Welcome back!
Probably like you, I get snowed under with email and this week I am slowly going through unsubscribing myself from all the ‘really useful’ stuff I have coming in but NEVER EVER get round to reading!
I’m being ruthless and to be honest, it’s not been THAT hard to do. One of the few people I’ve decided to continue to follow is Yaro Starak, an awesome blogger who resides in Australia when he is not travelling around the world doing whatever he fancies.
Why Yaro? Well he is doing what I want to do – living his dream lifestyle and profitably and it hasn’t taken him an eternity to get there which gives me hope that if I could just stay focussed and stop procrastinating I too can get there.
The other biggy of course, is that he DELIVERS VALUE. He shares what he learns, his viewpoints and has made himself an expert in his chosen field. He is INTERESTING to read, talks in simple, plain English and is not feeling so scarce that he can’t divulge his opinions, tools and ’secrets’.
Looking through his site, this paragraph from the following article he wrote, really struck home to me:
“Bear in mind I’m saying this from the mindset of running a business of a certain size and living a certain kind of lifestyle. I’m not looking to take on full time employees, get an office and grow to the point where I’m committed to certain things simply because the size of the machine has become more than I can handle.”
And that’s the thing – I just have to get clear on what my ideal lifestyle IS, what it looks like, how my days will be structured and what kind of income it will take to cover that without working my guts out .. ie. become financially free.. and then some.
There are of course a mass of other little gems packed in it too and I hope something kicks you up the bum too x
How To Work Less and Earn More By Leveraging The Synergy Between People And Technology by Yaro Starak
Several years ago when I was…
…managing BetterEdit, my proofreading company that I sold in 2007, I was knee deep learning from Rich Schefren, taking his Business Growth System course.
Rich launched that program on the back of his most successful report to date, the Internet Business Manifesto, which featured the now famous flow chart of what an Internet entrepreneur is supposed to do if he or she wants to succeed online. If you haven’t read the Manifesto, I strongly recommend you do so as soon as possible, it’s still one of the most crucial reports on Internet marketing as an entrepreneur ever written.
After reading the Manifesto it was clear I needed to make some changes, so I joined Rich’s coaching program and began going through it. The premise of what Rich teaches is the idea that no person can realistically ever get to the point where their business looks after them, rather than they look after their business, if you do everything by yourself. Rich took this idea a lot further than just outsourcing, and sees business as a machine that can be completely automated.
At that point in time BetterEdit was doing well and I did have Angela, my admin/customer service person looking after most of the day to day emailing for the business, which is the main workload to keep it going. This was great, but as a result of thinking so much about automation and studying Rich’s course, I was interested in possibly using technology to further systematize the operations and gain more leverage.
Using Software To Automate
BetterEdit has a very simple job flow process. A client submits a paper and makes payment, the admin person assigns the job and forwards the document to an editor. The editor completes the job and returns to the document to both the admin and the client. Various emails flow back and forth if there are problems, but generally that’s the basic process.
One of the key weaknesses of the system I had was no affiliate program. I saw huge potential if I could find a way to pay a commission out to websites that referred jobs to the business. Besides manually tracking things, which would be a nightmare, I just couldn’t do it.
The answer to the affiliate issue was to..
continue reading at Yaro’s website here: http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/1052/leverage-technology-people/#more-1052
