Let me share a big secret with you that all wealth-y
solo-entrepreneurs know: If you want to have an ideal
business, work less and make a whole lot more, I can assure
you that you CANNOT do it by yourself. You must outsource!
You know how I know this? Because for years, I tried! For
years, I tried to do everything in my business by myself,
like the good "lone ranger" that I thought I was. You know
what? It didn't work. In fact, a few years ago, I remember
getting on the phone with my coach and crying for the first
8 minutes of our coaching call. He listened patiently as I
sobbed and then said just one thing to me:
"Fabienne, Frank Sinatra didn't move his own pianos."
Silence on the phone. I stopped crying and it was like The
Truth had been spoken. It may seem like a "duh" moment to
you, but when I heard this for the first time, it felt like
the skies had parted and the answer to all my problems were
streaming down from the sky. I realized that I had been
trying to "move my own piano", instead of focusing on my
brilliance and my "genius" work - the stuff that I'm good
at and that only *I* can do in my business.
The minute he said those words to me, a surge of energy
went up my entire spine. I realized right then and there
that I was trying to do the impossible by doing it all
myself and that I would never be able to grow my business
further if I didn't change the way I did things.
So I changed my whole way of doing business and I started
DELEGATING different aspects of my business to others. And
I'm deliriously happy to report that my business, my bank
account (and my sanity) have never looked better!
Fact is, you cannot do it all on your own either. No matter
how much you like to think that you can do it better,
faster and more efficiently than anyone else, the fact
remains that you will eventually burn out. In his book "No
B.S. Business Success", Dan Kennedy talks about the worst
number in ANY business is the number 1. Meaning, you never
want to be the only one working in your business.
You MUST leverage your time and resources if you are
serious about running a successful business, getting
clients and finally making a good 1ncome being
self-employed. There's just no way around it. And getting
it ALL done means you have to eventually start outsourcing
and delegating.
Thing is, you can wait like I did until you nearly crumble
into a state of near exhaustion where things are falling
through the cracks left and right OR you can come from a
Full Practice Mentality and start getting assistance NOW,
before you ever get to that place.
Proper outsourcing means delegating specific things to
someone who's happy to do them for you:
Stuff you're not good at. Stuff you don't know how to do.
Stuff you don't have time to do. Anything outside of your
brilliance/genius (meaning, everything other than the stuff
only you can do in your business)
Delegating allows you to strengthen your strengths, instead
of trying to "better" your weaknesses. It means only
working on your core competencies and focusing on your
brilliance and genius work. In turn, you'll get more done,
you'll make more mo-ney, and you'll enjoy more time off for
the important things in life (like your family, your
friends, you know, the important stuff.)
It's the ULTIMATE leverage!
Now, I have a team of 5 virtual assistants and one
in-person assistant helping me on a part-time basis. On top
of that, I get help from bookkeepers, attorneys,
accountants, fulfillment houses, etc., so I can focus on
doing what I do best: speak, write, coach and create
products. Oh, and marketing too. Don't forget that. And
because of it, I'm personally able to PRODUCE so much more
than I've ever been able to.
But I know what you might be thinking. "That's fine for
you, Fabienne, but I'm not in a place where I can bring on
a whole staff of people." Well, believe me, I know about
that because I used to be there too! This wasn't an
overnight thing. It's taken me a few years to get to this
point. But the good news is, you can start slowly and ramp
up from there, like I did.
Here's what I want you to do:
Calculate what you're worth per hour when you're doing your
Brilliance/Genius work; that which only you can do. Make a
list of all the things you do each day. Attach a dollar
value to what you could pay someone to outsource this to.
Example: Let's assume you're worth $200 per billable hour.
Ideally you should be generating $200 or more for EACH hour
you work. However, I'll guess you're doing DOZENS of things
each day that someone charges less for (and is happy to do
for $15, $25, $45, $75, etc.) These are the things you want
to outsource, so you can make $200 every hour you DO work.
It's all about working smarter and more efficiently.
To justify this, REPLACE the time you've saved with doing
your Brilliance/Genius work and working on your Client
Attraction assignments. Why? Because marketing = more
clients = more do11ars. Enough said. (That doesn't mean you
can go goof off. That's NOT the point, at least not at the
beginning.)
Makes sense?
If budget is an issue, just start small. Focus first on
tasks that will immediately make you money (stuff you're
not doing now, stuff you don't know how to do) and set a
maximum hour cap per month. Then, as re-venue comes in, you
can grow from there.
Within months of my taking the leap and doing this,
outsourcing helped bring in so much mo-re mo-ney, I was
able to increase the hours I could delegate and outsource
some more and I eventually doubled my revenues in ONE year.
You can too. It's really easy.
Your Client Attraction Assignment:
So, take out a sheet of paper and do the following:
Calculate what you're worth per hour when you're doing your
Brilliance/Genius work; that which only you can do Make a
list of all the things you do each day that don't fall
within the category of your Brilliance/Genius work Attach a
dollar value to what you could pay someone to outsource
this to Begin to outsource and delegate, little by little I
guarantee that you too will catapult your 1ncome as you
focus more and more on business development and Client
Attraction, as well as your genius work. You won't believe
you ever did it any other way.
----------------------------------------------------
Need some resources on how to clear the decks and make
Client Attraction a priority by outsourcing? Then get a
copy of the Client Attraction Home Study System™.
It's all step-by-step, not a big mishmash of things. So,
you do step one of the system, and when you're done with
that, you move on to step two, and so on. You can get it
at http://www.TheClientAttractionSystem.com .
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