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How to start your small business quickly and effectively

Hi guys, I’m  Adrian Cahill. Going to share how to start your small business quickly!

 

One of my highest values is Community. Everyone that knows me, knows I’m a sharer.

The more we share resources, the more we can all enjoy our lives. 

Here are a couple of things that may help you start your small business quickly and effectively. I use this for my personal coaching business, MOTIVATE Shanghai & MOTIVATE Community. In my opinion, these solutions fit most freelancing, consulting or small businesses.

 
1. My IT Guy’. Junaid Ali Syed has been with me since about 2012 and you can use him too.

  • He has made webpages for me and a lot of my clients. Trustworthy! I give him full access and Logons. Even my personal email. To be secure, change your password after.
  • Here is a live website he made recently for a client in Australia. www.bellingerselectrical.com.au 
  • He is based in India with clear communication. I appreciate his excellent resourceful skills most. Also, he is very upfront saying what he can and can not do
  • He can make logo’s and graphics however he is not an expert in that field. 

To use most efficiently,

  • Send him all text that will be on your webpages as text that he can copy/paste.  
  • Consider writing your webpage in Word Document or similar. 
  • Have him do logo’s, graphics, and making connections to AgileCRM, MailChimp, Zapier/IFTT, Zoho all that so you can start with your business.
  • Launch fast, come back and improve after. Many people get stuck trying to make the perfect webpage/funnel/webinar. JUST DO IT. 
  • To use him, you can email him directly:  sjunaidali@gmail.com   or add him on Skype: sjunaidali   

 

2. CRM. AgileCRM
AgileCRM

CRM stands for customer relationship management. It’s a category of integrated, data-driven software solutions that improve how you interact and do business with your customers. CRM systems help you manage and maintain customer relationships, track sales leads, marketing, and pipeline, and deliver actionable data. I used MailChimp from around 2010 to 2016. MailChimp and it’s alternatives are ok, but why spend the money and time with them when you can build a CRM. For basic use, AgileCRM may take an extra hour to learn. But you can easily schedule Zoom Screen Sharing sessions with the Tech Team for free to solve your challenges. Because AgileCRM is newer, it’s in my opinion that they are focused on Growing and customer success. The difference in cost between AgileCRM and Mailchimp is similar.

I was being coached by an amazing coach/financial lady from Sydney, UltimateCFO, she is a CFO (Cheif Financial Operator) you can hire her to be a CFO for your business. Anyhow, I hired her, it was great and she recommended ZOHO. ZOHO is better and more developed. After trialling ZOHO and trying to sort out connection issues, I prefer AgileCRM for small businesses, consultants, coaches, speakers, but ZOHO maybe better for those with 250k + Turnover, or a small business aiming to develop into 250K+ businesses and willing to put the manpower into working ZOHO.
 

 
3. How to start your small business quickly  – get the Mindset for success!

If your parents were Entrepreneurs, or you grew up around millionaire business owners don’t worry much about this point. If like me, you didn’t grow up with millionaire parents, you need to realise how we are programmed. In a nutshell, without interference, we are destined to be like or the opposites of our parents (or those we saw most of growing up). It is highly UNLIKELY that we will develop the mindset to be rich and successful by chance. We should, therefore, be taking the actions to make it happen.

Reading biographies, modelling, spending time with more successful people give us an insight into their beliefs, strategies, ways of being. For most of my life, I was an avid reader/modeller through literature. It helped me with my first investments but I wasn’t getting the ultimate results I was after so I sought out coaching and later became a coach. Coaching/mentoring is far faster. It may appear to cost more, certainly more than the cost of a few books, however, what my average client accomplishes in 6 sessions around wealth creation, or building business is often what takes most people years reading books. Calculate the cost of the time involved and coaching is suddenly very cheap. For those on the edge, or really striving for greatness, feel free to check out my course and packages. You can find them on my homepage.
 

4. Outsourcing. 

I Adrian Cahill, made this article. It took me 45 minutes. I’m a touch typer (Colemak).  I’ve chosen to do it myself because it’s 45minutes, done and I can send it to my buddie Kai (who is an excellent business trainer in Germany). Kai just asked me about Junaid and why I choose AgileCRM over it’s competitors. Besides the above tips, a big one would be to start using outsourcing. Get a VA Virtual Assistant, and others to help you. Get used to the process of delegating and handing over control!

I have several assistants. Junaid my ‘IT Guy’ and the others were all sourced from ODesk, now known as Upwork.com (How to start your small business quickly = Outsourcing)

It’s a bit old now, but here are some articles my team and I wrote years ago to assist you in outsourcing. Apologies they are old now, but still very relevant and based on my desire to assist and share.  www.adriancahill.com/outsourcing/ 

Note:   Some people use Content Writers. I have an article on how to use them but I don’t recommend them if you are a real expert or you want to share real expertise. I had a coaching call this morning from an Entrepreneur who is launching a brand. He and others like him, tried to hire content writers but found he spent 20-30minutes editing each article. (+hours hiring, training, firing them). Meanwhile, I’ve finished this in 55minutes! Now I look forward to lunch than phone coaching with a gentleman who works for one of the worlds biggest finance companies on how to be twice as effective with his new VP and Team. Bon Appetite, Guten Appetite, Preetno, 

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Saving $16,000 by Hiring a Virtual Assistant

There are millions of examples where Virtual Assistant  have saved businesses and ordinary people countless hours, energy and money. Unmeasurable success.

virtual-assistant

Two years ago on a trip to Australia I caught up with my cousin Andrew we spoke to him about Outsourcing. He was interested and had open ears so we had a great couple of hours of discussion about where and how to start. Soon after, Andrew began hiring. This a superb example I take great pleasure in sharing with you.

 

Here’s how my cousin saved $16,000 (AUD) by Hiring a Virtual Assistant:

Andrew started with a Virtual Assistant. Well, Andrew actually started with mine and Tim Ferris’s advice. But then he started by hiring a simple VA from Odesk.

 

Online Personal AssistantAt first, he made errors and wasted time; however, it wasn’t a complete waste as as he learnt from his mistakes. Andrew had his research (I hadn’t written these articles at that point) and started his Odesk advertisements smartly like he would in a newspaper. Lots of people replied. Too many he says, far too many. So he cancelled the job and re-posted with significantly more information. Like our VA Article. He proceeded with testing, interviewing, and hiring multiple VA’s for short periods of time keeping the best ones until he had just 2 good ones left. Andrew says, “What we need is the right people, not the right skills.”

“The personalities are most important to me. I can train them or even leave them to learn the required skills. But I can’t teach them to be motivated and diligent.”

 

Andrew learnt how to hire and manage his VAs effectively. With these VAs, he began using them to outsource more and more. Andrew and his VA together created guidelines, roles, responsibilities, and procedures which laid the path for effective Virtual Staff Management.

 

Nine months later Andrew had put on 18 full time Virtual Staff from the Philippines and India. Andrew is saving his company $16,000 AUD per month. And that was just nine months after starting. These figures are still rising.

 

Andrew has since been featured in the Australian Papers as an upcoming business success star. However, it is still not widely known that a large part of his business success comes from hiring Virtual Assistant. His competitors haven’t caught on yet and it remains one of his business secrets. For this reason, I keep all details of Andrew’s company confidential.

 

For a lot of people, hiring, delegating, and managing are totally new skill sets to discover and to master. Doing this online can make things both easier and harder. If you learn from your mistakes, it will get easier and easier. It’s when you don’t learn from you mistakes that you have a problem. So give it a go—make errors, learn, make system, and develop. Simply don’t let your lessons become too expensive.

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Introducing Odesk: The No.1 Outsourcing Site

Odesk

In case you haven’t heard of it, Odesk is probably the no. 1 website for Outsourcing. For those unfamiliar with the term, what we are talking about is sourcing Virtual International Staff.

It lets small businesses hire, manage, and pay remote contractors as if they were in their own office. More than 200,000 businesses seeking skilled workers, and 800,000 service providers are registered from over 150 countries. It is changing how the world works. With Outsourcing, you can easily allocate specific tasks to people who have a lot of knowledge and skills in that area at the most competitive rates.

 

I’m a busy guy, I have lots of opportunities and not enough hours in a day. So I have my own Virtual Assistant (VA). My VA does a variety of tasks for me such as:

Before booking international flights, my VA will spend around 2 hours looking at possible flights for me. My VA then presents results in an easy-to-read spreadsheet listing routes and costs (including taxes and my VA knows if I’m carrying luggage or carry-on).

Before booking accommodation, my VA can research, select, and email suitable places in advance asking for availability and a discount price.

When writing for my webpage, my VA does the editing, looks for pictures, checks for grammar, makes suitable links, and uploads it all for me.

Sometimes people ask me about the most random things. If I want, I can just ask my VA to research or find solutions for them.

 

As a Consultant, I can provide solid valuable advice and connections to clients. With my VA, I can turn that advice into an easy-to-read, fact-filled, verified .pdf, .doc, or .xls for clients while I talk face-to-face or over the phone to ensure that the deals can be completed smoothly. As my VA handles the paper work, I can focus on bringing results.

 

If you’re a Consultant, Self-Employed, Writer, Blogger, Ebay Seller, or anything of the kind, on or offline, it can easily help increase your bottom line.

 

Other things Outsourcing can do . . .

 

Here are some of the tasks you can Outsource on your blog for faster results and save your time:

  • outsourceWriting Blog Posts – The most time-consuming part of running a blog is blog post writing. If yours is a personal blog, you probably shouldn’t outsource the writing however, you can outsource the editing. You can also record your voice or interviews and have a VA or Content Writer transcribe and edit it into a blog.
  •  If you have an Information Style Blog, you can get a capable Content Writer to produce new content for you, preferably a Content Writer whose passion is in your field.
  •  Social Media Management – Find someone who understands how social media marketing works and what techniques are most helpful.
  •  Link Building – Help develop your page rank fast and get the traffic you need to make your blog successful by quality links such as press releases, guest posts , and organic links to content.
  •  Blog and Forum Commenting – Make sure you hire someone with the understanding and reputation to give you the results you need.
  • SEO, Data Mining, Data Entry, Calendar Management, Scheduling, Answering Incoming Calls, 24/7 chat or voice support, and much much more!

 

Read all our articles on Outsourcing here. Go on, GIVE IT A TRY! Sign up to Odesk and give it a go today.
Please leave feedback if you have experience in this field. Thanks, guys!

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