Working With Virtual Assistants

Summary

Ryan is an entrepreneur friend of mine. He has a number of different ventures (website design company, t-shirt printing company, event planning agency, and is even writing/promoting a book). This is a ton of stuff to be doing at once.

Ryan is starting to realize that he’s stressed out, maxed out, and about to have his head explode because everything seems to go wrong at once in all his ventures.

What Ryan needs to do is focus his efforts on one specific business at a time until it’s an efficient and self-sufficient business machine, thus affording him the steady and reliable income he will need while working on his next venture. This posting will show you the error of Ryan’s ways and how you can learn from the hard lessons that he’s learning right now.

What’s The Problem With Running Multiple Ventures at One Time?

I once heard a saying that “a measure of one’s success is not how much he do on his one, but how much he can afford to let alone (have someone else do)”. Ryan is not able to have someone else do all the various responsibilities of his businesses because he has not yet organized them to operate in this fashion: his businesses are in serious need of a business model makeover.

If he doesn’t start to focus his efforts on making one business a self sufficient success at a time, he’s going to be left with

• a number of mediocre businesses
• a stressed out mind
• no time to enjoy the benefits of his hard work

Here is how he can change this downward spiral and come out happier, more relaxed, richer, and freer.

Step 1: Pick Your Poison and Stick With It

The first thing Ryan needs to do is decide which business to make a success. He will then focus his efforts on making this single business a success and will promise himself that he will not start or focus on any other venture until he either makes this business a success or 100% abandons the venture to pursue a different venture. There can be no middle ground…choose one!

Step 2: Analyze the Current Status of Your Business

Once Ryan chooses which business to focus on, then he needs to decide what exact steps to take to make the business a success. For this posting I will use his web design business as an example since it seems to be bringing in the most income compared to his other ventures, it has a global team already in place to manage parts of the business, and is the closest venture to being able to operate passively so that he can pursue his other ideas and still get passive income.

Questions to Analyze What Steps to Take:

1. What is this business’s biggest strength? This could be anything from the ability to complete a project with little to no focus on the part of the business owner (Ryan), the ability to generate a surplus of sales (a weakness related to this is presented below), etc. Start with the positive aspects…identify the biggest strength of this venture
2. What is the biggest weakness? This could be anything from not being able to efficiently complete a project even though I’m able to generate a surplus of sales(many problems arise throughout the project), not being able to generate any sales even though my team can complete the project once the sale is made, etc.
3. What top 3-5 solutions would eliminate this weakness and other weakness of the business? These can be broad steps, such as “coordinate a successful sales team” or maybe “manage the projects better to avoid problems that arise”. We’ll define how to take these 3-5 steps in the next step in this process.

Step 3: What Are My Action Steps, 1 by 1

Look at the solutions that you came up with above. You now need to draft a step by step gameplan of how to make these solutions a reality. For example, if you need to “coordinate a successful sales force”, then your steps might be (1) create a core list of website packages that are well defined (2) set a list of prices for the packages that take into account the costs and overheads (3) create a job manual of what the sales team will be doing. Think of a sales method that you can design to be successful in generating leads, contacting leads, motivating leads to purchase, enabling billing to be completed, etc. You want the selling process to be 100% self sufficient. (4) find applicants that would work well in this sales method via posting online, networking, etc. (5) decide on the best applicant and hire them (6) conduct training so they’re familiar with the sales method (7) start selling (8) evaluate periodically as defined in my sales method.

Step 4: Start Taking The Action Steps for Each Solution

For each solution that Ryan has devised (build a sales team, better manage projects, etc.), start taking the action steps 1 at a time for each. If you can logistically do it separately then that would be absolutely best. For example, if you’re having trouble managing projects then you should figure that out and design a project management method that you will follow before building a sales team that will flood you with new projects (and new headaches if your project management system is flawed).

Step 5: Evaluate Once You’ve Taken the Steps

Is your solution becoming a reality? If not, re-evaluate and re-plan your gameplan to succeed. If you are winning, then it’s time to take this to the next step.

Evaluate what you need to do to 100% remove yourself from the business. In Ryan’s case, if he can remove himself from this particular business (have his team manage it 100%), then he can afford to pursue his other business ventures one at a time, making them the same success that his web design business has now become.