Offline - think outside the box

Well said, Andy! Many people like you and I work right with our teams. Deeply rooted passion and hands-on involvement keep you up to date across the board not only with technological and other business-related advancements, but also your own industry / niche (s) and most importantly your clients (priority!)

I tend to agree with Andy somewhat. You see so many people on this forum that always say "outsource" and I too outsource much of my work that I do for clients. But I can tell you one thing, with the exception of some high tech design stuff, I can do everything myself if I have too.

Do to my first career (see avatar), I tend to think of 100 things that can go wrong and only 1 positive. My family thinks Im nuts somtimes. So with outsourcing, what is the worse thing that can happen? Your VA goes missing and your work isnt completed? Your client doesnt care and just wants his/her work completed when you promised it to them. So, even though it might take me all night, I can do EVERYTHING my VA's can do.

I'm a firm beliver in outsourcing but I think that you HAVE to be able to do everything that they can do. I consider myself the "backup" to my VA's. If you cant, I dont think you will be in business too long.

Rich

:rolleyes: yeah always the way haha.

I don't want to send this thread on another discussion about 'outside the box' so will leave that alone too :p

Actually just thought it might help some people - you never know

I believe most things can be outsourced or insourced. The question is finding competent people who can perform which is easier to do with an in-house employee because its easier to train them.

@Andy and @RichMag

I'm former military myself and your position surprises me. The military is based on people being competent in their position and coming together as a team to accomplish the mission.

I've never seen any squadron skipper turning wrenches on an airplane. That's what the mechanics are for and if they're not doing their job replace them.

Just imagine a SEAL team where one member didn't pull his weight. On a mission the other members would take up the slack but that person wouldn't be in the teams for long.

Not to beat a dead horse but one more example. If a regimental commander thinks one of his battalion COs isn't cutting the mustard he doesn't take over that battalion. He counsels that CO and if performance doesn't improve they're replaced.

Who want's a business where you have to do everything. IMO you should be striving to put people in place to replace you so you can concentrate on the more important areas of implementing strategies and tactics to grow your business.

For most people starting out the best strategy is simply to talk to all the business owners they know and anyone who'll listen to them so they get an idea of how these people think, what their concerns are etc etc.

Once you've got past working with your first paying clients and you have an understanding of how that process works, what kind of services you're comfortable providing and what to avoid then niching can be a great idea for many people.

At that point you also want to be thinking about working with clients from out of town in the same niche...using existing clients in the niche to give you out of town referrals etc etc.

If you're going to put a lot of work into creating a site etc you want to get maximum leverage from that.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

There are generic problems for a lot of small business. There are specific problems too - but once you have an understanding of the main ones, they'll sure let you know about the rest.

For my niche there are a lot of online shops, and as we are in Australia it's sometimes cheaper for the customer to buy their products online from the States than our shops can buy wholesale - so that's the first problem. In answer to this - you can't always compete on price and it's silly to try - you'll just 'sale' yourself out of business. But you can promote yourself in ways that others aren't, you can promote your service and friendliness, asking for advice, things you are can provide that the online shops can't - eg you can't touch, smell or taste online. Colors aren't accurate online. Once you add postage the prices can end up close anyway. Things like that.

There are also a couple of very large chain stores across the country**. These chains go into a small town, stock the items the independent shops have and under price them. Then once the independent has closed down the chain stops stocking those products, goes back to their regular line and puts all their prices up. The local shoppers are left wondering what just happened.

(**This is actually a really good way of finding a niche. If there are chain stores in a niche it's cause there's people spending in it. It also means there are likely independent businesses in that niche that are struggling as a direct result of the chain stores. Think about what chain stores you have near you. We have camping, fishing, boating, push bikes, car accessories, hardware, fabric, furnishings, homewares and that's just off the top of my head - there are heaps more)

Then you have things like - the shop owner is prob advertising in the yellow pages - which is specifically local (and expensive). Or maybe some magazines which can cost up to $3500 per month for one full page spread. They know they need a web presence, but don't know where to start or who to trust. They don't have a lot of money to spend cause they are struggling, but they still need help none the less - and they know it.

They also don't usually have any spare time. They are in their business during the day, they do paperwork at night and can't find extra time to develop or even maintain a website themselves.

If you point out to the prospect business owner that these are the issues that you are aware of and how you are trying to help with your site, they'll be listening with both ears open. Once you mention the main issues - the owner will usually start to relax and start to talk about these problems and will also tell you lots more. They'll do this with you cause you already 'get it'. You are demonstrating that you want to help them. Once you start listening to them your site is able to grow as you create areas to assist with those specific problems.

By creating a wpmu (now WP 3.0 Multi Site) community site, they get better rankings, better exposure, a much cheaper option and a fully blown website. If you do the maintenance for them, do their updates, etc etc you are taking a load off their minds and they'll be more than happy to run with you.

But the key to all of this is to actually care about the owner's business as if it was your own - and do your best to help them with their issues.