7 Secrets to Outsourcing Your Business and Life

Fitness Business Guest Post By Dan Go

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Hey there…hope you are doing great, KILLING it in your fitness business and changing lives in the process.

My name is Dan Go and you don't know me so maybe a quick history on myself and my business…

-  I was a fat kid who was made fun of by friends and family.  I was sick of myself and I got so pissed off I lost 37 pounds of fat and turned my body around.  It changed my life so much I decided to become a personal trainer.

-  I started off working for a big corporate gym… I worked about 30 hours a week and after 1 year I started to hate it… especially when I was always getting half my paycheck taken from me and having a manager that was sniffing up my a** every hour pushing me to sell people on the floor.

Trying to sell personal training to a 50 year old cranky lady on the elliptical machine is NOT a pretty sight.

-  Then I got into one on one freelance training where I would go to people's houses and train them for an hour.  This sucked just as badly.  I was working half the hours but the other half of the hours were spent traveling all over Toronto.  I hate driving… I hate driving even more when it's snowing.

And I was STILL working like a dog.

-  Then I got smart and decided to do boot camps so I could make more money and help more people.

I leveraged my time better… worked less hours and was able to really develop A BUSINESS rather than a hobby.  I also found it to be easier to hire people to train under this type of business rather than hiring a one-on-one travel to your door personal training sales person.   It's just too easy to steal clients that way.

Then I read the 4 hour work week by Tim Ferris and shortly afterward met Big Chris McCombs.  Then everything changed.  I saw Big Chris at the fitness millionaires event in New Jersey and after hearing my Aussie friend Travis Jones make $10,000 a month using his ninja tactics I immediately got coaching from him no questions asked.

So what did I learn from Big Chris's coaching and the 4 hour workweek?

If I wanted to make any advancements in my income, my business model and my free time I had to outsource the living sh*t out of my business… and well… sometimes my life.

Trust me this was no easy task especially when you have an entire business to look at.  I couldn't help but feel extremely overwhelmed at the task of outsourcing my entire business.

It was like staring at a 7 foot jigsaw puzzle inside a brain twister.

And I was also stuck on the, "Well if I can do it myself then I'll save more money"

WRONG!

I understand… Outsourcing and delegating is as hard for entrepreneurs as it is for politicians to tell the truth.  But the simple fact is:  If you want to grow your business, make more money, have more free time…

Then you gotta outsource and delegate the stuff you don't want to do and that is holding you back from progressing as a business owner.

"Delegate or Stagnate" – Jay Van Andel (Co founder of Amway corporation)

What do I outsource?  Training, administration, my fears, my worries, research, email, craigslist ad posting, seo article writing, website design and maintenance, video editing, sales and prospecting and much much more.

I still do a little training but I focus the bulk of my time on marketing, systems creation, product/service creation and living a life.

So again I repeat that if you want to make more money, have more free time, and really grow your business to the maximum potential it should be at…. then you GOTTA outsource a lot of it.

1.  Write out all the things you do not like to do and get someone else to do them.

Things I don't like to do:

• Administration (entering in contracts to my EFT, Sendoutcards.com, into my prospect lists, clients list etc..)
• Bookkeeping
• Accounting
• Cold contacting corporations to do lunch and learns
• Link building
• Research
• This list goes on

So what I did was hire a virtual assistant to do all of that stuff and then some.

I'm working on even having him send out press releases I create to all the major news stations in my area.  I got him from Elance.com and I'm only paying $5/hour for him.

He is so cheap, his quality of work is superb and so detailed which leaves me thinking…. North America is screwed.  But regardless of that I use him because he is the bomb.

**Side Note:  If you do get a virtual assistant make sure that he is part of a reputable team of virtual assistants so if the VA leaves they will have someone to plug in right away without going through the whole training process all over again.**

2.  Use Dan Kennedy's 7 step process to delegate your work effectively:

We can't just plop a task on someone's desk and say, "Get'er done".  That will leave us very frustrated business owners.  I did that and I ran into too many problems.  So when I read this it struck a cord with me that I use it every time I delegate a process/system:

1. Define what is to be done.
2. Be certain the delegatee understands what is to be done.
3. Explain why is is to be done as your are prescribing it to be done.
4. Teach them how it is to be done without micro managing.
5. Be sure the delegatee understands the how to process.
6. Set the deadline for completion or progress report.
7. Be sure you have an agreement to the date or time and method.

3.  Come to the understanding and appreciation that "Good enough is Good enough"

Often when we think of handing the reins over to another person (especially when it comes to training your boot camps/personal training clients) we have the fear that they won't do it the way we want it to be done.  And for the most part….they won't.

Many, many things can be delegated to people who will not do them the way you would, won't do them as perfectly as you would, but will wind up with the same result.  Every one of these things should be delegated.  In fact you MUST delegate.  You cannot move ahead without jettisoning some responsibilities and tasks in order to make room for new, more valuable tasks and responsibilities.

Sometimes…most of the time…good enough is really just good enough.

4.  Fire yourself

The only way to make more money and have more fun is to "FIRE YOURSELF" from your job.

Some owners are so focused on doing the $10-an-hour jobs that they never get to the $100-an-hour job of:  Marketing, bringing in new customers and keeping old customers coming back.

You can always hire someone to train, do the administration, article writing, web design etc…but you can't hire someone to effectively market and promote your training business.

5.  Stop micro managing

This was a hard one especially for me.

I was looking over trainers shoulders and attending their classes regularly to make sure they would do things the way I wanted to.  All it did was make them apprehensive to train a class because they had someone looking over their shoulder the whole time.

Resisting the temptation to micro-manage will require plenty of will power especially when you decide to give up the training aspect of your business.  The above example is just one of a number of reasons I stay out of my trainers ways when it comes to training.

Everyone has their own training style but they will blossom more without being scared of making a mistake.  Sometimes you just gotta let go.

6.  Delegate the things that scare you

I have a hard time sending press releases to newspapers and contacting TV producers.

I also have a hard time cold calling corporations to approach them for lunch and learns.

Think of the things that scare you… then find out which of those fears you can actually delegate to someone else.  I know it's kinda chicken but man if I wasn't going to do it… who would?

It's also cool when you can tell your VA to worry about a certain thing thats on your mind and he will.

I also tell my VA to send random emails to harrass one of my best friends in Hong Kong but that's another story.

7.  You gotta rank high on Google, get clients from the internet and have a high converting site.  It's like having an automatic marketing and sales team at your disposal.

Almost all of my new clientele comes from referral or the internet.  You don't know how good a feeling it is to get 1-2 new prospects a day banging on my door, raising their hand saying, "Hi, I'd like to try you out!"

The only way I could have done this is by using Market Annihilator and Fitness Website Formula.

This is not  an advertisement but more like a public service announcement:

To have your business on true autopilot you gotta rank high on Google and have a website that converts.  The investment is worth much more than it's original value in the long run.  If it wasn't for those two programs I wouldn't be where I am now and that's no lie.

That's it for outsourcing and delegation.  Again when you look at it from above it can be scary and downright impossible  But all it takes is that first step, then you create momentum and you are on your way to owning a business rather than having a business own you.

I hope this post helped you out.  Please leave a comment below and let me know what you thought of it or if you have a delegation secret to share I'd love to hear it!

Peace out!

Dan Go

Dan Go runs Markham and Thornhill Boot Camps and is a Markham personal trainer

Hey there it's Chris again, be sure to leave Dan a comment below about his post and any delegation strategies that work well for you

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