OUTSOURCING

By Neil Waterhouse

Outsourcing is one of my favourite topics.

Ever since I got into the world of selling online, my goal from day one was
lifestyle and today with outsourcing at our fingertips, we can literally purchase
an hour of freedom for one dollar per hour..
Everybody has their own definition of lifestyle but for me, lifestyle simply
means time and money.
Time so you can get out of bed when you want to, time so you can be there
when the kids get home, and time to do all those things in your life that you
want to do and discover before we’re too old to do them.
The older I get, the faster time seems to go for me, every hour of work that can
be “outsourced” is an extra hour of life that you can enjoy doing the things
that give you the most joy.
The second part of lifestyle of course is money.
Whether you want to save yourself, save the whales, or save the world, almost
everything requires cash.
Selling online for me is all about lifestyle. Time and money.
And this is why I am so passionate about selling online and outsourcing. Selling
online and outsourcing are a perfect partnership, just like bread-and-butter!
Outsourcing doesn’t just give you free time … It also gives you massive
leverage as your output is no longer capped by how many spare hours in the
day you have.
Instead of working one hour, you can pay people to work 40 hours doing
exactly the same work and you can get these people from 1 to 2 dollars per
hour as I will show you.
Leveraging your time is the secret to going from a 5 digit business to a 7 and 8
+ digit business.
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Never ever in the history of mankind have we had the opportunities that we
have today to so easily purchase one hour of life from one dollar per hour from
the chair you are sitting in now.
Today thanks to outsourcing, your online business can run and make money
24/7 365 while you are walking on a beach, lazing on a cruise ship. Sleeping,
taking the kids on a two-month Europe trip or doing whatever gives you joy.
In this PDF that is exactly what I’m going to cover.
I’ve been outsourcing overseas staff for over 15 years and as the host and
founder of the four largest eBay Amazon Meetup groups in Australia with over
5,000 members I get to see what works best not just for our businesses but
also for the other members.
Just so we’re on the same page, the term virtual assistant or (VA) simply means
a person that works virtually i.e. not from your premises. Most virtual
assistants work from their homes.
Okay, so first of all, we need to break outsourcing down into two different
groups of virtual assistants.
One group of virtual assistants are “trained ”virtual assistants i.e.
programmers, bookkeepers, graphic artists etc.
The other group is “untrained” virtual assistants and for these VA’s we train
them ourselves which at first can sound scary but… It has never been easier!
When I first started employing untrained VA’s, I used to fly to Cebu in the
Philippines to train our customer service staff and also fly to Delhi in India to
work with our programmers.
This of course took a lot of time and money flying backwards and forwards and
I knew there must be a better way.
So the next evolution instead of travelling was writing lengthy word docs with
thousands of words and screenshots. Pages and pages and pages and then
send these procedure manuals to the VA’s.
Then I had an epiphany about training VA’s.
I remembered back to an Anthony Robbins event I went to over 20 years ago.
Robbins talked about how anybody can make the world’s best chocolate cake.

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All you do is find the world’s best chocolate cake chef, fly to where the chef
works and document the exact process of how they make the world’s best
chocolate cake.
This includes measuring the exact amount of flour they use, the exact amount
of butter, the type of flour, the manufacture of the butter, the exact
temperature of the oven, the exact time the cake is in the oven etc etc.
If you document all this, you now have the exact recipe so you can also make
the world’s best chocolate cake yourself ANY time you wish or…. you can give
that same recipe to a virtual assistant and they can ALSO make the world’s best
chocolate cake.
Just like how McDonald’s gets 15 year old kids to make the same hamburger
over and over.
But… It gets better.
Today we have even better technology. Video!
We can now record our screens using programs like Snag It
Recording our screens has completely and are utterly changed how we train
our virtual assistants.
Instead of spending hours writing word lengthy documents with thousands of
words and tons of pictures, we have now created a “library“ of short 2 to 3
minute screen capture videos.
Now I’m not talking about recording yourself on video, I’m talking about just
recording your screen.
If you want to outsource a task, you simply do the task yourself and record
your screen doing the task.
You put on a $10 headset with a microphone, hit the record button and record
your screen while you are doing the task. You also pretend there is a 10 year
old person sitting next to you and talk into the microphone explaining exactly
what you are doing.
Then, when you have finished recording your short video, you simply get your
unskilled virtual assistant to watch your video.

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Anybody you has an IQ greater than a 10-year-old should be able to follow
your video and learn the procedure. If they get stuck, they can simply rewind
and watch the video over and over until they get it.
They say a picture speaks a thousand words if that is so, a 2 to 3 minute video
must speak hundred times +.
I cannot emphasise how much time and money this procedure has saved me
and my staff over the years.
No longer do I ever need to fly to other countries to train staff.
The secret to getting staff from one dollar per hour is to use unskilled labour
using the procedure above and to create a library of short videos showing how
to do each task.
For example, if you are building a dropship business, you need to keep listing
products that have sold twice or more in the last 30 days and making greater
than 10% profit. If you have done my Dropship course you will know this is the
column C procedure.
You simply record yourself doing this column C procedure and then outsource
the task to a virtual assistant.
Or if you need more Dropship suppliers, you simply do the circle of dropship
strategy.
If you have not done the Dropship course, here is a link:
http://www.neilwaterhouse.com/drop
One of my favourite quotes about hiring staff is from Warren buffet. “In
looking for people to hire, look for three qualities, integrity, intelligence,
energy. If they don’t have the first one, the 2nd two will kill you.”
I always remember that quote.
When we hire staff, the main 2 things we are looking for is the ability to follow
instructions and also a decent internet connection.
They don’t need a really fast internet connection as they are not playing
games. Just 3 Mb per second is enough.
If ever you employ a staff member and they seem really intelligent but…
everything they do seem to takes forever… Ask them to record their screen

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and send you the video. This way you can quickly figure out what is taking so
long. Is it the Internet connection or their methodology?
The next question that normally comes up is where to hire VA’s.
For skilled VA’s there are many places including:
www.fiverr.com
www.rentacoder.com
www.upwork.com
www.freelancer.com
And a ton of other ones.
For short-term skilled VA’s, my favourite place is Upwork where you can get
staff from three dollars US per hour.
For full-time staff, we normally only ever use unskilled labour and for these
VA’s we use http://www.onlinejobs.solutions where you can get staff from one
dollar per hour.
Online Jobs Solutions is located in the Philippines and we have had a very good
run with Filipino staff. The Philippines is predominately a Catholic country and
they hold a strong Christian ethos which carries over to an outstanding work
ethic.
We find the Filipinos on average to be very loyal, honest, reliable and they can
also be very resourceful.
We have also found their accent is welcomed when they need to call
customers.
One of the biggest mistakes I see beginners make is they try to find staff who
have eBay, Amazon etc skills.
These staff normally always cost more money and.. Invariably you end up
training them anyway.
So for that reason, I normally always prefer untrained staff and get them to
watch videos from our library.

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Another big advantage of creating your own video library is if you decide one
day to sell your business or part of your business, you can easily get your
videos transcribed to create “procedure manuals” which buyers love.
Best regards

Neil Waterhouse

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