“To be nobody but yourself in a world, which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”

– E.E. Cummings, American poet

“Why Even The Smallest Business Can’t Avoid Outsourcing.”

So your business is running, you’ve read lots of books, you’ve done a bunch of courses and you have no intention of being one of the 85% that don’t make it. 

After a while it occurs to you that your business is not going where you need it to. You may be feeling frustrated and there seems to be a never ending stream of tasks to get done. 

You are working harder and harder, but don’t really see the progress you would have hoped for. So what do you do? You try to work even harder, often trying to do everything yourself. 

Generally speaking, this results in tasks being done at below optimum levels, employees who never get the chance to develop as well as burn out for the business owner. 

More importantly, it is one of the biggest barriers to growth. No one can succeed on their own. Everyone who succeeds does so with the help of others. 

At this stage a lot of business owners are confused. They are running the business and they know that they have to be the brain, but many don’t realize that it doesn’t have to be you doing all those tedious tasks. 

Every successful business has a hierarchy in which tasks get delegated down from one level to the next. But if you are in a small or one person business don’t think for one minute you have to be doing all the work. 

In fact if you are smart about delegating, this should free you up to do the things that make money, while others who earn less than you, do the tasks that take you away from making money and growing the business. Don’t think of paying someone else to do menial tasks or jobs you are not great at or don’t like doing as an expense, think of it as an investment in your growth. 

These people need not be employees. In fact I’d recommend against hiring employees in the early stage. It’s often much more cost effective to outsource these tasks to skilled specialists and hire them on an as needed basis. 

Growing a business is not easy, but by outsourcing, you can make it a lot easier. 

You know you should be working on your business more than in your business and outsourcing is one of the ways you get to do this. If you do a good job of outsourcing, you’ll find that you’ll work less and make more money. 

I always find that when I delegate clearly defined tasks to good people, I make more money. So can you!

It’s really interesting, if you search on the web for almost any business activity, there are people to whom you can outsource. You probably already outsource your accounting and legal work, so it’s just a matter of thinking a little differently and looking for tasks that can be outsourced. Here are some ideas:

• Website creation
• Blog creation
• Article writing
• Copy writing
• Article submissions
• Video creation
• Video submission
• Pay per click management
• Publicity and PR
• Link building to social media and other web sites
• Sales and marketing to affiliates and JV partners
• Cold calls to telemarketers
• Office work to virtual assistants

There are literally dozens of sites that do this kind of work. Of course you have to do your home work and be clear about what you want and expect, but if you do, you’ll find it a rewarding experience.

You’ll get things done that otherwise might have fallen through the cracks, you’ll often get a far better job than if you did it yourself or in house and you’ll probably pay for it out of the increases in sales you’ll get because you now can focus more time and attention on these important tasks.

Sticking Points.  What’s keeping you from achieving the growth, business success and prosperity you deserve? 

Do you ever wonder why some businesses seem to succeed with almost no effort, while others seem to require Herculean efforts and constant attention?

I know I do!

A few years ago, I began sharing what I did to grow 5 successful businesses with a select group of people in my high end training and mentoring programs. I use the exact same principles as I teach in the program, to run consulting projects with a few select clients each year.

Some of the results have been astounding - everything from making an extra $14,000 from a single idea in my newsletter to growing a business from $2,000,000 per year in sales to more than $6,000,000 in just under 2 years. 

The ability for some business owners to create MASSIVE and FAST business growth not only made me very proud, but also very curious.

• Was there something specific causing this level of success?
• What sort of things get in the way of success?
• Why are some very ordinary people successful with seemingly simple business ideas?
• Why are some brilliant people with great business ideas unable to achieve their goals?
• What are the things that slow people down and sap their profits and cash flow?

In looking at these successes and failures, I’ve found there are several “Sticking Points” which trip up smart business owners and undermine their success.

What I now see, is that to grow a successful business, requires you to understand what these sticking points are and to put plans in place to overcome them.

The good news is that these sticking points are relatively few and most are relatively easy to deal with. A few require some diligence and focussed work, most require a bit of thinking and some change in behaviour.

On May 5th I am running a public seminar called:
“Sticking Points.  What’s Keeping You from Achieving the Profits and Business Success you Deserve?”

Register right away to attend this seminar and I’ll underwrite your attendance, so you can attend for free. register now.

“Comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, then a master. And then it becomes a tamer, and with a hook and whip it makes puppets of your larger desires.”

Kahlil Gibran, Poet, Visual Artist

 In a teleseminar last week, Robin Elliott the joint venture guru, said while talking about the necessary steps to create an effective joint venture, that unless you are actually doing joint ventures you don’t know about them.

This is not only true of joint ventures, but of almost every marketing strategy and tactic.

Over the years, I’ve met people who can tell you about every marketing tactic known to man. But when you dig a little bit, you quickly realize that knowing about something and actually doing it are two different things.

Theory is fine, you can find it in any number of places including books and universities; however it is hard to translate theory into bread on the table. You only get that, by trying something and finding what works and repeating it until you get it right.

Most of us are looking for the easiest way of doing things and try to avoid having to work hard at too many things. Success is hard enough when you get all the elements right, but there is no doubt that having the right guide can shorten the time it takes for success and reduce the cost of failures.

About 12 years ago, I spent $15,000 on a direct mail letter. I wrote it myself and sent it out to about 25,000 people. I received three responses. Two of who didn’t buy, the third called to let me know her boss should be taken off out mailing list as he had been dead for 6 months.

How is it possible to waste so much money on something so simple?

Ignorance? Arrogance? A lack of understanding? Underestimating the challenge at hand? Probably a little of each. I vowed then that it would never happen again.

Has this ever happened to you, even in a small way? Everyone knows how to write a letter, but without learning the fundamentals I can almost guarantee you’ll create a poor result. And even with understanding the fundamentals, you probably won’t have any real copywriting success until you’ve done it quite a few times.

This is one of the reasons why going to a course seldom gives you the results you want, there is no substitute for the slow learning you get by doing. That’s how you become an expert.

You have to take action to put what you’ve learned into place. Ideally you need someone with real world experience to review what you’ve done and to give you feedback and direction.

Working with people like this, you get the theory, you get the practice, you get the feedback and you get the experience. Having a guide and a mentor can significantly shorten the learning curve and get you results more quickly than you would on your own.

For every marketing strategy and technique it’s the same. Some look deceptively easy but you still need the combination of knowledge, skills, experience, feedback and guidance along with time and being proactive to become really proficient.

A good coach will help you shorten that learning curve and get cash generating results more quickly.