Outsourcing and Business Automation

you mentioned a couple things earlier on you mentioned obviously the impact that Zoe has in terms of keeping on point and and you know bringing you back in um and you mentioned being able to I can't do this now and say no to stuff I mean what's what's your take in terms of productivity, memory on outsourcing stuff? How much do you do that in your business? Oh, that was so hard for me to do when we first started because I was such a control freak. I was very picky about how I wanted things done. I'm very fussy. And I had a lot of hard, I had a really hard time giving control to people, especially when I started, when I started employing other coaches. And then I was like, okay, I'm going to give you these clients and there's a certain way I want things done. And it was hard, right? But anything that is below your pay grade, anything that you don't have to actually do, pay someone else to do it. Because especially at where I am in my company, it doesn't make sense for me to do some of these tasks that somebody else could easily do. Like I need to be doing what I have expertise in that no one else of my company could do. So if I'm doing this little niddly shit, like that's taking away time that I should be using my skills and I should take, let one of my other employees or outsource a PA, like a virtual PA or something like that, let them do it. So we do, we have a virtual PA that she's the one that takes care of our website, but she also takes care of some of the other things. It's like, Hey, I need a spreadsheet for this. I don't want to sit around and try to read a book and try to figure out how to make this fucking spreadsheet. That's going to say it's five hours i could have been programming or i could have been writing content or i could have been creating new new new education so um because again too if if you say yes to too many things especially things that you don't actually need to do then all the important stuff is going to get pushed to the side and then that's going to cause more stress and more anxiety it's not pushed even it's not pushed to the side you don't do it the quality that you're that you're you know and i can imagine like for someone like you who is that you have a certain way of doing things you have a reputation in this industry of having very very high quality education high quality courses i don't think the quality that you're known for would be possible if you were having to do all the back end stuff for the website all the editing all the filming all the admin all the outreach all the marketing all yourself it's that ability to be able to focus on that one thing and you went through your routine and how focused it was, but how much do you think that's because you've streamlined your day to the things that you're good at and you enjoy, and that's why you can stay the course? Yeah. And that has to be what's done, especially if you get really busy. We're super busy. So there's only so many hours in a day. There's only so many hours you can actually work in a day. I don't have a problem working 12 hours, 16 hours, but you still got to sleep and you still gotta poop and i still gotta train you know and i still gotta go to the grocery store and get food i can't live on uber eats you know so you you have to you have to mitigate your time by leveraging other people that can do have the capacity to do the things that you don't need to do and also can probably do them better because they can take the time like here's the thing like in you know and i've been criticized for this before like if you look at like my slides in my education they're nothing fancy like i'm you want good information or do you you want to get taught how to do things right you want fancy fucking slides so there are other people who make fancier slides they have fancier videos and all that but fuck it i'm all about the information and if i was sitting in there really trying to make my slides look really really good i wouldn't be able to i wouldn't be able to research and develop and do all the other things right so that's my next i was telling Zoe yesterday, I'm like, I really want to get someone that's good at, um, at putting slides together and building templates and making really nice. So we can polish it off because we do, you will get criticized for that because people will focus on the stupidest shit. Um, so now we've got to take care of that. So I have to find somebody who can like be the creative director kind of thing And you know a virtual PA or whoever who can now say okay I really I really good at PowerPoint I really good at Microsoft whatever the fuck they use or Canva and can put these pretty slides together Like Matt Peacock if you look at his slides he got these amazing slides but he really good at that shit Like he could do that stuff really fast. If I tried to make slides like Matt does, it would take me all day to do one fucking slide. Exactly. I always think that thing is like, if I had all day, if I didn't have anything to do, I can get really good at it. It's like, I could probably get to a point where it takes me five minutes make that slide but i don't have the five hours to learn how to make it in five minutes 100 yeah and you know what if i did them like i would be on one slide for eight hours because it would never look as good as i wanted to so i would just rather say hey you make the slides here's the information here's here's my dodgy ass slides go make it look pretty yeah i've got so i've got so many canva templates and i and i i think it's it that's such a you know thing that resonates to me and i think the big one of the best investments i ever made in my business as a huge plug for him uh it's a guy from a guy called paul spencer from a company called ato solutions and he does all the automations um like if you ever need the automation onboarding emails you know trailer boards client management stuff i will send you his details he's phenomenal but he's now got this thing where like from especially from someone with an adhd brain and being able to remember stuff someone signs up if you sign up with me today you'd automatically get your welcome email you would then fill in your onboarding form that would make you a card on trello that means then that's that will give you a template meal plan that i go and adjust for the foods you like and if i want to change the calories because you know you're different from what i normally do i make that that's all done for me it's all in one place in the card and then based on my check-ins if you go how compliant you've been this week anyone that says one gets moved to red everyone that says five gets moved to green everyone in the middle gets moved to amber and i get different reminders to check in with people like the people on red i check in with more people on green i can probably wait till next check-in and like that is done without me having to do a single thing because the amount of times i'm missing attachment forget somebody or just something like that is hands down it's not cheap but it's the best investment i've ever made because it allows me to not as you mentioned earlier feel like i'm sort of like juggling commitments because either i'm trying to do too much stuff or i've got behind on one thing because i'm trying to do it all myself yeah yeah you have to man you got to if you want to go if you want to do it right you gotta you gotta have somebody that can do it right so you gotta pay for that one thing i something you said you said so people who are compliant move to green and people who aren't compliant move to red and other people get moved to what orange amber like a traffic light system did you what did you say did you say umbra amber oh amber i heard you say umbra and i was like that's a color i don't No, what the fuck is Umbra? Hammer, okay, got it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like 100% the best investment because it just means that a little bit of my brain power now can come back to focus on me. And I like the fact that you've mentioned a VA because you mentioned that three or four times now and I'm on the cusp of getting a VA. I think the fact that you've mentioned it so much means I think this is worth the investment. Yeah, like one of the things we did that I really like, and this is a Zoe idea, is we automated our onboarding process. So used to, you would have a Dropbox account And you would have all your files, all that stuff. And you go in there and you fill out your questionnaire. But then now I have to go in to Dropbox, go on your thing, pull your thing, download it, go through it. So now you're sent a web portal where type that in. And I get a nice email that just pops right on my thing. It's all your shit on it. So anything you can automate, anything you can streamline, anything you can funnel is what you want to do. because if you continue to get busier and busier, you have to have those systems in place. When we started most of them, we didn't, we just got really busy. Like day one had no system set in place and it's taken us this long. You know, we're talking six and a half years now, almost seven years to get our systems a point where it's actually getting fairly well manageable because we need these systems to go through. Cause you can't scale up. If you don't have your systems in place and try to scale, and scale up and you scale up too much and you don't have systems in place, then you're going to piss off a lot of people, which happens because you didn't have proper systems in place. And we didn't know when we first started. We were just like, okay, we can figure this out. And we quickly figured out like, no, you can't. You can't be reactive. You have to be proactive. So we've had to now go back and try to redo all that stuff and keep improving the systems and keep putting more systems so that every single thing is automated. It's a double-edged sword as well, right? because you don't sometimes you don't know how far your systems go and where the gaps in your systems are until you push against them and break them. And then you're like, oh, OK, next time I need to do this. So I for the moment, I'm revamping. I'm going to be soon revamping my check in forms because to have a bit more like logic gaps. So what I find is that people could be finishing off the dieting phase It the same check in It not as urgent anymore because it not the strict deadline Those people start to drop off the compliance for check Or I got a lot of people in Serbia I've become quite well-known in Serbia somehow. And because a lot of their English isn't good, I'll be like, what are your wins this week? And they just reply, yes. Fantastic. Brilliant. So having multiple choice to go, okay, here's a few ideas, but if there's other and you want to say something nice and personal, be my guest but also have logic jumps so like depending on where which phase you're in what you're doing the checking can be a completely different check-in depending on what questions you ask which is a complete mindfuck in terms of how i'm actually going to put this together but i've got this clear idea in my head i just need to go okay what are the actual questions going to be and i you know i think that was going to have a massive impact and allow me to kind of give better feedback know where people's problems are allow people to communicate better because able to learn how to verbalize it like going back to our point earlier on that communication um but these are these are things i love doing i like having more time to go right one of the things i like finding out what i can outsource like i like trying to go what makes my clients better now who do i pay to sort this out but you know