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$120 = 40 hours : Why you should cancel your BS subscriptions now

AgainstAllOdds

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Yesterday I was sitting around dreading what I was working on. I was making a catalog for prospects and absolutely hated it. Here's the conversation that went through my head:

"Maybe I should outsource this."
"No. Every dollar counts. Might as well put that money into inventory."
"But damn, do I hate doing this mindless work."

So the day went on, and guess what happened? Nothing. I did no work. The catalog wasn't finished. And I woke up being pissed.

A half hour after waking up, I put an ad on Upwork for a virtual assistant. $3 an hour - a tiny amount ... however an amount that I hated having to pay since it made me feel lazy. It made me feel like I was spending money on something that was "nice, but I didn't need."

And then it hit me.

I was already paying for a lot of these services that were nice, but I didn't need. For starters:
  • 4 google apps accounts
  • 1 CRM tool that I wasn't using
  • 1 Emailing tool that I wasn't using
  • Hosting for 3 domains that I was waiting to expire; and
  • A Netflix account that I never watched
I was spending money on things that were nice to have, but that provided minimal benefit.

And so I cancelled them all. 1 by 1.

The savings?

A little over $120 a month.

Is it a lot?

I didn't think so. But then I started doing the math.

At $3 an hour, that's 40 hours of work.

Weekly, that's 10 hours of work.

Think about that: 10 hours of mindless work that I never have to do again.

So was it worth the tradeoff?

I'd say so.
 
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Jon L

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Yesterday I was sitting around dreading what I was working on. I was making a catalog for prospects and absolutely hated it. Here's the conversation that went through my head:

"Maybe I should outsource this."
"No. Every dollar counts. Might as well put that money into inventory."
"But damn, do I hate doing this mindless work."

So the day went on, and guess what happened? Nothing. I did no work. The catalog wasn't finished. And I woke up being pissed.

A half hour after waking up, I put an ad on Upwork for a virtual assistant. $3 an hour - a tiny amount ... however an amount that I hated having to pay since it made me feel lazy. It made me feel like I was spending money on something that was "nice, but I didn't need."

And then it hit me.

I was already paying for a lot of these services that were nice, but I didn't need. For starters:
  • 4 google apps accounts
  • 1 CRM tool that I wasn't using
  • 1 Emailing tool that I wasn't using
  • Hosting for 3 domains that I was waiting to expire; and
  • A Netflix account that I never watched
I was spending money on things that were nice to have, but that provided minimal benefit.

And so I cancelled them all. 1 by 1.

The savings?

A little over $120 a month.

Is it a lot?

I didn't think so. But then I started doing the math.

At $3 an hour, that's 40 hours of work.

Weekly, that's 10 hours of work.

Think about that: 10 hours of mindless work that I never have to do again.

So was it worth the tradeoff?

I'd say so.

What are you having your assistant do for you?
 

Imgal

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"Maybe I should outsource this."
"No. Every dollar counts. Might as well put that money into inventory."
"But damn, do I hate doing this mindless work."

Oh have I had that conversation! I was actually doing some mindless work this week to help out a friend's charity site and this will sound wildly over-dramatic, but it literally felt like it was draining my life force. I could do the work and if it had actually been my own project it would have felt like it was saving me money, but it wasn't.

The work I did probably saved them at least $500. Let's pretend it was my own project. Saving $500 sounds pretty good, but the fact of the matter is that I could have earn 5 times that doing something that pushes me more in the same amount of time. This means the reality is that in trying to save money, all I actually did was lose money AND come out of it feeling pretty deflated. It's a double lose situation.

It really is very easy when starting up thinking that every time you spend out you're losing money. The really important thing to recognise is that often by not doing it, whether it be on a virtual assistant or software that can do the work in half the time, you're actually probably losing even more.
 

AgainstAllOdds

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What are you having your assistant do for you?

Taking pictures from my manufacturer, and putting them into my own catalog. Creating new titles, descriptions, etc. in my POS so that when I pitch, I have something that I can show on an iPad, and can instantly place an order.

Really simple, mindless work. Should have been outsourced days ago. However, it's hard to get in the mindset of spending money when "I can just do it myself."
 

Digamma

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This is an *extremely* wise thread, one that many will overlook.
Personally, I have been screwed by this many, many times, especially when it comes to technical work.
So I come up with my rule in this matter. I only do the core of the business. Everything else MUST-BE-OUTSOURCED.
 

DamienP

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My mother in law would rather spend an hour washing her car, than pay a team of people at a hand car wash £4.00 to do it for her in 10 minutes flat. Would any of us work for £4.00 per hour? No way! So why spend an hour doing something for the sake of saving the same amount of money?
 
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db7903915

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This is an *extremely* wise thread, one that many will overlook.
Personally, I have been screwed by this many, many times, especially when it comes to technical work.
So I come up with my rule in this matter. I only do the core of the business. Everything else MUST-BE-OUTSOURCED.
How do you draw the line between the core and the rest? Can core be outsourced as well?
 

LifeTransformer

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One thing I've changed recently is my phone. No more contract!

I've gone from $50 per month, to $55 every 90 days.

Old phone bill per year: $600
New phone bill per year: $220

$380 saved.

Need to re-work the TV bill next.
 

Andy Black

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A decade ago I remember getting paid maybe £300 per day in an IT contract.

In the evenings I was fixing up a property to rent out when I moved to my next contract.

I had a deadline to get the property finished off so took a couple of weeks off work to do it.

In the second week I got a professional decorator in to help me.

He charged £150 per day.

He was twice as fast as me (at least).

And I could only marvel at his finishes. I would never be able to do what he did.

Plus he loved it, and I was finding it a drag by the end.

So I could have worked one week and paid him to do it all in two weeks, and to a better standard.


I keep forgetting that lesson. Thanks for reminding me again.



Perry Marshall has a rule of thumb in his book "80/20 Sales and Marketing", that if you're on $40 per hour, then you should outsource anything that is $10 per hour work.

If you're salaried then a quick way to work out your hourly rate is to divide by 2,000 (40 hours per week * 50 weeks per year).


Something else to watch out for, as @AgainstAllOdds says, is whether a task gives you more or less energy when you've been doing it all day. These are also good indicators of what you should outsource and what you should do.
 
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eliquid

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I have a couple of thoughts on this.

First off, about every 3 months I go through my bookkeeping and look at all my bills and what I pay. I'm pretty detailed and I look at what's getting spent and ask myself if I use that product daily or if it's really really needed. Then I clean house on generally at least 3-4 subscriptions ( if not more ) and save some money. I have to do this every 3 months because I am always picking something up and trying it out to see if it will help me, then forgetting about it. I just have a reminder now on my calendar to follow up every 90 days. It's a good habit for both personal and business.


On paying others for work, do it.

I organize my day to where my largest or most dreaded task is upfront and in my face as my first task ( Eat My Frog ). I also have generally 1-2 tasks in my day that push me to my 30-day and 90-day goals ( which are milestones to my yearly goals ). I always try to plan or work out getting someone else to do these tasks like a VA if possible.

For example, the day may line up where my biggest ( and also most dreaded in this example ) is training for a Marathon. I can't pass that to someone else.

However, the day may line up where my biggest or most dreaded task is actually tackling a code problem that came up in my SaaS, researching an editor for a book I could be writing, following up on new leads, and calling in old debts that dead beat clients owe me. For these tasks, I'll prob call in someone else to handle them and set up some kind of payment with them. Also, anything I find myself doing 3 times or more a month, I try to pass on to someone else.

One of my yearly goals is to travel more. I'm not a picky person, but I do have certain standards and "wants and needs". I break those yearly plans into quarterly, monthly, and weekly goals to hit the main yearly goal. I just have someone else make all my plans for me based on certain standards and desires. For example, I want to go to Thailand, but I have no clue what's needed if anything and I honestly don't have the time to find out. Someone else will be researching if I need any visa's for me and family, updates to our passports if needed ( mine is hitting it expiration date soon ), safe places to stay, the activities we do while we are there, the plane tickets and transportation, things I should pack ( like do I need a special outlet for my laptop once there ), etc.

It just depends on how your days and goals are set up. You might find it makes sense to keep several "go to" people on staff for certain things.
 
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Jon L

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ok. You've convinced me. I have a lady in Ireland that I've used for past projects at $5/hr. She's very organized. Considerably more organized than me.

So, why, again, am I doing busywork when I could be billing at my consulting rate?
 

jazb

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As entrepreneurs we need to put ourselves in positions of leverage so that we can focus on growing. Working on catalogs, doing the day to day, accounting...etc does not achieve this. Improving the sales model/buying new products/expanding your biz does achieve this.

I think its because many of us are brainwashed from the corporate world. in that world, success is dictated by the number of tasks completed and how many hours you put in. completely different set of metrics when owning your biz.

I guess the goal is to make a business as passive as possible...to the point where it runs itself. then when we decide to step in, we can focus on growing/ changing the direction.

The captain of the ship should be focusing on navigating and propelling forward, not checking if the decor looks pretty
 
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NYCGoblin

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Thank you for bringing this to my attention. In my business as a real estate agent, I have many things that are sucking up loads of my time, do not need to be confidential, and can be outsourced to someone else. Will look to hire someone asap
 

Andy Black

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PRO2018

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Yep agree, I have to constantly remind myself to outsource the little stuff. Its easy to fall back into doing it yourself, thinking that you are saving. Its a false sense of economy. Don't sweat the little stuff!

Thanks for the reminder.
 

G-Man

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You can do this in your day job, too. One of the most dreaded parts of my old job was working container loads of recycled parts manifests into analyzable lists and sell sheets. I would send them to a VA company in the Phillippine and they'd work on them while I was sleeping. $150 a couple times a month was a major factor in my quarterly bonuses that were usually $7k-$10k.
 

Andy Black

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Moved outside the Speedway forum so newer members (and Google) can view this thread.
Thanks @AgainstAllOdds
 
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