People rarely start a business that’s not their passion. “Do what you love and the money will follow.” It has served as an inspiration for many solopreneurs. They expect that when they do what they love, it will all turn out well and tons of money will follow instantly.
Sadly though, most entrepreneurs feel reality hitting them in the face within a year of launch. Business isn’t built on passion alone. It involves accounting, design, creating a website, talking to angry clients who just refuse to be agreeable, and more things they aren’t so passionate about.
The once happy, hopeful solopreneur becomes a miserable businessman who only spends 10% of his time on passion, and 90% on admin, support, accounting, and technical stuff. The business transforms from an exciting, promising venture to that dismal attempt at a business that’s barely making a profit.
If this is you, you know why it’s happening. You had to do everything in your business.
You’re the bottleneck in your business.
Because of this, instead of implementing your plans, you spend all your time just putting out fires and getting work done.
The revenue a business generates is directly correlated to its growth. As the bottleneck, you’re the one that’s keeping your business from growing.
Pause for a moment and read that line again. After you’ve calmed down, let’s imagine a different scenario.
Let’s say that accounting tasks take up 10% of your time. What if you stopped doing that and got a VA to help with your accounting? Instantly, that would free up 10% of your time. If you work 40 hours a week, that gives you 4 hours free. Hours you can use to manage your business.
You’ve allowed your VA to create and manage your website. This frees up another 10% more percent of your time. You can put that into marketing.
Now, let your VA do the social media promotion, SEO, and customer support to make calls for you. That’s another 4 hours you can use to improve your products or create new product lines.
These are not exact numbers. You may be spending more time on SEO or on accounting, but I think you get the idea. For every task you outsource you get more time. Time to stop and think about your business. Time to plan and implement.
“But, I can’t afford the financial risk of hiring an employee.”
Starting a business requires investment. And yes, getting a virtual assistant will entail additional costs, but not as much as you think.
A Filipino Virtual Assistant has a full-time (40 hours a week) monthly rate of $450. This VA already has the basic skills you are looking for in someone who can help you with your business. They have:
- Basic WordPress knowledge
- Basic SEO knowledge
- Social media management skills
- Email and chat support skills
They’re also committed to you and your business. If you give them training, they will learn whatever they need to get the job done.
If you want specific services, however, you will want to hire someone with specialized skills. It will cost a little more but you’ll get more things done. Here are the commonly hired specialized virtual assistants and their starting rates:
You’re paying yourself horribly by trying to do everything.
Have you heard of the 10,000-hour rule? That’s how much time you need to spend to be good at something.
You’ve already spent 25 hours trying to make that new website. Newsflash: you’ve ONLY spent 25 hours on that new website. You’re far from being good at it. And that website you made is far from the efficiency and quality a WordPress expert would produce.
For that work, how much are you supposed to pay yourself?
You should have two options, pay yourself based on your needs (bills, food, etc.) and the other is to pay yourself based on your basic worth.
- Pay based on your living requirements. This is totally dependent on how you live. You should have a balance sheet that lists down your living expenses, and total that up. Be sure to factor in not only your monthly, but also your quarterly, semiannual and annual expenses. Be as accurate as possible. This balance sheet will be your lifeline.
- Pay based on your basic worth. In order to determine your worth, start with your previous hourly wage. That’s your market worth. To get your basic worth, you need to identify the rate of inflation.
The inflation rate is the value you put in for the increased responsibilities of running your business, and your value to its success.
To put it simply, follow this equation:
The typical inflation rate is 4%. Do everything yourself and you’ll have to recalculate. Doing the writing alone will take:
- Articles (700-1k words) – depending on the amount of research needed or if a video needs to be transcribed to create the article. It would take anywhere between 3 to 5 hours
- Blog posts (500-1k words) – for most topics, 1 to 2 hours including research; highly technical or detailed posts would take 5 hours or more
- Newsletters (300-500 words) an hour
- Ebooks – 1 per month
- Sales pages/landing pages – 2 days including revision time
Let’s say you’re only doing blog posts, articles, and newsletter. This means doing a blog post per weekday for a month could take as much as 25 hours. An article per week could take as much as 12 hours a month. A newsletter per week would take up 4 hours a month. All in all that’s 41 hours or roughly 1 week’s worth of work.
So, do the math. Are you paying yourself a fare rate? Did you make money or did it end up costing you more?
Building on a team’s strengths is ten times more powerful than building on your strengths alone. You can get further, faster, if you have a Filipino virtual assistant who can take some of the work off your shoulders.
All successful entrepreneurs agree that one of their most valuable skills is delegation. Find someone who can do the job well, and give them that job. Pretend you can do everything will not only delay success, but also jeopardize your company.
Listen to those who made it:
“Focus on ONE NICHE! And become the expert guru in that niche with your brand. Don’t get greedy! It’s the reason most quit by spreading themselves too thin.”
– George Shepherd
“I tried to do everything, and ended up not doing anything. Since then, I’ve learned how to focus much better, and I’ve built up a team around me that allows me to do just that, so let’s see if I’ve learned anything.”
– Gary Vaynerchuk
About Jessica Madrazo
Jessica creates content and support for OnlineJobs.ph. She is also involved in different advocacies like climate revolution, local arts, internet freedom, women’s rights and more.
She dreams of a world where people are able to tap their inner heroism and work together for a better world.
She has a Dalek watching over her computer.
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Hi ..I signed up laready, how to start to apply?
You can apply for any of the jobs posted here by signing up for an Onlinejobs.ph jobseeker account. It’s completely free and takes only minutes to apply. Having a jobseeker account also gives you access to thousands of new online jobs daily.
To start the registration process, just follow this link ===> http://www.onlinejobs.ph/register
Once you’ve completed your profile, you can start searching for the job that you want here ===>http://www.onlinejobs.ph/jobseekers/jobsearch/
You can find a wide variety of jobs there, from data entry, design, writing, programming, and more!
The job posts would contain all the information you need to apply for that position.
If the employer doesn’t state their buegdt salary then the employer shouldn’t expect the applicant to say what he is earning in his current position. But what seems to happen in the real world is that the employer doesn’t state a buegdt, but then gets the hump if the applicant declines to say what he is earning at the very first stage of the application process. This has happened to me numerous times.My impression is that this is a power thing for a lot of employers and recruiters. They want docile drones who will blindly comply with every request rather than applicants with the nous and backbone to negotiate effectively. The exception is if the applicant has some hard-to-find skills or qualifications which are at a premium, in which case the employer has no choice but to concede that the applicant has some power in the negotiation.I am very skeptical about these supposed authentic posts which say salary isn’t a major issues; it’s all about the working environment, challenges etc. I think that jobstheword knows that undefined salaries put people off applying, and they are trying to create some kind of herd effect to kid applicants into thinking that they are in a minority if they are bothered by that.90% of open positions will have a buegdt salary range. Employers who are fair to deal with will post it. Employers who want to screw their employees for every last time will keep it quiet.This everyone’s salary is secret line is due an overhaul too. Why are they a secret? So that employers can get away with paying their staff as little as possible! It won’t be long before everyone knows each other’s salary the internet / wikileaks will see to that which will be good for quality people as they will be better able to negotiate what they are actually worth.