larger projects)
If these tasks sound doable and something you are interested in learning I have two requests.
*Here I’m giving an expectation of growth, indicating this position is long term. The ask is whether or not this is feasible and leads directly into a request.
1. Choose a single article from this site, read it in full and write me 2 tweets (140 characters, no need to add the link): www.kellyazevedo.com
Send me back the title and link of the article you chose and the two tweets (to review if you’re unfamiliar go to www.twitter.com and you’ll see the messages)
*the first part of the request relates directly back to the job description where I ask for candidates familiar with Twitter. This test allowed me to immediately eliminate half of the applicants, such as ones who wrote tweets but did not indicate which article they had read. Any applicant who chooses two articles and writes one tweet for each is also eliminated. The applicant who wrote me two paragraphs as “tweets” was also eliminated from the pool.
2. When you send back the tweets give me some times you are available in the next 48 hours to meet via Skype for 10 minutes for a quick interview. I’ll reply via oDesk with a time and my Skype ID so we can connect.
From there if it’s all good I’ll set you up with the first task and some guidelines and we’ll get started.
*In this part of the response I’m adding on to the test to find someone who pays attention to detail (also a skill listed in the job description). Candidates who did not include times to meet or failed to respond within 48 hours were also eliminated as possible hires. While it was not explicit, I should note that the candidates I interviewed also included their Skype ID making the interview process smoother. That attention to detail and anticipating the next question helped put them ahead of other candidates.
I do move very quickly in my life and business and have clear but not unreasonable expectations of my employees. I will most likely hire 2 or 3 people to start and see how it goes for the long term.
*This part is optional but I felt that since the first tasks would be coming within 72 hours of posting the job offer it was critical to identify the company and potential candidates as willing and able to move quickly. I temper this expectation by letting them know I am not unreasonable and clarified further in the job interview that communication was essential to this element of working together. Finally, the note that I would hire 2 or 3 candidates put a little competition in the process and encourages the ones I hire to continue to do their best work.
Before hiring your VA you’ll have a sample of their work know whether or not they can follow directions and know that you’re hiring someone who understands your style and business before a single hour is paid. Assistants are just like any other professional field, you have to be specific about what you want and what you don’t or you’ll be disappointed.
Many of the horror stories you hear all track back to one major underlying problem: communication. In this system I hope you’ve seen how clear expectations, communication of desires and fair expectations can help you find the right assistant for your business.
Make sure to read Part 1 here: Hiring Support in Your Business with the Right Job Description
Part 3 is coming soon: Using systems to track results and avoid problems