How To Build An All-Star Team Through Outsourcing

OUTSOURCING
You can't do it on your own.

We’re coming to the tail end of the tape now, and this is session that I know a lot of
people, when we sent out the initial survey and questionnaire to everyone, this is definitely
a section people wanted to hear more about. There is not a huge amount out there about
outsourcing and outsourcing well. We’ve done it very well and I think we have Meagan to
thank for a lot of this. She’d done a lot of project management work before she came to
work with me and she brought a lot of that expertise here.
You can’t do it on your own. I showed you the SEO method before and to try and
implement that while still trying to run your business, means you never get anything done.
So I’m going to show you how we go through outsourcing it.

Build a team
It’s important that you build an A team. If
you haven’t read a book called Topgrading
by Brad Smart, it’s definitely a book worth
getting. He goes through the whole process
of hiring A players and how to make sure
that you get the best people on your team.
When I’m talking about an A player, is someone like Ben, like Meagan who put in one
hundred percent, who have your best interests at heart and the business’ best interests at
heart, who you can almost just let run free and you know that they will create something
that will ultimately add value to the business in the end. It’s really key. If you can find those
A players, and you hold onto them, then that is just going to propel you hugely down the
track.
It’s all well and good to go and try to outsource different things to India or the Philippines
and you might not get someone who is an A player because you’re just sitting there
thinking, look I just want to get a batch of articles done, I don’t really care about that. But
the difference between having someone who is a star and someone who is not, will make
all the difference in the world.

www.theSEOmethod2.com

1

We’ve gone through quite a few different people over in the Philippines; we’ve got one
girl, Grace, at the moment and Grace will probably watch this, we really appreciate her
work because she is a star. She is someone we can tell exactly what to do, she is a self
starter, she’s a self learner, she asks good questions. Those are the people that you want to
make sure that you build around you. Video isn’t my strong point – Ben complements that.
Making sure that things get followed through – I’m very good with coming up with the
ideas and Megan’s good at making sure it’s followed through and actually happens.
I think a lot of people go wrong when they’re building a team and they’re going through
hiring, they sit there and look for people who they like. Oh, he seems like a good bloke
because he’s interested in this or he’s interested in that. You don’t want to hire people
because you think that you’ll have a good time with them and you’ll get on well with them.
You hire someone because you know that they will be able to complement what it is that
you don’t have.
We’ve had other situations in the past and this is a testament to Meagan. When we were
going through the hiring process she said, oh, look, our personalities might not match
really well, but it doesn’t matter because what they bring to the team makes it so
worthwhile that she can see that benefit. It’s all about that person adding value to the
team.
So just make sure that you play to your strengths and not your weaknesses. A lot of people
what they’ll do is, you will think, oh, here is an area that I’m not strong in, I don’t know how
to do this, I’m not very good at copywriting or I’m not very good at article writing. What
they do is focus in on those areas, hoping that by focusing in on the areas where they’re
weak, it’ll bring that up and then bring the whole average of everything that you’re doing
up.
But it’s actually counter intuitive, the inverse is true. If you focus on those things that you’re
not good at, you just won’t enjoy what it is that you’re doing and you won’t be able to
channel your creative outlet into things that you are good at doing. So find out what your
strengths are and make sure that you play to your strengths and then build a team around
you who can help complement those things that you’re not necessarily strong with.


2

Get your feet wet
This is how I would suggest that you get
started. If you haven’t done any outsourcing
before, the first thing that you want to do is
head over to rentacoder.com. I have tried
things like Elance and oDesk and a few of the
other ones. The majority of where we do our
hiring to start off with is through Rent A Coder. They do excellent coding, you can get
excellent coders on there obviously, graphics, video and you can also get writers on there
as well.
But typically speaking, if you want to try and go for writers, then you might head over to
something like elance.com because they’ve more of a first world background. There will be
a lot of people from the States bidding on that, whereas Rent A Coder you can get people
in third world countries and countries where English may still be their first language but
the dollar goes a lot further.
This is what I would suggest if you’re new. Rather than
going out and just hiring someone from the
Philippines to work full time for you because you hear
what a great opportunity it is, if you haven’t done any
outsourcing first, this is what I would suggest. Start on
Rent A Coder, find out one or two small jobs that you
want to get done. Find out just a few jobs or maybe if you’ve got a really big project, break
it down into one or two small pieces and then bid that same small component of the
overall job out to multiple people. So you’ll get three or four people post on your job.
Whenever I post my job, this is a little hot tip, I just like to start off my auction, I can’t
remember who I learned it from, but ‘this is an easy job for someone who knows what
they’re doing.’ That’s a really good start to your description because it’s pre framing them
to think, oh, it’s difficult, then you say, well, you just don’t know what you’re doing. Then
typically it will get people to be more competitive. So that’s a really good opener there.


3

But if you have a big project, you’ll break it down into smaller pieces and then you’ll bid it
out on Rent A Coder. Now for those of you who don’t know, Rent A Coder is just like a
reverse eBay. Rather than you posting up a product and people bidding on how much they
are willing to pay, you post up a job and then people will bid how much they’re willing to
work for. You’ll get to look at their feedback to see what work they’ve done previously, you
can go through their portfolio and analyze what it is that they’ve done.
Now when we try and select people, like I said, we’ll break down that little component of
the job, we’ll post it on and the things that we’ll look for is making sure that they get good
feedback from lots of people. I like to see at least twenty feedback points. I don’t want
someone completely fresh to Rent A Coder, unless they are going to come at a ridiculous
price, $5, $10 a job because they want to prove to you and they want to build up their
feedback points.
There are exceptions to the rule, but typically I like to go with people who have feedback.
The main reason for that is I don’t like to waste time anymore. As much as you can try and
dig for gold to try and get that one or two people who might save you $10 or $20, I think
you’re going to be better off to bid a little bit more and get a higher quality individual and
then it just makes things flow a lot more smoothly.
So you bid it out, you have a look through all of the people who apply. Then what we do is
contact. We award the job to one person. We choose the next two best candidates or one
candidate, if there is such a person. Then we’ll send them an email through Rent A Coder
and say, hey, we have decided to go with someone else but we do have some similar work
and we’d like to trial you. So if you want, we’ll get you to do the same job or something
similar. So you get maybe three people all doing a similar job. It’s only a small job so you
will try and give them a deadline of three or four days.
What you’re looking for is, one, they need to be very good on communication. When
you’re dealing with virtual assistants, that is key. If they’re not good on communication,
then they’re not going to work well as a virtual assistant for you. So they need to be
excellent on that. The quality of work needs to be very good as well. I like to see how much
hand holding they require. Ben’s going through the process at the moment where he is
learning how to use Rent A Coder and get the most out of it. You try and start to find that
balance, you use ScreenFlow and Camtasia to record the job specifics of what it is that you
need done.


4

You’ll learn after doing a few jobs with different people, what it is you need to include in
the video to reduce the number of questions that they’ll ask. That’s a really important skill
that you want to try and develop, how can you create videos that lead people through
what it is that you want them to do and spell out each action. I will record a video for
them. If I make a mistake while I’m doing it, I will keep on recording and I will talk through
that. I will say, oh, I clicked here, I should have clicked over here.
Some people try and make those videos where they’re trying to get someone to do some
work for them, a work of art. But sometimes it is just better to get the video up there and
chances are, if you make a little stumble, they’re going to make a stumble, so if you’ve
recorded it, at least they know how to recover from that stumble. Don’t worry too much
about having those videos excellent quality and chances are, no one’s every going to see
them other than the person who you bidded the job out to.
The first thing that you will do when you list your job on Rent A Coder is you’ll list out the
job. I usually don’t like to put too much detail. I’ll make sure there is enough detail where
they know what the job is about and I’m quite clear in that. But I’m not going to go into
super specifics. I’ll say to the successful bidder or the successful applicant for this job, I will
then go ahead and make you a detailed video that will explain exactly what needs to be
done.
I don’t want to post that on Rent A Coder and have everyone who comes to that auction
see it because there are different people who trawl Rent A coder looking for new ideas. I
have heard of entrepreneurs and people like that who will go to Rent A Coder, scope out
what jobs people are posting so that they can come up with new ideas because other
people are posting it and they detail the exact job specs of what it is that they’re looking to
do. So it is a lot more tight.
Then once we’ve selected someone, we’ll send them a video. Once they do a little bit of
work like I said, those few key things you want to watch out for. Something else I was
going to mention, in the auction, I also like to put down the bottom, that this is a trial for
ongoing work. What you want to try and demonstrate there is have them be more
competitive on their bid. I want them to think, I just want to get in the door because this
could potentially be regular work for me.
A lot of times when I first work with someone, I’m happy to bid a little bit higher to get the
quality person in, but I’ll tell them that at the outset. We’ll set the job and I might set it $50
above what I think it’s worth so I get some good quality applicants that apply.

5

Then when I reply to them I say, look I’m happy to select you for this job, just to let you
know though, it will be ongoing work. I deliberately bid higher to make sure that I get a
good quality of applicant. Then the person that we ultimately end up working with, we
work out something fairer on a more competitive rate. That pre frames them down the
road that you’re going to be negotiating a little bit on price. You want to look for ones who
do quick replies and work best.
I also use Need An Article, that is another service
as well for articles. A lot of the writing these
days I’m very much the content generator. So I
use Rent A Coder for those things I talked about,
graphics and video and coding because I don’t
do the writing so much and I don’t bid it out on
Rent A Coder because I’m creating the content.
But if we needed to get some articles written for blog networks or things like that, we’ll go
through Need An Article. We’ve sort of shifted away from that. We used to use them a lot
more. Meagan used to pump quite a few requests through there but now we’re hiring
assistants whose job it is, we skill them up and train them up as to what it is that we want
and then they can write our articles to those specifications.
Has anyone given Rent A Coder a go? A few of you probably have. One? Rent A Coder, I’m
telling you now, that is a goldmine. Talk about an easy business model. If you design
websites, you find a coder in Russia who can build a WordPress blog for you and do a nice
design, and he’ll do it for $50 and that for him is fantastic pay for a couple of days work.
You can go and resell that to a local business here for $1000 or $2000 and you just make
the minor tweaks. There is such a huge opportunity for looking for arbitrage opportunities,
the opportunity where you can sell something at a much higher price than the price at
which you can acquire it. Rent A Coder is an absolute goldmine. You get to tap into these
third world countries where they are so happy to get paid $US4 and $5 an hour and they’re
university educated and they provide excellent work, they’re good communicators, they’ve
got a very good work ethic. Try and get someone like that here, try and get someone for
under $25 an hour to do anything in the web space here and you’ll be struggling.
That’s not to say there’s not a time and a place for having good team members and I’ll talk
about why I build my team here and how that plugs in, because they are also very key,
they just have a slightly different role and they might not even know it.

6

Playing for keeps
When it comes to playing for keeps here,
when I’m doing my work on Rent A Coder,
I’m building up this virtual team. I’m
bidding out these jobs and this is initially
how I got started. I found a graphics guy, I
found a video guy, I found a writer, I found
someone to do each of these different areas I’m outsourcing and I found them through
Rent A Coder. After I’d worked with them for a little while I said, hey, do you want to jump
off Rent A Coder? They’re taking out a little bit of extra fees. We both lose in it.
How about I send the money to you directly, thorough PayPal, because you’ve already
done three or four jobs? You know I’m trustworthy, I know you’re trustworthy. It’s going to
be much better for both of us and we’ll share in the savings. Then I take them off Rent A
Coder and then we work with them on just an email basis and it just makes it a little bit
smoother.
What you’re looking at doing here, and why I talked about playing for keeps, is the idea
that when you’re building this outsourcing team, you’re looking at building a team not to
do one off tasks. Out tasking is getting someone to, hey, I want you to update this blog
and you have to create a video to teach them how to do it and they do it once and you
never hear from them again and the next time you need your blog updated you post the
same job on Rent A Coder and find a new person and do it again. Out tasking is you’re just
getting a task done once and you’re forgetting about it.
Outsourcing is all about building your virtual team, making sure that they’re there, so next
time I need my blog updated, instead of me having to re educate them, they know what it
is I want, they know the standard of work I require, they know all of these things and it’s
about training them up and working with them and wanting to work with them for the
long term. It’s going to make things move a lot smoother for you.


7

So we use Rent A Coder to find people and then we work with them off line. You want to
make sure that you build your virtual team. So again, coming back to your business,
thinking about where you are now, thinking about the different components in your
business, thinking about where you get caught up in certain tasks, repetitive tasks
especially, those are the types of things that you want to start and write down and say,
these are the components that I want to start to look to outsource. Think of the different
areas as well: graphics, video, coding, web.
Get a person for each area and build up that virtual team and just tell them, hey I want to
work with you and I’ll let you know when I’ve got work and I’ll just email you. These
people, if they’re on Rent A Coder, they’ll be happy because they’ve got someone who is
sending them through that regular work. So it is good for them and it is the stepping
stone, the gateway drug if you will, before you hire someone to work with you full time.
You’re just doing the baby steps because you don’t have to commit to $200 a week or
whatever it is. You can just do baby steps, get them to commit on that small level.

Getting serious
Then when you start to get a little bit
serious, I think what I found was, and this
might have been the job ad that I’d written
when I attracted Meagan to the position,
was saying, I’m an entrepreneur with a
virtual team who is finding that I’m the
bottleneck to getting the work done. I’m
constantly feeling like I have to keep these assistants busy because I’ll basically start at the
top, give them something to do, go to the next person, give them something to do, go to
the next person, give them something to do, get all the way down the bottom. Then by
the time I get down to the bottom, I jump back up to the top to give them to start working
on something again because now they’ve finished whatever it is I started.
I was just jumping and managing all of these different assistants. At that point I realized,
hang on, I’m spending so much time managing assistants that I’m not able to stop, take a
step back and be able to work on my business because I was so involved and stuck in the
business. That’s the point at which Meagan came in and really freed it up, and I don’t think
she knows or understands how much I appreciate the quality of what she brings to the
business in making sure that things actually happen.


8

That’s why it’s important to plug these other team members in the managing of the virtual
assistants. I find the people who work with me in my office, typically speaking, first they’ll
learn everything about the business or the area that they’ll be working on. So they’ll learn
and understand the way that works. Once they learn and understand that, the next step I
teach them how to start outsourcing what it is that they’re doing. So that way, what they
do is they become almost more of an editorial role.
So Ben now is working with a couple of people on Rent A Coder where he’s now getting
them, he used to be the one who was cutting these videos up. But now he’s got someone
else who is cutting these videos up for him, uploading them to YouTube and then he’s
doing more of the editorial role. What you want to try and do is, you think about what are
these repetitive tasks that I’m doing and where can you get them done for the lowest
dollar per hour and creating systems in place to make sure that those tasks can get done.
Where Ben would previously charge me at his hourly rate, we’re now outsourcing that to a
couple of different assistants. We pay about $US7 to cut a video, put an intro on it, put an
outro on it, write us a description, upload it to YouTube and it’s $US7 per video. That’s
alright, considering how much we were doing beforehand. Now if you think of scaling that
out, now Ben doesn’t even know what’s coming next. We’ll start to plug more and more
people underneath Ben and that’s really what the people in the office are all about. The
people are about managing those outsourcing assistants.
You’ve got to first understand that part of the business. It’s very hard to try and teach
someone to do something and know how to ask the right questions if you haven’t done it
yourself. I’ve written my Ezine Articles, I’ve done my hard yards, I’ve posted in blog
networks. I know all of these things inside and out because I’ve done it, so when it comes
to the person who’s going to do it, I can say, here’s what needs to be done. Why is this
taking you forty-five minutes, when it should take you fifteen minutes? We’ve had
situations like that in the past with assistants who’ve been taking a lot longer. I say, it
shouldn’t be taking that long. I think that’s the first stage.
If all of this is new, first learn how you do this yourself, then go to Rent A Coder, start to
outsource some of those and start to build some of your team and get that team. Then
after that, depending on where you’re at, at that level, you might look at plugging a
Meagan into your business.


9

If you’re not at that point, maybe what you do is you look for going to the Philippines or
something like that and organizing a full time assistant who can maybe take a whole lot of
those jobs and squash them all together. So they might become your web all rounder. In
fact that’s what we write in our job ads. We ask for a web all rounder, someone who
understands all bits and pieces and we try and give them a whole lot.
So go to the Philippines. The Philippines is a great place to outsource. I’ve had a lot of
experience outsourcing to India. They can be at times difficult to work with, and they’re
very much yes men. They say yes, yes, yes but when it comes to actually delivering, often
they fall short. I know Dan and I talked about this, only recently you had a situation like
that as well. It’s all too common for them to say, yes, we can handle this but then when
push comes to shove, they can’t.
That’s why we’re finding great success in the Philippines, for $5 an hour, $6 an hour. I think
you can hire a lawyer, university degree, for like $7 an hour over there. So I overpay people
over there. I can replace myself. John Jonas talks about you can hire people in the
Philippines and you pay them $US300 a month and they’ll work a full 40 hour a week for
you.
Me, I’m happy to pay that little bit more. I pay my guys more than fair because I’m looking
for those A players. For me, I want it to be win for them and it will be win for me. Our full
time assistants, we pay them $US200 a week for a full 40 hour work week. For over there,
they’re on very good money, especially for some of these guys. I’m happy to pay that.
They’re well educated, they speak great English, they have excellent work ethic and I’m just
finding the Philippines, and you’ll hear a lot of the internet marketers are starting to say,
the Philippines is a great place to outsource.


10

The needle in the…
How do I actually find these people in the
Philippines? How do I find the needle in the
haystack? There’s the Topgrading book. The
first thing that we do is run an ad on
jobstreet.com. It’s really important to craft
your ad like a direct sales piece. You want
to write it speaking to the person. It’s just
copy. You want to imagine you’re a player reading this and you want to talk to that A
player. What is it that would grab their attention? You want someone who is not looking
for a little bit of extra cash, you want someone who wants to be involved in something
exciting and something that is growing and something that is going to be a creative outlet.
You’ll often find really A players aren’t as concerned about the money. For them it’s about
the experience and being involved in something and knowing that they’re growing and
building that information base. I know a lot of the people who we hire, I try and write it for,
here’s an opportunity to grow. I’m happy to grow. You find a course that you want to work
through. I’ll buy that course for you. You can delve into my library of all the courses that
I’ve got. That will save you. Courses that I spend $2000 or $3000 on, you can get them for
free.
I’ll say to them, I want someone who wants to do that on their own. I don’t want to pay for
their learning unless it’s required by the job. I will say yes, if it’s required by the job, I will
pay for that training, but I also like the idea of finding someone who wants to develop
themselves and wants to grow themselves, and I’m happy to facilitate that. It’s a win win.
They get access to all of these courses that they never get access to and I get the benefit
because then that gets funneled back into the work.
So we run an ad on JobStreet. Here’s a live example of one of the ones we did recently. We
ran an ad, we got 98 responses of people who came back to us. I got my Mum to do some
basic culling. She went through and had a look at any of the ones who didn’t have
university degrees, no work experience and the time availability. Of that, we filtered it
down to about fifteen people. Stage two was Meagan sent out a survey to them with a
series of about two pages with different questions. We asked, what’s web 2.0. why do they
want the position, have you done any keyword research and a few things like that.


11

The reason we do that is, A players will fill that out and fill it out willingly. A B player or a C
player will just say, no, this is too hard, I’m just going to keep spamming all of these
different jobs until I find one. So I want to get someone to jump through a couple of hoops
and then once they do that, then I know they’re a qualified person who I’d be interested in
talking to.
Then we send them an easy test. Pretty much you want to give them an underarm throw,
something very easy that they can catch. You want to see how quickly they respond, very
similar to Rent A Coder, where you want to give them just a small job to see how it is that
they go.
We might say, here is an article. Watch this video, optimize the article, write some titles and
then send it back to us. It’s a really simple job, shouldn’t take you more than an hour. We
see how quickly they get back and the quality they get back. Obviously that task is going
to depend on what it is you’re hiring the individual to do. So if it’s a little coder or
something like that, give them a, please go over to my web host and install a WordPress
blog for me and pre populate some of the different categories, or something like that.
Of that, you’ll get more people who drop out and you might only get a few and the few
who do reply, you pick out the golden ones and then we do an interview process. We’ve
got a series of questions that we go through for the interview process. I’ll hop down on
Skype and Meagan will sit with me as well. Meagan will typically make and take a lot of the
notes as I’ll ask the question, which is a really good thing to do. It’s good if you get in that
position where you’ve got someone to do that. That way I don’t have to think about
making sure that I’m logging everything, even though we record everything. That is
another hot tip. Make sure you that record all of your Skype calls. There’s a free call
recorder, it’s called Call Recorder on Mac and PrettyMay on PC.
You should be recording all of this. It’s like content, you’re creating it. If you’re going to
have a project manager come in, they can then listen to all of those interviews that you’ve
done, listen to the way that you do it, model the way that you do it, then they can do it. If
you’re creating it anyway, most of these things, if you do it once, most things you only
have to do once. Once you log a system, then you can look to outsource it.


12

So in the interview process, we’ve got a series of questions that we’ll ask. The main thing l
look at, and this comes from Topgrading, at the start of the interview, I want them to talk
through their work history. Tell me about your first job, what did you like about it, how was
your boss, was he a good boss, bad boss, whatever? I don’t like to call them bosses either,
but the people who you work with.
The next step, where did you go to, what was your next job like? Tell me about that, why
did you leave? What you’ll find is, if you ask someone what they liked about it, what they
liked about their boss, why they left a particular position, you’ll find recurring themes and
that’s where the gold is when it comes to interviewing. You’re looking for recurring
themes, you’re looking for someone who left because their boss was dreadful and he
always overworked them and he expected too much. They might say that two or three
times.
Then you think, maybe it’s not the boss, it’s they’re taking the same problem to every job
that they go to, they’re taking themselves. That’s the same problem to every job that
they’re going. Maybe that’s what’s causing the recurring theme, not that it was the job.
Obviously, there are going to be times when that is the case, that’s why you want to
identify recurring themes.
Then in addition to that, we have a whole series of questions that we ask as well. One of
the questions I like to ask is a little bit off the wall and I’ll say, this question I ask and it is
quite broad and I ask it deliberately so it’s broad, what do you like most about business?
The reason I ask that question is ultimately they’re going to be working in business.
I want someone who’s excited about the idea of building business and being involved in
business. Even though they might see themselves as a content writer, they’re involved in
business. So I want to make sure that they see business as important and not just say, oh,
I’m not really interested. There are a few other questions like that which we have: what are
your strengths, what are your weaknesses? So there are a few questions that we go
through.
From there we get the final few or the final one and then we make a decision based on
them and then we hire them.
Question: Do you do video interviews?


13

Answer: It depends on their internet connection. I think Grace for her interview had video. I
prefer video if you can, just because it’s that connection. I’m a real person. Once you sit
there and you speak to me and you see me, we’re connected a lot better than if you were
just hearing a voice. So where we can, we do.

Welcome to fight club
Once they have been selected, welcome to
Fight Club, here are the different things that
we send them. I’ll send them a welcome
letter. The way that we position ourselves is,
I want them, when they sign up to us, to
feel like I’m signing up to a company. I’m
not signing up to some little one man band
dude who isn’t going to be there.
When people sign up, they want to make sure that they’ve got some good job security.
They want to make sure that they’re signing up to a good company, especially in the
Philippines, it endears them to you even more. So we have a welcome letter, we have a job
description, here’s what you’ll be working on. We just take some of those elements from
the job ad that we write. I outline how I’ll be paying as well. Typically I have a three month
trial period, where I’ll say, look, if you’re not happy with this job for whatever reason, or
we’re not happy, we’ll just part ways and that is all well and good. Also during that period
they’re on a training wage. So they might be on $4 instead of $5 an hour. Then I say at the
end of those three months, we’ll bump it up the extra $1.
I’ll get them to sign a confidentiality agreement as well and we also have a form where we
get them to send out all of their details as well: contact, address, all those sorts of things
and they will send back a signed confidentiality agreement and all of their personal details
to get them to scan it in and email it back to us and then Meagan prints it out. We have a
file for every person who works with us and all of the details are stored in there.
Also right at the outset, I like to set the expectations for them. We have an intro call just
before they start, where I’ll talk them through everything, here’s your work description,
making sure we’re all clear and on the same page and I’ll go through my expectations.


14

I have a list of expectations. I can’t remember them all off by heart but, I expect you to be
open and honest at all times. I expect you, if there is an issue, I don’t mind mistakes, but all
big issues once started out as small issues, so I want to make sure anytime something small
pops up, you tell me at that instant. If you don’t tell me at that instant, and I find out later
on that you knew something was up and you tried to hide it, I don’t like that sort of thing.
What are some other things? I want to make sure they’ve got a thirst for learning, I want to
make sure that they’re continually growing and learning. This is something in your
business that you want to sit down and say, what is important to you, what are your
important values that you want your key star players to exhibit.
I do this even when I hire staff with Meagan and Ben when they came in with me and other
team members. I’ll sit down and go through this with them. I think people appreciate it
because you’re saying, here is what I’m expecting from you. If you don’t think that you can
meet these expectations, tell me. I make them relatively easy, open and honest. If you’re an
A player, that’s a no-brainer. A players, all these things and all of these extra hoops that I
make people go through, it’s looking for that A player. An A player will go the extra
distance and you’re looking for A players.
Expectations on the flip side – I don’t want to be sitting there saying, hey, I need you to do
this, I need you to do that. I also say, hey, here is what you can expect from me. You’ll get
me open, honest and upfront. I don’t beat around the bush. If something needs to be said,
I’ll say it when it needs to be said. I’ll tell them, there are a few other different things. One
of them is I say, I’ll pay you on time every time. A few key things I say, you meet my
expectations and I’ll meet your expectations. It’s a really good way to start working with
someone.
Also very early on I’ll give them an education package to get them up to speed. That’s one
of the reasons we are recording these DVDs. These DVDs are going to be training for my
assistants. One of the first things that they’ll do, they’ll watch you all having your group
mastication and going through this whole process that we’ve gone through today and
then that will just introduce them to what it is that we do and give them a really good
grounding.


15

There’s the SEO method, they’ll now get the DVDs instead of the SEO method, this is 2.0.
The Thirty Day Challenge, for those of you who don’t know, that’s an excellent free
resource. If you type Thirty Day Challenge training, you don’t even have to opt in and you
can go to straight to the download page, sorry Ed. You can jump straight in and you can
actually send your assistants straight to that download page. You can say, I want you to go
through the pre training, I want you to read about Google Reader. You heard me talk
about Google Reader, go to the Thirty Day Challenge thing if you want to learn more about
it and watch the section about Google Reader.
If you want to learn about Market Samurai which is a tool I only briefly mentioned, all you
have to do is go there and you can watch the training. There are so many good free
trainings in there and it’s a great way to get them to start to get their head around all of
the different things.

How to work with them
How we work with them once we get going,
the first thing you want to do is make sure
that you give them that underarm throw, a
really easy task very early on. Show them
what to do. What I mean there is, I’ll record it
on Camtasia or ScreenFlow exactly here’s the
process of what it is that I want you to do. I’ll
record it and document it. I’ll also give them,
where I can, some written notes as well.
Usually what I’ll do is I’ll get a notepad and I’ll write bullet points of everything that I’m
going to cover in the video. Then I’ll record the video and I’ll use the bullet points in the
notepad to make sure I stay on topic. Then I send them a video; in the PS, I write PS here
are the notes from the video, bang. So they’ve got a little bit where they can jump around
and they don’t have to go backwards and forwards between the video. Record them, show
them exactly how to do it. Let them do it with you so the first step when teaching
someone how to do something, is, here let’s do it together and you’ll show them. That’s
why I record the video. Then we’ll do one together.


16

If they’re in the office I’ll sit down and do it with them, otherwise, if they’re virtual, you do
the work and then you get back to me and let me know how you went. Then I’ll let them
do it on their own and I’ll provide feedback. So at that point I’ll say, right, go ahead, do the
work, send it back to me and then I’ll review it and then once I review it, I’ll give them
some feedback points.
If there are some feedback points, I will get them to do the task again. Then they’ll do it
again and I’ll give them more feedback points. Then if there are still feedback points, I’ll
give them those and then I’ll say go do it again. I basically will keep on doing that to the
point at which they do the task perfectly with no feedback. So this is like a process that
we’ve gone through and developed and I think it is important. You’ll go back and look at
these points later.
You may not be at this level yet, but this material when you do get there will save you
hours of heartache. So record them, show them how to do it, let them do it with you, then
let them do it on their own, give them the feedback and then the final thing is every now
and then you’ll review it. Then the very final step after that is then they have to teach
someone else how to do it. Once they do that, then they’ll start to record videos and then
they’ll become that person who then has people underneath them to train them. But
you’ve got to first learn how to do it yourself.

Daily workflow
Now, the daily workflow. This is how we work
with them on a daily basis. The daily work flow
is, you’ll chat with them in the morning. So this
again is talking about the Philippines assistants.
Usually we’ll chat with them in the morning,
five, ten minutes usually at the start when they
first sign on with you it’s going to be a little bit longer. You might have about a half an
hour session. Once they get going, it’s only going to be five or ten minutes a day.
What you’ll do is you’ll review what they’ve worked on in the previous day and you’ll also
set out what today’s plan is. For the review, you’ll just sit there and send an end of day
email. This comes from Eben Pagan’s work and I know Eben Pagan draws from a lot of
different areas, so who knows who the original source was. Ask for an end of day email that
says, what did you do for the day, what did you work on, what issues did you have, any
problems that you had and then any questions that you might have. List them in an email.


17

When they list what it is they work on as well, this is more so for virtual assistants, get them
to append the time that they spent on each one of those tasks next to each of their to dos,
so you can make sure. Sometimes that is just a matter of making sure, not so much,
because when you hire A players you don’t need to worry whether or not they’re taking
advantage of the situation. A players don’t take advantage of the situation. A players work
full out all the time.
The reason that you ask for those times is more so you can find out where they’re getting
stuck on certain things. Or maybe you say, right I want you to do some link building and
here is the type of link building that I want you to do. Then you might find that it is a new
link building method that you’re testing out and it is taking them half an hour to do a little
session. So you calculate over the course of two weeks they’ve spent five hours building
links. Then you say, right I want you to now go over and analyze how many of those links
actually stuck. Three of the links stuck. Ok, so we spent five hours to get three links. That’s
probably not a good use of our time, let’s drop that. So that’s one of the reasons you want
to make sure you log times.
Also we’ve started to build like a repository, a document where we log all of the times that
certain tasks take. So that way, when a new assistant jumps on board, we know, to spin an
article, to post it through to the three websites and to do it well, to AMA, Portal Feeder and
Unique Article Wizard takes about an hour, probably a little bit longer than that. We know
how long it takes so when they start, obviously they’re going to take a little bit longer at
the start, but once they get it, that’s how long it should be taking.
End of day emails are really key and also it’s another underarm catch. You tell them, the
email should only take you five or ten minutes at most. If it’s taking you longer than five or
ten minutes, you’re putting too much detail in that email. It’s also a very underarm throw.
You tell them, I want you to do it every day, at the end of every shift. If they can’t handle
giving you a five to ten minute job every day, then chances are that they’re not going to
work out in the long run anyway. It’s a very good early indication as to the quality of the
individual if they’re going to do the end of day emails because it is such an easy thing.
Here’s something that you don’t hear other people talk about and this is something that I
learned from a podcast called Manager Tools which internet marketers don’t really delve
into. I’m trying to build a business, I’m not doing a one hit wonder promotion, so I ‘m
interested in developing my skills as a manager and it’s a really good one. One of the
things they talk about, really good successful managers in big business have monthly one
on ones with their team members and their directs.

18

So what you’re doing there is every month, I try and do it every month, but sometimes
things get caught up and I might not do it for a month or two. With some virtual assistants
it can be even longer but you want to make sure that you check in with them. You always
start off, and this is where I suppose these guys will get some insight into some of these
monthly one on ones that they might not use. I’ll always start the one on one with the
same question.
I’ll say, how are you going? I use that as a litmus test very early on to say, how are you
going? They’ll say good. You’re always looking for patterns. If they’re saying, good, good,
good, because I keep all of the notes for my one on ones, I’ve got a folder filled with all my
notes from that, good, good and then one day they say, yeah, I’m alright, then there might
be something up. Then that’s when you can chat with them about that.
It’s win, win, it’s not anything sneaky or anything like that. I want to make sure that they’re
happy and enjoying the role so when they come into work, when people, are enjoying
what it is that they’re working on, then you’ll get the best output from them. So it’s win,
win. Not only are they enjoying it but you’re getting the best return on your investment as
well. So I’ll start off with that question and there’s a little bit of insight for you guys. I’ll ask
them as well, what have you been working on and what do you like and don’t like?
Meagan was good at bringing me up on this one. l like to make people happy when
they’re working with me and I try and give them tasks that they really do enjoy. Sometimes
when they tell me there’s a task that they don’t enjoy, I’ll look at ways to try and think, how
can we plug another system underneath them to then outsource that particular task that
they don’t like?
Meagan said a few times and it’s true, even in jobs that you like, there are going to be tasks
that you have to do that you don’t enjoy. So I’m trying to get over that and that is
something for my evolution. I used to think, how can I take that off their hands when
they’re not necessarily enjoying it? As long as, on the whole, they get to work on different
things that they like and they get that creative outlet, then they’re going to be happy. So
what do you like and don’t like? What would you like to work on as well, that helps provide
direction for the business.


19

That’s how we evolved with what we were doing with Melbourne SEO Services. We were
an information marketing business, selling stock market products. We had a massive
network of sites and I was testing all my SEO material on all these little sub sites. Once a
month we’d have a team meeting where we’d get down and we’d plan out what we were
doing and talk about all those sorts of things. The team started to say, hey, we’re evolving
into a search engine optimization company. That was not a direction that I was necessarily
heading in, but I was asking the team what they wanted to work on and we moved in that
direction.
What skills would you like to develop? If they want to work on a particular project, are
there any skills that they need to develop to work on that project and then I’ll help
facilitate that. I’ll give them courses, I’ll do whatever I can. Then at the end, I’ll ask, are there
any questions or comments as well?
From the way things work in the office, I mentioned that we do try and have a meeting
maybe once a quarter where we’ll sit down for half a day and we’ll just strategize out, here
are the different areas of our business, here’s where we’re making most of our money, let’s
do more of where we’re making money. That’s another real key. Sit down, find out what’s
already working and do more of it and where you’re making money. We do that on a
monthly basis.
We’ve just implemented recently, probably the last few months now, once a week, every
Thursday, we’ll sit down and just for half an hour we’ll talk about what’s everybody been
working on. We’ll have fifteen minutes where someone will get the floor and they’ll get to
talk about whatever they want to talk about, to do with business or something that is
going on in their own personal life or something that they can bring to it. That was really
good at bringing the team together even closer and this is not so much for the outsourcers
that I’m talking about, this is more so for the internal office people.


20

Creating systems
The next thing that we’re looking at doing
is you want to, anything where you’re doing
the repetitive tasks, this is where you’re
creating the system. You should only do
repetitive

tasks

once, record

it

with

Camtasia, do whatever you can to get the
system in place, then get it outsourced. You
want to have a written overview and supporting videos. Creating a work wiki, this is a
brilliant idea that came from Jeff Johnson. I flew over to his seminar, that was I think the
most expensive seminar I ever went to, about $10,000. I flew over to Detroit and I think
learning that one idea was just key.
We have now, on our network drive, catalogued all of these different tasks that we do in
our business. It might be basic web work, FTPing, it might be loading an auto responder, it
might be all of the different areas within your business.
At the end of the month I have to prepare some invoices to send off to certain people. I’ve
documented all of that and then on the network drive we have all of that catalogued. So if
anyone’s got a question, they first go to the network drive, try and find the video that
answers their question. If there’s not, then they’ll come to me and sometimes as well, when
they solve the issue for themselves, I’ll say, can you make a video? So it’s almost like the
team is building up this work wiki of all of these short videos that help solve problems.
That was a fantastic addition to our business.
Money is made in the repetition, so when it comes down to SEO and content creation,
that’s why I was talking about, you want to continually do it on a regular basis. If you can
get systems in place that make sure it happens on a regular basis, that’s when you start to
see growth, especially from an SEO point of view. Then that, assuming you’ve got your on
page optimization, and your business funnel that we talked about so long ago at the start
of today, if you’ve got all of those things right, then once you start to create those systems
that’s when you start to create some freedom for yourself.
I still work incredibly long hours and work very, very hard, but I’m putting these systems in
place now where I’m gradually stepping out and stepping back. With Meagan’s help, now I
can take a break over Christmas or I can take a break at the start of the year and know that
the office is going to keep running.


21

My girlfriend doesn’t let me work on the weekends. I get five days a week now, instead of
the full seven. Work tends to expand to fill the space that you give it. Sometimes if you
squash it down into a smaller amount of space, you’ll end up being more productive
anyway because you know, I’ve got this set amount of time and you don’t just find yourself
wasting time.

Tools for the trade
Tools of the trade. Some of the things that
we use to work with virtual assistants are
Google Docs. I showed you an example of
that. That was that Google Doc spreadsheet
of the SEO method that Ian wanted to get a
copy of. That particular Google doc, when
people first sign up with us, or start work
with us, one of the first things we get them to do is open a Gmail account. So that way,
once they open a Gmail account, we’re actually about to change this slightly because
we’ve installed Google Apps on Melbourne SEO Services so that when they sign up they
get grace@melbourneseoservices.com. It’s still done through Gmail but the reason for
doing that, it makes you feel like you’re part of a real business, you’re not someone who is
signing up people under Gmail.
Because it is with Google Apps, what we do is, we can then share documents. So they’ll
sign up and we’ll share with them the documents that they need to work on. Everybody is
working on those docs. We’ve got docs for all different parts of our business. We’ve got
multiple assistants who log in, they will be updating tags, they’ll be updating URLs and
they do all that sort of work. That’s why we started to get them to put their initials, so that
we can make sure who’s doing what and making sure it is being done correctly. Google
Docs is a fantastic addition to building a virtual empire.
You need to get a domain name or use drop boxes as a dumping ground. You want to
have some domain name that’s not really used for anything other than dragging and
dropping things in there. So you give them a video they need to work on, you just drag
and drop it almost like the work wiki, but online. You have to be careful though because
obviously that’s very much your intellectual property.


22

With our network drive, with all of the different videos, that’s my business and that
explains exactly what we do. So we don’t put that work online but we have cut down
versions of that. Meagan put together the process for the way that we do the promotion
for our websites and that component is online, so when an assistant starts, they actually
get the documentation. We’ve got a manual that says, here’s how you do the first wave of
the SEO method. They learn step by step through each one of the different components
and we’ve got supporting videos and all that sort of thing.
Basecamp is another very useful tool and this is how we manage different assistants. We
have a lot of issues when you’re emailing backward and forward as to who said what, what
got said, especially when you start to build a bigger team. We’ve got Andrea who couldn’t
make it here today and she will be watching the videos. She chats with the assistants every
day. Let’s say if Meagan chats with an assistant and says something and then Andrea chats
to an assistant and says something, there needs to be a central meeting place so
everybody knows what’s been said. So we use Basecamp for that.
Everybody gets their own log in, we assign different tasks to different things that need to
be done under Basecamp and then all of it is done. It is almost like a message board. All it
is, it is an online place for you to collaborate where you can upload files, but we don’t use it
so much for the uploading files, it’s more for the central communication to make sure that,
when Meagan is away, Andrea knows exactly what’s going on. When someone else is
away, I can log in and make sure I know exactly where the different assistants are up to. So
Basecamp is the one that we use for that. There are a few other solutions and there is a free
one. Then Skype, Skype is a critical component as well.

The next level
Into the tail end of this session, taking it to the
next level. I told you I was getting too busy
managing all of the different assistants and
that’s when I looked to get people into the
office. Andrea is like an assistants’ supervisor.
So she manages all of the assistants. She does
the daily checking with them, chats with them on the phone in the morning. We’ve got a
separate room out the back where she goes, hops on the mike, has a chat with them, talks
through their end of day email, says how are you going, any questions, any issues, ok, what
is the plan for today?


23

So that gets done every day. I like that everyday contact because that’s what connects your
assistants to you. When you’re working in a virtual environment, unless you’re making that
personal contact, it’s too easy for them to separate and not feel like they’re a part of your
business. So that’s a really key thing to make sure everybody gets chatted with everyday.
Meagan is more of the project manager now. She used to work with the assistants but now
she manages the office and makes sure that Andrea has what she needs and Meagan will
get conceptually in her head, ok, here are the different things that we’re working on and
then makes sure that that gets passed on to Andrea who then makes sure that gets pushed
through to the different assistants.
My suggestion for hiring people in your office, especially for project management and
supervisory type roles. Hire Mums, they’re stable, they’ve had their kids, a lot of them aren’t
looking to climb up the corporate ladder at this point of time, it’s more of a lifestyle thing.
Sometimes they just want to be involved in something rather than sitting at home doing
their own thing, they enjoy coming into the office. They have excellent experience, a lot of
them have already worked in corporate backgrounds and then had kids, got out of the
workforce, so return to work Mums are really good. They have a really good work ethic. So
we’ve got a few Mums in the office because they’re really good.
Depending on what the task is, we do also hire people straight out of uni as well, and
depending on what they’re skill set is, that’s not a hard and fast rule but when you hire
people straight out of uni, sometimes they’re already on the cutting edge for different
technologies. They’re familiar with web 2.0 and there’s not that education process, but
what you’ve got to understand is, you’ll grow with them up to a certain point and then
typically they’ll move on because they’ve got their career and the rest of their lives to go.


24

80/20 rule
The final piece for this one is the 80:20. Start
building a team straight away. Use Rent A
Coder, get yourself a virtual bench and then
when you can start to look to outsource to
the Philippines. Only build A players, I can’t
stress that enough. It will make all the
difference. Assign work based on outcomes
not keeping people busy. This is the key insight that I had probably about six months ago
or twelve months ago. I used to think more about keeping people busy than I was thinking
about what the actual outcome was.
So you need to think in your head, I have a project that I want to take through to
completion and that is when I’m going to get paid. When I was talking about focus at the
start of the day, you need to make sure that you think about the AA and think about, I
want to get that project and then start to outsource based on the outcome that you’re
looking to get. Don’t just keep people busy, otherwise they’ll end up working on tasks that
aren’t getting you closer to the outcome.
Outsource what you’re not good at or you don’t like. That’s a good place to start, play to
your strengths as I talked about. You want to make sure that you focus on what it is that
you’re good at. I’m good at content creation, I’m good at the marketing, I’m good at the
vision, that’s what I focus on. Then you make sure that you get other people who
complement those other parts of your business.
Start working on your business, not in your business. There’s a Michael Gerber E-Myth type
quote for you. That’s what I think the project manager really does help you to do. It
enables you to take a step back because they’re handling things from a day to day and
then you can approach things from a new perspective.
So any questions on working with a virtual assistant team?
Question: It seems like there might not be exactly a contradiction but a challenge in what
you were just saying about working on a single project but at the same time not worrying
too much about what you team’s doing. What I mean is, if you’ve got a video person,
there’s only a certain amount of video that needs to be done in the project and then it’s
done and then you’re doing other things. If you’re not starting on another project, then
that video person is going to be sitting idle. Maybe in that case you shouldn’t have taken
them on full time, I’m not sure. Is there sometimes an argument for working on multiple
projects so that all these people are doing their bit?

25

Answer: If you made a commitment to that person where you will be paying them, then
obviously you don’t want to have them sitting on their hands and you want to make sure
that you keep them busy and you’ll skill them up to do other areas as well. There is always
something that can be done. They can be creating systems. If they know their particular
role inside and out and they’ve come to the end of the video job, start getting them
working on building a system so that they create something in place so they can step back.
Yes, if you have committed to a certain number of hours, where I think of some of the
assistants where they’re not on an hourly rate for us, then I’ll be more outcome driven. I
still try and think outcome driven if they are working for me in a more full time capacity,
but there is a little bit of a balance there. I think Meagan has a comment she wants to add
to that.
Meagan: I think also just to clarify that point,
you can have numerous projects that are
actually going on in the workplace, but I
think what you meant, Dave, was actually
business ventures as such, when you said
focus on one project. It’s more like a
business focus. What area of internet
marketing are we going to focus on for this month, rather than trying to put all our eggs in
one basket and not have an actual business focus that we’re going to achieve.
Answer: We’ll strategize that, we’ll strategize what is our outcome in those monthly
meetings and then we start to assign tasks to the assistants based on outcome, based on
what it is that we’ve talked about, rather than keeping them busy. We know what it is.
Does that help answer that question?
Did you have anything you wanted to add Meagan, with working with virtual assistants?
Meagan: You covered it all quite thoroughly, the only other thing could think of, was not
falling into the trap of having all your virtual assistants thinking you’re getting a lot of
productivity out of them because they’re at such a low pay rate. Some of them may not
realize that they’re meant to use a self initiating work style.


26

So you might find that they’re on Skype all day to you, asking little questions here and
there and then it consumes your whole day and your tasks that you’re meant to be doing
haven’t been achieved by the end of the day. So letting them know very early on in the
piece, do the work they can do during the day and with their end of day emails, that’s
when they put in any questions, any stumbling blocks that they had, anything that they’re
actually querying and that way it doesn’t waste your time.


27

How To Build An All-Star Team Through Outsourcing

Recomendados

Recomendados

Más contenido relacionado

Más de David Jenyns

Más de David Jenyns (10)

Último

Último (20)

How To Build An All-Star Team Through Outsourcing