Lightening the Load ... Getting Help When You Need It
If there's one immutable fact of life when it comes to this
business, it's that there's so much to do but so little time to
do it all in. At some point around the one year mark, if you've
been even moderately successful in your online business, you'll
find you've reached the limit of what you can do with the time
you have available. At that point you have a choice: to
deliberately retard the growth of your business to maintain the
status quo, or take on additional resources to help you cope
with a business that continues to grow beyond the capacities of
just one person.
That's just the choice I was faced with when I returned to the
full-time workforce last month after running my online business
on a full-time basis for two months. I realized almost
immediately that if I kept on the way I was, my business wasn't
going to go any further. It was taking all my time to deal with
the administrative side of the business and that left none for
the really important business- development activities that kept
getting pushed to the back-burner until I magically found the
time to get to them. In this article, we look at getting help
when you need it. And no, I'm not talking about going out and
hiring a wage-earning full-time employee or even a part-time
employee for that matter although that, of course, is one option
open to you. Instead, with a little bit of lateral thinking you
may well find you can get the help you need for very little (if
any) up-front cash outlay.
COMPENSATING YOUR ASSISTANT
Because (I assume) you're still running your business on a
shoestring, you can't afford to pay someone a wage in advance of
generating additional income. This means that whoever you choose
needs to be someone who's prepared to work for a percentage of
the profits of the business rather than a wage. For this reason,
the person you choose will most likely be close to you ... a
family member, spouse or very close friend.
As for the proportion of profits that you pay to your assistant,
this is up to you and your assistant to negotiate and will
depend on several factors including the types of tasks your
assistant performs, the time they have available to work (and
actually do work) and the overall contribution they make to the
business. An assistant who takes an entrepreneurial interest in
the business and contributes to its growth in addition to its
maintenance should be rewarded accordingly.
TAX CONSEQUENCES
Be sure to get professional advice before you start your
arrangement with your assistant. You need to think about tax and
other issues such as whether your profit-sharing arrangement
might create a partnership rather than an employer-employee
relationship (this may or may not be something you want). Also,
assuming you're not intending to create a partnership
relationship with your assistant, think about whether you want
an employer-employee relationship or whether you prefer your
assistant to be an independent contractor. There are tax
consequences for each of the above scenarios so be sure to talk
to your accountant about your options.
CONVERTING TIME INTO INCOME
It should be self-evident that you are going to have to convert
the time you free up with the help of your assistant into
income. In other words, if your business doesn't generate any
more income as a result of you taking on an assistant, by the
time you split your profits, you're going to be behind. So it's
crucial that you take the time you save and spend it wisely.
That means using your time on projects that are going to
increase the income of your business by more than the cost of
splitting your profits.
WHO TO CHOOSE FOR YOUR ASSISTANT
Now, who should you choose for your assistant? To start with,
consider who in your immediate circle has both the time and the
ability to help you in your business. It could be a spouse,
teenage son or daughter, parent, next door neighbor, brother or
sister, close friend or colleague.
In my case, my first choice for an assistant was my
computer-savvy mother but, because she is retired and on a
pension, she can't earn an income without jeopardizing her
retirement income. I therefore didn't consider her as a real
possibility.
I then considered one of my sisters but, because of technical
problems (she didn't have a suitable computer and wasn't in a
position to get one quickly) that wasn't going to work either.
Then my other sister, not computer- savvy but obviously a
lateral thinker, suggested that, instead of paying my mother her
share of the profits in cash which would have jeopardized her
pension, why not pay her in airline tickets from Australia to
the US? Because I have recently relocated from Australia to the
US, this was a perfect solution because it was expenditure my
parents would have incurred anyway. And, from my business's
point of view, because my mother works for the business, the
airfares the business pays for will be tax-deductible as our
visits will be, at least in part, business-related. So, give
some thought to your particular circumstances and think
laterally. Perhaps you have a teenage son or daughter who is
good with computers and is looking for a way to earn additional
income. Not only does appointing them as your assistant achieve
this goal, it also gives your child crucial experience working
in the ecommerce field and that sure can't hurt!
Perhaps you have a close friend who is a single mother and is
looking for at-home ways to supplement her part-time income.
Perhaps a sibling is in a similar position. You get the idea. I
imagine that most people know at least one person that they
could strike such an arrangement with.
TASKS TO DELEGATE
OK, so you've lined up your assistant. Let's turn now to the
kinds of things you can delegate to him/her. As a general rule,
you want to delegate those tasks that are routine, repetitive
and which maintain (rather than grow) your business. Growing the
business is your job. That's what's meant by working "on" the
business rather than "in" the business. Consider the following:
=> Processing Subscribe/Unsubscribe Requests If you publish an
ezine, then you know what an administrative headache it can be
processing all those subscribe and unsubscribe requests even
with the aid of automating software.
Despite your best efforts, and clear instructions in your ezine,
there are always at least a dozen people who can't seem to
figure out how to unsubscribe themselves and send you a message
asking you to do it for them. Then there are those who write
asking to be added to your ezine list because they've been
referred by a friend and don't have your subscribe URL.
So you add them manually too. Then there are those who want to
unsubscribe but keep trying to do so using an email address
other than the one they signed up with. They send abusive emails
to you when, for some mysterious reason they keep getting your
ezine. They, of course, think you're so desperate for
subscribers that you have set up your devious systems so that
once they're subscribed they're on your list forever.
Annoying as this is for ezine publishers, the real problem is
the time it eats up dealing with this stuff. So delegate this
task to your assistant.
=> Processing Advertising Orders Another routine task that can
be delegated to your assistant is the processing of advertising
orders in your ezine. Set up your systems so that all orders go
straight to your assistant (with a copy to you so you're in the
loop) who then schedules the ad, confirms the booking with the
advertiser and then formats the ad ready for the next issue.
=> Sending Your Ezine Actually sending your ezine to your list
is something that you can delegate to your assistant, too. Just
email your ezine to your assistant when you've finished it for
sending to your list. You may even leave your assistant to
insert the classified ads.
=> Submitting Your Articles Another routine task that your
assistant can take care of is article submissions. I have a list
of article submission services that I submit my articles to on a
weekly basis, as well as a handful of publishers who have
specifically requested to receive them. My assistant sends for
each article after it is written (they're all available on
autoresponder) and submits it to the article submission
sites/lists I specify. A longer-term project is to seek out, on
a regular basis, new article submission points. That, also, I
have delegated.
=> Submitting Your Ezine Similarly, I have delegated the task of
submitting my ezine to the various ezine announcement services
that are always springing up all over the place. => Negotiating
Ad Swaps
If you're an ezine publisher, you know that receiving ad swap
proposals from fellow publishers is a frequent occurrence.
Delegate the negotiation of these swaps to your assistant.
=> Web Site Updating Depending on how computer-savvy your
assistant is, they may also be able to take on some simple web
site updating for you. We're not talking about major design
changes here, just making routine updates to add your latest
ezine, article or advertising information, that sort of thing.
~*~*~*~*~*~ By delegating these routine administrative tasks and
any others that may apply to your particular business, you will
save yourself several hours of work every week. Don't squander
this time! Now you have the time you need to overhaul your site,
write the next month's articles for your ezine, investigate and
respond to the half dozen joint venture proposals you've
received this week, create that ebook you've been meaning to get
around to writing and, most importantly, *promoting your
business*! As stated earlier, you MUST convert your newfound
time into dollars. If not, your business is just going backwards
... the very circumstance you sought to avoid when hiring your
assistant.