 So my name is Alex and the talk today we're going to do is called Delegating Your WordPress Business Beyond Yourself. Let's get your time back and become the lynchpin in your own business. And the primary focus of this talk is really going to be on balance. You know whenever people talk about you know running your own business and automating processes and you know outsourcing resources and stuff like that. A lot of times the conversation is around cash flow and you know making a bunch of money and and all these things and that's really not the paradigm that I come from. I come from a focus on balance to where you've got enough work coming in and you've got a way to be able to get all of that out through the system that you're running. So you're gonna see first off we're gonna talk about how to buy your time back so that you can run your business sustainably. We're also going to talk about how to transition into delegating your own business into you know other people and things like that. Because obviously you can't do what doesn't happen over night. This is one of those things that you know you first off you hire you know maybe a project manager and then maybe you hire a developer who works on top of that and maybe the people who are working on different projects change from time to time. We're also going to talk about why you should delegate no matter your working situation and what I mean by that is you know sometimes sometimes I've talked to a lot of developers and or business owners in general who kind of take this role as a as a contractor right so they're kind of this true freelancer this person who's just on a six-month contract and then whenever they're done they contact the recruiter and they get in on another six-month contract. And I really want to talk to everybody including those people and make it clear that you know you should probably be delegating something and there's probably plenty of opportunities to do so. We're going to talk about why you need to do that above and beyond just having less things to do. And then we're also going to talk about you know when you're ready to delegate you know what are the signs what are the strong indications that are saying okay you probably should not be doing that anymore you should probably go ahead and invest into having somebody else do that for you. Alright so who am I? Well I'm just another WordPress developer. I've been working in WordPress since 2009 and I made the switch to freelance in 2014 and started actually outsourcing some stuff in 2015 after realizing that it just really wasn't working for me just doing it all by myself. And the reason why I wasn't working was because I found myself on a financial roller coaster and if you're a freelancer now you know what I'm talking about it's almost a right passage right where you know you're in this pattern of work work work sell sell sell right so you're in what it really looks like is you're working really hard to be able to catch up to get all that work done that you've committed to and then you're so busy working you know until eight or nine o'clock in the evening throughout the week that then you stop and you turn around you're like crap I don't have any more work I got bringing more work what am I going to do so what do you do you turn around and you pan you go sell sell sell sell sell sell and you commit and you make all these promises to all these people to get this stuff done because you need to work so then all of a sudden you know you're right back in that position again work work work and then it's sell sell sell so it's just this financial roller coaster and this is really the core problem for freelancing that I believe outsourcing fixes it certainly helped and it certainly has fixed the problem in a lot of ways in my own business ideally you would be in more of a work sell work sell right where it's much more like a rolling hill in terms of how busy you are instead of this steep and insane switch back and forth but ultimately I think the most important thing to know here is that you know work work work sell sell sell no matter what I was working too many hours I was working you know 10 hours a day 11 hours a day waking up at five in the morning working until you know six or seven sometimes late 10 o'clock at night I was just killing myself and that's just not something anybody should do and I don't think that you know you should have to do that if you if you recognize that's a problem soon and jump ahead of it so yeah I was like well this kind of sucks maybe I need to think through this and change up how you know how I do my business a little bit so I got some help and what I mean by that is I hired a virtual assistant and basically just work with her to delegate some of those tasks a lot of my tasks a lot of things I do and actually before I even hired her I actually divided all of my to-dos into three columns I'm gonna talk about that a little bit later and I said you know these are the things only I can do these are the things that requires a professional to do and using the things that almost everything almost anybody can do and I ended up looking at that big column this big gigantic column that was almost anything now sending emails sending invoices you know paying bills right writing checks all these different tasks that that are very important to a business that are ultimately the glue that makes a business run but are capable of being systemized to a point to where you know almost anybody who's competent enough to patient that to learn how to do it can do so first I automated what I could out of that big giant list of views invoices and all that stuff and then I delegated what I could not and like I said all of a sudden my roller coaster started to smooth out a little bit once I'm being having these sharp highs and lows to more of a word work sell sell you know so now I'm not necessarily staying up till 10 o'clock every night maybe just once or twice a night or once or twice a week rather so you know it started to get a little bit better but it still wasn't that nice smooth you know actual casual work day that you really want so after I worked with her for a little bit when we started to get the hang of working together and we got some chemistry and we were starting to make sense of you know just what her role was and what all she could do what all she was good with and what all she wasn't we start I started looking at the second column which is the requires a professional to do and I you know I started looking at all those tasks such as managing a project project communicating directly with the client about scope talking with you know are being a front-end developer being a backing developer all these different tasks that that fall into that and I decided to start outsourcing those parts of the business and I ended up starting with a manager which it just so happens to me that it was also by virtual assistant who I ended up also just hiring on to also do some of the management work and you know it the primary focus again on that was to help focus more about striking that delicate balance between overworking and overselling because if you think about that work work work sell sell sell pattern the core problem there is that it's not balanced I'm not doing work and sell work and sell so and what was what happens with a project is if you you're kind of you know at the mercy of your clients win right so if you've got five clients who suddenly decide they need work and they want it right now they don't necessarily care about your other clients they want it now so I decided to get a little bit more help and ended up hiring a technician a what we call a technician a vendor another words who is a really good WordPress developer and he would pick up the slack when we're busy he would pick up some of the smaller projects you know some of the $1,200 $1,300 projects that would come in and that would allow me to focus on the bigger clients the clients that you were taking the government job that took you know 13 months for us to get done but it still allowed us I priced it in such a way so that I was still able to actually bring in somebody from those projects so you know the business was still seeing some profit from that and again it got even better eventually as I worked with developers and I worked with project managers and I work with a couple other those roles in that little column all of a sudden that roller coaster started to smooth out even more and now I'm in this healthy work sell work sell pattern and this is pretty close to where we're at right now we're design frames out right now is business and so you know now basically what happens is we will hire out well outsource work whenever we need if I'm overburdened if I find that you know I can't afford to take on another project well source it right one of sending off to somebody else and basically what that does is now my team these vendors these people who work with me shield me from my clients web just like what I said a second ago if five projects come in all at once the full impact with that work doesn't fall right on me so I have the ability to effectively I'm being shielded you know so if yeah five people come in and they would overdo it for me and I would have to either one recommend somebody else or two I would and I know me what I would actually do is I would try to do all five projects right and again it would end up working too hard and neglecting the important task of selling and bringing in more work into the pipeline and that would end up putting me back in that work work sell sell sell pattern so that's kind of our story that's how we come to develop the system that I'm going to talk to you guys about and how how you guys can do that yourselves so yeah let's go ahead and get started with that well yeah okay one more note here so as a result you know of course I'm able to sell more business and that's simply because you know I'm on a healthy pattern sales is slow is generally it's a slow cycle if you know you've got people investing thousands of dollars in something they're not going to make that decision on a quick win unless it's an emergency oftentimes it'll be six weeks six months two years you know I've got I've got prospects who I've talked to a full year after having a conversation with them and I'm like are you guys still interested in this and I don't know where they're like oh yeah we forgot about that we actually really need to do that let's jump back on you know so again as a result I'm able to sell more business and this means that I can bring more work which gives me more options for my business cash flow better cash flow means less stress which means smarter decisions when you're in that work work work sell sell sell pattern specifically in that sell sell sell phase this is as high as it's ever going to be right I mean I can honestly say that at any point my my professional career my times of highest stress have been in that sell sell sell pattern because I've got bills I gotta pay I've got things I've got to take care of and at that point at that moment I'm so desperate for work I'll do just about anything to have a client sign a contract and that's not a good place to be in and that's really what this delegation is focused on again work so work so and when I say more options for my business cash flow what I really mean there is that you know I've got more work than I can do coming in and I'm ensuring that I've got more work than I can do coming into all times so that I have the I have the ability to choose when I take a project you know I mean if I need more money or I need more to come in for me to be able to make a living where I have a goal or something I have the option at any time to pick up a job pick up a job as it comes in or you know I'll tell I'll tell me assistant okay like you know what this is a good one for me I'm gonna be open this month I'm gonna pick that one up you know yeah so that's good so why delegate well first off and most first and foremost it forces your business to be more consistent and this is something I haven't really touched and this is kind of a nice fringe benefit but I didn't really see it coming so what happens what has happened to my business and the way if you follow the directions and you do this right do this the way I do it right or wrong the first thing I did was I started documenting everything right and I'm talking you know everything from how to do an invoice to how many times should we communicate with a client before we go to a lawyer you know things like that just just everything from that you can think of and what's interesting is as a result of course people follow those documentations they end up doing the same as that process every single time things go through your business the same way every time but what's funny is now that it's documented and it's in place I find that even if I'm doing those tasks I'm doing them more consistently with the business as well even though the business in a lot of ways starts out as just me whenever you're just by yourself and you don't document it there really isn't a set way to do it so you're going to do whatever is best for that particular situation so you end up being inconsistent enough doing things kind of on your own win but whatever you document it you'll find that you're actually going to reference your own documentation and say oh yeah how do I do an invoice or how do I do this so that's yes and then the second one is it allows you to focus on business growth I did this at midnight that should say on so and again work sell work sell right you're able to focus on those those follow-ups those sales talks and all those things that allow you to continue to grow and not only that not only from a sales perspective but you're also going to open yourself up to be happier and healthier and less desperate again just because you're delegating the work you're not overworking yourself and that's going to allow you to think about your business more and think then you know things are think whenever you're not flooded with how am I going to get this work done or how am I going to pay these bills all of a sudden you stop thinking about those immediate things and they'll start thinking about those things that are a little more existential in nature you know you're able to think about what's why am I doing this or you know what happens where do I want my business to go this is where it seems to be heading now what do I need to do to make this course corrections and you know as a business owner that really at its at its core as a business owner that is your primary job you know I mean that is why you are there that's why your business is running that's why people work with you or work for you if you choose to do W2's is to some degree they expect that you're going to be able to drive that boat and see where it's going it all allows you to increase sales produce stress kind of are to talk about that and then provides other people you care about with some extra money you know we actually and as a good example of that one of our contractors that we work with you know he's got a full-time job and human life picks up a couple jobs here and there you know I'm not going to pretend that my my company is in a position to be able to give you a full-time job with benefits and all these things what I can promise you is that you know I can give you a job that'll take you 12 hours to do and I'll give you six weeks to get it done you know and if you're working a full-time job and you want to pick up a little midnight oil and make some extra money I can do that for you and as a result you know I've got a contractor who I've worked with who has been able to focus a lot more on a passion project of his on becoming a part of a band and doing some touring and writing music and all this stuff and you've been able to you know with with this sidegate be able to pay and fund that you know so that's that's just something I think is really cool is that you know you're able to not only take care of yourself and help yourself and do better for yourself but you're also providing other people with with more and better things that they may not have otherwise been able to attain themselves so let's talk about some common misconceptions about the principles behind delegating first off delegating is for lazy people I hear this all too often and this is bullcrap it's so fast because it doesn't mean just because you're delegating it doesn't mean that you don't work it just means that you route your work to the most impactful tasks right and that's really what you're trying to do you're trying to say what is the most important thing I can do in my business is it working with a key client is it bringing in more sales is it focusing on marketing is it improving does you know improving our processes and what is it you know but the you know a lot of people will tell me oh you just want you just want to outsource all your stuff so that you can sit on a beach all day and drink some pina coladas and just have yourself a good little time it's just not the cakes right I mean at no point have I ever believed that I'm not going to be working so another one is I don't make enough money to delegate again this is probably false if you're overwhelmed with work you're charging enough you're making enough money to delegate and if you're overworked and you're still barely making ends meet raise your prices and then raise them again and then probably raise them again because you're definitely not charging enough and we're going to talk a little bit about how to figure out you know if you are charging it up here in just a minute and another one is I don't know enough to delegate you're right you're absolutely right you probably don't if you haven't ever been a manager if you've never been in a position of higher authority in that capacity and even if you have you probably still don't know but like any skill it takes practice just to learn how to do it this is a skill you know and that's something that's important this is a skill it's not just something that you wake up one day and you can do so start sharpening it just like you sharpen any other skill you're working on all right so let's actually get started on actually talking about how to do this phase one is higher a virtual assistant but before we do before we actually hire a virtual assistant we actually have to get you prepared to be able to actually direct them and give them something to do right so the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna divide up your to-dos you're gonna look at everything you do each day and divided into three columns and you're gonna say these are the things only I can do these are the things that a professional can do and these are things that almost anyone can do this is you personally take this very personal don't think about it just as your business think about this as what can I do only me right so for this only me this is things like be healthy right brush my teeth every day you know very very internal very personal you know odds are pretty good nobody's gonna brush your teeth for you and also pretty good that well they haven't figured out a way to get a person to do my drawing for me yet the second one is a professional so this is you know write HTML write CSS write PHP do plumbing do electrical work anything photo edit take photos do videography project management sales marketing you know there's all these things that that require some kind of special knowledge that you may not even have yourself or just something that isn't necessarily so well-defined or so simple as you know anybody else could do it so and then last but not least is almost anyone again this is just like what I talked about before this is sending out invoices writing checks dealing with bank issues keeping track of finance finances receipts expenses taking phone calls there's there's no shortage of things on that one chasing clients for payments checking mail pausing checks so once you do that you're gonna start automating your tasks and the first thing you want to tackle that almost any one-list you're gonna sign up for services that allow you do these to quicker and the reason we're gonna do this is simple you don't want to hire a virtual assistant to do an intervention the task an efficient task you want to make it efficient first and then after you hire them of course they're gonna help you be making more efficient even still so you're gonna want to use some tools to automate what you can some examples are things like Calendly which is a great tool to schedule meetings and we think about how much time you spend emailing back and forth right now just trying to figure out a time to person do you really want to pay somebody to do that probably not you should use it to look out of the way you send them a link the personal link and they get to pick a time block you know another example is DocuSign makes your life a whole lot easier just to sign and automate the process of getting your contract signed and dealt with and then QuickBooks is another example for invoicing sending out you know doing reports for your your expenses and things like that so after you do that you're to start documenting of course you're gonna document every task in detail and some examples of that include things like how to send out an invoice or how often should you follow up on an invoice what happens if one of our clients websites go down right what contact information should the client get what's the preferred way to contact me and you're gonna miss things on this and that's okay because what you're gonna make sure that you do is that you only answer questions once so anytime the person you're working with anybody you're ever working with they ever come to you and they ask you a question don't just answer them answer them and go to your documentation and update your documentation so that information is there because in a perfect world you should be in a situation where anytime somebody asks you a question you should actually be able to just send them to a specific spot in your documentation where you already answered that question set up work hire the virtual assistant preferably local but you know start with your network and see what you got the reason why I recommend that you start local is because if you work with a local bank or you have a PO box and you're comfortable with them you trust them they can do some of your banking for you they can check your mail for you they can they can help you with those things of course dot lv is do this so it just depends on your situation and of course if you're not comfortable with your vehicle in any kind of your banking or not comfortable with them checking your mail and you know the local is probably all that work and then once you hire this person give it time you know just keep on working with them keep working with them and you'll get a feeling whatever it's right right so they're gonna be asked they're gonna ask you questions eventually it's gonna get to the point where it's like one or two questions a week right and once you once you're there it's time to make the next step and so maybe jump in your second out here so you know this this kind of comes back to the same problem we just talked about a minute ago again you need to prepare your business for this moment and the first thing is you know are you charging enough to outsource and still profit so and also are you docked your projects documented properly so again to in order to figure out your pricing problem in order to figure out your budgeting you need to take your projects or any of anything you ever do for a project and bring it into roles generally speaking this really boils down five different things the technician sales person manager owner and the business itself the technician generally revolves around anybody who does the technical work right everything from front-end developer back-end developer SEO guy marketing guy social media you or whatever you want to call it salesperson is probably gonna be you for a while and if you happen to figure out how to get a salesperson and motivate them to work on a W9 please let me know manager same thing right they it's just a role where they actually manage all this stuff and make sure it all works business owners your own personal cut because ultimately if all these roles are filled you should still get at least a little bit of something just for for being a part of this business and making sure that you know at the end of the day somebody's not responsible it's you so you should still be paid for it of course and then last but not least business this is where your taxes you know where you're able to make sure you're finding your taxes your in all your businesses so once you figure out those roles start setting a number for every project you do and just try to budget you know the pricing for each one of these roles and ask yourself for this project would I take that job you know what I would I do whatever I'm asking this person to do for this much money and the answer to know raise it keep raising until you look at all those roles and you go heck yeah I would work for that heck yeah I work in that and once you have that and then you have you know some kind of profit margin for your own business you now have your minimum price once you do that pick a rolled out source also pretty good it's gonna be a project manager if you're really lucky you might actually get a salesperson just depends on what you're good in if you're better in sales in front of management then maybe you'll find a salesperson first I was better in the project management side than the sales side so I found a project manager just so happen to be that my VA actually had a pretty good project management skill set as well so she ended up also taking on some of those projects as a project manager so then you hire you document the role that you've chosen right to document every task in detail just like before this is the same exact thing as we are documenting all those roles documenting all those tasks you know and again answer questions only once step three hire tail goes after that you make mistakes and you repeat so basically you're just gonna go through your work with them and you're gonna make sure that they're able to get through everything that they need to get through and repeat the process is it for the technician role in the sales role and whatever other roles you got and eventually you're gonna spot where you've got you know a small team of people you can call on for any given role so before I jump into that again what's interesting about this whenever you break it into multiple roles like this what happens now as you're able to say you know what I for this job I'm going to be the project manager or I'm gonna be the project manager the developer in the sales person so now you know how much to pay yourself with that project how much you don't get paid right because you're the business owner project manager developer in sales person you those four roles so you take the total amount of those four roles and that's how much you get paid the rest of the money is already delegated else like and then you know you're able to kind of scale back and scale up as much as you want so if you don't if you don't have a lot of time and you've got enough work maybe you're nothing but the business owner on that project and then maybe you can scale up whenever you're open to be the business owner the developer the technician and the salesperson right it just depends on how things work forward so a couple recommended reads are the email three visited in the 40 hour work week the email three visited if you haven't read this I know you've heard of it because it's on every single solitary business shelf on the planet and it's on every recommended read list and it's there for a good reason it was literally written for you if you're in this room and you're listening to this talk read this book if you already read it once read it again the second one is a 40 hour work week it's okay if there's some points of it that I don't necessarily agree with but if you are afraid if you know fear is stopping you from making that jump into that next step it's a great book it's almost a manifesto in that way where it you know demands that you just get over that fear and it helps you figure that out all right well that was dense so how's it you guys have any questions so when you work with said technician that's out today have any client contact or resolve my contact it's all through the that's why the project manager exists my second question is what are the roles that your project manager so primarily project manager manages the timeline the budget and the client communication so what what my project manager is a girl so I'm gonna refer to a cheat right back there she she she made big a differ on any of these things but you know it's it's primarily at client communication budget and timeline so she makes sure that they do things secondly and then I don't know what they did and then I have to check all their work figure out what they did and that takes me almost as long as that's where documentation comes in that's that's where documenting your roles documenting a process to be able to do those checks and balances and things come in so for example as a developer right now I for the smaller that's why also why you should start a smaller projects and somebody you trust because if it's a smaller project it's a smaller scope and they completely botched worst case scenario you have to jump in and fix it really okay I guess the only thing I can say really is you just have to document early and make very clear your expectations and trust your project manager trust that they can take from there one of the people in my online world just put together like a package that has like 24 checklists of like SLPs standard operating procedures which you're talking about documentation if anyone wants that if you're sending your email I can send you the link to that it saves a lot of time you can modify it to include any extras that you do yeah it's awesome and I just missed the boat I should have had that checklist absolutely culminating in standard right right exactly and I guess I should take a setback I was a mechanical janitor before before I was so yeah I did leave without knowing it I remember where one of the places I work they were just jumping into the units or some glasses and some of the parents behind it yeah you're right I guess that must be showing through yeah something to take you to establish this entirely too long I I'm gonna say probably a year and a half and honestly you can probably get there in six months we used to use a song and honestly if you're looking for something I would recommend that I've kind of gotten to a spot now where we're using a ticking system that that manages all of that force fresh test so that's kind of helped reduce our our leniency on a sauna and then we're just using slack and we're creating an individual channel for every project and keep it going I use trouble before I used the sauna but I found that a sauna was kind of like trouble on steroids yeah test management where it's like the kid in the sauna trouble is my personal life yeah I think I think we found some success and we use the sauna for a while but eventually we ended up shifting over to a ticking system that I don't know it was just a little less rigid which you know it's a right given everything I just said about documentation and stuff but the ability to just kind of let people who store documentation yeah you can and that's actually where my documentation is starting to be stored now before it was ever no and that really worked but it's nowhere near as good as I think I got you not here yeah I'm sorry man oh you're good thank you