Hey Dan here again and hopefully in the last video I convinced you about the
benefits of starting to outsource well if I didn't I don't really care I don't
know in an outsourcing company it's your business not mine but if you're sold on
this concept of having someone help you with some or a lot of the work on your
plates and I want to go through a lot of tips in this video on how to do it right
because I have made every single mistake you can possibly make while outsourcing
well I guess I haven't give anyone like my credit card yet who's stolen all my
money but aside from that and there's still time I have made every single
mistake but I've also found ways to make it work so I want to go through all the
different ways you should approach this and not approach it and how to get it
right as well as I will cover some places well one place where you can go
to get started hiring people as well so right off the bat you want to start
small and start hourly I've made this mistake a bunch of times where I brought
someone on sometimes someone I knew in real life actually sometimes someone
online like a VA where I brought them on on kind of a ten hour a week agreement
and I didn't know what I wanted them to do and I really it was messed up for a
few reasons so first of all I felt like I was paying them and if they weren't
getting stuff done or that wasn't a busy week it really bugged me I felt like I
was losing this money the other thing is it increased the expense before it was
necessary right so I try to create busy work I'm like alright I got ten hours
for this person um maybe you could like go through my home exchange emails and
do some stuff like that for me so it ended up in this situation where I felt
like I was wasting money and I was just creating busy work for them so when you
start hourly with no minimum commitment that is a really good way to do it the
second thing in this this ties in is you got to trust them right because what I
was doing when I started is I brought someone on for like ten hours a week but
I didn't really trust them now that I don't I don't necessarily mean in terms
of like honesty but in terms of their technical abilities or decision-making
so I wouldn't really give them the important stuff and I'd end up having to
kind of teach them everything and I'd give them these really basic tasks that
in my business I don't actually have many of so it didn't work very well what
I've learned to do later more recently in the past year is just hand over the
whole project to someone and say hey like with my with my last assistant
Jenny hey Jenny if you're watching Jenny was awesome I would just say to her
stuff like hey I'd like to be doing more podcast interviews can you put together
some information on the best way to do that and and the next steps of what we
need to do and I might give her some tips like hey from what I know this is
what we should do but I would leave the project with her to take on rather than
trying to nitpick every detail and outline everything for her because then
it ends up being a lot more work for me now along that note one of the things
that can hold people back as well as you think
well it's quicker for me to just do the work than to explain it right and this
is sometimes true but you've got to try to think in the long term is is it
quicker for you this one time or is it quicker for you for all times ever right
so if it's filling out one form once maybe it's better to do it yourself
but what a lot of entrepreneurs do and I'm doing this as well is you create
something called an SOP or a standard operating procedure so this means that
when I'm training someone to do a task for me I'm not just talking to them one
on one I'm usually making videos or screen
recordings where I explain how the task works what I want done and all that and
I'll sometimes have a written document as well and then if that person quit I
can then have that same document to give to the next person and it really
minimizes the training time and actually this was amazing when Jenny had to quit
she was actually a doctor and she got a placement in a hospital she I asked her
and she actually put together a 23-page training guide for the next person how
cool is that so she created actually she helped create the systems and I'm gonna
talk more about that about the kinds of people you can hire those who create
systems and those who follow them but she actually helped create the systems
and the processes and then documented it to help train the new person so that was
amazing so how do you find somebody like a Jenny well let me just say off the bat
but it might take some time jenny was not the first person that I hired and
will not be the last and so what I found works really well is
to start small there can come cases and this happens in all areas of life from
romance to business where we get really charmed off the bat right we meet
someone we think this person is great and then they totally flake out and
don't follow through this has happened to me once I hired this podcast editor
and she came on and we had a great meeting and she was full of energy and
all this and I was like this person's awesome and then she just disappeared
just disappeared and she's taking other jobs on up work and but just disappeared
from me and and this is actually somewhat common there are certain
countries I won't name that might start with low Lapine's or sound like we'll
Lapine's I should say that I've had more of these experiences with but I've also
hired great people from the country that sounds like glue Lapine's so it's not
something like everyone there is at all there's some great people I've hired
there but I have found that there are certain people online where they
basically are looking for they're always looking for the next opportunity and
they often only work when they need money so in this person's case she had a
great up work profile all this experience and what she did I notice is
she never accepted the job right away so that means I couldn't leave bad feedback
because she hadn't kind of accepted the job after we'd been meeting and talking
in that anyhow this is why it's great to start small because if this is gonna be
a person who just wants to make a bit of money and then quit again or they have
this habit of flaking out or changing positions whenever they can earn more
money then you can spot that in the case of Jenny actually the way we started was
with the most basic of work which was transcribing so I had her helping edit
the captions on my YouTube videos these videos and and doing some transcription
work as well and then I noticed like I really liked her attitude she was really
proactive she mentioned things that she could do like oh do you want me to do
this or improve this and I just started asking if you could do other work and it
grew into basically a full VA position where she was doing just anything that I
wanted and that started with really basic work and that allowed me to see
that she was responsible she was smart she was proactive and from there it grew
so I would really recommend starting with something small this way you keep
your cost down you get to test the person out and you also don't end up
with that problem I mentioned at the start of the video
where you get someone for like ten hours but you don't really know what they
should do yet and then you end up with some problems there as well so I want to
mention that there are really two approaches to hiring people and I'm
gonna just break these into smart and repetitive and what I mean by that is in
the case of someone like Jenny she was actually really smart I mentioned she
became a doctor and in that case what I liked about her if she was able to like
take on a whole project on her own and also develop the processes and help me
basically like get my shit together in terms of how things worked and so if
you're someone that's not great at like systems and organizing and all that like
maybe me you might find that really helpful bringing someone on who can kind
of help you create those processes and understand what you need and then make
it happen I have another friend who's way better at outsourcing than me and he
is all about the systemization and he actually prefers to hire people who
aren't that smart and will just follow the processes so he is a guide of
exactly what he wants done and he just says do this fill it in you know don't
use your intuition just do what we want and get it done and keep doing that work
and and he's had really good luck with that as well it's two different ways of
outsourcing one is kind of bringing someone on who's gonna have a bit of
their own opinions and look for ways they can help in your business and that
but the downside with that person is they'll often get bored with repetitive
work so if it's the same thing every week they're probably gonna get bored
and quit or find another job and they may not always be that good at following
instruction so sometimes with these people they miss some details than that
because they're thinking more about your big-picture stuff right and what like
how they can improve other parts of the business and they miss some important
details windows closing and opening there if you saw I guess carrots that's
what's going on so in terms of these two types of people you can look at hiring
both potentially or going through phases so it might make sense to start off with
someone who can help you figure out those processes they might be someone
who's a little more expensive a little more experienced and they can help you
figure that out and then you can hire someone maybe cheaper to just keep doing
the repetitive work and keep that up or if you have a few things that you do
consistently there are a bit of repetitive tasks and you know how you
want then think about hiring someone should
just do those and write up SOP a standard operating procedure of just how
you want it done what it looks like and then train them on that and have them
take over that and start with one task and then you can add more and more and
more as you get to know the person in and figure out basically are they good
fit or are they not now what kind of a friend would I be if
I left you just with that without telling you actually how to hire someone
so let's get into that in terms of where to hire someone off work this tends to
be where I go I don't necessarily love it as a company they take 20% of the
freelancers income for the first five hundred dollars they earn and they
basically become a monopoly and keep raising their rates I don't like them
but I'm familiar with them they're easy and they have a huge amount of
freelancers on them there are other sites as well there's a site people per
hour which tends to be a little more expensive of people and then there's
also some sites I will link to below because I forget the URLs but for
specific areas so there's a job board for hiring in Eastern Europe there's a
job board for hiring in the Philippines and this way if you want to post
classified and go that way where you pay for the classified but you don't pay
part of the hourly to a company like I work that could be a better way to do it
if you're just starting I would say get someone in up work and go hourly and
just to get started cuz it's way less hassle they handle the money the
invoicing all that but over time is you get better at it and you want to hire
someone to stay with you for a while maybe someone who's doing 20 hours a
week then probably look at one of these job boards to get someone there so in
terms of getting the right person first of all sell the job one of the biggest
mistakes I used to make and a lot of people make with trying to hire like a
virtual assistant is they don't treat them like a real person they put up a
job like hey I want this work done $4 an hour come do it no one wants to work for
you for that right would you apply for that job of course not so you got to
sell the job right the job and this applies to hiring in all cases all the
job right about how awesome it will be how you're not a douchebag I was gonna
be fun or they'll learn a lot or it will be great or whatever it is sell the job
write up a really good description write about what you do
your company does this is a perk for me because my material is I think pretty
entertaining and often about freelancing so freelancers tend to want to work for
me or they're like oh I'd love to edit those videos or do this kind of work
because I actually enjoy the content it's a lot better than doing some boring
or for someone so you write up the awesome job post then you need to test I
suggest two to three tests within the hiring process one is in your
description so well your your job description your post is put some kind
of test - right away screen people out so say something like hey in the first
paragraph of your cover letter be sure to mention your favorite type of cactus
or whatever something just to know if people have read the Job Description
because on a site like up work maybe two-thirds of the responses you get our
generic posts that they just copy and paste and I instantly get rid of those
people because they're just not putting in any kind of effort the next test you
can go about and do would be some kind of a task to actually see how well they
perform something depending on what you're hiring them for test for that so
if you're looking for someone who just follows instructions and we'll follow
your SOP then give them a really like detailed set of instructions and give
them a task and see if they follow them exactly if you're looking for someone
who's sort of proactive and gonna think for themselves then give them something
a little more creative where they have to figure out a few things and you can
test their ability to think critically and think for themselves and then give
them that kind of task a test is so much better than a conversation even huge
corporations who spend millions of dollars training in HR learning how to
hire they have something like a 50% miss higher rate so talking to someone the
interview it's great to do but I've actually been getting better hires the
less I'm doing interviews and just focusing on kind of tasks and
communication in that or like text communication before when I was
interviewing people I found that I would just like them so I'd be like oh yeah
this person seems good but I wouldn't have any sense even though I've
interviewed before I've read books on it I have some experience with it I had no
real way to judge if they're actually gonna be good at the job so give them
some kind of a test task and then after that maybe you have a third test so
maybe that's a way to narrow it down to your final few people
and then you can have another project you have them do or do like a probation
period for the first month where you're just feeling out how well they do stuff
again if you're starting out with just a single general pass that they do for you
that's the test in itself right with Jenny she started doing transcription
work she did that well and then that proved she could do other stuff or at
least that was sort of like a test to know we can go on with other work just
remember that hiring and finding that right person takes time do not expect it
to be overnight success but once you get someone in the right fit it's amazing
how much time it frees out for you and how much it can benefit your business so
be willing to put in the time treat it like an experiment know that you might
have to hire four or five people over the next year to get that perfect person
but once you do it will be amazing and know that you need to grow and learn
just as much as getting the right person that learning how to hire someone how to
manage give instructions that takes time as well and to my friends in the country
that kind of sounds like Lilla peens I love you I just was mentioning before a
few of my own experiences but I've also had great experiences hiring people from
your country and your president is hilarious and I love everything he says
thanks for watching these videos if you are freelance or entrepreneur someone
working for yourself be sure to subscribe to the channel because there
are lots of upcoming videos on building your team on sales I'm growing your
business and all kinds of good stuff so catch you in another video soon
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