555 – The Blog of John Van Wyk

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

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.

One of my primary objectives to starting an online business was to have the ability to control my time. Use it as I saw fit, and teach others to do the same. In order to do that, I needed to sit down and really determine what I should try to accomplish and what I should job out to virtual assistants. The four hour work week directed me towards Elance as a possible avenue for hiring outside help at a reasonable rate. As I started my first online business, I had very little money.

I wanted to prove to myself that an Internet business could be started with very little money and hard work. So, far it worked. I’m not going to lie, there were times when I just wanted to throw in the towel. Every time that happened I would review something positive like the 4HWW, or read a little Jeffery Gitomer. I found that these types of positive reinforcements would help me keep going towards the goal. It is amazing how you can find money when you open yourself up to looking for ways to make it. I sold items on EBay, created affiliate programs, sold scrap metal and even used google adsense in my first failed attempt at a website. Each time saving a little more and more, finally,  I was able to put together enough to start my first website. Looking back now, it may have been easier if I had more money, but bootstrapping taught me how to maximise a dollar.

A major lesson I learned from starting up this way was that I severely undervalued my time. You need to know your worth, and most entrepreneurs starting out severely underestimate the value of their time. By undervaluing my time, I caused numerous problems all around. Next time your working late into the night, ask yourself why that is? It could be because you haven’t taken full control of your time yet. Something that needs to be done before you can be successful at anything! Time is the most precious commodity you have, without it, nothing else is possible. If you’re constantly acting as the fireman and putting out all the emergencies, you will get no where. A close friend whom I consider a mentor has a saying, Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. A leader needs to have the ability to work on the business, not constantly be caught up in the business. That’s what you hire others to do. Leaders need to have the vision to lead others to golden fountain, because its out there.

Although I would consider myself somewhat computer literate, I came to the quick realization that there is a helluva lot of things that I do not know about when beginning my first online business. Website design, keyword research, uploading files via FTP, domain hosts, sub domains, etc. I was ready to throw in the towel. Glad I didn’t, because now I am having so much more fun than sitting in my office all day dealing with petty things from people that do not want to make decisions.  Elance was able to help me with anything and everything that I could think. Being somewhat hesitate at first, I started with a basic research project. So, let me walk you through the process.

1. I went to www.elance.com and opened up a account.

2. I linked my pay-pal account to my elance account.

3. I wrote up the scope of my project as a google document so that I could access it remotely from where ever I may be.

4. I went through the steps provided by elance to post the project

5. I clicked the button to post.

Within an hour I was receiving bids for my research project, within 24 hours, I had received over 25 bids from all over the world. It was at this point that I knew the power of elance! Once I awarded the project I placed the funds for the project in escrow and set up milestones. Once the provided met the milestones, I would release the escrow amount. Easy! I love it!

A few things that you need to keep in mind when listing your project on elance.

1. You need to be extremely clear in your description, and in your directions after you award your project to someone. I was able to award my first research project for $50.00 and I received 17 hours of work from a provider in India. I would give them clear directions like, “work on this for three hours, then stop and send me an update with hyperlinks in an excel spread sheet. Do not continue until I review the first results and give you approval to continue.” The better you communication via written word, the easier it will be for you.

2. You have to realize that you can’t just throw projects out for bid without awarding them to someone. There is a percentage that you need to award or else you will not be able to post.

3. Feedback is your friend, review the providers feedback in depth.

I would love to hear about your experiences with Elance or some other ways that you were able to leverage your time. Leave me a comment.