Leveraging Your Time As A Internet Entrepreneur
So you want to work four hours like Tim Ferriss, or hire full time virtual assistants like John Jonas at www.replacemyself.com to do all the mundane tasks of running an Internet business? Well, I can’t vouch that these two are working the hours they claim, but with the proper preparation, you can definitely make your journey as a Internet entrepreneur much easier. Don’t fool yourself into thinking this will be easy, because it will not. It takes hard work, dedication and the ability to take risks to succeed.
You need to face facts now, there are things that you are strong in and others that you are not. Recognize the positive traits you have and don’t stress about your weaknesses. The beauty about the Internet is that it has opened a new world of collaboration, and in order to take advantage of it, you need to plan. Oh, no John, not planning, I like to react to circumstances, move with the action. You mean I have to sit down and write out a plan for a few hours. The answer to that my friend is an unequivocal YES! Don’t fret though; this few hours will save you hundreds of hours down the road. In order to live the four hour work week. You need procedure lists to leverage your time.
These procedure lists will document all aspects of your business. In an earlier post I touched on the fact that improving your communication with virtual assistants is crucial to the success of your business. Procedure lists are a large part of that communication. You will be wasting money if you hire a virtual assistant without having directions documented for them to follow. Unless, of course, you hire them to create the procedure lists! Hey John, that’s a great idea! I’ll just have them do it. EEENNTT, wrong, now your being lazy again. Didn’t I tell you in the beginning that this wasn’t going to be easy.
All right, so what exactly is a procedure list? Those of you that have served in the military will recognize them as “Standard Operating Procedures” or SOP’s. They are step by step procedures that show new hires how to perform the job you need them to do. There are many ways to create them; I prefer to have a written one with screen shots. But, you can also utilize tools such as Camtasia screen capture for video ones, these video’s will shorten the new hires learning curve even more. These procedures will also enable you to leverage your time tenfold. They give you the ability to hand them off to potential hires in order to perform tasks that you either don’t like, or waste way to much time doing. As an Internet entrepreneur you need to understand that your time is the most precious commodity. How much do you value your time? I can bet it’s not enough.
I utilize two forms of saving procedure lists. The first is that I have a Google documents account dedicated directly towards procedures for new hires to follow. This enables me to give access to anyone I want throughout the world and Google provides the space for free. Residing inside of the Google documents account is a hierarchy of files that contain all pertinent background information I require all of my virtual assistants to know about my business. They start at the first file in the account and move down the list concurrently. This serves the purpose of training, training that was in my head and now is in procedures located in these files. Training that I no longer have perform myself. When they are done with the initial review of the training, they now have an overview of;
- My company and product
- My expectations of their job performance
- Information on how and when to contact me
- Information on when and how often I need specific reports (analytics, traffic reports, etc.)
- Information on how I want new reports and correspondence formatted – (font size, type, headings, etc)
- Information on how often procedures need to be done
- Information on how I will provide them direction on projects and my expectations
- Basic Information on passwords, user Id’s, etc
- Daily, Weekly, Monthly procedures with links to a shared Google calendar with reminders in place for the VA’s to follow
All of this information in this account took me days to complete; it paid itself back after the first time of not having to train someone. It enabled me to leverage my time to work on my business, not in my business. I have worked with four virtual assistants in the last six months, each one has gone through this training and I now have four people that fully understand my business without me having to take the time out of my day to train them. Procedure lists are a pain to create, but are the only way for you to leverage your time to get more things done.
I mentioned that I had two forms of saving procedure lists, and the other has to do with personal information. Bank account numbers, personal items, etc. these have to be handled with a little more security then I am comfortable with leaving on Google. So, I have these securely stored in a separate area that I only grant access to VA’s I trust. How do you get to trust a VA? Over time.
If you would like a copy of a procedure list that I created, leave a comment on my blog. I will send it to you. Sometimes, seeing the format helps. Just remember, you have to be in this thing for the long haul, and eventually you want it to pay off by being able to fulfill you definite major purpose. In order to do that, you need to be outsourcing as many facets of your business as you can. You will be surprised, once you start outsourcing, the possibilities become endless on what you can accomplish.
