How to simplify your business – with free audio

November 2, 2009 by Johnny
Filed under: Online biz 

There is a recorded audio to go with this post. If you’d rather just start listening than read my ramblings, then go ahead and go there now, sparky.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I’ve decided to hire an assistant. What may not have been entirely clear was what I was going to do, or what that arrangement would look like, or… most importantly… why you should care.

Well, here’s why you should give a shit about my quest for an assistant:

A lot of you reading this are just starting a new business, are looking to start one, or have nurtured one along for a little while now. And at the beginning, it seems to make sense to just do everything yourself that you’re capable of doing yourself. i.e., if you know how to create and send a newsletter, you should do it. If you know how to launch a new website for a new service or product, you should do it. If you know how to buy your own stamps and research your own new printer, you should do it. Because you can save money that way.

So again, a lot of you are saying, “I don’t care about JT’s assistant. I can’t afford and/or don’t need an assistant. I just want tips on how to get more clients.”

For those of you who are thinking that, I want you to pay attention anyway because if you’re going to ever succeed, you need to start RIGHT NOW thinking about the value of your time. If you want to buy your own stamps, that’s cool. Just remember that you’re doing it because you have time to kill or really want to get out of the office… and NOT because you have to. Your time is valuable. Very valuable. You’re the Big Cheese, after all. Buying stamps is beneath you. So, the minute you have something more important that you should be doing, someone else should be buying those stamps for you. Even if you’re not there yet, I want you to operate with this mentality. Do what makes you money. Outsource the rest.

And then, one day, your business is going to grow, and those little tasks and the big tasks will both multiply and begin to war with each other for your precious time. You’re going to someday realize out of the blue that you’re really, really busy. You will probably not know why, or even have a clear accounting of your time. You won’t truly understand that you’re doing things that are unproductive, and you won’t know what to do to make yourself less busy. All you’ll know is that you need help. Help with what? Well, who the hell knows. You just need help.

And that’s where I am. I’m just really busy. I don’t know what I’m doing right or wrong or what I should be doing different. I just know that I need help.

So at this point — whether you’re just trying to engender “Big Cheese” thinking or whether you’re currently going batshit crazy with busyness and don’t know where to start fixing it — just listen to this recording between me and Marcia Hoeck. We talked about exactly how to put order back into your life and put yourself back at the wheel of the giant ship of your business, rather than working below deck fixing leaks.

(Audio is below… if you’re reading this via a feed, you may have to click through to the post.)

Download as MP3 file

>>>> If you’d like to find out how to simplify your own business and hire your own supremely helpful awesome savior V.A., check out Get More Done, Make More Money: The 5 Easy Steps to Find, Hire, and Partner with a Virtual Assistant. (That’s the book we talked about in the recording above.)

 

 

 

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  3. You can’t do it.

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Comments

9 Comments on How to simplify your business – with free audio

  1. Dave Doolin on Mon, 2nd Nov 2009 4:15 pm

    2. Dealing with Lesser Mortal Shi^H^Htuff is a pain.

    My current strategy is to just worry about it. Sure, the laundry piles up. And the dishes. And the bills. No big deal. First year is the worst year.

    I’ll start outsourcing once I have the (positive) cash flow.

  2. Dave Doolin on Mon, 2nd Nov 2009 4:17 pm

    3. I mean NOT worry about it. Sheesh.

  3. Johnny on Tue, 3rd Nov 2009 7:13 am

    4. Dave, I used one of your tutorials the other day. On how to make custom templates in Thesis. It was weird; I just Googled and you came up. How cool is that? Anyway, good stuff… thanks!

  4. William @ DIY Video Marketing on Tue, 3rd Nov 2009 12:24 pm

    5. Good audio, Johnny.

    A story with a lawnmower: I was explaining this very concept (actually “comparative advantage,” roughly the same) to some students– I said a surgeon shouldn’t mow his lawn because someone else can mow his lawn for $10/hour while he can fix aortas for $7000/hour or whatever the going rate for fixed aortas is these days. Makes no sense not to hire 700 sullen teens to landscape his 50 acres.

    One of my brightest students chimed in that her neighbor was a surgeon. And he screwed up his back mowing his lawn. Couldn’t perform surgery for a month!

    Moral: plant clover, not turf grass. And do the high-ticket stuff first, like creating products, assets, and marketing. Someone else can take out the trash.

  5. Johnny on Tue, 3rd Nov 2009 2:06 pm

    6. Of course, the caveat in all of this is that this only really helps you if you have a higher-paying activity to put in place of the lower-paying one that you otherwise couldn’t do. So, the surgeon only improves his lot by $6990 IF he’s booked up enough that the lawnmowing is actually keeping him from surgery. If he pays a kid to cut the lawn and then sits on the couch, he’s not improving financially at all. And then the question is whether the stress reduction or whatever is worth it anyway.

    That’s the reason I started this site as “Learn To Be Your Own V.A.” — because if fledgling solopreneurs simply don’t have enough work and marketing activity to keep them busy, they might as well do their own mailings.

    The problem is when you start to get busy and neglect good stuff for crap work because the crap work is demanding your attention.

    Of course, if your $10/hour activity risks injuring you, that’s another story. I shall be wary next time I buy those damn stamps, should I decide to take the risk.

  6. Ben MacLeay on Wed, 4th Nov 2009 8:09 am

    7. Johnny,

    really fantastic stuff, thanks for posting. I have always wanted to move from the guy swinging the hammer to the CEO in the corner office but there is this horrible middle ground called manager. I have two brick and mortar’s and hired a secretary (not virtual, she’s real you just keep missing her I swear) and for me the difficulty is I wanted somebody to act like an owner. Inspecting what you expect has been a long and painful journey to get me closer to the corner office.

    If you could touch on how to become a great manager, when in fact you never wanted to be a manager and as soon as you can you will hire a manager, that would be awesome.

    Again, thank you, really solid content and good job of not swearing in front of your mom.

  7. Johnny on Thu, 5th Nov 2009 9:47 pm

    8. Yeah, I know nothing about being a manager. Like, at all. But I do think it’s hard to get an assistant to think/act like an owner, because… they’re not. Hell, who knows. I’m getting there, but still overwhelmed.

  8. I’m sleeping with my assistant : Johnny B. Truant on Wed, 18th Nov 2009 8:11 am

    9. [...] let’s take the latest open question. You may be wondering whatever happened with my assistant situation. Like, maybe you’re at the point in your business where you really should have an assistant [...]

  9. Team Truant : Johnny B. Truant on Thu, 3rd Dec 2009 1:13 pm

    10. [...] an assistant is aces. I won’t explain exactly why because I’ve already done so here and here, but suffice to say that the minute I stopped having to think about the things I suck at [...]

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