by Jason Linett
My most profitable projects began as drawings on blank sheets of paper. A pencil sketch on the back of an envelope generated $40,000 of new business. I’ve built websites and designed multi-step online educational programs with this method, even though I’ve got a reputation of crashing my own websites because I thought I could fix them. I design best in a “bare bones” environment: a single-color pen on a white sheet of paper. I do my best writing in the Notepad or TextEdit applications on a computer. If I’m not allowed to change the fonts or size of the text, my 100% focus is on crafting the written message. Avoid the distraction of making it pretty. That comes later.
I can now pass the work off to someone with the necessary skills to turn the idea into a reality. As outsourcing is sometimes an international dialogue, my preferred method is to “show” rather than “tell.” I’ll make a video with my smartphone explaining the project or use screen-recording software like Camtasia to describe the task. I’ll talk through the project and upload the video privately online.
Remember these magic words: “Make this pretty.”
You might even begin with a model to emulate. It’s important to not rip off someone else’s idea, though their ideas may inspire you. My local hypnosis business website was modeled from the website of a nail salon in California. I’m not in the business of doing manicures and pedicures. Not yet, at least. However, the layout of nail salon’s site clearly featured their top three services. Everything else was in a drop-down menu called “Other.” Their website inspired a pen-and-paper sketch, and my design team built something new from the ground up. I’d bet the nail salon wouldn’t even recognize any hint of their website that inspired my site!
This method of modeling is a model of other models. Disney’s The Lion King is a retelling of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet . The George Clooney movie Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? is an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey . A friend of mine once worked writing for afternoon soap operas and children’s cartoons. Imagine the massive number of scripts they would have to produce! He shared the story that one time he literally threw a dart at a bookcase full of classical works of literature. He found a theme in a story that seemed interesting and adapted the conflict for the characters in his script.
Here are your other magic words: “Make me one like this.”
Keep your focus on the service or product you expertly provide while others expertly handle the technology. Where do you find these people? I recommend using your local network or exploring peer-reviewed outsourcing website communities. At the time of this printing, I’ve found the best service from the website Upwork.
Unfortunately, I’ve met people who would now turn off at the mention of outsourcing. They cry out, “I’ve tried that, and it didn’t work for me.” Remember, it’s very rarely the platform, it’s almost always the strategy.
The mistake I often see people make is they jump into the task too quickly. They metaphorically try to consummate the outsourcing relationship before the first date. Take them out for coffee before getting too intimate !
Start with a micro-task. Do you need a new website? Start your process earlier in the relationship as you hire someone capable of web design to help you build a logo. Consider this task your first date as you learn about their responsiveness. Now you can decide whether to continue the relationship. Expand the job to request a graphic design of a new website: just the design, not the actual build. Perhaps now expand to having them build out the navigation menu and home page, now the entire site.
Remember the Bill Murray movie What About Bob? Dr. Leo Marvin was right: BABY STEPS! If the person you’ve hired becomes unreliable or unable to follow instruction, you have the ability to exit the situation before it became a relationship. Politely exit the contract, pay for the services already rendered, and hire someone new. The benefit of peer-reviewed sites like Upwork is that you can explore a person’s reviews and portfolio even before hiring.
How do you make payment? I suggest starting with pay-by-assignment tasks. Offer a specific rate for a logo, then a specific rate for the full site. As you’re now satisfied with their quality of work, pivot the relationship into a by-the-hour role as needed. Here’s a life-changing strategy: pay them for their time to connect via web-conference software like Skype or Zoom to share their screen and teach you how to make small updates to your website. This may be helpful for simple tasks like updating a blog or adding a quick thank you page. Deepen the relationship by pivoting into a monthly contract. Having a relationship with an ongoing outsourcer expedites your process as you further systematize your business. My programmer and I can launch a new membership product online in a single day. I can share a photo with my designer, and she nails the podcast design for a Facebook ad for a class on the first draft. I also don’t have to spend my time looking for new people to help me!
My favorite outsourcing story was the time I attempted to update the layout on one of my websites. I was up early one morning and felt inspired. “I can probably do the task myself faster than I can send the design notes,” I unfortunately believed. I crashed the entire website. I frantically sent S.O.S. messages to my programmer who fixed the issue in minutes. She also temporarily locked me out of my own website because “you keep screwing it up, and this is why you pay me.” Some people would be offended by this action and end the contract. I gave her a raise.
“I can’t afford to outsource” is an objection I often hear. I’ll reply you can’t afford not to outsource. I trust you’ve already realized the value of outsourcing from the stories I’ve shared with you. In addition to the value, please let it become a balance of priorities. I’m amazed by people who will spend $5,000 on flights, hotels, and convention registration to attend a conference but will not give someone $40 to make their business card look decent. Pay yourself first to reinvest in your success.
The value of including outsourcing in this “Design Systems” dialogue is that you don’t have to fall into the virus of “Superhero Syndrome.” Break past the expectation that you have to do it all yourself. The brick wall of “I don’t know how to do that” becomes an incredible doorway to letting someone else make your ideas better. Given the shape of your business, everything I’ve shared with you can also translate to hiring additional staff either part-time or full-time.
Thinking of your business as a series of systems helps you to know where you are at all points of your entrepreneurial journey. Remember the story from the “Print Money” chapter when my webhosting company was hacked? I ran the system of getting out into my community and networking. Think in terms of systems, and you will know how to turn your business on and off.
Building systems allows you to duplicate yourself. Empower yourself to exponentially increase your productivity and your income. WORK SMART by spending time working less. Focus your time on scaling up your business or time with your family.
The real question: what’s working, what’s not working, and what can you hand off to someone else ?
WORK SMART ACTION STEPS:
☞ What would it be like to create an employee manual for yourself? Designing systems doesn’t have to only be a technical task involving software and a virtual team. Like the story of revisiting network marketing when my websites crashed, I knew exactly what to do to turn my business back on. Track the efforts necessary that make each part of your business WORK SMART more consistently.
☞ Run the imaginary exercise of dividing your business personality into a few dozen hypothetical parts. Some of these potential “parts” could include doing your service, producing your product, promoting your work, updating your website, responding to emails, and taking care of your own accounting. These parts of you are your “staff.” Make a note of which parts absolutely MUST be done by you. The threat of “downsizing” or “layoffs” can be terrifying if you’re an employee. However, it’s exhilarating as an entrepreneur! Fire yourself for the tasks that don’t 100% require you!
☞ Start small. Re-read the outsourcing syst
em I outlined to start with a micro-task and evolve it into a relationship. Your physical or virtual staff may be skilled technicians, but they’re not psychics. A principle of hypnotic communication is “the meaning of the communication is the response it gets.” Recognize that you will have a learning curve to best express what you want a job to be.
☞ Take good care of the people you work with. Put the words “please” and “thank you” in your instructions as you communicate. Send the occasional bonus for a job well done. They may be your staff, but they’re still people. They will help you design an incredible lifestyle for yourself, so be sure they know you appreciate their work.
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SCALE UP
The world has become a lot smaller. It’s never been easier to pivot a small business into a global brand. Let’s talk about growth. You’re about to learn to WORK SMART in order to “Scale Up.”
In this chapter, you’ll find methods to expand your business beyond the nine-to-five lifestyle. Thanks to the systems you’ve designed in the previous chapter, you’ll be able to focus your time strictly on those things you enjoy doing to continue the growth of your business year-after-year.
What got you started in business may not be the mechanism that helps you to grow. Just like a baby that has to figure out how to crawl before it can stand up and walk, you’ll WORK SMART in your thinking to evolve your business to the next phase of your own success.
We’ll talk about the mindset of hunting dollars rather than chasing down pennies, how to overcome competitive self-imposed limitations, and the ability to convert your knowledge into a passive income project that earns you money while you sleep.
To “Scale Up” is to reach new audiences and increase the value you share with your clients. By providing more opportunities for your value, you create more opportunities to receive value in return. You earn more money.
This is an important distinction: provide more value as you receive more value. Operate your business from a place of integrity; you’ll create an irreplaceable brand that may keep your business growing as long as you like.
Remember the filter of “more of the same or scale up?” Look at the steps you take in your business to gauge whether your efforts will keep you producing similar results or continue to grow greater success.
Be aware that it’s all right to keep that status quo if that’s what you want. You may have built your business to operate at the specific level of your own choosing. It’s fine to embrace that. There’s one segment of my business that is basically on autopilot. It’s not my desire to release it or increase it. It’s a segment of live programs that I’ve mostly “retired” myself from doing by subcontracting these events. The income benefits the people I hire, the clients remain satisfied, and it provides another flow of income on top of everything else I’m doing .
Keep up what you’re doing if you want to keep up what you’re doing. One of my consulting clients was already operating a business in which she saw, at a minimum, thirty-five private clients a week. We talked through the steps of product creation, design, and promotion to expand her passive income business. She successfully launched several new programs. When we were through working, she gave me the biggest hug and said something that surprised and inspired me. The experience helped her validate that her true passion was working one-to-one with her clients. She loved the learning and received the unexpected benefit of realizing it was time to raise her rates. I see no conflict with this. She was already extremely successful in her business endeavors, and she realized she loved things as they were. If it ain’t broke, right?
Let’s bring it back to your story. Where do you want things to grow? Where do you want more freedom? There’s a danger in working strictly in a dollars-for-hours model. It can wear you down. It can leave you in a business where you’re stuck only earning an income if you’re physically there doing the job. People who live this way often fear taking vacations. They avoid situations in which they could miss out on business. They live by their phone and have a hard time shutting down to relax. They position their lives to be dependent on a week-to-week or month-to-month lifestyle .
Retirement is never a choice and time off is rarely an option for them. They’re stuck working for their own business. The opportunity to step away and enjoy the later years of life is a fantasy to those who positioned themselves so that their livelihood depends on the next payment. The exception to this is the old saying that “if you love what you’re doing, you never work a day in your life.” Let’s be honest. Some days it’s work. Some days it’s a job. The opportunity to “Scale Up” allows you to step away from the requirements of a standard workweek. If you stick with a dollars-for-hours model of business, the only opportunities are to either work more hours or charge more money. This can be done, but it can wear on you.
Systems are the key to scaling up. As you view your business from the perspective of building systems, you empower your time to branch out and build up. Know where your current business is coming from, know where the money is already flowing in, and know where to duplicate it. As you build an entrepreneurial adventure that easily runs on its own, it’s easier to let your current state of business run like a machine so you can explore new opportunities.
Develop your systems to the point that you know what works best for success. Scaling up is easy as you know when and where to duplicate yourself. You know where to spend your time and money. The phone rings at my hypnosis office. Someone is trying to sell me a print ad for a newspaper in the community. I’m able to politely decline because my systems have already demonstrated where my ideal clients come from. Putting my business out to the general community in a non-targeted way hasn’t worked in my experience. Be specific to be terrific. A print ad would just deliver “more of the same” rather than the opportunity to “Scale Up.”
That doesn’t mean the interaction is over. There may be a benefit to pivot the conversation to what personal development columns they’re currently featuring. This is the exact situation I created years ago to write a monthly column for a local newspaper. The visibility and credibility of the article were much more valuable than another advertisement. This reinforces the lesson of “Be the expert, not the vendor.” The entire WORK SMART way of thinking moved into full throttle as I printed color copies of the articles and mailed them to influencers and decision-makers in my community. Build assets and leverage them!
As you “Scale Up,” consider the classic 80/20 principle. Frequently 80% of your success comes from 20% of what you do. Scaling requires the decision to let go of the bottom percentage of your business. This is a bit of a leap as it may mean letting some income streams go. You could alternatively job this work out as I previously mentioned or bring on additional staff. What got you started may not keep you growing .
Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you have to do it for the rest of your life. I loved my theater job, but I knew when it was time to go. I loved traveling the country and working with public schools, but the long hours on the road didn’t mesh with my personal goals. I still occasionally do these motivational programs at schools, though, most often, I now subcontract it out.
The trigger to “Scale Up” sometimes is that your message needs a bigger audience. I used to host a local MeetUp group. This event was always free. I would put out coffee, tea, snacks, and often pay the guest speakers a respectable amount of money to be a featured speaker. The attendees never were asked to pay for their attendance.
Another group met a few miles away. They had a reputation of being predatory in making sure every attendee paid $10 to cover their event’s expense. My focus was elsewhere. By hosting a quality networking group and by welcoming people into a positive environment, the venture was indirectly profitable. Because of the visibility and the quality experiences I produced, people became my private clients or invested in my training programs. A single night’s event could result in $10,000 or more.
Where would you rather focus? $10 a hea
d or $10,000 in total? Don’t let the pennies distract you from the dollars .
Place value on the soft skills that you gained from your start-up years. My programs for high school events built the presentational foundation necessary to now speak in the corporate world. The previous career of management in professional theater prepared me for the mindset of automation and the integrity of delivering the same high-value presentation, even if it’s the hundredth time I’ve done it. Embrace the skills and strengths you’ve gained to leverage these as assets well into your future.
The seed for this “Scale Up” mentality was planted when I hosted the MeetUp group. While the attendees were outstanding people and good friends of mine, I was looking at the same faces each month. I wanted to reach a bigger audience. This was my catalyst to start to podcast, write, speak, shoot videos, and attend conferences. This also shifted the focus of my business away from one-to-one to one-to-many.
Will broadcasting a message to a larger audience dilute the power of your message? My experience is the opposite. I’ve expanded my reach to people who get to know the work I do, and I sold more training or personal services. You’ll discover the mental triggers that make this possible in the “Lead Generation” chapter.
If you are providing a valuable experience, I would suggest that it is your ethical responsibility to scale up your business! Serve a larger audience and expand the reach of your message. Take a moment to brainstorm how what you do could be adapted for a larger audience. Increasing your reach will help more people discover you. The other benefit is that they’ll already be in rapport with you by the time they make personal contact. Your value increases as a result. You’ve heard of a sales funnel. I call this “Positioning yourself at the end of the funnel.”
Some people in business are held back from scaling by the fear that someone else is out there providing a similar service. Why does there need to be another version? Why would someone buy from me? Check out the book Strive : Your Life is Short, Pursue What Matters from author Tim Hiller. He writes, “Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.” People need to hear your story. People need your variation on a common theme. Plus, we all start somewhere. That person you may be comparing yourself to also had to start somewhere. Just get started, establish momentum, and focus on doing things to the best of your abilities.