outsourcing

3 Truths About Spending Money On Your Business

February 10, 2016 by Marc Guberti 3 Comments

Money. There will be no other thing in the world that we are so familiar with but don’t know much about. Money provides us with more purchasing power as consumers and business owners.

We use money to make investments, buy products, and all of that stuff.

But when you spend money on your business, money takes an entirely new dimension. The way you spend your money on your business can entirely make or break your business. It’s that important.

As a Daymond John brand ambassador, I was lucky enough to get an early copy of Power Of Broke. It is a book that I highly recommend for all entrepreneurs.

In the book, Daymond discussed money in a way that fascinated me. I learned new things about money, its benefits, and the potential destruction that it can cause.

I combined the knowledge I learned from Power Of Broke with my own knowledge with spending money on my business. Most of the money I spend is for outsourcing.

However, I am also spending money on important tools like HootSuite Pro and Dropbox.

The fascination from Power Of Broke combined with my prior knowledge resulted in these three truths that I present to you in this blog post.

#1: Having Too Much Money Can Be A Bad Thing

Huh? That was my initial reaction when Daymond John introduced this idea in his book. We are raised in a world where the more money you have, the better you do. That’s true for the most part.

The problem with having too much money to spend for your business is that everything about your business may suddenly become complex. The mission changes. There may suddenly be a stronger focus on making money than satisfying the customer.

When businesses have more spending power, the challenge is discovering the best way to spend the money. Sometimes marketing teams get it right. Other times they mess up.

Think New Coke, if you even remember what that is (I only know about New Coke from Daymond’s book).

So don’t live in the mindset that you need to have a lot of money to be successful. Sometimes money complicates the issue and shifts the business plan from a simple success to a complex collapse waiting to happen.

Part of it has something to do with whose hands the money is in 🙂

It is very possible to become successful with a lot of money, but it’s not the only thing you need to become successful.

#2: Gradually Increasing Spending So A Profit Is Always Maintained

The amount of money I spend each month is dependent on the amount of revenue I will receive in that month. That’s because I am focused on making a profit.

And in the end, the profit is all that really matters in the money-making game. Your business could be making $300,000 in sales every year, but if you spend $400,000 every year to keep your business going, then you’re swimming in debt.

I’d rather be the debt-free person who makes $10,000 every year.

When my revenue increases, my spending also increases. With that in mind, my revenue always increases more than my spending.

That’s because I view profit differently from most people.

Most people view making a profit as getting the scraps. These people think of profit like this:

Revenue – Expenses = Profit

With this equation, the profit barely gets any attention. It’s simply the result after revenue and expenses are accounted.

Here is how I view profit.

Revenue – Profit = Expenses

Now expenses are the last thing I focus on. The amount of money I can spend is dependent on revenue and the money that I choose to keep for myself.

In this equation, profit receives more attention and plays a big role in how much money can actually get spent. This added attention discourages a negative profit and encourages the business owner to always maintain a profit.

Gradually increasing spending as your revenue increases boosts the likelihood of you securing a profit.

This tip would be incomplete without a big shout out to Mike Michalowicz for writing the book Profit First where I first came across this new approach to making a profit.

#3: Maintaining A Budget Will Inspire You And Teach You A Lot About Money

A focus on making a profit also comes with a focus on maintaining a budget. With the Profit First equation in play, you can’t spend more money than you make.

That means your budget is a real budget. You can’t go over it.

There will be times when that budget leaves you frustrated. And that’s a good thing because the frustration challenges you to think outside of the box.

Maybe you have a budget of spending $500/month, and you are currently spending $490/month. You want to hire someone who can manage your social media accounts because you read one of my blog posts about outsourcing.

The problem is the person you want to hire will cost you $30/month. That can’t happen since you would be over the budget.

What do you do then?

You look at all of the ways that you are currently spending your money.

How are you wasting your money? How can you spend less to get the same result you are getting anyway? Are certain opportunities you are pursuing not worth the cost (or not as good as the outsourcing)?

In other words, how can you squeak $20/month out of your current spending so you can hire the person to manage your social media accounts?

Let’s say you manage to find $20/month that you were not spending properly and you hire the person to manage your accounts.

Now you are at the $500/month budget. However, you will get exposed to different tools, training courses, and opportunities that cost you money.

Especially outsourcing because once you successful outsource one part of your business, you’ll want to outsource as much of your business as possible. The cost can add up to a lot.

No lie there.

So how do you spend money when your budget is at its max? The answer is that you make more money so you can expand your budget.

If you make $2,000/month and want to save $1,500/month, then that’s how the budget is $500/month.

If you make more money, then you have the option to spend more money.

Imagine how different the budget would look if you were making $20,000/month. Let’s keep everything in proportion and assume you would want to save $15,000/month.

Now the budget is $5,000/month. That’s looking a lot better than the other budget. But the only way to reach that budget is by making more money.

Then think about what that budget would allow you to do. Imagine all of the time you would save and all of the opportunities you could now actively get involved in.

You’ll become a hungry entrepreneur who will put in more work than most people as you charge towards success. Literally charge because no successful entrepreneur ever walks their way to success.

In Conclusion

When you spend money on your business, you are forced to make decisions. The dollars you spend on outsourcing cannot get spent on online advertising or anything else.

Every dollar matters. Whether you are trying to make a bigger profit from advertising or save time with outsourcing, you must consider all of the ways that you are spending your money.

Analyzing how you spend your money will allow you to make better decisions with what you do with your revenue.

And remember, it doesn’t matter how much money you make. What matters is your profit.

Which of these truths about money do you believe is the most important? Do you have any other truths about money to share? Sound off in the comments section below.

5 Blogging Tasks You Must Outsource Now

December 18, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

The biggest lesson I recently learned is that outsourcing most of your work is essential. The way people increase their productivity when they “hit a peak” is by outsourcing.

For a long time, I was a lone wolf. I managed to make it, but making it wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted to excel.

The way my workload and schedule were set up, I had no extra time to excel. At the time, it seemed like a legitimate excuse.

It’s funny how when we make excuses, the sound legitimate to us at the time. Outsourcing most of my workload eliminated that excuse.

Most of my social media activity is now outsourced. Outsourcing is the only reason I could focus more of my time towards Udemy and still write these blog posts.

It was scary to hand over some of my power to someone else, but it was worth it. You need a team of freelancers who can lighten your workload.

Now with social media outsourcing mastered, my eyes are now set to outsourcing many of the activities that happen on this blog. The end goal is that I only do two things with this blog:

Write content
Engage with readers like you in the comments section
Promote my content (and most of that is outsourced)

Everything else I do with this blog stands in my way. That’s how I choose to see it. I have outsourced many activities that once stood in my way. The result: more time for myself and my business.

So what should every blogger outsource right now? Here are the big five:

#1: Editor

No matter how great you are at writing content, you are bound to make some mistakes. You wouldn’t want a typo ruining the way people perceive your blog—and even worse—how they perceive you.

With so many blogs on the web, we expect a great experience. Any flaw has the potential to depreciate the experience.

Depending on how many blog posts you write, proofreading your blog posts may take up hours of your time every week. The worst part is that you may skip over the mistakes as you rush to read your blog posts.

If you proofread your blog posts too early, you may not even notice the mistakes. Here’s where a proofreader comes in.

Right when you finish writing a blog post, you can submit that blog post to the proofreader. Then, have that proofreader double-check your blog post for any errors. You can even ask this proofreader to add additional value to your content or reword certain paragraphs.

When I proofread my blog posts, I rely on spell check. Sometimes I will proofread my blog posts from start to finish, but that takes too much time.

If you find yourself proofreading your blog posts too much (or typos find their way on your blog), you should hire an editor to make sure your content is sharp.

#2: Picture Creation

For the most part, this blog has had a fair amount of eye-popping pictures but also a fair amount of decent pictures. Just like any blogger, I want more eye-popping pictures in my blog posts.

I heard about a free tool called Canva. It is an AMAZING tool for creating free pictures. However, I didn’t have enough time to create awesome pictures with Canva. Some of the pictures I created for my blog posts were nice. Other pictures were decent.

So I decided to outsource that part of my blog.

I no longer create the pictures you see on the top of my blog posts. I hire a freelancer who knows far more than I do about creating eye-popping pictures.

It would take me 10 minutes just to create a picture and insert it into the blog post. The same process now takes me less than 15 seconds (I just get the provided picture and insert it into the blog post).

In other words, I shaved off 9 minutes and 45 seconds from the blog scheduling process—for each blog post I schedule.

All of that extra time adds up.

#3: Content Research

Providing data to support your content will give you more authority in your niche. There is a difference between saying, “Twitter is great for business” and providing credible statistics and facts that explain why Twitter is great for business.

That data comes from content research. It is simply the process of using Google or Bing to find articles and information that would strengthen your content.

Some blogs rely more heavily on content research than others. If you find yourself Googling and Binging too often for the sake of your content, a content researcher is the next person you should hire.

Even if you know how to find the right information to strengthen your content, outsource the work.

Successful entrepreneurs don’t exclusively outsource that tasks they don’t know how to do. They also outsource the time consuming tasks, even if the task is relatively simple. Time is money, and entrepreneurs always need more time.

#4: SEO

Let’s be honest. SEO is a bear. Technically, it’s a panda or penguin depending on what Google chooses to call it. Of course, the updates are named after the innocent animals that we aren’t scared of.

But for many people, SEO is this giant maze that seems to double in size when you think the finish line is near.

And if you are one of the people who knows a lot about keyword research and SEO, then you know it takes a large amount of time.

Which keywords to choose? What description would work the best? So many questions and so much work once you know the answers.

Outsourcing your blog’s SEO solves that problem.

However, you want to be very careful when you outsource your blog’s SEO. There is a lot of contradictory advice and not all SEO experts are actually experts.

If you choose to hire a freelancer, ask that freelancer who he/she has already worked for and how much the freelancer knows. If you know a lot about SEO, simply tell the freelancer what you would do and then have the freelancer do it.

#5: Someone To Add The Finishing Touches

Consistent bloggers almost never hit the “Publish” button. We click the “Schedule” button. We must designate the time and date in which all of our blog posts must be published.

Then we add categories and tags to our blog posts to make it easier for readers to navigate through our blogs.

Depending on your blog, you may have numerous finishing touches to make once you write the content and have all of the picture ready.

I have to play around with the HTML to make the big text a specific size. Here is the HTML I manually type in to make the big text the way it is:

<span style=“font-size: x-large;”>#5 Someone To Add The Finishing Touches</span>

Manually making that change takes up time too, and I am sure you have to make similar finishing touches.

Imagine if those finishing touches were all done for you. Outsourcing those finishing touches to other freelancers makes that possible.

In Conclusion

As first glance, outsourcing is scary. Outsourcing requires trust and a willingness to hand over some of your workload to someone else.

Once you become comfortable with outsourcing, you will quickly find extra time in your day. Imagine half of your workload suddenly getting taken off of your shoulders.

The amount of time you would save. The goals you would accomplish. Just imagine it.

Outsourcing makes it possible. Out of all of the tasks associated with a successful blog, those five tasks are the ones you need to look into outsourcing now.

Even if you can’t outsource all five of those tasks now, outsource at least one of those tasks.

Which of these tasks do you think is the most important to outsource? Do you know any other tasks in the blogging process that you believe should be outsourced? Sound off in the comments section below.

What To Outsource In Your Twitter Strategy

November 18, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Twitter, just as all social networks, is a double-edged sword. Twitter can provide many opportunities, but it can also take up too much of our time. Small business owners constantly want to utilize social networks like Twitter but rarely have enough time to do so.

Twitter is the main reason I became a digital marketing expert. Once I got comfortable with Twitter, it was easier to get comfortable with the other social networks. In addition to the comfort, most of the interviews and guest blogging opportunities came directly from people who first saw me on Twitter.

Then time became a factor. During my junior year of high school, I had so little time for my business that the only thing I could focus on was Twitter. I saw the growth of my audience and was happy. However, I wasn’t fully utilizing the revenue generating opportunities.

Many small business owners find themselves on the seesaw with social media activity on one side and revenue generating activity (quicker revenue versus long-term revenue and social proof you get from social media) on the other side.

No matter how much you try, you won’t perfectly balance on the seesaw. Unless you have freelancers working for you.

The most significant decision I have made for my business in 2015 was outsourcing my workload. The only thing I do on Twitter now is engage with my followers. Virtually everything else I do on Twitter is outsourced.

This one decision has saved me an enormous amount of time. I want you to see similar results. Here’s what you need to outsource in your Twitter strategy:

#1: Prewritten Tweets

Many Twitter users find themselves tweeting the same type of content. Some Twitter users find themselves tweeting the same tweets in a cycle. If you are not one of these two Twitter users, you may find it difficult to schedule any tweets at all.

Regardless of which type of tweeter you are, outsourcing that work solves the problem. All of my tweets are scheduled by someone else. That saves me 15 minutes per day. 15 minutes per day may not seem like a lot, but the crumbs add up.

We all want to be successful on social media. Therefore, it only makes sense to look at successful social media accounts. Take a look at The Huffington Post’s account. Arriana Huffington does not publish the tweets that show up on @HuffingtonPost.

All of the top brands have social media management teams. However, you don’t need to be as big as The Huffington Post to outsource your tweets. You can find a freelancer on a place like Fiverr or UpWork. Then tell the freelancer what types of tweets you want them to write and publish on your account. Be specific.

Then you can devote your time towards other areas of your business. If you find yourself tweeting multiple on-the-fly tweets, you can potentially anticipate those tweets (i.e. if you know you will tweet affiliate links for the next three weeks) and tell the freelancer to schedule the tweets.

#2: Audience Growth

Imagine gaining hundreds of Twitter followers every day without being on Twitter every day. Just a year ago, I thought this was impossible. I thought I would have to put in all of the work to grow my Twitter audience.

Then I hired a freelancer and told him what to do. Now that part of my strategy is automated. This decision allowed me to save an extra 30 minutes per day.

Remember how those small crumbs add up. Now I’m saving 45 minutes per day (and Twitter isn’t the only thing I outsourced so I save more time than 45 minutes).

Learn how to grow your audience and examine how your freelancer grows your audience. That way, you are bound to achieve rapid audience growth without putting in any time.

#3: Account Problems

One of my CSV files had a bug where apostrophes were replaced by question marks. Here’s what happened:

Original Tweet: 5 Ways To Boost Your Blog’s Traffic

With The Bug: 5 Ways To Boost Your Blog??s Traffic

I told my freelancer (the one who schedules my tweets) about the problem. I proposed some ideas about why the problem occurs and then my freelancer was on it.

I no longer worry about these issues because I have a team around me putting in the time to fix these issues.

#4: Engagement

Engagement is the one thing on this list that I will never outsource. For some people however, it may be a good idea to outsource the interaction between your account and your followers. That depends on the amount of interaction your account receives each day and if you feel comfortable with someone interacting with them for you.

If you don’t interact with your followers because you don’t have the time, then outsource this part of your Twitter strategy. It’s better for your Twitter interaction to get outsourced than it is for no interaction to happen at all. Be very careful with this one. Make sure you set very clear expectations with this one.

In Conclusion

Outsourcing your Twitter strategy will open up more time that you can repurpose towards other areas in your business. When you choose to outsource your Twitter strategy, the only thing you must do is make sure your freelancers are doing their work.

In the beginning, never assume that you and your freelancers are on the same page. It is usual for miscommunications to occur in the beginning until you and your freelancers get into a groove. Look over their work and make sure they are doing a great job.

What are your thoughts about outsourcing your Twitter strategy? What do you want to start outsourcing? Do you have any ideas for other parts of the Twitter strategy that you believe should get outsourced? Sound off in the comments section below.

My Outsourcing Case Study

October 14, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

A common theme on my blog lately has been outsourcing. The reason I have mentioned outsourcing in many of my blog posts is because of the following

I recently started outsourcing most of my work
Writing about outsourcing inspires me to outsource more of my work
Time is valuable, and we all need more of it

Some entrepreneurs go as far as saying that if you aren’t outsourcing any part of your business, then you are not a real entrepreneur. Ouch!

When I first discovered people said that, I thought to myself, “I’m an entrepreneur if I don’t outsource.”

If you don’t outsource, then you are still an entrepreneur. However, you aren’t as good as you could be. If Tim Cook had to worry about responding to all customer emails and pitching iPhones in the Apple Store every day, he wouldn’t have any time to lead the company to success.

You can’t do it all by yourself. I only discovered this when I decided to outsource some of my workload. Since then, I have outsourced various areas of my business. Here are three notable things I outsourced in August 2015:

All Pinterest activity (except comments)
All Twitter activity (except interaction)
All intro pictures for my blog posts

When you put the three together, it takes an hour of my time every day. Now I’ve got that hour back. I feel like a more productive entrepreneur, as I should. That hour now goes into creating additional videos for my training courses.

I don’t even edit the videos anymore. I hired someone for that too 🙂

Right now, I am saving close to 10 hours of my time every week because of outsourcing. Put those hours together and I save 520 hours every year. Outsourcing those four parts of my business allowed me to get 21 days back.

We feel great when we get an hour back, so getting 21 days back put me on cloud nine. My goal is to get 60 days back by the end of the year.

The Beginning

Once I realized I needed to start outsourcing my work, my first step was figuring out how to actually outsource the work. I tried using Fiverr to get assistants but I didn’t have a good experience.

Some research led me to UpWork (formerly Odesk). I decided to post my job and see what would happen. The first job I posted got seven applicants. The second job I posted got 27 applicants. The great thing about UpWork is that you don’t have to worry about people seeing the job you posted. You’ll get applicants if your job description is good.

After getting the applicants, I narrowed my list down based on price and value. It’s easy to find someone on UpWork who is willing to work for less than $5/hr. It’s a great option for entrepreneurs who feel tied to a shoestring budget.

The First Struggle And Lessons Learned

The first time I experienced difficulty with outsourcing was in the very beginning. There was some miscommunication between me and the virtual assistant I hired. Since this was the first assistant I hired, I thought outsourcing wasn’t worth it.

Luckily I stuck with it.

The key to success on UpWork is to outsource the people with a mix of price and value, and then create detailed videos showing them what you do.

I didn’t take any chances with my Twitter activity. I created a video showing my assistant exactly how to follow and unfollow people so I could continue growing my Twitter audience without putting in any of the work. All I do on Twitter nowadays is interact with my audience.

Still Not Convinced?

I heard about two things for many years before I actually implemented. I wish I started them earlier. The first thing I wish I did earlier was build an email list.

The second one was outsourcing my work. Yes, outsourcing my work is right up there with building an email list late in the game.

For a long time, I shunned outsourcing and thought it was a solution for people who didn’t like to work. Seeing books like The 4-Hour Workweek didn’t please me because I saw it as people trying to escape their work all together. Why not work 40 hours every week if you love what you do?

I wasn’t a workaholic, but I was close.

Then it hit me. People are outsourcing most of their work so they can work on the most important parts of the business. No one can write my blog posts or do my videos. With the proper guidance, anyone can follow and unfollow people on Twitter.

But this was the main reason it took me so long.

Why would I pay someone to do something I already know how to do?

I knew how to unfollow and follow people on Twitter. I knew how to edit my videos. I knew how to do everything that I outsourced. Why hand it to someone else and pay them when I could do it myself?

The answer is outsourcing opens up more time. New time makes it possible to develop new skills and explore new opportunities. On a typical school day, I used to go home and do the following (for the sake of this list, homework isn’t included)

Grow my Twitter audiences (20-30 minutes)
Create a picture for one of my blog posts (10 minutes)
Create videos (30 minutes if I was lucky. This activity was skipped on most days)

Here’s what my after school (and post-practice) schedule looks like now (again, excluding the homework):

Create videos (30-60 minutes)
Play the piano (30-60 minutes)
Explore other opportunities

Fewer tasks stand between me and creating videos. That makes it possible for me to create more training courses, YouTube videos, and Periscope broadcasts. I save 30-40 minutes per day. I could have done those two tasks on my own, but now I have a lot of extra time to play with.

In Conclusion

Entrepreneurs love to self-assess themselves. They like to see how they have grown or stayed the same. Most entrepreneurs stay the same and don’t do much growing. This is where the frustration sets in.

Remember that the frustration is part of the journey. However, the frustration and stagnation may be a result of an inefficient amount of time. Outsourcing your time will open up more time which can potentially skyrocket your entrepreneurial success.

Think about the business person you admire. If you’ve been an entrepreneur long enough, you admire some of the top entrepreneurs around. For me, Seth Godin quickly comes to mind.

Here’s the interesting thing. All of these entrepreneurs are outsourcing some of the work. Seth Godin (and most of the top authors) has an editor. When Squidoo was around, he hired people to respond to bug reports and interact with the community.

As productive as people like Seth Godin are, they can’t do it by themselves. Neither can you, and it’s okay to admit that. Outsourcing parts of your business will open the door to hours upon hours of extra time.

Do you outsource parts of your business? If not, are you willing to give it a try? Sound off in the comments section below!