The objective of leverage is to provide the most advantage with the lowest effort. Specifically, for internet businesses, that means most ROI with smallest personal involvement, and we can realize this via outsourcing.
Preceding articles discussed gaining leverage by 1) re-using, and 2) re-purposing content. In this article, we’ll discuss gaining leverage by outsourcing routine, or non-value-add work, and any work that simply isn’t a match with our individual skills, experience and/or personality.
Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman addressed some interesting findings from more than 25 years of research by the Gallup organization – initially in their book, First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, and then elaborating on those findings in several subsequent books. Two of their findings, that are important for internet marketers and home-based business owners are these: 1) Improve your strengths, not your weaknesses, and 2) Acquire workers for ability.
Affiliate business has a large learning curve and involves a lot of diverse skills. But, not very many people are gifted at all of those areas – and even those who are, may not be making the best use of their available time and other skills when they focus on areas that are relative weaknesses for them.
William of Occam, best known for “Occam’s Razor,” has noted: “It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.” As online business owners, Occam’s Razor has a big lesson for us relative to our individual time usage.
Tim Ferriss, author of “The 4-Hour Workweek” is a huge fan of the use of virtual assistants to handle recurrent, low prioritiy activities or those for which he does not have either the time or inclination to perform.
Contrary to popular opinion, outsourcing is not limited to the world of giant companies, but given the low cost of international virtual assistants, even small, internet companies can afford to delegate many activities to VAs.
One task that many internet marketers choose to outsource is writing articles. They see the value of article marketing, but either don’t like to write, don’t have the skills, don’t want to spend the time, so they delegate those writing tasks to ghost-writers.
Another task you might consider outsourcing to a virtual assistant (or call center) is the telephone and email follow-up required for lead generation and sales closings.
If you improve your areas of strength, you gain the benefits of leverage and multiply your results, whereas, focusing on your weaknesses willonly incrementally improve results.
Would you rather multiply your results, or simply see incremental improvements?
If you would like to learn how to leverage your efforts, sign up for the Online Success for Beginners course.
