This article is by Hernan Vazquez. Hernan is an Entrepreneur and Digital Marketing expert. He works on providing value on his YouTube channel about the latest marketing approaches and strategies, as well as connecting with fellow entrepreneurs and business owners on his Facebook Group.
With the beginning of the year, it’s a good time to recap about everything you have achieved for the past year and everything you want to accomplish this year. I strongly believe that if you want to have an amazing 2017, you should have started working in 2015. So now it’s the time to work for an amazing 2019!
But if you want to really grow and scale your business and take it to the next level in 2017 and beyond, you will find that you cannot do it alone. In fact, if you read the biographies of the big names in your industry and the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, they’ll all tell you that they’ve never done it alone. They’ve partnered with an amazing team of A players at every step of the way.
Now the question comes: How do you develop your own team of A players and get your company to the next level?
This article will shed some light on that matter. I’ve built a team of 60+ people and virtual assistants across three companies. And I’ll show you how we have automated most of the process so you don’t have to spend hours trying to figure this out.
So if you want to focus only on the highest value/ROI tasks of your business, get amazing outsources for a fraction of the cost and much more, this article is for you!
The 80/20 Rule of Business
You have probably heard about The Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule. In short, it means that 20% of the tasks you perform every day will yield 80% of the results. The same happens to your business. Twenty percent of the clients bring 80% of the revenue. Twenty percent of the salesforce brings 80% of the sales. And 20% of your calls will end up in 80% of your sales, etc.
Whether you’re a “one man show” just starting your business, or you already have some success, if you want to take it to the next level, you need to focus on those 20% high value tasks.
And what happens with the remaining 80% of tasks? You need to outsource them or stop doing them completely. While some tasks can be eliminated altogether, some of them are just a necessary evil for your company. And while repetitive and low value, they keep the business running.
So you need to outsource these tasks in order to free your time to accomplish higher value chores and pursue opportunities for your business.
Why Outsourcing is Key
Even if you don’t apply the 80/20 rule in your business, think about this for a minute. If you make $200 an hour every time you do some consultation or fulfill a service for a client, you should focus the majority of your time doing this. Alternatively, you can try charging more for your time.
However, if another task can be fulfilled for $10 an hour and you end up doing it, then you’re not saving those $10, but you’re actually losing $190!
Every daily task that provides either:
- a) less value to your company than the 20% high value tasks that you have determined
- or b) can be performed for less money that you’re actually making per hour doing other things
should be outsourced.
I explain more about this on this video.
The Problem with Hiring Outsourcers
Many entrepreneurs never jump from self-employed to business owners simply because they don’t know how to do the following.
- Hire talent
- How to keep it
- And how to delegate these lower value tasks
And believe me that I feel your pain.
I’ve gone through the madening process of sifting through hundreds of applications for a job posting on Freelancer.com or Upwork.com. Not to mention that you actually need to hire someone from the legion of potential outsourcers out there and hope that he or she doesn’t disappear from the face of the Earth once you do!
This can be a really frustrating process. I know I’ve been through it in the past. However, my team and I have develop an amazing method to get only the best outsourcing working for you, without having to do 95% of the heavy lifting, using the power funnels and automation. Let’s see how this works.
How to Find Great Outsources
It doesn’t matter what kind of task I’m looking to outsource, there are certain traits that I always search on my team members. These are:
- Hard working
- Self-motivated
- Creative
- Committed
- Responsible
- Accountable
The best way to find these kind of people is to develop a process (a.k.a a funnel) that they need to go through in order to prove that they have these traits. I always go for attitude first, since skills can be teached, trained and learned.
Before I post on the outsourcing websites mentioned above, I put together a funnel that they need to go through in order to apply for the job. People that are serious and committed to do the job that the funnel requires will pass onto the next step, that is a text chat with me.
What I’m trying to achieve with this process is to filter 95% of people that will either not do the work or simply don’t have the tools to achieve the tasks that I detail on the funnel (simple tasks like creating a Google Doc or uploading a video to YouTube, depending on the position I need to fill). People that don’t comply with all the steps will not even be considered for the position.
Filter Applications
One really neat trick I use to filter applications is to put a random phrase in the job posting body. Such as “white elephant” or similar. It’s usually located at the end of the job posting and I ask specifically to send that phrase on their email subject when applying for the job. So people that either don’t read the job posting and apply anyways, or that can’t follow instructions will be automatically discarded.
The second step is to setup a filter in Gmail to send an automated answer when that “secret phrase” is detected. This makes the process automated, because I don’t even need to answer everyone that applies for the job! Gmail does it for me. You need to setup a filter as follows:
The answer to the application email will usually have a Google form in it, where the applicant is asked to follow some more instructions or complete a set of simple tasks. Google form will integrate with Google spreadsheet, so that every answer is automatically recorded within a spreadsheet that I can then filter.
Select a Few Potential Outsourcers
After that, I select just a few potential outsourcers to interview via Skype text chat. At this point you’ll only interview people that:
Has responded to your ad following specific instructions.
Has completed your Google form in timely manner
Is willing to do the work before even getting paid.
This way we have filtered out 95% of the applicants and selected just a few of them with ease and dedicating less than 2-3 hours to the whole process. Pretty cool right?
A note of caution though. When people go through this process they show that they are committed and willing to do the work for you. At the end of the process you might have some issues deciding on the best candidate because they are ALL usually REALLY GOOD! When this happens, just hire them all and start building your team!
If you want to know exactly how we put together this funnel, you can join this free webinar where we show step by step how to implement the outsourcer hiring funnel for your company. It’s over 1 hour of completely free value that you’ll love. Click here to save your spot.
Hope you have an amazing 2017!
Hernan
