Team BuildingIt’s Monday morning in Australia and I’m about to have a group meeting at my house with my team to begin work on something new.

For most of my Internet business career I worked solo – and I really mean solo.

I built my website myself, created marketing materials like flyers and posters, promoted my websites, located and managed sponsors and provided customer and sales support. The only thing I didn’t do was actually provide the services, I had contractors do the editing when it came to BetterEdit.com my proofreading business and I had writers write the content on my first successful online venture, MTGParadise.com (although I did a lot of writing myself on that site too).

It’s amazing how far your enthusiasm and work ethic can take you in business. I’m proud of my achievements as a solo entrepreneur and I’m amazed at what I did manage to get done by myself. However after about 7 years of working without any support I realized that I couldn’t keep it up for ever, plus there was another pressing reason to get help – I had reached a ceiling point in my growth. Your business can only get so big if it’s just you doing the work.

With typical timing, it was around this time that Rich Schefren came to town with his first ground breaking report, the Internet Business Manifesto. I read Rich’s report and found myself agreeing with everything he said. I wasn’t exactly shocked by the revelation as some Internet marketers were when they first read the report. I knew I was working too hard and doing too much by myself, my problem was lack of action to change the situation.

Things finally did change in 2006. With my blogging business growing and my cashflow increasing I knew I could realistically outsource tasks to other people. With a looming trip overseas I decided I to do two things –

  1. Hire a customer service admin person to take over the day to day activities at BetterEdit, meaning I could travel overseas with a lot less pressure – no need to run to cafes for Internet access all the time while hopping from country to country.
  2. I signed up to Rich’s mentoring program.

This was a real turning point for me and my business. I knew it would be, but there’s a difference between knowing and doing – I was finally doing.

Angela joined me and took over management of BetterEdit, dropping my workload for this business down to a few hours a week.

Rich’s Business Growth System training was the perfect compliment to what I was going through with my business, and although the course is way too comprehensive to get everything done in a short period of time, the synergy was a comfort, as was being involved with a group of people at a similar stage of business development, who were also taking Rich’s program.

From this point forward I started thinking more about how I could get other people to do things I was not good at, but it really wasn’t until the launch of Blog Mastermind that I really built an entire team around me.

In late 2006 I brought together a talented group of people for a launch. I had Nick handling technical challenges – by far the biggest role outside of my own, Rob manned my website portfolio so I didn’t have to worry about that while I focused on the launch, Fran helped out with some admin tasks, Mick did graphics work and West was working on affiliate recruitment. I had a few other people help out with tasks like copywriting, transcriptions and audio editing.

Simply put – there’s no way I could have done a successful launch without these people.

I’ve spoken to Internet marketers who do nearly all the tasks themselves, but these guys work 12 hour days non-stop – it’s nuts – you don’t want to be like them. If you have plans to launch a product or even just expand what you do, you need people.

Outsource From Day One

I understand that people who are new to Internet marketing or who have limited budgets may look at outsourcing as something you do in the future. I totally get that – I had that mentality for a good seven years and it was probably the biggest mistake I made.

I was stubborn. I liked being in control, I thought I would make more money if I did the work myself and even after I broke down that belief, I still felt I needed more cashflow before I could hire people. I didn’t believe I could find the right people, or that it would cost too much or possibly the biggest reason – I simply wasn’t mature enough as a business owner to take the next step, I wanted to stay in my nice, safe, entrepreneur cocoon, even though it meant I didn’t make good money, I had to work hard and everything depended on me.

The very first lesson I give to my blogging students is to find a tech person you can rely on if tech is not your strong point. I’m grateful to know that many of my students take this advice on board and several have even told me that it was the most powerful lesson they learned from me.

Knowing Is Not Enough

You need to strike a balance between knowing what to do and having other people do it. I admit, because I did so many things by myself early on I now have a good intuitive grasp of how the Internet works from a technical and business standpoint. That makes it easier to understand how to get things done. It’s important to have a basic awareness of things like websites and content management systems like WordPress, but you don’t need to spend seven years getting that knowledge like I did.

Today there are so many courses and free tutorials online, you can spend a month or two, get a basic understanding of what you want your website to do and look like and then go get someone else to make it happen. That’s the mistake I made, I went and did it all myself with my mediocre technical skills.

I got by, made money, but I know I left a lot more money on the table and wasted a ton of time because I was trying to make code do things that I just didn’t know how to make it do. It frustrated me like crazy too, so I’d pour hours and hours into it, where I could have been using that time to move projects toward profitability.

It was a lesson learned the hard way for me, but it doesn’t have to be for you. You can build a team from day one and I’d start by considering two particular roles you can outsource immediately –

  1. Hire a tech person, someone who knows servers and HTML and CSS and PHP. They set up your websites and server side scripts, plug all the web tools together and make things work. This person is critical and when you get a good one they can make you so happy – they produce output 500% quicker than you do and make things look prettier too.
  2. Next I suggest an admin assistant who can also be your support person. As you start, you probably won’t have many support queries, but trust me, you will eventually. In the meantime you can have your helper do all kinds of things – marketing tasks, documentation, setting up systems, working your calendar – even basic tech things like buying domain names and setting up new hosting accounts. This role is a real jack-of-all-trades position and when you get the right person you will be amazed how you ever got by without them.

You Make More Money Outsourcing

One of the biggest mental hurdles to get by when you first go to outsource to other people is the idea of spending money to have things done that you can do yourself and thus save that money.

Business systems and outsourcing experts go through detailed calculations to show that for each hour of work you do it’s worth X amount of dollars, thus if you can outsource that task to someone else for a lower hourly rate it’s more profitable.

That’s great, but it does assume you have *some* cashflow and until you do, every dollar you spend doesn’t come back quite as easily.

However, that doesn’t really matter, unless you have no money at all.

If you look at your business with a view to the future then you will grow and even if you have to spend now to contract to other people tasks that you could do yourself, by doing this you get to future goals quicker. Plus you have the added benefit of forming relationships with outsourcers before things go critical, so when the work starts to flood in, you are comfortable, rather than rushing around trying to hire people at the same time as deal with all the new business.

There are probably one or two tasks that are big money tasks for you. You should focus on handing off everything else that needs doing until you have the freedom to spend all your working time just doing the money tasks. Even if it costs you in the short term, if you can invest time in activities that deliver the highest return for your business, you will make more money long term and grow quicker. It is a process and if cashflow is tight you have to be strategic with how you outsource, but the important thing is to do it – form the habit early and you will benefit.

Big Profits

One of the very early pillar articles I wrote to this blog is this about small business realities – Do You Want to Run Your Own Business? Read this First!.

Point number three in that article is the often sad but true fact for so many small businesses:

“You may never make real money until you sell your business”

Many small business chug along, making a reasonable salary for the owner but don’t move beyond that. The owner lives with the hope of one day selling their business and making enough to retire on, in the meantime they work like a dog just keep things afloat.

In this case, our budding business owner shows some entrepreneurial spirit but really is someone who has a skill and decided to go out on their own. The end result is a business that really is just a job – and one of the worst jobs ever because the owner has to not only provide the service or manufacture the product, but do everything else that goes along with running a business.

When time comes to sell the business, the owner struggles to find a buyer or get a high price because no one wants to buy something they have to work so hard to maintain. If you want to make big money selling a business, it should be profitable with minimal input from the owner. If the asset makes cash and you don’t have to work 12 hour days to keep that cash flowing, then you have something of value.

Take BetterEdit for example. I could have sold the business when it was just me running it. I would have been able to show a nice salary sized income, but to make that money you have to lock yourself to your computer seven days a week to monitor email and get out and market the business. It’s effectively a full time job for an okay salary.

After hiring someone to handle the day-to-day stuff, BetterEdit goes from a job, to a business and an asset that requires the owner step in only a few hours a week to perform easy tasks. Now the business is worth so much more to a potential buyer because they can realize profits without substantial commitment.

Think About Team Building

At all stages of business building you should look to foster a team around you. It can make your day-to-day working life easier and when it comes time to sell, your business is a lot more attractive to potential buyers.

It doesn’t have to happen overnight and I understand your fears about money and control, but as long as you take baby steps and wholeheartedly commit to the concept of outsourcing and team building, then you are on your way. Just don’t take as long as I did to action this mindset.

Yaro
Not Outsourcing Blogging