When to Hire, Use Independent Contractors, Temps or “Outsource” to Grow Your Business!

As a business owner, you understand how much work is wrapped up in the details of every little thing you need to do in order for your business to run.  You also understand that to get all of those things done, it requires a lot of time.

As of now, most of you have been the sole owner and worker in your company.  You have been the one to determine what it is you are going to do and then actually doing it or implementing that action down to the very last detail to get it done.

You may even be wondering how you will ever get ahead at this rate.  You have put so much time and energy into implementing you have little time left to focus on the next stage for growth in your business, let alone, time to enjoy other things in life.

You’re stuck in this vicious circle, driving yourself in the ground, about ready to give up.

Well, don’t give up yet!  I am here to provide you with a solution that will not only free up your time to focus on the bigger picture of your business, where it’s going and next steps for growth, but will also leave you with enough time to do the things you really enjoy in life, while making money.

To be clear, what I am about to share is not theory or something that sounds good and is bound to work.  This is something I have done and am currently doing today.  It is proven to work for me and many other business owners out there.  Are you ready…?

Outsourcing!  That’s right… outsourcing.  Notice, I didn’t say hire, independent contractors or temps.  I said “outsourcing”.  There is a big difference.

I’m not talking about hiring full time employees for $15/hr where you worry about performance and whether or not they are cheating you out of hours.  I’m not talking about Elance either.  They are not automated; they are freelance, contract workers.  I’m also not talking about India.  Outsourcing there can be tricky as people in India are entrepreneurial minded.  They might open their own business after learning your trade secrets and show up as competition.

I am suggesting that you outsource in the Philippians. Don’t get me wrong…  This is not a magic bullet to have someone else take over your business.  The solution is to outsource specific duties in order to live the internet business lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of.  I just talked about how there is always work to be done.  The question is who is going to do it?   Are you going to do it or have someone else help?  The key to living the lifestyle of your dreams is to outsource, finding good quality people with minimal cost to do what you were doing; freeing up time for you to do what you want.

The people in the Philippians are loyal, honest, super hard working and ask for wages starting around $200/$250 per month.  Over time this will increase to about $400/$450 per month but by then they will be doing what they do very well at that point.  They are all very well educated, have computers and work from home.  You don’t need to go there to set up an office.

Outsourcing in this manner is also considered a business expense, is tax deductible, you don’t have to pay insurance, benefits, etc.  Best of all, after tax benefits your actual cost ends up being around $200 per month.

They are so loyal, they will never quit unless you let them go. Once you teach them how to do something you won’t have to teach them again.  They like America and are very westernized, thinking like Americans.  They will do things just as you would like to have done it.  They will do it right the first time and if not, will work hard to fix it for you.  It is actually a bragging right for them to have an American boss.  It even elevates their social status to have a foreigner as a boss.  Most of them also speak very good American English.

One question you might be asking is “If they are this good and you teach them about your business, why don’t they go out and do it themselves to make more money?”  That is a really good question and the answer is because they are “LOYAL” and they are not entrepreneurial. When they get a job, they want to keep it along with their elevated social status.

So what kind of skill sets can you find with people from the Philippines?  You can find programmers, graphic designers, webmasters, copywriters, investment banking analysts, article writers, PPC and SEO managers, any skill set you want.  Most people you find will not know how to do everything you want them to do but you can teach them what they don’t know.

I hired a couple of folks from the Philippines for one of my network marketing businesses to test this out.  I hired one programmer, one graphic designer and one article writer. Then I started training them gradually and started outsourcing my daily needs to them. They designed my websites, blogs, landing pages, wrote articles and distributed them for me.  They did SEO keyword research and made my life very easy. I could not believe building a Network Marketing and Internet based business could be so easy and fun. Then I got creative, I started offering my outsourcing services to my clients and prospects.

First of all, it attracted many new clients and distributors to my team because they saw a lot of value in working with me since I had affordable outsourcing solutions for everyone.  In fact, I could not believe my eyes when I saw that my back end conversions for big dollar products increased by over 225% because of these additional services I was able to offer my new clients and distributors. I was also able to add an additional significant income stream by selling the outsourcing services to my clients.

Here is an example of how it works:  Say John wanted to join your business.  I would say “John, if you invest $20k in this business I will offer you $12k worth of bonuses for Free.” I would then get those bonuses such as a personally branded blog, autoresponders, twitter profile, articles etc., which all have a great perceived value, manufactured in the Philippines for 1/10^th of the price.  This not only increased my back end conversions but I was able to sell these services separately to my clients who could not afford to invest $20k in the business.

This resulted in an additional strong income stream which paid for much more than the monthly salary I pay to my outsourcers in the Philippines.  As a result of this, my network marketing business almost doubled in 2009 compared to 2008 and I worked half the number of hours.

In today’s world you need to be the CEO of your company, the strategizer, the knowledge gatherer, understanding the business, where you’re going, the goals and directions, what it takes to grow, synthesizing information, and staying ahead of the curve.  Your job is NOT to go out and implement the things you strategize!  You should be implementing everything you learn, but not you, yourself.  Outsource that role! It is very liberating to be free to focus on what really matters in your business and not get bogged down in details or fixing problems.

Some say you should be doing what your best at but what your best at doesn’t always make you the most money.  Writing articles, programming and SEO management doesn’t make money.  Doing sales, collecting knowledge, strategizing and running the business makes money.  You should be doing what you love and what makes you the most money.

When there is work to be done, don’t do it yourself hire someone else.  Implement everything you know and have learned.  Implement every course you have bought so it can make you money.  Say you just bought a product.  Listen to it, synthesize it, determine where it fits into your business and pass it onto your Philippians team with instruction to implement it.  Implement everything you’ve ever bought, all of your knowledge.

Are you convinced that this is the route to go?  Great!  Now you are wondering where you find these people.  There are several websites available for you to use.  First, do not use Agentsofvalue.com. They are an American company with offices in the Philippines.  They hire and recruit people to come into an office and work for you.  They mark up the cost about 3 times to do this for you.  They recruit from the same place that you could recruit from yourself.

A good place to look would be Bestjobs.ph but they are not taking any more registrations so you can look at http://www.VirtualEmployeeFinder.com It is specifically aimed at Philippines looking to work for American companies or the westernized world.  These people want to work online for you and have a computer at home.  You can look at skills by category and subcategory.  Will find what you want here.

Here are some tips to help you hire the right candidate and achieve the greatest success with your outsourced team:

1. Give them a difficult first task pertaining to what you hired them for. Have them set up a Word Press blog on a purchased domain, change the theme and write a post and a page.  Let them know that you want them to succeed and are willing to help them.  This will weed those out who are not willing or able to figure things out.
2. Make them send a daily e-mail. This holds them accountable for what they’re doing, let’s you get them out of your head so you can focus on more important things.  Ask them what they did today, what problems they ran into and what you can do to help them.
3. Bonus people for good work. Example: $50 bonus for doing something good for the month.
4. Let them figure some things out for themselves. Don’t need to babysit.
5. Use Jing at jingproject.com. It’s free, fast and easy to use to record stuff like instructional videos
6. Give them access to stuff like hosting accounts on the first day.
7. Pay people using xoom.com – Paypal is new in the Philippians and fees are high.  Or use emoneygram.com
8. Be aware of customs like how they communicate (EX:  Dear sir… ) Honor their customs.  Also be aware of the 13^th month.  If you are a Philippine employer working in the Philippines with Philippine employees, it is legally required to give the employee a bonus of one month’s pay after they have worked for you for 12 months.  Honor this tradition and tell them you know about this up front and to remind you by sending you an invoice when the time comes.
9. Provide your team with recurring tasks that they can do over and over again so they don’t run out of things to do.  You could even have them work at night so they are online during your day; however that is not as healthy for them
10. Don’t expect someone to do something you won’t teach them.

What about training?  What is the best way to train my new outsourced help?  Here are more tips on training to help you as well.

1. You need a system to get them up to speed so that you don’t have to teach them every little detail and take several hours to do so.  The key is to save all of your trainings so that you can pass onto others and only train any given thing once.
2. You can us Camtasia with a simple Plantronics headset to record the trainings. Keep them brief and to the point. Don’t ramble. When things change, you can just go into the file and make updates. This way, when someone is hired, they go through YOUR training without you having to spend time doing it yourself.
3. This also alleviates the stress of turnover.  You can plug the next person in easily as the training is ready anytime.  Plus, if they have a question, instead of bugging you, they could reference the training material. You will wonder how you lived without it.
4. Train your employees (independent contractors) so they are completely knowledgeable on what you want them to do. Don’t leave any detail unsaid or uncovered. Since it is in Flash, they can review it at anytime – even at 3a.m. when you are sleeping.
5. Training should never be regulated to only the beginning of employment. Training should be ongoing and at least once a month.

Are you ready to get out of the vicious circle, stop running yourself ragged, have time to do what you love in addition to growing your business and making more money than you thought imaginable?  With this expert advice and these tips, now you can.  See you at the top!

To Your Success,

Vishal Bhatia

Author’s Blog: http://www.Vishal-Bhatia.com

Important Outsourcing Resource: http://www.VirtualEmployeeFinder.com

Outsourcing Service Provider: http://www.InnovativeStrategicSolutions.net