Outsourcing towards confidence and freedom to your business. by Jennifer Perdew

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing

NICHE AFFILIATE MARKETING SYSTEM

MYNAMS300 Interview with Nicole Dean:

OUTSOURCING TO MULTIPLY YOUR PROFITS

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing

NICOLE DEAN: Nicole Dean is the Mostly-Sane Marketer. (Ask anyone who knows her and they’ll say that the “mostly” part is up for debate!) Nicole loves to help online business owners earn more money AND have more fun! She is an expert in Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Management, “Lazy Marketing” for passive profits, Outsourcing Effectively, and Marketing with Content. But, she’s got a secret. She uses a LOT of shortcuts. Nicole juggles a lot of things, but she does it all without owning a Blackberry or giving out her cell phone number. She enjoys work very much, but lives to spend time with her much-adored husband, her two silly children – and also her two slightly neurotic puppies, Eddy & Einstein.

RESOURCES FROM NICOLE DEAN: Quality PLR Articles & Reports Nicole’s site to help you as a business owner obtain quality content for your projects sold in small quantities to ensure the same content isn’t plastered all over the internet. How to Guest Blog Check out Niocle’s Blogging World Tour and learn how she made new joint venture partners, got great links and got her products and her name in front of ton’s of new customers. Ready to Make Real Money on the Internet After creating your info product, how do you market it? Nicole has already been there- she’s jump the hurdles, she’s taken the punches and she will guide you through the process of getting your products on the market while avoiding the pitfalls and mistakes.

DAVID PERDEW: David is the founder of NAMS – the Niche Affiliate Marketing System – one of the fastest growing affiliate marketing workshops and affiliate training systems available today. What makes NAMS so different is that the instructors TEACH, demonstrate, and enable the students with handson workshops. Students learn from their current experience level. Beginners work with beginners, Intermediates work with intermediates, and Advanced students work with advanced groups. Everyone talks the language they understand. Page 2 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

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Nicole Dean: Outsourcing

INTRODUCTION: In this presentation, Nicole Dean takes you through the struggles ever successful business person has to overcome. With growth brings more things to do with less time and people to do it. Being overworked and underpaid, she saw the light and realized that outsourcing is a valuable resource if used correctly. Nicole helps you stick your toe in to test the waters and leads you towards the confidence and freedoms outsourcing can bring to your business. Nicole has literally written the book on outsourcing and some of the tips and tools you’ll learn include: 

What is outsourcing and why is it important?

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What can outsourcing do for your business?

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Factors that prevent people from outsourcing effectively

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How to choose which tasks you should outsource and which ones you should not

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The differences between outsourcing and out-tasking

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Steps to take to get started with outsourcing

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing David Perdew: This is David Perdew from the Niche Affiliate Marketing System and this is another of our weekly live training sessions. As you know, we try to go through this on a weekly basis. We try to go through these in a track style. So, a couple of weeks ago we did – Kevin Riley did some very basic niche research techniques. We call that our NAMS100. Last week, we did a NAMS200 session and this week we are doing a NAMS300 session with Nicole Dean. Nicole is a one of my favorite people. She's got an infectious laugh, which is just crazy, but she is also one of the best business people I know. She's a really brilliant mind when it comes to online business. She has – were you the co-author or were you the primary author or the only author of The Outsource Weekly? Nicole Dean: I was the primary author of that. David Perdew: Okay. That's a 52-week course that you have that walks people through the processes and the constraints and the issues and the workarounds and the tools and techniques of outsourcing. I’ve gone through that and love it. And I know that Terry Dean actually sent it to his list not long ago because he loves it. Nicole Dean: That blew my mind. David Perdew: I know. It was pretty cool. And I’m encouraging people to take a look at that tonight even before we go on here. I just want you to take a look at that and I will put a link in the box here for it. But I want you to know that Nicole is one of the primary instructors that we have at NAMS and I’m really excited to have her here. I look forward to everything she teaches because she's always real simple, real clear cut, and she helps me a lot because I’m not that simple. I try to be a little complicated sometimes. Nicole Dean: Surer words have not been spoken! David Perdew: Thank you so much! Okay, so, Nicole, take it away. Nicole Dean: Alright, guys! Welcome, welcome! I’m looking forward to having a great time tonight. We’re going to talk about something that is very scary to a lot of people and so I have decided to basically put it in cartoon format tonight. You can't be scared of cartoons, right?

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing Well, what it is, is that I tend to be a doodler. I take notes with circles and I make doodles with smiley faces and draw flowers and all kinds of stuff on it. And when I started to think about putting together this presentation, I opened a PowerPoint and I went “Ugh!” PowerPoint stresses me out. So, instead I started to doodle. And my friend, Susana, always says that she loves my doodles and that I should sell them. So, I thought, “Well, you know what I’ll do – I’ll just sit down and I’ll doodle all these presentations and see how it turns out.” Then I just had my son scan the doodles and that's what we’re working from tonight. I hope that's okay; it just seems natural. Some people are very linear thinkers and I’m not. I’m a very visual person, so you get to peek into how my brain works. So be afraid, be very afraid! David Perdew: So, I have a question already. I’m sorry. Nicole Dean: Yes? David Perdew: So, your son scanned these for you? You mean you outsourced these to your son? Nicole Dean: I did! He was home sick today from school. His allergies were bothering him and so after I doodled it, I numbered the pages 1 through 19 and I said, “Please scan these.” And I showed it to Kyle and said, “When you’re done, drop them in Dropbox and then I’ll get them into my PowerPoint.” David Perdew: And he sent you his PayPal address, right? Nicole Dean: Actually, yes. He is a little keeper. He keeps his hours on a piece of paper on a bulletin board by the front door and then whenever he buys a video game on GameFly or through the PS3 he subtracts it off, so he keeps like a running checkbook that he hangs by the front door so he knows every time he works how much he can add. David Perdew: Good, that's a great lesson! Nicole Dean: Yeah! He stores it up and when he's earned enough he can buy whatever he wants. David Perdew: Terrific! Nicole Dean: And he knows the rules for video games, and as long as it meets the criteria for violence and content, then he is welcome to buy it with his own money.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing David Perdew: Okay. Sorry for the distraction. Nicole Dean: That’s okay, David. We are all family here and this is cool. Alright, guys. This is me. I can talk to you about my business all day, but this is basically who I am. This is my family. I like to have a lot of fun and the point of these pictures is just basically to show you that I’m not sitting behind the computer 12-24 hours a day. I have a life. And to kind of show you why I’m qualified to teach this topic, I own or co-own four PLR sites, I have tons of niche sites, I have my own info products, I have coaching clients, and I have a life. So, this talk today is going to be geared towards people who – I’ll get to this in a second – people who have built the business and have gotten to success and now they feel trapped and stuck. You’re sitting on your bottom too many hours in front of a computer and it's not where you want to be. So, you guys know somewhat about me as a business person. I’ve been – some people call me successful. I’m happy with my business, how I built it. I plan to grow it. I like to make the web and the world a better place. That's one of my mottos. And I love my family. You can see my daughter Delany is up in this corner. That's Halloween a few years ago. That's me and her a few years ago. That's my husband and I when we renewed our vows for our 10th anniversary. I told him we have to renew our vows every 10 years and he said, “Why? Do they expire?” But you guys who were at NAMS have seen this before. It's just, I’m shooting a 9mm at paper, not people. Then I volunteer at the Humane Society with animals. But this presentation is about you guys, not about me. I just kind of wanted those of you who don't know me yet to kind of get a visual of what I’m about. And I like to have a lot of fun and I don't like to sit in front of my desk 24 hours a day. So, that's kind of a sneak peek into my life. Alright, like I said, this whole presentation is doodles. So screen one, who am I talking to today? If you are on the line and you’re overwhelmed, you’re working too many hours, you’re making a good income online, or you’re at least making an income, you’ve gotten over the accidental income stage and you’re starting to make a consistent income at some level – then this is for you. And this is – I’m talking to myself back in 2007, when I was in a position where I felt overwhelmed. I would sit at the computer. I’d make myself sick because I had so much to do. I didn't know how I could do it all. I didn’t know how to outsource. It's not like we are born with these tools. It’s something that we have to learn. Page 8 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing I’m talking to my friend Lain at scraphappy.org. I asked if I could mention her because right now her parents are visiting her for a week and her mom hasn't been doing so well. And so her business has to keep running, but she's being pulled because the kids needs to be taken care of, her business needs to be taken care of, her parents are there from across the country, and she wants to spend time with them. She wants to take time to be with them, to help her dad out. My friend Susanne Myers, AffiliateTreasureChest.com, just had to fly over to Germany for a week for a funeral. You have to be able to step away from your business. And I’m talking to you, too, if you are having some of these problems at the 300 level. If you can relate to some of these things. If you have reached the level of success where you are starting to feel punished for it rather than feeling liberated by your business. If you feel stuck. If you’re starting to resent your business. If you’re starting to question whether what you created is really what you want. If you’re working too hard. If you’re losing your mojo. If something happens in your life, your income stops if you aren't working. If you have no room for life events – good ones, like you win the lottery. If you win a cruise around the world or your daughter gets invited to compete in an event across the country, can you pick up and go? Can your business run without you? And you have no room for bad life events. You see there, “Boo! We don't like bad life events,” but they happen. So, we have to have some outsourcing in place so that if you want to step away or if you need to step away from your business, you can do that without taking a huge hit, without just disappearing on your customers, without your income dropping. So, this is why outsourcing is so very important. Okay, so how did it happen? How did you get in this position where you’re sitting on your bottom too many hours a day and you feel trapped by your business. If you’re at the 300 level, it's because your business grew without enough focus and direction, without enough systemization, without enough delegation, and without enough automation. Try to say that fast a few times! So, you’re in a position that's good, actually. I know it doesn't feel like it right now, but it's good because you've gotten to a place where you have customers, you have affiliates, you have these things. So, this isn't a talk for people at the 100th level that need to know how to Page 9 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing outsource to get their first blog site up. You guys have that. You’ve got the income coming in and now you’re going, “What now?” You can’t reach the growth levels that you want to reach until you start outsourcing and you can't reach the lifestyle goals that you want to reach as well. You can't live your life if you’re trapped by your business. So, this is actually a good problem and it's a normal problem, so don’t feel like you’ve done anything wrong. You just haven’t learned yet how to do it right. Alright. In talking to people, there are several things that are stopping them from outsourcing effectively – not outsourcing at all, but outsourcing effectively. And before I get into these, one of the big things that I hear a lot – you can see that scared face out there. People are afraid of outsourcing and I’d like to tell people that you are already outsourcing. You’re outsourcing every day in your personal life. It's just that when it gets to our businesses that all of a sudden we just get this wall up that we don't understand how to do it, even though in day to day life we outsource all the time. When my hair needs to be cut, I go to a hairdresser. I don't sit with two mirrors and a pair of scissors and try to figure it all out on my own. I go to my hair stylist and she handles it for me. Twice a week, the city comes by and picks up my trash. That works just fine. I don't have any issues with that. When I go to a restaurant, I have the waiter to bring me my food and a cook cooks it for me and that's pretty easy and I think you'd agree with me so far. What else? Let's see. Oh, I know. The one I always like to say is if your appendix burst – well, if my appendix burst right now on the call, I wouldn’t say, “Hey, guys! I need to know how to fix it! Let’s look it up on the Internet and I’ll do it! I’ll get the scissors and you can walk me through it!” No. I’ll get an ambulance or get in the car, go to the hospital, and let somebody more qualified handle that situation for me. No offense guys, but I’d like to have a doctor take my appendix out of me if that needs to happen. So, we’re already outsourcing in our day to day life and we seem to be able to do it just fine. So in your business, it's not something to be afraid of. And I know, I know. I also get people all the time saying, “I tried once and it didn't go well.” Well, there are a lot of things in life, and there are a lot of things in business, that we try once and they don't go well one time. My mom’s here. I could ask her, but I’m pretty sure that the first time I tried to stand up and take a step, I probably landed on my face. And if you need I can go get her; she's in the house. I’m guessing any of you that are parents watched your children learn to take their first steps, Page 10 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing too. And they probably fell down, not once, not twice, but multiple times. Did they give up? No! They got back up and they kept trying. So, just because something in your business didn't go quite as you planned, or even if it goes wrong, that isn't a reason to never do it again because at some point in your business, you have to learn to outsource. This is not something you can put off forever. If you are running a business, you have to learn this skill. It is essential for you to have an income and to have a life. So the fear aspect, if that's what’s stopping you from outsourcing effectively, just remember what I told you about when you go to the restaurant, you don't go on back and cook your own food, and elbow people out of the way and say, “Get out of my way! I’m cooking this!” That would be ridiculous. And remember the appendix story because although there is the Simpsons episode, I think, where Santa's Little Helper, Homer’s dog, he needs surgery and Homer goes and gets The Dog’s Surgery book and looks up how to do it. So, don't be like Homer Simpson; call a doctor! Another thing that stops people from outsourcing effectively, or even outsourcing at all, is time. It takes time to find people. It takes time to train people. It takes time to figure out what you want to do with people when you do get them. That was one of my first realizations. I got a virtual assistant. I went, “Yay! I’ve got you! Now everything will be wonderful!” And I didn’t realize that I actually had to come up with the tasks and train that person. So, at that point I was so far behind that I didn’t utilize her effectively. And we’ll talk some more about small outsourcing mistakes in just a little bit, but time is an issue that keeps people from outsourcing and outsourcing effectively. Money. It’s hard to convince people to spend money and to have someone else do what they are capable of doing themselves. I understand that, but again, eventually, it’s a task that you are going to have to do and that brings me up to confidence. The confidence and the money go together, I think, because if you don't have confidence in your business, then it's hard to invest money in it. So, one of the first things, if that's the case, that you might want to invest in is a good business coach, someone that can just flat out tell you, “Yes, this business is doing well and it can go and do these other things, but we need to make these changes and we need to put money in here, here, and here, but not here yet, until we've gotten to that growth.” So, I think that the money and the confidence thing normally go together because it’s very hard to invest in a business when you don't fully believe that it's going to work or other people Page 11 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing around you, in your circle of influence, are telling you it's not going to work. Why would you put money into it? So, there’s kind of a problem there. And the other confidence issue is having confidence in yourself. If you don’t have confidence in yourself that you can be a success in your business – you may think your business is a great idea, but that you’re not good enough to take it where it needs to be and you can’t invest money for that reason. You're just slowing down your progress. And again, I would suggest that you get a circle of people that you can turn to that can help you to get past that because you have to get to outsourcing eventually. And the motivation part is hard, too. And that kind of ties into the time. It's hard to motivate yourself to go out and figure out outsourcing, to find people, to train them, because of the time aspect and it's a job; it involves effort on your part. And then, the other part of motivation is once you get someone, you may find that it's very difficult to motivate them to get the work done. And you may have run into that obstacle in the past where you've hired someone and they stalled and stalled and stalled and you couldn't get the work done, couldn’t get the work done, and finally you went, “You know, it's just faster to do it myself. I’ve spent more time dealing with this person, trying to get them to do their job than it would’ve taken me to get it done myself.” So, these are some of the things that I’ve seen in talking with people about what's preventing them from outsourcing at their greatest capacity, and outsourcing efficiently and effectively. David, are you there? Have you missed anything or have I missed anything? David Perdew: No, but I have a bunch of questions I’ve been writing down. Nicole Dean: Okay. David Perdew: They are kind of appropriate right here if you don't mind. We could just have a discussion about it. Nicole Dean: If they are appropriate here, yes, please.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing David Perdew: So, when you talk about spending money, and we have so many people who are afraid to actually pull the trigger – you know, there's a big difference between getting somebody to do a transcription for you and having somebody systematized so that you can continue to do this kind of work on a weekly basis or a daily basis and have that ingrained into your system, incorporated into your system. How do you go about doing that specifically, I mean, is there a leap between the one and the system? Nicole Dean: I do have that coming in a little bit and I like to call it out tasking vs. outsourcing. David Perdew: Okay. So the money part of it is what I want to talk about. Nicole Dean: Well, the money part, yeah, and there are some different ways to handle the money part of things. What were you specifically wanting to address there? David Perdew: So, it seems to me that you – here’s the trap I think people fall into with outsourcing, is that they bank on making money and start building a system to make money, but they are not making money yet. And there has to be some kind of a tipping point where you know you are going to get there and you can see that it happens if you're not making money yet or if you're spending too much in a system. So, the thing that has happened to me in the past – and I really had to back off from this – is that outsourcing is addictive in a way. I mean, you can get really rolling with it and see that you can get a lot of it done. If you don’t watch the money piece of it as part of your financial system, you’re kind of in trouble, right? Nicole Dean: Yes. David Perdew: Then that's really what I want to talk about, how to monitor that money system that you have in place. Nicole Dean: Oh! That's a whole load of questions. David Perdew: That’s the reason it took me so long to ask it. Nicole Dean: Yeah, it is. Without knowing someone, it's very difficult to answer that perfectly, in my opinion, because I can't say you should outsource these things because every business is so different. And that's what I was saying; it's not exactly a linear process.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing I don’t want to tell someone to outsource in their business if the business is not a viable business. You know what I mean? David Perdew: Sure. Nicole Dean: So, I think one of the problems I see people make a lot of times is that they’ve got this business and it's growing and it's starting to make money. So, they outsource someone to work on a niche site that may or may not make money. They invest the money from the site that's actually working to invest and kind of play over here and that can be really dangerous because these are untested. So, if you don't have the cash flow and you’re struggling to pay your mortgage every month, then that money should not be pulled out of your business and invested into other niche sites. It should either be used to pay the mortgage and credit cards because they get out of hand, or invest back into that same business because you know it’s working. And every time you see what is working – if you do a webinar and you make $5,000, then you should be doing more webinars. David Perdew: Sure. Then I want to talk to you about the fear of failure. Nicole Dean: Yes. David Perdew: Because to me, that's a huge piece of it, too, that people are afraid to pull the trigger on something like that. Nicole Dean: It's huge. David Perdew: And one of the things that I tell people, and I don't know if you agree with this or not, is to start with something really small, like the $10 thing that you do or something else like that, and then just get the feel of how the process works. And that helps you build that confidence that you're talking about, I think, but then there's a point when you want to spend $500. And I’ve looked for the cheapest vs. the best some before and it never really works that way. So, that really leads to failure to me. Nicole Dean: Yes. And I always recommend starting slow, both for your protection with that one task and just for your sanity. You don't want to tell somebody that they're going to be working 20 hours a week for you if you give them their first assignment and it just isn't a good fit.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing It's a lot like marriage and there has to be a courting period there where you get to know the person before you make any kind of bigger commitment, but once you find somebody that’s awesome, you keep them... David Perdew: Yup! And then by the way, I’ve… Nicole Dean: As many of their hours as you can. David Perdew: I’ve had one person for four years now in Romania that I’ve never met, but I speak to a lot. And the guy started with a $10 Excel project for me, and I loved that guy from day one. I’ve paid him $250 a month for almost three years and he loves it and I love it. It's a great relationship and when you find those things, it's gold to me. Nicole Dean: Yep. That's why people always ask me, “Who do you recommend for some job?" It's like, well, if my person really has an opening, I’ll recommend them, but if not, I can't afford to because I can't afford to lose them. If they're good, it's a hard one. David Perdew: Move on. Nicole Dean: Are you ready to move on? David Perdew: Yep. Nicole Dean: Okay. Alright, these are the three types of outsourcing according to me. There is outsourcing up, outsourcing sideways, and outsourcing down. Outsourcing up is outsourcing in skills. So, if you're outsourcing up, you're outsourcing up in skills. If you're outsourcing down, you are outsourcing down on skills and if you're outsourcing sideways, you're outsourcing laterally to someone that's just as capable of you in doing whatever that skill is and this varies by person. For me, outsourcing up graphics, it's always outsourcing up. I don't do my own graphics at all, unless it's scanning in doodles. That's pretty easy. But if you're outsourcing up, basically, it's for something that you don't know how to do or something that you could do, but someone else could do it better, or you're outsourcing something that you’re using as an excuse to procrastinate getting something done because you just need to research it a little more. You're not quite sure yet which way to go. Hire somebody that knows the answer and pay them good, get it done, move on. Page 15 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing Outsourcing sideways is just: “I could do that or you could do that. Either way it's going to be just the same, so why don't you go ahead and handle that for me?” So, you're paying someone that's as equally qualified as you to do it. Outsourcing down, and I don't want to say down in quality, but outsourcing to someone that can do something that isn't your core competency, like customer service. Customer service is not less important, but if you're looking at your core competencies, you don't want to. That’s also research – anything that's a way that you don't need to be spending your time right now. For me, my core competencies are writing. I write on my blog. I write emails. I create products and I do networking. Those are the four things that are the best use of my time: talking to people, creating products, blogging and writing, and sending emails. So, those are things that I don't outsource. However, pretty much anything that doesn't fall into those four things can be outsourced up, sideways, or down. If you're outsourcing up, you usually pay more. If you're outsourcing sideways, it would be middle, and if you're outsourcing down, it may be a little less. But if you're outsourcing up, that could also be a coach, consultant, someone that's bringing you up, so you don't have to figure things out as you go along. You may need a programmer, someone that's designing something for you. And this is just, you know, a general idea, but it kind of helps me to figure out where I want to outsource and how I want to outsource. And, like David, I know you can find programmers that are much less affordable, but it's by person, too. And you're much more techie than I am, so to me that's definitely outsourcing up. David Perdew: Well, and I want to say something about that, too, because one of the keys for me is that I have to be really aware of what my skill set is and be really honest with it. I used to teach graphics design, so for some reason I think I’m a graphics designer. And the truth is every time I did it, somebody else could do it better than I could do it and faster and cheaper so I had to let go of that, you know? Nicole Dean: And it's amazing if it's something that I could tinker around with like for three hours, I can pass it off to my graphics designer and have it back in 15 minutes. David Perdew: Exactly.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing Nicole Dean: And it would be a thousand times better than anything that I did and I just wasted three hours of my time where I could have been just blogging or connecting with somebody to do a promo for me, you know, planning a webinar like this, things that are actually part of my important skill set, the things that make me money. David Perdew: Yeah, I agree. Now one of the four things again that you don't outsource? Nicole Dean: I don't outsource the emails that I write and send to my list. I don’t outsource my blog post, unless it's like a research blog or it's a guest blog post and someone just puts it up for me. Loretta collects my expert briefs and gets them ready for me then I go in and write my part of it. Also, networking and product creation. David Perdew: Okay, thanks Nicole Dean: Yeah. Would you agree that that's about yours, too? David Perdew: Yeah, I’m just thinking that I also don't outsource the finance side. I don't outsource affiliate payments and those kinds of things, but I could. Nicole Dean: Well, we’re going to get to that later, but you know there are different levels of PayPal. You don't have to give someone your PayPal access. David Perdew: Well, you can tell us about it. Nicole Dean: Okay, we'll get to that in just a little bit. Let me make a note. When I get to the control freak part of me, remind me if I don't mention it. David Perdew: Well, I’ll be listening closely then. Don't worry. Nicole Dean: Alright, so where to start? What to choose? This is kind of what you're talking about, David, where to invest your money, how do you know what to do? And these are the areas that I like to recommend somebody to start outsourcing. The first, and the most important one on there, is road blocks. If there is a road block standing between you and profit, outsource the darn thing and get past it so you can get the profit.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing If you've got an e-book ready and it’s going to change the lives of people and you can't wait to get it out there, but you don't know how to set up your shopping cart, well then get past that roadblock. Get help with that! That's a one-time task and it can be done and you can be seeing profit. So, anywhere there's a roadblock between you and money, that needs to be outsourced so that you can get to that profit. Anything that's an emotional drain – for me that’s customer support. I love my customers, but just the occasional meanie that comes in, it can throw me for a week. So, I know myself well enough to know that I have to outsource my customer support. I have a fabulous person that handles it for me, takes care of everybody, protects me from meanies. So, if you have an emotional drain like that, then by all means, outsource it. Going back to one-time tasks. Similar to road blocks, one time tasks, anything that you will only ever have to do once, there is no reason to learn how to do it. Just outsource it. That could be something like creating a header for your blog. If you don't know how, outsource it. Installing your shopping cart and setting it up for your first product, outsource that. Setting up your first Aweber list, go ahead and outsource that. And then after that, you have a model that you can follow or you can go back to that person and let them know you have another one that you need help with. Any time you have a one-time task, don't use it as an excuse to procrastinate for six months in getting something done. Hire somebody. It's usually cheaper than you think and it's quicker than you think. I remember, I’ve been stuck before and I just thought, “There is no way I can afford this. This is going to cost me $500.” This was years ago and I was like, “I have to figure it out.” And then finally, I couldn't figure it out. I went to someone and they were like “$75.” Okay, yeah, done! I can't believe I wasted so many months on that stupid thing. Your non-strengths, things that frustrate you, outsource those. I don't like to say weaknesses. David, you know that. You have strengths and non-strengths and your non-strengths are things that just you don't have yet, that you haven't developed yet. So, anything that is not your strength right now, go ahead and outsource it. For me that's graphics. It’s one of those things. Research is another one. I’m terrible at research because I go

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing off and I start researching and I end up on Facebook, I end up reading these blogs, I just wander. So, I have to outsource my research. List rollovers. And what I mean by that is, if you open up a notebook and you find a To Do list from last year on it and you see an item on it that still hasn’t been done, if that item could be making you money right now, then that should probably be outsourced because you’re not getting into it yourself. And again, procrastination – anything that you're using as an excuse to figure out how to do it, as an excuse to procrastinate, then that should be outsourced as well. So, David, that's pretty much the things, how I like to prioritize where to start and what to choose. David Perdew: I would agree with that. I don’t think I could add anything to that. Although, I will say one thing. This also is a great list to helping you figure out what to automate, right? Nicole Dean: Yes, absolutely. I don’t if know you recall, but in The Outsourced Weekly course, which you have the link up there on the screen, right? In that course, in the first lesson I talk about my R.E.A.D system. I don’t know if you recall what that was, David, but I like to have people work through that first lesson so they can figure out what to outsource. R stands for ruminate, E stands for eliminate, A stands for automate, and D stands for delegate. So ruminate means to think and figure out which projects are going to make you the most money. Those are the ones you're going to want to invest your time and resources in, so ruminate means we go through and figure out what those are. Eliminate is getting rid of the mental clutter that's not going to make you money and getting rid of projects or just at least setting them aside so that you're not splitting your time between multiple projects and you’re pushing the best one forward the fastest. So, ruminate, eliminate, automate. Automate just means to make sure that before you hire someone to do a task, that it isn’t something that a computer could do equally as well because you don’t want to pay someone hourly to do something that a computer could be doing for you for free.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing And that's a big one and a lot of people don’t quite understand that because they don’t know the power of technology. The simplest example for that would be hiring someone to handle all your spam on your blog without installing the Akismet plug-in first. So, it's ruminate, eliminate, automate, and then the fourth one is delegate. And those are the things that you figure out what you need to be having other people do so you can focus on what you do best, and how you can help the world the best, and how you can change lives while profiting. So, that's definitely true, automate is a huge part of that. Okay, so what not to outsource? When I started outsourcing years ago, I didn’t know how to do it, obviously, because none of us did. None of us knows how to outsource initially. We have to learn; it's a learned skill. And so the first thing I hired someone to do was to write articles for me. And it was the biggest waste of money I’ve ever had because, of course, my strength is that I write. So, I get the articles back and they weren’t in my tone. I was picky, and I was – what’s a nice way to say it? I was anal about it. David Perdew: I think that covers it, actually. Nicole Dean: That covers it. So, they just got stuck in a folder so that I could go back and edit them some day. And now, like I said, I don’t hire people to write as me, but I do have a lot of writers who write PLR for my PLR sites. I have a team. I have a content acquisition manager who handles the writers. I have a content prep manager who preps the packages and works them through the process. Then I just focus on the marketing of that. So, now I deal with a lot of writers, but when I initially started, I thought “Oh, well there's this ghost writer. I’ll hire her to write some articles that I can use on my blogs,” and I paid the money and they got stuck in the folder and I’ve never looked at them since. Just because you don’t want to outsource things where it’s your personality and that’s where you shine. You want to outsource places where you don’t shine as much. David Perdew: You know, that can work and that's what magazines have done for years because they actually have an entire guideline for people to be able to submit writing samples and stuff. One of the things they judge it on is the tone of the magazine. But you have to work with those people long enough to be able to make them understand that the tone is the theme, you know Page 20 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing it’s got to sound like the magazine; it's got to sound like you. So, I agree with you. I’ve done the same thing. Nicole Dean: Yeah, and I’m sure it could work, but it's just not where I want to invest my outsourcing money. David Perdew: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Nicole Dean: Okay, so next. Some of you might be thinking, “Why all this basic stuff?” If it’s basic to you, that's because most people that are the 300 level in business are still at the 100 level in outsourcing, and most people put it off. The worst offenders are the people that are successful because we are perfectionists. We are hard workers or perfectionists. We get stuff done, obviously, because we've got profitable businesses, and then it's our baby and we don’t want other people messing it up. So, we are the worst offenders as people that are in the 300 or 400 group because we have built something of value, of quality. It is profitable and we don’t want somebody else coming in and mucking it up. The other reason is because a lot of people still don’t think they can afford it. And the truth is you can’t afford not to outsource. Your business cannot grow unless you start outsourcing. And the people that are outsourcing a bit don’t know how to ramp it up and really get their outsourcing moving and working on its own without being in the middle of it, without running out and finding someone to do all these little tasks and coming back. They don’t understand how to actually have systems to make all this work. David, do you have anything to add? David Perdew: When you said the 300 people are at the 100 level on this, that's the reason we actually didn’t even touch outsourcing until 300 to tell the truth, so there you go. Nicole Dean: Yes. And the only part of outsourcing that the 100 level really needs is probably graphics and some technical help. Once we get to this level, where you’ve got a business and it’s making money, no matter how much that is, you’ve got to be outsourcing. David Perdew: You know, the one thing I want to say about the 300 people is I have a lot of sympathy for them because I feel like I’m there in a lot of ways. The 100 people, you know,

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing you're excited about getting your business started and maybe you don’t know how to do it. The 300 people are working their tails off I think, so there you go. Nicole Dean: Yeah, I agree. And I’m a 300 in some ways and I’m a 400 in some ways. I mean, we all have varying degrees of strengths and non-strengths, so I fluctuate between the two, depending on the topic and probably the day of the week. David Perdew: Yeah. And somebody said, “What does 300 level mean?” in the question room, so we should explain that just quickly. We have four tracks in the NAMS system. That's the Niche Affiliate Marketing System. It is four tracks. We start with the beginner level, which is somebody in the 100 level. It's like a university. 100 you can think of as freshman, 200 sophomore, 300 junior, 400 senior, and we don’t have a post grad because it’s all about – it’s exit strategy at that point. But, anyway, the 100 is really for people who are just getting their business started. They may have a site, but they're not making any sales. 200 is for people who have sites. They may be making some sales, but it’s mostly not on purpose. Their goal is to drive traffic, to learn how to make more money to get to the 300 level. The 300 is you've got websites, you’re making money, you're subsidizing your family income, potentially. You know what you’re doing; you just have to work really hard to do it. The 400 level is about people who are full time marketers who are really looking to turn their business into a real business, an asset, and how to protect your assets and build more continuity, sustainability, those kinds of things. Nicole Dean: Passive income. David Perdew: Passive income. Nicole Dean: We like the passive income. David Perdew: Yeah. Nicole Dean: Alright, so to continue on with the “How do you know what to outsource?” One of the things that I have my coaching clients do as soon as they come in is fill out two forms because I think it’s important to know yourself, know your strengths and your non-strengths, and to know what makes you happy and what you enjoy versus what frustrates you. Page 22 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing So, I give them two pieces of paper and they're both divided from top to bottom into two columns. On one piece of paper the left hand column is the strengths and the right says nonstrengths. And, of course, in the strengths is the muscle guy and under non-strengths there's a skinny little guy. And so I have them list those and once I see their strengths, then I don’t want to tell them to outsource those things right away. We need to look at the non- strengths, and think about, one, if we need to turn those into strengths. If there are areas of business that really need to be enhanced and you need to focus on learning those things, or if those are things that need to be automated and delegated. I do the same thing with the smiley face and frowny face paper. I have the line from top to bottom and then one side has a smiley face. These things I enjoy in my business and the other side has a frowny face that says I don’t enjoy these things in my business. And then you want to list those. I’m a very visual person and sometimes it has to be in black and white before I know it. And then I slap myself in the forehead and go, "Oh well, duh! I should've known that all along.” But until it's in writing and it's in black and white in front of me, sometimes I can’t tell where I need to focus in my business, where I need to outsource, and what just needs to go away. So, those are two exercises that I would highly recommend that everybody on this call does. David Perdew: And then you probably, if you're like me, if you could take it to somebody else or a couple of other people to evaluate that for you as well. Nicole Dean: Yes, definitely. David Perdew: Because you need a reality check, right? Nicole Dean: Yeah, absolutely. David Perdew: Often I don’t recognize my own strengths. Nicole Dean: Well, your strength is people, and pulling an amazing group of people together. It’s just phenomenal. David Perdew: Well, thank you. Nicole Dean: Alright, and in addition to knowing your strengths and knowing yourself, you need to know your business. You need to understand the value of the tasks that are being done in Page 23 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing your business and do an analysis of what projects are the most profitable because, like I say, you don’t want to throw money at a dud, and we all have duds. I’ve had a hundred websites, and, David, I know you've had a lot more than that. And some of them I could walk away from them and they'd make me money month after month after month. Others, oh my God, I could throw blood, sweat, and tears on that thing. I could pray, I could beg, I could plead and that thing was just not going to make money. David Perdew: I’ve got a couple of those. Nicole Dean: It was a bad topic, it was a bad idea in the first place, but I couldn’t be convinced of that because I thought it was good idea. But once you can look at the numbers – and that also is a great way to identify where you should be outsourcing and investing both your time and your money because you don’t want to be spending your time on a project that just isn’t going to make it. And you don’t want to be investing your money into a project that just needs to be let go of either. David Perdew: I agree with that. Nicole Dean: Okay, so now getting to outsourcing versus out-tasking. And the difference between outsourcing and out-tasking – I didn’t make this up. This is terminology that’s been around. It didn’t come out of my hat, but I will explain it because I think it's a really good way to explain it. So out-tasking is like throwing a ball for your puppy. You throw the ball, he goes and gets it and brings it back. You pick it up, you throw the ball, he goes out and gets it, and comes back. You're involved in it every single time. So, out-tasking is when you go out for a one-time job, and that person does it, and they come back and they say it's done, and that's the end until maybe you need that job done again. You go back out, you task it, they do it, they come back and you're in direct contact with that person and that's it. An example of that might be when you're setting up a new blog or if you’re launching a new product. You may need to go and order graphics for that product for the sales page. You go out, you order them, they come back, and you’re done.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing Outsourcing, on the other hand, is a more systemized way of handling things where someone has a daily task that they do for you, or weekly task, or a monthly task. This gets done without you being involved in it. You're not throwing the ball every time. It's just happening without you. So, an example of that would be, “Every Monday or every Friday, please go into my Aweber accounts and see if there's an email in there. If there is, check it and send it.” I have some content that I don’t want it to go out automatically, so I create a draft. So, then if there's a draft in there then the person can go in, see it, check it, and make sure everything is good. If so, I’ve had a second set of eyes on it. She can hit send. It goes out. So, that's something that's done automatically. As for briefs, every Tuesday, Loretta emails me and says, "Okay, it's ready. The draft is in there." So, then I have between Tuesday and Thursday to add my part and schedule it so that it posts on Thursday. That's a blog post that I do every Thursday. And so, neither is better than the other. They're both important in outsourcing. You just have to understand that there's a difference there because that's one of the first parts of being more effective with your outsourcing. Understand that there are two types of outsourcing. Some of it is, should be, out-tasked and some of it should be outsourced. And in the beginning, you're going to want to out-task to someone and to try them out. Then you may decide to move over to outsourcing to that person where they're doing something for you on a continual basis. David, did you have anything you wanted to say to that? David Perdew: No, but Natalie asked a clarifying question there. So, the difference is single task and recurring, single task versus recurring tasks? Nicole Dean: The difference is your involvement in it as well as single versus recurring, yes. In a single task you're involved. You throw the ball every time, so you have to be in the middle of it. David Perdew: One of the things that’s a differentiator for that from a technology side of the house is when you have to write requirements or specifications documents. That’s a one-time deal because you're telling somebody specifically how something is to be built, how it's supposed to look, how it's supposed to operate. Page 25 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing That’s versus when somebody – when it’s a technical task like you described, where they would go in and check a feed once a week or those kinds of things. Nicole Dean: Yes, exactly. And some things are always out-tasked. Like I said, if setting up the shopping cart – you don’t need that done on a weekly basis. However, adding the products every week may be something that's outsourced. Make sense? David Perdew: Right, right. Nicole Dean: Okay, and where the magic happens in outsourcing or out-tasking is one of my favorite things – and that’s where you give your project manager, which we'll talk about in a minute – but you give a project manager a checklist and they go out and out-task those items, but you're not involved. David Perdew: I just have to say a project manager is worth their weight in gold. I had a really good project manager for a year and half on another project that I had. And she just saved me so much time. She was worth every nickel. And I have Cindy, who is just as good and is learning everything that I do, so I love that. Nicole Dean: Awesome. And also where the magic happens is when you're able to automate more, when you can make more things run on their own so that you're not in the middle of it all, and when you have somebody that’s been with you for awhile and you can assign ongoing tasks to them, daily tasks, weekly tasks, monthly tasks. I prefer checklists because it's just easy to go through and go, "Okay, this is all done, this is all done, and this is all done. Yes? Okay, then we're done. Move on to the next thing.” David Perdew: So, a checklist – this is a place where we can tell people that inside their library, we have a ton of checklists on different topics that will help them. But we also have, I think its 140 pre-made outsourcing templates that people can use as well. So, members, you should get in there and start digging around for those and you won’t use them all, but you'll find half a dozen that you can use this week, probably. Nicole Dean: Great. Cool. Okay, so here's a visual example of what I was just talking about. This is not sustainable, where you're in the middle. You’re talking to your graphics designer and outtasking graphics when you need them. You’re contacting writers and going back and forth with all of your writers. I mean, picture me with four PLR sites trying to be in touch with all of my writers. I’d go crazy. I don’t have enough hours in the day. You are contacting your bookkeeper, passing things back Page 26 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing and forth. You are contacting support. Oh, and then you need something done from the tech person, so you contact that person. Then you're contacting and dealing with and connecting with your affiliates. That's a lot of work. There are two problems with that. Problem one is that a lot of times in that situation you're going to think, “I can do it faster than dealing with this,” because you're contacting so many people and you're in the middle of all of it and you'll start to think, “All I do all day is manage people.” Now this is how it needs to be at the beginning. Don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying that eventually you need to move to more of a model like this where you are in contact with your support manager who's communicating with the customers and lead support person as well as the affiliate supports person. And that is just my model so, I mean, you can design yours however you want. Then you deal with the project manager who has checklists and who – let’s say I’m going to release a new product. The project manager goes through the checklist, orders the graphics for the product, contacts a copy writer to have the sales page made, and works with the tech person to get it all set up. Now, the project manger and tech person might be the same person. I mean, there are all kinds of overlaps. But this is a system that you want to get more – you want to move toward so that you can actually go have a life. David? David Perdew: Yeah, so the project management thing – I know that Gary Huff is on our call here as well. Gary's a great project manager and I’ve been a project manager for a long time as well. In fact, I’ve managed a lot of project managers and project managers, in our world, are really different from the technology world, but the key is still about hiring and firing and getting the right task done, making sure that you check those things off the list and getting things done. You've got to be a real detailed person to make that happen. I don't know about you, Nicole, but, to tell the truth I need a lot of help in the detail world. Nicole Dean: Uh huh. Well, there's just so much. David Perdew: There is. Page 27 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing Nicole Dean: So big. David Perdew: That's right. Nicole Dean: And in an online business there's so much to do. And your project manager may actually be a virtual assistant. It doesn’t matter what their title is, just as long as you have someone that can help you work through the process without having to be in the middle of every single thing, every single day so that you can focus on what you need to do. And again, this is down the road, so don’t feel like you have to get to this today. The thing with outsourcing is, like I said, it’s fluid and it’s ever-changing. So, you're always going to be changing. It's going to be evolving. You’re going to have turnover. You don’t have to feel like you have to make the perfect decision right now, today. You just need to move in that direction and it'll work a lot better that way. David Perdew: You know I think I’m going to suggest right now that it's some time later date we do a session just on from working with a project manager because I think that's so important. Nicole Dean: Great. David Perdew: We could get Gary Huff as well and some other folks and talk about this. Nicole Dean: Definitely, I’d love to hear that one. David Perdew: Okay. Nicole Dean: Okay, so I was talking about outsourcing on my blog today and Tracy Murphy at quicksourcing.com stopped by and mentioned some things that drive her crazy with outsourcing from the service provider side of things. So, I included the slide, “How are you sabotaging your outsourcing?” So, if you have tried to outsource and you’re saying, "Oh, it didn’t work for me. It was just frustrating. It was a waste of my time," there are probably three areas that are key here. One is control. I tend to be a control freak, so in the next slide when I talk about how to manage a severe control freak, I’ll hold up a mirror, so I can talk to myself. The second thing is lack of organization. A lot of times people hire someone without knowing what they're going to have them do for you. That's very difficult for the service provider Page 28 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing because they can’t read your mind and they can’t guess because they may not know your business well enough. Though granted, if you hire someone that's smart, you want to have that door open. I would say this to all my people: If you ever see an area of my business where it's not optimized to its highest profit or where I’m possibly losing money, please tell me. Either fix it yourself or tell me because you just turn on the clock and do it or turn on the clock and tell me. Either way, I hire smart people because it takes a team to make me look good. So, I want their input. I don’t want someone that is just going to say, "Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am." I want her or him to say, "Hey, you know what, Nicole, I saw this over here and I think we can improve your blog conversion or whatever if we do this," or if they say "Hey Nic, I saw a typo on your blog or your link was broken, so I just fixed it for you." Great. Thank you! Don’t come to me and ask. Just do it. And the third thing is poor communication or lack of communication because a lot of times, again, we hire someone because we're busy and this is just basic Human Resources 101. You hire someone because you're busy and you don’t have the time to do everything you need to do, but it takes time to communicate and train someone to be able to do what you want them to do. So, if you hire them and then you don’t talk to them, then that's not going to work so good. And a lot of the people on the call, you know that my motto is you don’t have to be perfect to be profitable, thank God, but neither do your helpers, so give them a chance. Let them learn and grow with you, and it will definitely help your business. David? David Perdew: So, I think that, if there’s a likely communication part of it, it’s about the clarity of what you’re doing and what you want done. One of the things with my wife, whenever I have to get directions to get someplace, I let her get the directions because I give such unclear directions, even to neighbors or how to get to point A to point B.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing It’s really important to be able to communicate and know where you’re headed with it. You’ve got to know what you do well. Nicole Dean: Yes, definitely. And that’s again a good place for a coach to come in and say, “Here, why don’t you do it this way? And you need to outsource this,” because they can help you prioritize those things and that can help a lot. At least have other people look at your business and help you have a good support system that can figure that out with you because it can be confusing. It is. I mean, it’s like I said. You’re not born with knowledge of outsourcing. It’s something you have to learn. And some of that’s through trial and error, unfortunately. You liking the doodles, David? David Perdew: The doodles are great, plus they’re real clear. Nicole Dean: Okay, so what if I’m a control freak? There are a few things that you want to do. The first is to take baby steps like I said before. You can get very excited when you find someone that you think has a lot of potential and want to go just, “Oh, thank you. Here, just do everything!” You dump it all on them and that’s bad for the person because they can’t possibly succeed in a situation like that. They haven’t been trained. Now, all of a sudden they’re overwhelmed, overworked, confused, having all the same feelings that you were having, but with no guidance. So you have to take baby steps. Try someone out. If you need an article writer, hire them to write five articles. Don’t hire them to write 50 a week until you have that relationship, and even then, you have to have some kind of checks and balances to make sure that they’re staying at the same quality that they were when they started. Always give the lowest access required. This drives me crazy. Is Regina on the line? Regina Smola? David Perdew: I don’t think so. Nicole Dean: No? It drives me crazy when I’m asked to be a guest blogger at someone’s blog and they send me their admin access. I don’t want their admin access. I want to have access. I want to be set as a contributor or an author, not as an admin, because I don’t want – if they get hacked, I don’t want to be one of the people that has access to their admin account.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing The same is true in outsourcing. And in some shopping carts, you can set up users that have limited access, like they can’t see the reports, the amount of sales you’ve made. My shopping cart now has that. They can go and refund things and do basic tasks that you might need help with for products, stuff like that, but they don’t have access to change your merchant account or anything like that. PayPal. I have users set up in PayPal and each one has a different capability. One is able to process. She is my customer support person and she has the ability to process refunds and I think that’s about it. If someone requests a refund, then she doesn’t have to come to me to have it done. She can just go on and do it, whereas my project manager has access to do mass pays, do refunds, but the rest of the access is completely limited – or pay invoices, I think, was the other one. So, you can set up PayPal with separate users at different levels and you can turn off the access whenever you want. So, that person is not able to change your bank account information; they’re not able to even see it. All they can do is what you give them access to do. So, there are book keeper settings on there as well, where all they can do is see the information without changing it. So, if you’re a control freak, you definitely want – or if you’re just smart, you definitely want to, no matter how much you trust the person, the person could be wonderful, but you don’t also know who else could have access to their computers. So, you just want to be smart and make sure you’re giving people the lowest access required for anything that they need to be in your computer. If they are just approving blog posts and editing things, then just give them the editor capabilities; don’t set them up as an admin. Another thing that I use is Dropbox. I have content files flying through like crazy. So, I have set up a Dropbox where each writer has a separate account and then I have a main PLR area that has processes that we drag files through as they move through this process. And the Dropbox is really nice because I’ve had editors that have disappeared on me and the content was in their folder, so I was able to go back and recover the content and get it back very easily. Or if somebody screws something up, I can go back to a former version of that

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing document without losing anything, or if somebody deletes a document on accident, you can recover it from Dropbox. It’s a brilliant, brilliant program and it’s free. Another thing that I do a lot of is Skype, right Cindy? Cindy is my call person. What I like to do is I use Skype for a few different reasons. One is to just be able to communicate and make sure that the person knows what they need to be doing. The other is it’s a great way to interview people. If you have someone you’re interested in hiring, get them on Skype and use screen-share so that you can see their screen and try to walk them through a task. If they don’t know how to copy and paste something, it’s a very quick way of seeing someone struggle and realizing that maybe either they need to be reassigned to do something else or they’re not the right person to work with you. The third way to use Skype is for training. If somebody needs to do a task and they don’t quite understand it or it’s their first time through, we’ll say, “Let’s go on Skype.” We get on Skype and I’ll share my screen just like I am right now, so I can wave my cursor – I think that shows up – and I can walk through the process or walk them through it on their side, and then they know exactly how I want it done and we’re able to both see the same thing so I can catch things as they're going. Like I said, I’m very visual so I can see if somebody is struggling or their mouse is kind of hovering over something and I can say, “Oh, just go up to the right a little bit. It’s right there,” rather than have them sit there for fifteen minutes trying to figure where to click next. So, it’s just a fantastic, fantastic way to train people, to communicate, to speed up processes and just keep tabs on each other. Also, I like to document everything. When I was working with someone, not too long ago, well even the gal I have now – she has a to-do list and it is just very basic: daily, do this; every Monday, do this; every Tuesday, do this; every Wednesday, do this; monthly, do this. It’s just laid out completely, so she can just walk through it. But having a document, it is so important.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing Being a control freak, there are a couple of reasons why that’s important. One is that if she disappears on me, I can use that to train my next person. Two is that if she works for me for three years and she quits, I can remember how to do this stuff. I have to step in because after you haven’t done something for a while, then you can forget, so it's documented; it's written. And also there’s no miscommunication. If she doesn’t do something, I can look at the To Do list and say, “Hey, go back to your To Do list. Don’t go from your memory. Work through that list every week.” And the other thing is to start small and be commitment-phobic at first. And then once you find somebody that’s fabulous, keep them. Try to get as many hours of theirs as you can and just appreciate the heck out of them. David Perdew: So, you’ve addressed a lot of my control freak issues. Nicole Dean: Good, what did I miss? David Perdew: You didn’t miss anything. I just was wondering if you have – you just talked about the Dropbox thing and I want to see how you got that laid out. Nicole Dean: Okay. It will be covered in the How To Start PLR site next week. David Perdew: Okay, cool. So, we can wait for that then. Nicole Dean: Yeah. David Perdew: I think that’s pretty much it for the control freak. Thanks. Nicole Dean: Alright. The Dropbox thing. Basically, I start each of the folders – like inside a folder, each one is numbered. So, it’s like: zero dash = ideas; one dash = new content; two dash = additive content. Then it just keeps moving down through those folders. It’s basically how I do it and I do the same thing with my pre-reports. Once I have Lisa make them, I’ll drop in stuff and then she moves it to the next folder until it’s done. David Perdew: So, there is one thing I want to say about documenting everything . That was probably the smartest thing I did with one of the failed websites that I have – and it’s not really failed, it’s just kind of not doing as well as I wanted it to do. So, I had a team of people working on it and every one of them, one of their tasks was – it was eight people working on the site. Every one of them had the assignment of doing documentation for what their job was. And so I’ve got all of that in a spot where now I can Page 33 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing actually pull that out and then change the name of the website and it will work for a lot of the material that’s there. So, it’s not only good for redoing all of the stuff, but good for reusing with others websites as well. Nicole Dean: And that is a brilliant thing when you have the people that are working for you documented. And that’s what I’ll do sometimes to as well. “I’m going to show you how to do this. I’m not going to record it, but what I want you to do is just document it. Then send it back to me so that I make sure you understood it.” That way it’s done if they need to be reassigned to someone else or because that person gets promoted or whatever. Alright, this is the last slide. I have your link for Outsource Weekly. They're dated. If you guys want to learn more from me about outsourcing, that’s a link to that course. There’s also an ecourse on there about five outsourcing mistakes you might be making. This is my newest course. It’s about how to keep your blog fresh and awesome. And you can get a 50% off coupon if you go to that page just because you're on this call. And I think it’s only $17 off of that. That will be $8, I think it is, or $8.50 or whatever it is. And that will be going up to $27 soon, so the coupon is even better right now. Don’t miss these weekly webinars and you can make sure you don’t miss those if you’re a member of MyNAMS.com. We’d love to have you in here. David Perdew: Well, thank you, Nicole. That’s great! We would love to have people in there. And I’ve told a couple of people in the chat room who asked, we do have a coupon for MyNAMS right now that’s running at an 85% discount right now and that is myNAMS85 and they can go to myNAMS.com or they can go to NAMS.ws/join and just click through the “buy” button and put in the coupon and join us. Nicole Dean: Do you have questions, David? David Perdew: We do have some questions. Nicole Dean: Okay, let me holler at my mom quick to tell her I’ll be a few more minutes David Perdew: Yeah, not long though. Page 34 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing Nicole Dean: Okay, just a second. David Perdew: You really did mean “holler” to your mom! Nicole Dean: She is at the other end of the house. It was her night to bring the wine over. David Perdew: Okay, that’s great. So, here is a question from Rachael and she says, “How do you outsource when you’re first starting and literally have no money at all? I’ve done some bartering of skills with some of my friends.” Nicole Dean: Yes, that would be what I would recommend. Do some bartering of skills, definitely. If you have something that other people find valuable, then barter. Otherwise, what you may need to do is to start offering a service for a short amount of time just to get enough income that you can sink it back into your business. So, if you need to, go to the NAMS forum and post on there, “I can do ghost writing. I’m running a special for so many articles for so many dollars for the next two people,” and just plan to reinvest that money back into your business. So, we’ve all got to do what we’ve got to do. I remember, you know, pinching pennies, too. So when you’re just starting off, you have to shoestring it a bit and also price around, ask for recommendations, see if you can put a link of that person on the bottom of your blog like, “This blog was designed by…” Be creative. See how you can make a win-win situation where the other person benefits even if you're not paying them directly for the work, or how you can come up with a way to pay them back by helping them with their business. I don’t have a hard and fast answer, but I’ve done all of those things and they do all work. It’s just a matter of getting out there and getting to know people. David Perdew: So, let me use Rachael as an example, if you don’t mind, because she also posted right down here that, “Yes, I am setting up a voiceover service to help build seed money.” So, one of the things that I’d really suggest for Rachael to do is get into the accountability groups in our forum and also into the sections of our – make yourself known in our forums. Start building relationships in there. Tell people what you do and you’ll get people on the accountability groups who want to use your service or you start trading off. And you’ve got some very talented people in the forums who can help you out with that stuff, so that’s one good way to get started. Nicole Dean: Definitely. Page 35 Copyright (©), All Rights Reserved Niche Affiliate Marketing System, Inc.

Nicole Dean: Outsourcing David Perdew: Let’s see. We have a lot of comments. David loves your doodles. It’s a nice change from the usual, more formal webinars. Nicole Dean: Aw, thank you! David Perdew: Gary said that he was looking at Regina's materials from NAMS and he's setting up his websites completely differently and the right way now. And let’s see, Mathias says, “Do you ever do videos for your staff to train them with Skype or other software?” Nicole Dean: Yes, I have done videos because it’s just – if I know I’m going to be using it multiple times and it’s not going to change, then I will do videos. Like with my writers, I have a “Welcome to Nic’s Writing Team” video that they have to watch and answer some questions before they start writing for me, so that they understand what my requirements are and what I’m looking for. And I have one for how to use Dropbox and the formatting, all that kind of fun stuff. So I do that, definitely. It’s just with videos it’s hard because if you’re recording – technology changes so fast, so it’s just easier for me to do documentation where it says, “On the right side, click this link, then scroll down,” because then if that changes, I can just run through the process again and quickly change the text so that I don’t have to record a whole new video and blur out private information or any of that. David Perdew: Right, right . Nicole, those are all of the questions. I really appreciate you doing this. This restored so many different thoughts, I think, that we could actually go on for several sessions with this. I think we can go in depth on quite a bit of stuff. Nicole Dean: Good deal. I’m glad. Thank you so much for having me and for putting up with my doodles. David Perdew: You bet. Thanks. Nicole Dean: Thanks everybody for staying on, too. I appreciate it. David Perdew: Sure. Bye. Bonus offers, discounts and coupon codes may no longer be available

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