The objective of leverage is to secure the biggest advantage with the least possible effort.  Specifically, for us, that means greatest profit with smallest personal involvement, and we can make this happen via outsourcing.

Earlier articles described ways of providing leverage by 1) re-using, and 2) re-purposing content.  In this article, we’ll discuss obtaining leverage by outsourcing recurring, or non-value-add work, and any work that simply isn’t a match with our unique skills, experience and/or character.

Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman addressed some interesting findings from 25 years of Gallup organization research – initially in their book, First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, and then elaborating on those findings in several subsequent books.  Two of their findings, that are important for affiliate marketers and home-based business owners in general are these:  1) Emphasize your strengths, not your negatives, and 2) Hire workers for potential.

Online business has a rather large learning curve and involves a lot of diverse skills.  But, not very many people are talented in all of them – and even those who are, probably are not making the best use of their available time and other skills if they focus on areas that are relative weaknesses for them.

William of Occam, noted for “Occam’s Razor,” has said:  “It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.” As affiliate business owners, Occam’s Razor has a big lesson for us relative to our personal time management.

Tim Ferriss, who wrote “The 4-Hour Workweek” is a major proponent of outsourcing to virtual assistants to handle repetitive, non-value-add activities or other non-favored tasks.

Contrary to popular opinion, outsourcing is not relegated only to large businesses, but given the low cost of international VAs, even small, home-based companies can now afford to delegate a lot of tasks to VAs.

One task that many internet marketers choose to outsource is writing articles.  Many see the importance of article marketing, but either can’t write well, or simply don’t want to write, so they delegate article authoring to ghost-writers. 

Another task you might consider outsourcing to a virtual assistant (or call center) is the telephone and email follow-up required for lead generation and sales closings.

If you improve your areas of strength, you gain the benefits of leverage and multiply your results, whereas, focusing on your weaknesses will, at best, result in only an incremental improvement in results. 

Which is more important to you – the ability to multiply your results, or simply see incremental improvements?

If you would like to learn how to leverage your time, sign up for the Online Success for Beginners course.

Serial Entrepreneur & Ultravagabond

Timothy Ferriss, author of the 4 Hour Work Week, is a self-described “serial entrepreneur and ultravagabond” who lives a lifestyle that most of us could only dream about — until now.

Ferriss presents a step-by-step guide to his free-wheeling lifestyle, allowing us to follow in his footsteps and realize lifelong dreams. Some people consider Ferriss to be an “Indiana Jones for the digital age”.

This challenging book has been a #1 Wall Street Journal Best Seller, a #1 NY Times Best Seller, and a #1 BusinessWeek Bestseller.

Replace Obsolete Assumptions

His basic premise is that we need to fill the vacuum created by replacing outdated assumptions with the “Rules of the New Rich”.

Entrepreneurs need to replace limiting assumptions and learn to enjoy life now. We should replace limiting assumptions that waste our time and force us to live in a particular location.

Freeing our time and increasing our mobility are pathways to the lifestyle of the New Rich (NR).

Rules of the New Rich

According to Ferris, the “Rules of the New Rich” include the following:

• Retirement is Worst-Case Scenario Insurance
• Interest and Energy are Cyclical
• Less is Not Laziness
• The Timing Is Never Right
• Ask for Forgiveness, Not Permission
• Emphasize Strengths, Don’t Fix Weaknesses
• Things in Excess Become the Opposite
• Money Alone is Not the Solution
• Relative Income is More Important than Absolute Income
• Distress is Bad, Eustress is Good

The 4HWW Model

His model provides us with a roadmap for realizing our own lifelong dreams. He shows us how to:

• Live like a millionaire
• Free time and automate income
• Outsource our lives to overseas virtual assistants for $5/hour
• Travel the world without quitting our jobs
• Eliminate 50% of our work in 48 hours
• Trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and mini-retirements

He uses the DEAL acronym to describe his model, where:

• D = Definition
• E = Elimination
• A = Automation
• L = Liberation

He encourages us to use “Dreamlining” to design our own luxurious lifestyles. We need to focus our current efforts on elimination, simplification and outsourcing if we want to find ourselves among the New Rich (NR).

The Lifestyle Design (LD) process is both an art and a science. Lifestyle Design (LD) relies heavily upon automation, i.e., creating systems and processes that remove ourselves as bottlenecks. Don’t automate something that can be eliminated, and don’t delegate anything that can be automated or simplified.

Carpe Diem!

Use this book as a roadmap taking you on a journey to opportunities that others will never see. You’ll come to realize that having choice; i.e., our choice is our real power.

Personally, I found this book very easy to read – and very compelling.

Our courage and self-confidence, we can realize our dreams quicker and easier than we ever expected.  I plan to implement many of his ideas into my own life.

One superb starting place for obtaining all the  knowledge about internet marketing that you’ll need to be successful is to sign up for the Online Success for Beginners course.