In this episode of Hardcore MBA, Erlend and Matthew talk about success and failure in outsourcing, and how to turn any mistake or failure into a success each and every time. In Erlend’s world, if you sit by yourself, ‘it’s draining and lonely’. But he says that working with a team is a game changer.
The stronger the team and the more fun the team has together, the more successful you’re going to be.
Matt’s first mistake was waiting for the right time. He later realized that there was no such thing as the right time. He says it’s relatively new to him but outsourcing is one of the cornerstone mistakes that he talks about in Successful Mistake (grab your free paperback copy here: http://successfulmistake.com/erlend).
Going for the top paid, going too cheap, waiting too long, and other different things have been people’s mistake when it comes to outsourcing.
Hiring can be costly because if you hire the wrong person, they can sue you. Erlend’s friend hired the wrong person and ended up having legal problems because of that person. In the end, it cost him his time and money.
The biggest mistake when it comes to hiring virtual employees is not thinking that the initial phase of hiring is important. You need to take the time to have a good hiring process so you can think through what you want and you test the person to screen them if they can do what you want them to do. You need to ask yourself if you really need somebody to do this job or whether or not you can automate the job yourself.
There are different types of outsourcing but it depends on the quality you want.
The problem with working with VAs is that it’s very broad. People give their VAs a lot of work not realizing that they can’t do everything. You also need to lead yourself to be able to lead people effectively. For someone starting out, the relevant tasks to outsource are web design and list building. You can prepare a list and have the VA prepare a customized email to get more traffic. That will save you time and money.
People think hiring a person is a huge thing. One of the things Matt has learned was to make a list of everything he does in a week and asks himself which ones he doesn’t have to do and which ones he does. Filtering through emails, editing them, and scheduling them can take a lot of time. You could have somebody else do it for you. You should ask yourself how much you can afford to spend on having somebody else do this. This saves you 2 or 3 hours a day that you can spend time with your family or use that time for yourself.
You have to experiment on stuff to be successful. You have to learn how to embrace failure. Erlend tries harder to be weird in public because he believes that mastery comes in failure. If you see someone that’s really great in the industry, it’s because they’ve made a lot of mistakes. They also have a different attitude to making mistakes. They don’t blame themselves. They see these mistakes as learning opportunities and use their failures to be successful.
People Matt has interviewed were hit really hard but they reverse engineered these failures. They then were able to turn their good ideas into great ones. Without those failures, they wouldn’t be as successful as they are now. Successful people have fears and self-doubt but they kept going and thought of the light at the end of the tunnel. They didn’t sit down and accept defeat. They would take a deep breath and move on.
Erlend recommends the book, The One Thing that helps you schedule your day more efficiently. It helps you take those 45-minute Focus Blocks to work on what’s important to him. Don’t fool yourself into believing that you can do things if you work for 8 hours straight. Erlend does some busy work that includes playing around in social media towards the end of the day to get it out of his system.
Delegating work for its sake has been a mistake that many people make. To avoid this, you have to be 100% clear on what you do and staying loyal to it. All energy goes towards that.
In One Thing, you have a five-year goal but today you only have this one thing. It’s working on this one thing to reach your overall goal. It’s really more about focus. Erlend also talks about the Success Focus, which is eliminating things that are not relevant to his life and his business. The times Erlend has been successful is when he’s had this deep internal focus where he let go of a lot of things.
Matt says, “I am who I am not because what I’ve produced but because of the effort I’ve put in.” This is about appreciating what your success it and not listening to what people have to say about it.
When you read those self-help books, you just become aware about your mistakes and how to turn them around. It gives you the power to be aware of your own limitations and stop comparing yourself to others. Little snippets of reflection allow you to stay on the right path. Reflecting daily helps you react productively to negative events in your life. This is how people become successful and stay successful.
Matt believes that the human self believes what it wants to believe. There are so many things being bombarded at you. It forms these habits to make life easier on itself. You can tell yourself you’re going to be a morning person and become healthy. But once you hit a sticky patch, your body will do what’s easy for it. What you’re actively trying to change now is you. You have to do it every single day. Don’t let it revert back to your old habits. When times get tough, don’t go back to the old me.
Erlend used to multitask but he’s stopped doing those things. He says it has been better for him. It allows him to be. He used to feel guilty about this but he’s learned that he has to take time off from it. Matt allows himself to do what he wants to do especially when he has accomplished the things he has set out to do.
Outsourcing is a muscle you need to train. Choose the right people. Test them. Notice early mistakes – if they’re lazy, make mistakes, they don’t show up without letting you know. Erlend has a three-strike rule when dealing with his employees. So far, this has worked from him.
You can get your free copy of ‘The Successful Mistake’ by visiting: http://successfulmistake.com/erlend
