Some of you may know me for my work on outsourcing. I’ve spoken from the stage on several occasions about this topic, and it’s had a significant impact on the way I run my business. Before I started doing it, I was banging my head on the wall trying to do everything myself and getting nowhere fast. Since I’ve been able to leverage my more valuable skill sets by outsourcing the lower value skill sets, I’ve been able to achieve much more.

And lately I’ve had alot of people come to me to ask about how to more efficiently achieve an outcome through better systems or more efficient processes.

So I’ve put together a three part series sharing some of my thoughts on the topic. It’s by no means super comprehensive, but I will share some gems to get you started.

I’m a big believer that lifestyle is important. If you’ve chosen the Internet as a lifestyle and you’re working on it as if you were working on a job, then you probably need to reevaluate your strategy.

The first step I’d recommend is checking out Tim Ferriss, who wrote The Four-Hour Work Week. That will definitely give you a mindset rock. Tim’s mind is really cool in terms of being lazy; I love being lazy as well. Not as lazy as Tim, I work a little more than four hours a week, but I don’t see it as work; I see it as play. When I’m in front of the computer, I’m having a great time.

But in terms of automating your business, the first thing you need to do is have a look at your core skill sets. What are you good at? Take out a piece of paper and write down your business, the topic of your blog, and where you can add the most value.

The initial urge will be that you want to do everything. Make a list.

If you’re busy one week or so, you’ll have 20 things instead of only ten things. And if you only get five things done, on the next list you’ll have 25 things. That process will never end. If you’re sitting there in front of your computer trying to do it all on your own, you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle that you will
never, ever win.

The first thing is to identify what you’re good at personally. I’m assuming you’re some sort of expert, some sort of recognized authority in a niche or industry. And if you’re not, you probably are able to associate with someone who is an expert or has some sort of knowledge in an industry.

Once you’ve identified your main skill set, you then need to identify the tasks that need to be done that would take you too long and waste too much of your time to do, but which are still important to get done.

For example, recently I purchased a website marketing program. There’s a lot of installing of tags and all sorts of different technical things that need to be done on a site. I have neither the time nor the inclination to do them, so I find someone who is able to do that quickly and much more effectively and efficiently than me.

I pay them usually very little, and we’ll talk later about some of the developing countries who have a lot of really good workers who work for very little. It’s not a bad thing, just that the market rates for their current situations are not very high, so what seems low to you is actually a fair price to them.

Then I get them to do it and I can spend my time doing the stuff that I see as valuable to me.

So, first identify your core talents and skills, and also identify other things that are of paramount importance to the success of what you’re doing.

Then identify the things that you’re not good at.

Maybe you haven’t got a blog yet, so you need to set up a blog. You need to have some kind of name capture to bring people into your website, for example. If it ain’t your skill, don’t do it!

You can’t say, “It’s not getting done!” It IS important. They need to be done. But not by you!

Please check back next week, when part #2 of this series comes out. You’ll get some specific insights into what I do and how I do it.