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How to DelegateWe quickly found out that living the Passive Income lifestyle required that we learn how to delegate, organize our work (become a virtual company) and to be as automated as possible - and have websites that support our business and life plans (How does your website stack up? - See our Free Web Analysis at the end of this article). But we didn't want to hire employees - which would negate the whole passive income philosophy. One mistake that many new business owners make is managing all the small details and not delegating them to someone else (things that take up hours and hours per week). This can easily get them derailed from the things that make them money over the long run.
Jumping From Task to Task Because we not only run one business, but several, it became very easy for us to get overwhelmed. For instance, Kim would be designing a new web page for our aZenGift ecommerce site and get detoured with a phone call from someone wanting to buy our Fireflies product they found online. She would then jump over to that task, finish it up, and try to get back into the design mode again. Five minutes into the design work Kim needed to rush down to our shipping center to deliver a priority package. This type of thing went on for both of us all day long - we clearly needed to learn how to delegate. More than Learning How to Delegate - We Needed a Plan! In addition to learning how to delegate, we needed to learn how to plan a way to automate our common work tasks as well as do a better job of delegating work out to others. What we needed was to become more of a virtual company and less of a typical in-house do it all yourself type company. Give Up Some of The Work This processs of learning about how to delegate (also called automation) was gradual. It is important to realize which work is best done by someone else, and which work must be done by you. For instance, in order for a business to grow it is important to nurture relationships. This requires contact with your friends, peers, and even your competitors. Email and phone calls of this type should be done by you. But some parts of your business definitely need delegating. You may even want to think about hiring a virtual assistant - there are risks, but the benefits may just out weight the negatives. Learn all about virtual assistants jobs here. Even if you really, really enjoy doing various tasks, you may need to pass them off to someone else in order to build your business faster and more effectively. What we found is that for us to sit at our computers and build online Flash designs was a lot of fun, but would take far too much of our time for it to be a money making proposition. Once we learned how to delegate this type of work to someone else who is faster and probably better at it - our lives started to make a lot more sense. The simple truth is if you do not learn how to delegate, your business will remain stagnant, and eventually die. Delegating gives your online business a burst of energy provided by the enthusiam of the people you are delegating to. But before you start delegating, start with the proper foundation - establish an efficient way to run your business, before you begin the delegating process. Bill Gates puts it, "The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency." Let's Talk About Costs What we did was to create a task list of the things we absolutely had to do ourselves, and another list of the things we could vend to another professional. The cost of hiring someone else is another factor - and important to new business owners. But remember, many businesses fail because they think too small and lose track of the big picture. The online community is full of willing low-cost experts just waiting to take over your lesser tasks often at remarkable prices. So Where Are Virtual Jobs Offered? On the web, of course! But not all web resources are as good as the next. One of my favorite sites for finding short and long term online professionals is at www.craigslist.com. This no-nonsense virtual classified adds super-site is available in many of the nations biggest metropolitan areas and growing all the time. You may want to utilize people locally (if you think meeting up will be important), but quite often using your virtual workers from other areas is just as advantageous. Another great source for low-cost web designers is eLance, www.elance.com. But our favorite (at least right now) is oDesk.com - where you can review capabilities and even interview all types of virtual assistants, writers, programmers, you name it, for no cost and much better results. We have had great success using all kinds of virtual workers (many found on craigslist and oDesk) from flash programmers, to writers, to graphic artists, as well as our very own software programmer, William, who has been a HUGE part of our ongoing success. But Be Very Careful! On the flip side when delegating to virtual workers, is a fact that you have no real idea who it is that you are working with - at least not at first. For that reason, you should be very leary of what personal or financial information you provide your contact person access to. Would you give your credit card number or bank account access info to a complete stranger? Of course not. Oo take a few security measures when hiring people that will be working on your website or ecommerce website; this is essential. Here are a few security steps you can take that will save you some major grief later on:
You also might want to check out our section about the 4 Hour Work Week. Timothy Ferris has made millions learning how to delegate. And he shares many of the same delegating tools and techniques in his book as we do on this site. And it's more than just delegating - is you website a moneymaker? ___________
We are sure that you will find this site to be a good start at learning how to delegate, and providing yourself with more free time to do the things that you want to do - all while your making money. |
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