Ep 36 Make a Quantum Leap in Your Business to a 7 Figure Income Level
April 17, 2008 by Elizabeth Potts Weinstein
Elizabeth speaks with David Neagle of Life is Now, Inc. about manifesting quantum leaps within your business and your life. David shares his tips on how to leave linear thinking behind, what can stop your true desire in its track and what you need to make your quantum shift. Elizabeth answers a listener question about timing your hire of a Virtual Assistant and shares her Entrepreneur’s Success Tip of the Week: Going on an Information Moratorium.
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Transcript: Elizabeth Potts Weinstein welcomes small business owners, entrepreneurs and anyone who dreams of opening a business someday to this empowering hour of The Wealth Spa Radio Show where you’ll find answers to your most pressing financial and legal questions. Now here’s your host, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth: Welcome everyone to today’s show. This is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein, your host for The Wealth Spa Radio Show. And today is Episode 36. I can’t believe it! We’ve had that many shows on. And today we have a couple of things going on like usual. First, we’re going to have our guest David Neagle. I’m very excited about sharing his wisdom with you. We’ll be talking about making a quantum leap in your business and frankly, also in your life.
The second half of the hour, I will be answering a questionnaire from a listener who’s asking about “When is a good time to hire a virtual assistant or any sort of staff for your business?” so we’ll talk about what is a Virtual Assistant of course, and also about when is a good time to start hiring people.
To the top of the hour, I’ll share with you my entrepreneur success tip for the week. This tip is about going on an Information Moratorium as opposed to more research, actually stopping that and going and getting some stuff done.
Before we get started with our guest today, we’ll remind you that if you’re going to be missing any part of the live show today, you can always go to our website for the show to get delivered to you automatically by email, RSS feed or iTunes (if you’re an iPod kind of person), and you can also listen to it on your computer. To do that, just go to the website TheWealthSpaRadioShow.com.
Now I want to introduce our guest for today, David Neagle. I’ve been familiar with him for a year or two now. As many of you know, I’m a student of [inaudible 0:02:08] Brown and she is one of David Neagle’s biggest fan. I’ve been hearing about all the amazing things he’s done for her and her life including manifesting multiple houses and all kinds of wonderful things. He is the Million-Dollar Income Acceleration mentor.
What we’re going to be talking about today is making a quantum leap in your business, in your life to that 7 figure income level. David, thank you very much for being on the show today. Welcome!
David: Elizabeth, it’s my pleasure. I’m glad to be here.
Elizabeth: Great! I was introducing your talk of this quantum leap. What are we talking about here? What does that mean, a quantum leap?
David: A quantum leap really means bypassing a stair-step approach towherever it is that you want to go. Let’s say a person was making $20,000 or$50,000 a year in their business, and they wanted to go to $500,000 or $1,000,000 or whatever number it is that they pick. If it’s really a desire for them to do that, they could do that a lot faster than they would think that they could do it. Once they get out of the linear type thinking and start thinking more like leap-frogging to their success than stair-stepping it.
Elizabeth: What’s something that they have to change? Is it that they need to think differently? There are things that they need to do differently in their business and their lives?
David: Yeah, absolutely. It starts off with thinking differently. Basically, what we’re doing when we think about something, the mental process that’s taking place is we’re going over information, facts, and beliefs that we already know, how we perceive the world that’s around us, our business, what other people have done in business, maybe what other people have done in a similar business that we’re in. We take this information, we begin to evaluate it and we begin to think, “What do I think I can accomplish here?” and we start to set our goals in that direction based on that type of a thought. If you were to remove that thought, and you think about what do you really want, if you could pick anything, if you could pick any number, any business, any destination, what do you really want? And then you change that end point, and you stay in that realm of thinking. You will literally start to create in your own mind the ways for that to actually happen, and it doesn’t have to take a long time either. You just go from one way of thinking to another way of thinking and as long as you take action on it, you’ll actually produce that in your own result.
Elizabeth: Actually, before we started doing this radio show today, I told David I was going to play a little devil’s advocate [laughs] because I know some of the people listening to the car’s thinking, “We want to be realistic. We don’t want to set ourselves out for failure that I think, OK, I’m going make a million dollars this year and then it’s not going to happen, and then I will be disappointed and upset.” There is that feeling there that we are setting ourselves up for disappointment by thinking big.
David: And you know something? There is a large amount of truth to that.And here is where that truth lies, the people that I coach, a lot of times, people will come to me and say, “I just want to make a million dollars.” or “I want to make 10 million dollars.” and I’ll ask them why, “Why do you want to make that?” and the answer, inevitably, in some way, shape or form is, “I don’t want to have to worry about money.” Here’s where the problem is, the real cause of what they want to do is a fear-based motive. It’s they don’t want to have to worry about money. They don’t want to have to deal with money. They don’t want to have to deal with the consequences about it. Actually, what they’re doing is subconsciously, they will create that scenario in their life. They really don’t want a large sum of money because they can’t deal with the small sum of money, [laughs] so they don’t get the large sum. But if you remove that and you get to the core of what it is that they do want, and then that becomes their intention, that dynamic of setting yourself up for failure begins to shift dramatically.
Actually, that is where you go beyond realistic thinking. A person who thinks realistically is - that’s a perception. What’s realistic for one person is not realistic for someone else. It really goes down to what is your core desire to achieve in your business? Why do you really want to do it? And then when you get really clear on that, that’s when you can make a quantum leap.
Elizabeth: We’ll say someone is thinking they’re going to start a business right now. They have ideas for their business and they’re starting from the very beginning. Is the issue that instead of saying, “I want to earn extra dollars this year,” You need to be thinking about, “What do I actually want in my life? What that money would be?”…
David: Exactly. What I do is say, “Let’s make that number real. If you want to make a million, let’s make the number real.” In other words, you want to make it for a reason. So how is it that you want to live your life? What is it that you want to do with the money? And one of the stuffs that a person can take is to say all the different things that they want in their life: their house, their clothes, how and where they want to travel, where they want to send their kids to school, what kind of vacations they want to take, all these different things, everything, including their bills, their taxes, all these.
Then go on the Internet and do a little research. Find out what is it going to cost you on an annual basis to live that lifestyle pretty comfortably. Then you have a real number; the number has a real purpose behind it. It’s not just shooting a number in the sky and hoping for a pot of gold to fall on your lap.
Elizabeth: That wishing for the number. Some lottery ticket will fall on your foot. I have some clients, and I’m sure some people listening to - they started a business because they want to change the world. They want to help people and they are not doing it for the money. We’re here, we’re talking about making a million dollars. What would you have to say to someone who says, “I’m not doing it for the money. I just want to change the world and help people.”
David: There’s a lot of different things that you could say to a person like that. First, you’ve got to find out is, if they’re not doing it for the money, do they have enough money to live independent of having to earn an income? Is their money working for them? Is it an investment? Where is their income coming in? If they say that they don’t have that, then they better reconsider what they’re doing because you have to have money to live any kind of quality of lifestyle today. It’s just a fact. That’s just the way that it is.I think that it’s very honorable that we should want to help, but it needs to come from a pure intention. It needs to come from a pure heart of really wanting to make a difference. Unfortunately, you see a lot of people that say, “I want to help.” and where it’s really coming from is their need to feel appreciated. When you give somebody a gift, whether you’re helping them or it’s a material gift, whatever kind of gift it would be, there’s no attachment to that. You’re not expecting a return on it.
Very often, people that say that they want to change the world, if they don’t receive appreciation for what they’re doing, they’re often devastated. There are various different levels and you really need to work with somebody who want to find out where it is that they’re coming from to give them the correct advice to move forward.
Elizabeth: When we’re speaking of someone who is wherever they are in their business, maybe they’re - I think the average solo entrepreneur make $35,000 a year, something like that. So someone’s in that place where they’re squeaking by, or maybe their business is hemorrhaging. And of envisioning this 6 figure, 7 figure, and 8 figure life would be like and they get really specific about what thatone means for them, how come they start coming up with things to reach that besides this linear path of how you grow a business or what other people do?
David: That’s a really great question. I have found with people that are in that range (35-50 thousand) they’re not just making the amount of money in their business that they want to. It’s not that they’re not capable, and it’s almost never that their business is not capable. What it is, is that there’s something that they’re resisting doing in their business that will allow them to begin to make that quantum leap. It could be that they’re resisting help, learning something, raising their prices, they think they have to do everything on their own, it’s always something that they’re resisting.
When I work one on one with individuals or in a seminar format, we very quickly get to the bottom of what that is and help them make a shift. Once they make that shift, if they stuck into it, they’ll see that their income will just take off.
Elizabeth: I’ve talked to people so many times to have businesses where it’s like there’s a million dollar business inside that businesses waiting to get out. And we just need to peel away whatever this junk is so that business can rise to the occasion.
David: Let me just say this, and this was one of the greatest pieces of education that I ever got. I read some place that - it was a reading material on self-improvement, spirituality, this type of thing - and what I was reading said that you cannot have a true desire without it being ready to manifest itself in your life. So if you really have a desire to go to over 6 figures, or over 7 figures, if it’s really a true desire, it’s already ready to manifest itself in your life. The only thing that’s stopping it is there’s something you’re resisting, changing or that you’re looking at the wrong way. Once that changes, that’s how a person can make a quantum leap. That’s the success with the individuals that I worked with and it’s exactly what takes place.
Elizabeth: Great! Everyone, we’re about ready to go to our first break. After the break, we’re still going to have David Neagle talking to us about making that quantum leap in our business. We’ll talk to you about that after the break.
BREAK
Elizabeth: Welcome back everyone. This is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein, your host for the Wealth Spa Radio Show. And this week we have David Neagle on the line with us, who is the Million Dollar Income Acceleration coach. And we’re talking about taking a quantum leap in your business, and really in your life. Next question I want to ask you David is, let’s say you have someone who’s making that $30,000 to $50,000 a year in their business. What kind of a leap is possible or where should you start? Should you start from thinking a million dollars? 10 million dollars? Is that too big of a jump?
David: No, it’s not too big of a jump. The question comes down to what is their purpose? What is their intention? Why are they asking for this sum of money? As long as it’s coming from a pure place where they want to do
something, then it’s absolutely possible. You can study biographies of business
people throughout history that have made jumps like this. Really, they came from
nothing. They started out small and in a very, very short period of time, they were
making millions or in some cases, billions of dollars.
It’s not coming from a place of lack. It’s not coming from a needy standpoint, which is absolutely critical for an individual to understand because if it is, then they go on in the wrong direction. It’s just struggle after struggle.
Elizabeth: Because I found out for me personally, a lot of times when I’m
looking at creating a vision of how much I want my life to be, and even doing
vision boards and all these different things, I end up feeling frustrated that I don’t
have that, and feeling the lack as opposed to being in the place of having already
received it. Does that make sense?
David: Absolutely. Definitely, I think affirmations like setting specific goals,
vision boards, all these things are great. You just have to go back and ask
yourself, “Why do I want this thing? What is the real reason why I want this? Is
this something that I really, really want or am I just putting down what I think I can
accomplish?” there’s a big difference there.
When you go after what you really want, then you are like mind, body and soul in harmony with that thing, and you begin to create all the opportunities for it to manifest in your life.
Elizabeth: And also, making sure that it’s something that you really want and
not something you think that you’re supposed to want. Because some people
don’t all want big, gigantic house or this certain car or whatever becomes some
societal kind of thing that people think that’s how life should be, and that may not
be what a particular person really want.
David: Absolutely. It’s okay to want whatever you want, just know what you
want. And if you find yourself making a decision based on what somebody else
will think about what you want, you’re making a wrong decision.
Elizabeth: For some listening right now, and to them it’s just, “Yeah, that
sounds a great idea but I don’t feel that it’s possible. I don’t feel like a million
dollars is something I could even possibly earn.” What would you say to that
person?
David: I want to ask them what they do feel like they could earn. What
really comes into their consciousness when they think about what they want? I’ll
give you a story for instance. I knew somebody who’s making about $24,900 a
year and a friend of mine asked this person, “Would you like to make a hundred
thousand?” and they could not see themselves making a hundred thousand. This
is going back 20 years now, they could not see themselves making a hundred
thousand and they said, “How about 50?” and she thought, “I could probably see
myself making 50.” That was the target, to focus on the 50. The person that
ended up making almost 500,000 net year, the idea was to get the person out of
the mindset that they could only go for the 24,900 that they were making and
really watch everything start changing. Once they realize that they realized that
there are no limits to what they could do, and they actually ended up in about
499,000 through the year.
Elizabeth: Wow! Maybe it’s not necessarily the number that you’re looking at,
it’s how that changes, how you feel and what you think and how you act.
David: Totally. That’s everything. Number has nothing to do with it, it’s just
a number.
Elizabeth: One of the questions that I actually got from you that was - when
we’re looking at our business and what we should create in our business, should
we choose a business that - you know we should only follow our passion and
what we do. Is that realistic to be able to make huge amounts of money just
doing something that you’re passionate about, or do we need to fix particular
tasks on our business that we’re passionate about? How does that work?
David: Well, I think that in a person’s business, they should do what
they’re passionate about. And every thing that really isn’t their core competency
that they hand that off to somebody else as fast as they possibly can.
Unfortunately, when most people start out, they can’t do that, but if you’re going
to the mindset that you’re going to do this the very second that you get the
chance to do it, then that’s what you do. It’s better for you because it allows you
to grow. It allows somebody to do things that come much more naturally to them
and you’re on your way.
I do believe that a person can do what their passion is and earn a lot of money doing that. It would really kind of be a cruel joke if you couldn’t. So the question is, do you have any issues around money? Do you have issues around business? Do you have issues around marketing and sales? which are all required in order for you to make money in business, and if you don’t, then it should be not much of a problem. If you do, you have to address those issues first, and once you get those cleared up, you’re going to find that things are much more smooth sailing.
Elizabeth: Is it a business where they have a business partner or maybe - or
someone who’s married or has a life partner, and who thinks this stuff is all nuts.
What would you say to that person when they have to interact with this other
individual at the time who doesn’t really believe in this?
David: Well, that’s basically the truth of that is that it’s a decision. Often,
we come together in partnership with people either in marriage or in other
different kinds of partnerships where we came in at one level of who we are as a
human being, and then we begin to advance in our self. If the other person does
not do that also or realizes that they’re on a different path, you’ve got to choose
whether you’re going to give up your path, your journey and your life, what you
want to experience so that the other person is not uncomfortable. Or can you
amicably find a way to dissolve that partnership and find somebody who’s more
in tune with what it is that you want to do? So it really comes down to a decision,
it’s when people try to force things together that really don’t fit that cause the
biggest problem.
Elizabeth: I think with business partnerships, people will stay in this
partnership because it’s someone they’re friends with so they feel that sense of
the obligation way too long. It’s not just in businesses in general that aren’t
working, where it’s like the faster that you can get out of it in the best amicable,
honorable way, the better so you can make progress faster in your life.
David: A friendship, partnership, and a marriage all have a purpose. A
business also has a separate purpose. When you let one purpose cloud another
one, one of those two things is going to fail. You have to be clear on what the
purpose of the business is, what the purpose of the friendship is or what the
purpose of the marriage is. And then make the correct decisions for each one but
you can’t like - if you have a friend who’s a business partner, and that person is
not living up to what it is that they need to live up to, what happens
to a lot of people “I don’t want to lose my friend” so I start tailoring the business
around their weakness. And then that creates just a big disaster and you can’t do
that.
Elizabeth: And being worse for everybody if you just let that go and have a
separate thing. Someone listening to this right now and they’re thinking, “I want
to start doing this.” Where should they start?
David: If they want to start with the quantum leap? The first place to start is
to ask yourself why you want it and be very clear that it’s coming from a place of
a good intention, not a neediness, not a place of being afraid. You want the
money or you want the result for a good, positive, moving you forward type of
intention. Once you get clear on that, then you have to ask yourself, “Am I doing
what I love to do? Is that not an issue?” because if you’re doing something that
you hate, you better get out of it and find something that you love to do because
you’re just never going to have the success that you want to doing something
that you hate.
You get those two pieces together and I guarantee you, the rest of it will start to come in to your field of vision as to how to make that quantum leap. The people, resources, ideas, opportunities, all of it becomes - just begins to unfold right in front of you and all you have to do is say “Yes” to all of those things. You take action on them even if you’re afraid, even if you’re nervous or worried. You take action on those things and I guarantee you, your life will transform right before your eyes.
Elizabeth: And some of those things are actually right there, you’re just not
seeing them because your brain is in a [inaudible 25:44] It’s almost kind of
amazing, you just sweep stairs like, “Oh! All these stuff was right in front of me.”
David: It is exactly right in front of you and you can’t see it because your
perception is seeing something totally different. When your perception shifts, you
see the opportunity.
Elizabeth: Great! If people wanted to find out more about you and hear more
about you, I know you have a special event going on this weekend, how can they
find out about that?
David: Well, what they can do is they can go to www.DavidNeagle, my last
name is spelled: N-E-A-G-L-E, so it’s DavidNeagle.com/xcountry and they can
find out how to sign up for our event in Los Angeles on Saturday. We’re going to
be talking about this very thing all day long.
Elizabeth: Great! Do you have another event that’s in another part of the
country?
David: Yes, in Baltimore. If they go there, they’ll find out about the
Baltimore event also.
Elizabeth: Okay great. I know some people are in other parts of the country.
And of course at DavidNeagle.com they can also get other information about you
and sign up for a newsletter and all that.
David: Absolutely, or they can send us an email and ask any question that
they’d like.
Elizabeth: Great! Well thank you so much for being on the show today, David.
And again, that’s DavidNeagle.com/xcountry like cross-country is the idea.
David: Thanks Elizabeth.
Elizabeth: Thank you so much. So everybody, we’re going to a break in just a
few seconds and after the break, I’ll be talking about a question from a listener
which is “When should you hire a Virtual Assistant or staff?” and then we’ll be
sharing the entrepreneur success tip for the week. We’ll talk about all that after
the break.
BREAK
Elizabeth: Welcome everyone back from the break. This is Elizabeth Potts
Weinstein, your host for The Wealth Spa Radio Show. And the first half of the
show we had David Neagle on, we’re talking about taking a quantum leap in your
business. If you would like some more information from him and about this
special event that they have coming up in LA this Saturday and they also have
another event in Baltimore I believe, you can go to the website:
DavidNeagle.com, his last name is spelled N-E-A-G-L-E, that’s
DavidNeagle.com/xcountry. Yeah it is cross-country so it’s an X-COUNTRY and
get more information about that.
Also, we’re going to start now talking about the question of the week. This question is from someone who’s actually a member of The Wealth Spa Radio Show Group on Facebook. And then to close the top of the hour, I’ll share with you my entrepreneur success tip of the week. If you did miss any of David Neagle’s interview that we had in the show last half hour, you can always go to TheWealthSpaRadioShow.com where you can listen to a recording on the show, download it, get it sent to you by email, any of that stuff.
Let’s get to today’s question. As I said, this question was posted on The Wealth Spa Radio Show Group on Facebook, and if you are on Facebook, go ahead and look us up and then you can ask questions to be answered live on the show. This question is from Zoe Herbert Routh (I don’t know if it’s Ruth or Routh). Zoe is asking about virtual assistants and by the way, she is from Australia so that’s really fun. I’m here in California, she’s out in Australia. She’s a Law of Attraction guru, so very on topic to what we’re talking about today. Her website is InnerCompass.com.au.
Zoe asks, “I want to know when is a good time to get a virtual assistant?” Before you can afford to do it so you can get on with the business - of building a business rather than administrating it, how do you break to the staff-imposed limitation? And it especially interests her talking about this because this is one of the things that David Neagle was talking about in the last half an hour, which is a lot of businesses - one of the mental breakthroughs we need to do with the business owner is to get over the fact that we don’t need to do it ourselves, that we can hire help and we need to hire help. But when should we do this? on Day 1? Should you wait until you’re making more money? When’s the appropriate time?
First, there is an amount of this that is dependent upon your business and where you are in your business and how it fits into your life. Looking at your business and your personal finances, how much money do you need your business to be spitting out to you? Right now, are your personal expenses being paid for by your day job? by a spouse or a partner’s job? or does it need to be paid for by this business? Do you have some sort of financing available to pay for your personal expenses and for the growth of the business? or are you bootstrapping in on something else?
The reason this is a big issue is, when you hire any sort of staff, whether it’s an employee or a virtual assistant, this is another expense for your business. A wonderful investment for your business but it is another expense, and it can be an issue if you are not able to take home as much income because you’re paying someone else. Even though that will help you create a lot more income in the future, there could be a personal cash-crunch for a few months until things start turning over.
What I suggest is, crunch some numbers for your own life and look at, “How much money do I need this business to give me?” is it paying for your personal expenses or are your personal expenses being paid for by some other source of cash flow? or personal savings or something else?
One of the issues is this whole concept of affordability. When you are growing a business, typically in the very, very beginning, what we do is we do everything, especially if you’re solo entrepreneur. You start a business and you’re doing everything. You’re both the CEO as well as the person who’s doing all the work, as well as the person “I’m doing the trash can.” You do everything. And then your business grows and you’re bringing in - in the beginning you make zero money or very small amount of money. Then your business grows, you’re doing better and better, you get more clients, you get more customers and you’re starting actually to pay yourself profit or a draw or a salary, and it’s great. Your business is making you some money, but you’re not making a lot. You’re just doing okay.
Then you hit this plateau and you have to hire staff because it’s actually physically impossible for you to take on any more clients or sell any more products because you’re also doing all these other roles, and either those other roles aren’t getting done. Your bookkeeping hasn’t been updated in six months or you hit the ceiling on how much more products you can sell, or how many more services you can provide to your clients. You can’t take on any more clients because you’re doing all those admin junk.
And then people hire staff and one of the issues there is that their take-home income drops for a short amount of time, or at least could drop for a short amount of time because they’re paying up this additional expense. And then of course you can break through that and bam! You’re earning a whole lot of money. The only way to really get to that high 6 figure, 7 figure, 8 figure level, is to have several people doing the admin for you. So how do you actually do that? And one of the issues is, when you hit that ceiling, you’re not going to have them to hire staff right? You’re freaking out that you’re working 80 hours a week. Maybe you actually started to stop doing your marketing and advertising because you don’t have time to do it anymore. You don’t have time to go look for assistants and train them.
So here’s what I would suggest — if you’re starting a brand new business or you’re still earning a wealthily, modest amount of money, and you’re not yet comfortable hiring out — is get ready to hire staff. And David actually talked about this in the last half an hour. The day you open up your business, the day you put up your website or you conceive of your idea, plan that you will hire staff to do everything that you don’t love. And there’s some part of your business you’re passionate about, it could be seeing clients, speaking, talking about your products, making your products, whatever it is that you love, you plan on doing that for a while but there’s also the junk. There could be answering the phone, filing, website maintenance, bookkeeping, that’s a huge one for a lot of people.
From the very beginning, plan to outsource that. Plan to delegate that to someone else, even if you’re not ready. So how do you plan to do that? What you want to do is create checklist, templates, an employee manual even if you don’t have actual employees, even if you hire independent contractors, but a manual for people that you can have them, so they can just go on and do it. And it doesn’t have to be hard or complicated especially at the very beginning.
When you answer a client phone call or inquiry, you just write down the steps that you take. Okay, someone calls, here are the kinds of things that I say, people will hear the typical kinds of questions, here are the typical answers and then here’s how we put them into the system, and I create the file and all the little steps you take when you get a call from a client or a prospect. It won’t take that long if you just do it in a little notebook sitting next to your computer.
Then, certain amount of time from now when you have just enough cash flow to barely start hiring people, you’ll know exactly what that person is supposed to do. You just hand them the sheet. You made that checklist. You systematized your business. That’s when you’re ready to hire people. You can hire them immediately.
When you’re in that place in your business where there’s a height growth area, and you’re working 80 hours a week and all these craziness is going on, you don’t [inaudible 39:00] through these systems and checklist and all these jazz. The idea is you want to do it now when you’re still small. You want to do it as you’re doing the work.
And the same thing, as you’re keeping track of what you do, as you’re creating checklist of what you do and putting - everytime you send an email back from an inquiry from your website, you save it in a special folder that can be used to create template emails to answer customer inquiries. As you’re doing all this, you want to actually keep track of what you do. You want to keep track of all the tasks you do during the week for your business.
What I would like to recommend is for one week at least, or maybe even ongoing, keep track of how you spend your time on your business. How much time you spend on each kind of task or goal, and then put a little star next to the things that you love, that you plan on keeping. You love meeting with clients, maybe you love writing stuff for your website, writing your blog, speaking to people, whatever it is that you love.
And the thing that you don’t love will stand out. The things that you spend a lot of time on will stand out. The reason why you want to do this is because then will you go to look for an assistant, you will know what they’re supposed to do. You’ll have a job description. Here’s the thing that they’re supposed to do: you want them to do this bookkeeping, answer this email, do your phone calls, do this filing, format documents, your website stuff, whatever it is. So you go to hire staff, you hire the right person.
I feel a lot of people will say, “I want a virtual assistant.” And the idea for those of you who don’t know, a virtual assistant is someone who is not an employee of your business. It’s someone who has their own business — a virtual assistant business, who’s an independent contractor for you. You pay them by the hour or by the project, or a monthly retainer fee for them to do whatever it has for you that you may assign to them in their area of specialty. It could be that they’re your administrative assistant, they could do web maintenance for you, there’s virtual assistants who do sales, there’s people who do all kinds of different things. The idea is they’re an independent contractor, and they work for you just two hours a week. You pay them a little bit more but the idea is you don’t have to deal with all the employee junk.
When you go to look for that person, you want to look for the right person. If you need someone to do all this web work for you on your website, that might be a different person than if you want someone to answer your phone. And that’s a different person if you want someone to do sales calls.
What we want to do is whenever you hit that point where you can just barely start to afford an assistant, you want to immediately be able to immediately find the right person because you know what exactly they should do. And you have checklist and systems and templates for them to do their job literally starting on Day 1. You won’t have to spend a lot of time training them.
Before we go to our last break, I just want to also share that is it humanly possible that one of the best things to do is to start doing this before you can “afford it”. And a great way to do that is just by hiring people out for specific projects. You can go to a website like elance.com, that’s a great place to hire someone just to do one thing or two things. You could find someone to transcribe a document, format something, write something for you, do something to your website. You use to having people work for you and also a great way to audition people to be your assistant eventually.
So that’s what I look at when you’re thinking about when is the best time to hire a VA. It’s typically when you don’t have time to do it. When everything’s in place, when you’re ready, you can go for it as fast as possible. Okay after the break, we’ll be talking about the entrepreneur success tip for the week.
BREAK
Elizabeth: Welcome back everyone. This is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein, your
host of The Wealth Spa Radio Show and right before the break, we were talking
about when is a good time to hire a virtual assistant? And one last thing I did
want to share is if you do have enough cash flow in your personal life, that you
can run your business not taking money out of it for a little bit longer, I would
recommend hiring a virtual assistant as soon as humanly possible.
In the very beginning on Day 1 of your business, you start doing everything yourself. Even just a few months after you start, as soon as you figure out what your business is and you have something that you could delegate, and you have some ideas of what this person would do, then go ahead and hire someone, even if it’s just hiring them for two hours a week.
But I do recommend that when you do that, you want to know what that person is supposed to do or at least have a few roles in mind. A few people who hire virtual assistant and they don’t yet have anything to delegate, and they may even bring someone on a retainer, they’re paying them a monthly retainer and have no work for them to do.
Before you actually hire that person, at least have one role. In the beginning, my second virtual assistant, the first thing that she did was just answer my phone and answer my email — the public email that comes in to my website, people who don’t know me yet. That’s all she did in the beginning, now she does a lot of other things. She sets up stuff for my radio show. She manages the whole other host of things in my business, but in the beginning, it was just answering the public phone and answering the public email.
Now I actually did hire a virtual assistant for my business before my business even existed. That was some sort of a special situation because my first virtual assistant was my sister. And she was home on maternity leave and wanted to earn some extra money from working from home with her baby there, so she started for me in the very beginning. And it was really incredibly valuable for me, partially because I could delegate all that admin stuff that I wasn’t going to do to free me up to grow my business, but also to have another human being working on the business with me. It could be very isolating to be a solo entrepreneur. It’s great to have - even if the person’s not legally a partner in your business…a great VA will be a partner for you to help you grow your business.
I was able to do that because I just didn’t take any money out of the business in the beginning. We saved up a whole bunch of money for me to run my business, so we didn’t have to take any money out. I was able to grow much faster by hiring a VA from the beginning.
We’ll talk about the secrets of successful entrepreneur’s tip of the week. This tip is about going on an Information Moratorium. What do I mean by that? This is something that I’ve actually been in the middle of right now. Last year, back in 2007, I was an information maniac. I went to all these different seminars and I bought all these different seminars-in-a-box or information products. So it’s a box you get - if you’re not familiar with this, Tony Robbins sells these kinds of stuff on Infomercial. And actually yes, I do own some of Tony Robbins’ stuff. The idea is you get a box in the mail that has 6 CDs or 20 CDs that you listen to and workbooks, templates and checklists, and all these stuff for you to learn about a specific subject. The idea is, instead of going to a seminar or conference, you get it in a box.
I have these for all kinds of different pop topic. Everything from improving your life, personal development to time management to specific things in my business like running an eZine, podcasting a radio show, the internet, getting clients, speedreading, I have photo reading course, all kinds of different things. I spent gosh awful amount of money on these things.
What I have at the end of the year — when I sat down most of my finances for the year and all these different things that I’ve done — yes I had done a lot of stuff, but I also had this sense of information and research overload. Partially because I have a few of these seminars-in-a-box that I hadn’t opened yet, that were still in the shrink wrap. Obviously, I was kind of going wacky wild buying these stuff, and I also looked at how much money I’ve spent.
While research and personal development and improving yourself for your business is incredibly important and you want to definitely spend lots of time and a fair amount of money on this stuff, you could also had a point where you’re doing all these research and all these learning but you’re not taking any action. I see there’s a lot with colleagues from my clients where you get really ingrained in learning some new stuff whether it’s Law of Attraction, whether it’s Internet Marketing, whatever this is, and you’re so excited about it that you spend this huge amount of time on it, and you know actually it’s the point where you’re implementing any of it in your life or in your business. You still just keep learning.
It might be an effort to learn everything, which of course is impossible because there’s always new stuff, it might be because you’re afraid of actually implementing it. You don’t realize you’re afraid so you just keep learning as if you’re going to somehow be perfect, and then when you do it, it will all be perfect.
It can also be, if you’re like me, you may be a life-long learner. You love this stuff. I read multiple books every week. I love this stuff. I could just learn forever, but it really keeps you from achieving things in your business and in your life. What I recommend for you is you may want to take a break. What I did the end of last year is that I said, “One of my intentions, one of the principles I’m going to do in 2008, I’m going to go on a moratorium. I’m going to do no seminars for the first six months of the year. I’m not going to buy any new information products or seminars-in-a-box or any of this stuff for the first six months of the year.
The actual idea behind this __[52:21] intention was that I was going to go back to all those things I had in boxes that I hadn’t opened that’s still in a shrink wrap and do all that stuff.
Here’s a funny thing, I did a little bit of it but I’m giving myself space. I was able to achieve and finish a bunch of things in my business and in my life. You have to give yourself space to process all this stuff. You have to give yourself space to actually take action, to implement, to do. At a certain point in your life and in your business, we need to stop the focus being on learning. You can still learn, but stop the focus being on learning. The focus being on getting prepared, on research, on doing, you just go and do the stuff. You will never know everything, it will never all be perfect. You just need to go and do. Don’t get frozen in that.
What worked for me is this thing. First six months of the year I’m not allowed to buy any of this stuff. I’m not going to go to any of this stuff. So tempted at so many great things, some of them sold by people I love and friends of mine, but no! not allowed. So for me, I needed a strict rule because I was kind of insane. You really need not a strict rule but I highly recommend doing this if you see yourself not taking action.
We’re almost at the top of the hour and so I want to make sure that I let you know about next week’s show. Next week we’re having Nika Stewart on, who’s going to be speaking with us about Using the Law of Attraction to Manifest More Clients, taking a lot of things that we’re talking about today, all this mental stuff and taking action, and specifically applying it to attracting more clients or customers into your life and into your business.
As always, if you’ve missed any part of the show or you’re interested in next week’s show and not going to be able to listen live, you can go to TheWealthSpaRadioShow.com to sign up. Get the show delivered to you automatically by email, RSS feed, you can listen to it on the website and you can also get it through iTunes so it comes directly to your iPod (if you’re that kind of person). You can also listen to iTunes on your computer even if you don’t have an iPod.
If you’re on Facebook, I encourage you to go to The Wealth Spa Radio Show Group on Facebook where you can of course join and interact with the other members as well as give any suggestions for guests you think should be on the show, and post questions for me to answer live on the show. You can also ask questions directly on TheWealthSpaRadioShow.com website for me to answer live during the show.
Thank you all for listening to the show today and being on the call today. Again, I’m going to give you David Neagle’s website: DavidNeagle.com/xcountry, his name is spelled N-E-A-G-L-E, so again that’s DavidNeagle.com/xcountry. Again, you can always go to TheWealthSpaRadioShow.com to listen to any part of the show, get it delivered to you automatically.
Thank you so much for listening today and I will look forward to speak with you next week. Bye bye!
Thank you for joining us this hour for The Wealth Spa Radio Show. You can listen live every Wednesday at 11 am Pacific on the VoiceAmericaBusiness Radio Network. See you next week.
Tags: Entrepreneur, radio, success, success tip, virtual assistant
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