Welcome back to my crazy outsourcing origin story. Let me catch you up to speed.
At the end of my last email, I
– was working as a computer programmer
– was moonlighting as an online entrepreneur
– just got double-crossed by my first employee
– was desperately struggling to juggle two jobs
– was attempting to create the ideal life for my new family (Phew!)
Sound familiar to anyone???
At this point, I was exhausted. And the most crushing blunder was yet to come.
Some time after my first employee went rogue, Tim Ferriss wrote and released The 4-Hour Workweek. In his book, he introduced the idea of outsourcing. He preached that outsourcing would create boundless free-time and business growth.
I was riveted – this was the kind of automation I’d imagined.
This book was proof that it could work!
I knew I needed help.
Tim suggested India so that *must* be correct.
So I hired someone based in India.
It was a disaster.
For whatever reason, we both struggled with the communication and cultural barriers. I tried hiring other workers from India (maybe it was just not a good fit the first time?).
Nope.
I continued to run into the same problems with each new hire.
I almost gave up.
But Tim Ferriss’ voice played over and over in the back of my head.
Maybe I could find another way to make outsourcing work…
Then one day, I discovered eLance (now UpWork).
I hired someone to write articles for me. Article writing and submission was a huge part of my online business marketing plan. I knew article submissions were super effective, I knew the strategy was working great, but I hated doing it.
I hated the writing. I hated the posting. I hated the whole thing. Not only did I hate it, it ate up so much of my valuable time.
So I hired this guy from eLance to write 50 articles for me. I thought I’d won the lottery. I could pay someone such a reasonable amount to get so much work done. “Yes!” I thought, “I figured out how to hire people and do this outsourcing thing!”
And then he sent the articles back, and it hit me:
I’d created another face-smashing failure.
The biggest one yet.
He did complete and send me 50 articles and they were decent. But then I realized I had to do the rest of the work. Argh!
I had to review the articles’ content,
I had to edit them,
I had to make sure they weren’t plagiarized
(turns out, some of them were plagiarized).
I had to come up with great headers for them.
I had to submit them.
I had to create links for them and
I had to post them on a list of different sites.
Not only did I hate doing all of those things (for one article, let alone 50!), I did not have the time or mental capacity for them.
I just couldn’t do it.
Instead of handing things off and creating freedom for myself, once again, I’d made more work for myself.
That sucked.
I was so disappointed. I was so let down.
Outsourcing had NOT worked the way I wanted it to.
Sometimes, I feel like that’s the point that most people reach in their outsourcing attempt before they quit. They come to believe that it’s a headache, it causes more problems than solutions, and it’s basically terrible. That’s where I had landed.
But I kept hearing stories about people who’d made it big with outsourcing. I knew that logically, it should be the solution to so many challenges. It worked for other people and it worked in my head. I just needed to make it work for my business.
Little did I know, I was about to have an encounter with an enormously successful entrepreneur.
It would change everything.
I’ll share that pivotal experience in my next email – and you’ll learn the same thing he taught me which changed my life.
Until then,
John
PS – Keep up your efforts. You’re doing great. Outsourcing the right way takes time and hard work right out of the gate. But I promise you can do this, and I promise it will be SO worth it.