070 - Firefight Less & Create More with Profitable Outsourcing - Zsófia Banyai Interview

Welcome, everybody. I'm excited today to have Zsófia Banyai and try to pronounce that I think I'm doing OK.

She is going to help us talk about how to stop firefighting and be the creator of your own company. And I was really impressed with her work. I saw some of her work of how she helps people understand the process of outsourcing and as an outsourced manager, how she helps people. And I think we can be very helpful for you. What I want to do is first just read you a little bit about her. She's the founder of my processes and she helps busy entrepreneurs to automate and outsource their time consuming tasks without sacrificing profit.

If you're looking to make a four hour work week a reality or simply avoid burnout, then she has a lot to tell you. She has degrees in history, in finance, plus corporate world experience that enables her to look at business problems in a different light. She believes entrepreneurs should not be the employees of their company. And while burnout is a real problem for business owners that with carefully set processes and efficient outsourcing, they can avoid such breakdown or even achieve their dream lifestyle of the 4-Day Work Week or 4-Day Work Week as an operational outsourcing manager.

She maps out processes to spot tasks for automation and outsourcing and also handles the whole process with backup solutions and training as well to make outsourcing safe and affordable. So thank you so much for joining Sophea and I apologize for my almost getting your name right. I got a pretty close 90 percent right. Would you please share with everybody a little bit about what it is that you do? Because even as you and I were talking, you helped him understand a little bit more greater detail.

What do you do as an operational manager and why people seek you out? What is it they're looking for?

Thank you, Wade. Thank you for the introduction. You said my name perfectly Zsófia Banyai. Hi, everyone. I am so glad to be here. And oh, my God, you thought so many things about me. And that's what's going to happen to you. I hope I get something of value in the show. So, yes, I am an operational manager. I started in the corporate world and then I transferred to have my own business, to have my clients on a smaller scale, businesses to set up their processes correctly.

And operational manager is something that usually big corporations have operation managers. They foresee the processes of the whole company, and they they basically make sure that the different teams use the resources in the most efficient way for the company. So they usually stand for the sake of the efficiency of the whole company and not for the sake of the individual teams or the defense teams. And that's how they make sure that the company can can proceed and process in the most efficient way and the most the.

S.V. as possible, so what, as an operational manager for small companies, that's usually not a thing. So a small company usually doesn't go out and say, hey, I need an operational manager. So that is something. Yes, but what I realize is that small companies and even solopreneur do need to have their processes really set. And they need to ensure that the efficiency of the whole company or a whole small businessman is the best for the sake of the business itself.

So how they approach me, it's usually not because they come up with an idea that they need an operational manager. They usually think about outsourcing. And we both know that outsourcing is really a thing and has been out there for a while, but it has significant risks, some of my clients are simply aware of these kind of risks and do their research on how to avoid them or and sometimes, yes, this happens that they come to me because they already had a bad experience.

And that's somehow the most challenging part of my job to to turn that experience into a. A lesson that is learned and from then we can proceed. But in all of these cases, my clients need help to not just to stay efficient, but basically to be able to and that's the end goal of all of business, is to serve our clients the best. So their biggest concern and my biggest concern is always their clients, their clients experience, because that needs to be awesome.

And in order to get it the best, get it, get the best out of it. Then they have to set those processes in the background. And then I'm so proud of it's funny because you would think that there are things in the Solopreneur business. Well, yeah, but the solopreneur can be different. So sometimes it's about this, sometimes it's about marketing, sometimes it's about consulting, the accounting, the bookkeeping and the business itself. Of course, we also can have different phases and depending on what the Solopreneur likes to do or the balance can just switch to the task, which is solopreneur likes to do the most.

The support supported the most flourishing, and the other tasks can easily fade away. Unfortunately, and this is also a situation we want to be able to avoid and balance all those things, what they are doing. So that's how I have some awesome.

Thank you. Yeah. As somebody who's done my share of hiring in regular brick and mortar businesses and also for my business, for other people's businesses and also hired outsourced talent through up work and fiber and all sorts of different places. One of the things I found is. For a lot of people, first there is that challenge of will you let go of the work? And I think many entrepreneurs today have kind of come to terms with that. Not all, but many of them have realized, OK, yes, I want to outsource if I'm the lead singer of a band or if I'm I don't know if I'm Taylor Swift or if I'm U2, I need to be on stage.

That's how I'm serving my clients. Me, you know, turning the guitars or or selling tickets. That's not the best use. So most people kind of get that.

But then if they don't like the processes or if they don't know the processes, there's a tendency to do kind of this almost childlike teenage well, I'm not doing it. So I hear somebody else take it and that's OK.

But you're spending your money to do that. And so you're having to work more at some point to either sell more or coach more or do something to pay for that. And so there can be a danger in that. You mentioned people's lessons. What do people usually find? Are the lessons they run into and how can you tell if somebody is probably, perhaps OK delegating on their own or trying to their own hand versus now they're probably better off having a professional like you guiding them?

I think the turning point is around when you have two or three outsourcers and a team, because I don't say that anyone couldn't do that. So you can go to Afwerki. Anyone who's listening to this podcast right now, I encourage you to go to a fair go to try to do something small delegation and hire someone. And it's really easy. And I have so much appreciation towards my fellow colleagues in the freelancing era who do their best to serve their clients and to serve your business as well.

So I think that's great. But the point is that when you are growing a little bit bigger, you have to have to understand what's happening in your own business and have to be sure that the communication goes relatively flat because those guys out there, especially if you hire them remotely, they cannot figure out what you want to tell them, what you want. And even to if you are talking about something that you hired a professional so that you hire your accountant or a video editor, you don't do anything.

You have no clue about the accounting rules. So that's why you hire enough and a professional. But and that's very important. You have to give the data to your accountant. You have to give the proper data to your video editor right in the time. So not later. And that's something that just needs to be done. And you have to organize all this communication and it becomes even more complicated when another partner comes into the room. So let's say that you have a video editor and you have someone who is scheduling your post on YouTube and doing some kind of marketing for a very simple example.

And those two guys have to communicate to you have to make sure that the input in the process, which is your roll video, comes in the right time process in the right, then by the right person and bussed to the other person who can posted to YouTube and do the marketing whatsoever. So you see the basis of communication need to be very best, both of which need to be aligned and trained. And that's also very important that those guys do everything that has to be trained on your face.

So they has to understand how you work and how you should work together. What happens if your video editor was out? He's not doing the job. How do you notice that he didn't do it on time with the next person in the role? Think about or do it yourself notice it what you will do, actually. So hopefully the editing will be us, a secondary backup will be the other guy or you have another front to back up this.

And I just really mentioned the scenario. We see people in a role and a very simple thing, but like we go bigger and bigger, we have to consider more and more consequences like that. So that's when I say that it's worse to have a kind of professional look on it. And also that when you hire someone, it's really hard to hire to backup because you agree with somebody. How do you beat the back up when you go to that?

Maybe never. Hopefully never. So having a back up is the tricky part of the story, I believe.

Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, and there's so much to that. I think one of the things that I look back at different stages of my career as an entrepreneur.

And in my case, it ties to family because before I met my wife, I wanted to scale a business and so the idea of employees was very attractive. And actually this was 20 plus years ago. So there really wasn't. As many options for outsourcing or freelancing, at least that I was aware of. And so scaling for me felt more like, OK, if you're going to scale, you want a team of people that know, you know who you are.

And if you're really looking to go big, yeah. Then employees, the steadiness, the consistency, the loyalty is great. On the other extreme, when we had our first child, I scaled back my traveling and I went back more into that mindset of a, you know, a lifestyle entrepreneur, which the focus is more of. OK, almost how little do I have to work to be able to pay my bills? And it's not quite that, but scale was not a big deal.

And to your point, you want to outsource for one person doing this task over here that wasn't related to this with my accountant was doing one thing and my video editor was doing one thing. OK, I could handle that. But once it was the social media person, then some of the content came from the podcast and the video editor. I happened to be fortunate.

I had one person who actually she did sort of double duty. She did what she did and then she was able to coordinate with the others. But, yeah, trying to make it all work together because very quickly, I was the employee to my outsourcers of 08 that didn't get there. Oh, my mistake. And and trying to be polite with people. And, you know, here I was at the middle of all this. It happen and it was right back to, well, this is not what I wanted.

I didn't want to be in the middle of all this. The whole idea was to get this out so I could do something else rather than for me to now be at the middle of something which and that's actually for me. I'm horrible at that. I'm really not good at that. I can do it, but it's not what I do. Well, so I was working hard to pay extra people so that I can then do a job that I didn't enjoy.

And that for me was and again, maybe it's the difference being a solopreneur or not as much as solopreneur news me a Lifestyle Solopreneur versus somebody that wants to scale or just more details going on. For me, it very quickly became clear if the tasks in any way overlap. I want somebody that can manage all that. And to your point, that if and when the video editor doesn't do as well or they do well for a while, and if they're freelancers very often, if they're really good, they're going to be gone soon.

He's going to hire them full time. And if they're OK, they might stay around forever. Well, that's right. Back to your usual hiring challenge. So having somebody that could do that is something a lot of people don't have. What do you find when people do this? Where have they usually made mistakes when they hired or tried on their own? What did they usually run into? Do they hire somebody that didn't work out because the person was lazy?

Did they not define the task for enough? What usually the pitfalls for people.

In terms of hiring, my biggest worry would be that does your business really need and maybe your business does. So I'm not arguing about that. But does your business really need a full time video, Ed? I think that's that's really a question that needs to be asked. And then a lot of people think that. Yeah, but I, I maybe I need a video editor, but these guys could do like and then they ask the questions, can you do my desire for social media, hashtag research and ordering flowers for my grandmother like all the things to put to him because he's hired full time.

So let's give it a full time job. But these guys are not necessarily good at graphic design. You could have a graphic designer who is great and it doesn't end up neither of them a full time job. But but you'd want them to just, you know, because let's be honest, it has been a very, very long tradition that we have this cue that there is a job which starts at nine, finishes at five, and that's a food that job.

And we want to squeeze everyone into this cube. Maybe we could think out of this coordinate system and figure out that, yes, this guy, for example, your video editor, you don't need him for a time. He could do graphic design, but someone would do so much more. You don't have to fill up the whole eight hours of this guy for every day. You can just get that work for the time you need it. And he's also an entrepreneur.

He's serving his own clients. And you are one of them. And of course, you will be a very, very good priority for him because you've worked with him a lot. But it doesn't have to be full time if it has to be an IQ. So, yes, if you need to foot that for something in your seat, do that and go ahead. Just don't try to squeeze every situation in in this kind of way of thinking, which is which is a heritage, which we do because we have been doing it for a long time.

That's the biggest mistake, thinking that because we have been doing it for a long time should be that like that. Try to think deeply about this. Absolutely.

Thank you. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I find is when you have somebody that is competent, we can almost put a halo over their head that will if they're competent at this one thing, well, they must be competent something else, and we just kill them and be comfortable. All these are the things.

And like you say, then we start saying, let's have them do this and this and the other. And then you also run on the fact that different tasks have different hourly value ranges for what a great person does. So when I hired somebody to do, let's say, social media posting wylder, he said, here's the content just posted or management. That's a lower dollar per hour task than, OK, create the content, you know, take some of the content from my podcast, turn it into something.

And so now you've got somebody if you hired that high level person, now they're doing lower dollar per hour tasks. What are you going to pay them? Lower dollar per hour? And it becomes very difficult if they're not doing what they love also. And I think for me, it became about how could I find a good enough situation where at least roughly five hours a week I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Most freelancers I found would prefer to have five, 10, maybe 15 hours a week.

Usually they seem to want two or three clients or four clients, but not 10 or 15 because they're constantly having to sell. And yet most are freelancers. I've worked with like a little variety, otherwise they'd be an employee somewhere else. So they like the challenge. How do you know if you when you're working with freelancers, what do you look for or the teams that you're helping coordinate? Or even in the process, though, what do you look for?

Are the areas where maybe it's going to work easily and what are the things that you have to watch out for? For example, let's say the owner wants to delegate something, but maybe he or she should not be delegating because it's too high of a level task. How do you help people think through that? You mean then the fetus, we have it, whether they should delegable task or not, whether OK, so yeah, maybe I'm sorry, a little clear, no problem.

So let's say I have a freelancer and they're doing one task really well and I have two or three other tasks that I'd like done. What do you find that people usually run into his challenges when they try to take that person and have them do multiple things? And how could they possibly do that better? How do you do that? How do you determine, well, this person should be doing these tasks and this is where we stop person A and we get to the next person.

How do you think through that and how do you help a person coordinate that? That's that's a very, very good question, and I think it comes down to communication, which usually always and what I think one of the biggest three in outsourcing, but I think in every operation is assumptions. So if you assume that you can do it and you give it to him and you communicate either way, let's do it. Then of course, he will say that, yeah, you are my client, let's do it.

But let's not go into assumption. Then let's really just ask, is it something you can do? Is it something you think it's fair to do on that? You can have an honest conversation, I think this kind of coaching guidance clause discussions are very important. I don't say that you necessarily have to do it every day or even every week with every two weeks to have a chat, especially if you have like a limited, limited time. It's kind of doable.

It doesn't have to be even one hour half. I think it's I like half, of course, when we have a lot of politics then to be a little bit too long. Let's have a half hour or let's see what you are working on. Then all is going. You know, this is the question that is, hey, we have this extra task. It needs to be covered. Do you think it's good for you? And maybe they will say yes, even though it's not entirely so, we are all biased.

Maybe he just needs the money. So then let's have it for a while and let's see how it works out. If he just said yes, because if it doesn't go well, he will feel uncomfortable about it and Podfest the questioning the next God and then you can adjust it. So I don't have the recipe are working with people. So I believe that there is no one recipe fit for all. But but still you can say these factors and yes, don't assume and make sure that you stay engaged with the people you are working with.

Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. There is a country song and the country song is called God is great, beer is good and people are crazy and always remind people that any time you get into conversations about hiring or performance or staffing, there's going to be inconsistency because we're people, we're not machines. And so you do the best you can. And certainly I've had quite a few conversations where the person says, oh yeah, I've got this no problem.

And it's not something they do well. And something at least when I've worked with online services that I'd say, OK, is this something that I'm going to be wanting to give you a five star review for? Oh, because then they start realizing his, you know, their reviews. If they're an online person, that's a very big deal for them. No different than for you, your reputation or my reputation.

And so sometimes when you ask, that kind of brings people a little bit more to think things through. And yet, funnily enough, I found I was the more guilty person more times than not because I didn't want to hire another person. I didn't want to I was getting lazy or I was like, OK, I hope the Soul Work out there, they're really good. And that's, I think the danger that sometimes happens. And I see this being a huge thing for what you do when the owner or the entrepreneur really doesn't want to do all this stuff and gets tired.

Biden starts something, but I don't feel like dealing with us. And yet so many of these things are critical to stuff going on on a regular basis. How do you leverage a SOP, standard operating procedures? How do you help create stability knowing that people are still going to come in and out? That's not going to change. We can't fix that. How do you help make things stable and what's good for small business owners to do, whether they work with someone like you or not?

OK, so my favorite topic. Yes, standard operating procedure. So let's establish what is that? Just in case somebody doesn't trickle up. So when I used to work in the corporate world, S.O.P, standard operating procedure was a really, really big deal. It was even our target had to prepare. If you had to be. It was reviewed like for I think your principal on that and it had to be as punctual. They said that even if somebody else from the street should be able to perform the task.

So do you need standard operating procedure, maybe solopreneur never giving any test to anyone? Do you need. Yes, my friend, you do, because maybe you win the lottery, you go for Haliday, you break your leg or whatever, and you have to ask a sister or brother and mother to perform. That's your standard operating procedure should be done in a way that your grandmother can do that. That's funny enough, but it can be and it's not too complicated.

We have three screens, documents and also, yes, we have video recording to was there some really great for example, I started to use, if I may mention, Lou, this looks really, really good. It's really pretty. You quickly the record that you can show your face on, not show your face, whatever, go through and and showing it good for you. Maybe nothing happens in the next year or the next two or three months, and you have to do the task again.

In two months, we will remember in stuff that what was the link to click on Password and that you have to go. And there was this little trick, which I always do wrong. And then I realized that that's the right thing. These kind of things, if they tend to resemble maybe a short video, whatever, then in the next few months you don't have to worry about that. What was the threat? Because it's there and you already save time for yourself.

So it's already good if you don't get any outsourcing, establish your standard operating procedures. If you happen to outsource, then then it's going to be caught because this is the this is basically the training. This is what you can give to the outsource. And I started to be really strict with my clients, to be honest. I was in the beginning like nice that you should have. And this is true then, but not that that's really a mask.

So don't outsource things without having your standard operating procedures. It doesn't mean that if you are outsourcing your bookkeeping, then you have to tell people how to do the bookkeeping. You are not a bookkeeper. That's fine. But where to find your invoices like that? That's that's really the basic. And if there is a trick that you have to go to this website and flacking and download it and you still want to do it yourself, then make sure that you let your bookkeeper know that there are those invoices, because otherwise no point to have a bookkeeper.

She cannot work. So I started to be very strict on this with my clients. Have the standard operating procedures, have the information that can be found. And yes, video is a very nice way because that's the easiest for you. And then you can ask your outsourcers to get the notes. And I think we talked about this already, Wade, and it's a really fun way to do so. But if you are like you like the old method, just open up a document, maybe online, take the print screens debt and then start saving and it will be there.

And next time maybe you don't even have to refresh it because you feel the already your assistant got to refresh your fan base of change in the process. Absolutely.

And that's something that became very liberating for me. I remember the first time one of the people I worked with had suggested that I send her a video, Uloom and. The reason why it was so liberating is because I hate writing a soapies, I don't like doing them, but I know how to do what I want to show you how to do.

So, for example, it was on how to do my podcast episode, so I just recorded the screen here.

I'm doing this. I'm doing that. I'm doing the other. And so it freed me up from having to be the teacher. Sometimes the best doers or things were great at doing work, not great at teaching, or sometimes especially if something. In my experience, if we're talented at something and somebody says, well, how do you do that? So I don't know how to break that down because I didn't learn half of it. Some of it was a gift.

Whereas if somebody is not talented at something and they have to learn something from step one, look, for example, in the National Basketball Association in the United States, the basketball league, some of the best coaches are some of the more average players because they didn't have gifts that they could get around learning the fundamentals. They had to learn the fundamentals step by step by step so they could tell them to you. And so for me, being able to use a video, say, OK, here's all the things I do, and as long as I got the output right and I'd even sometimes, oh, I forgot to step in and go back.

But usually the person, if they're good at doing this, is going to be somebody that's good at sequential. And it's not a big deal, at least in my experience, if they're good to go back and say, oh, Wade. Well, you said.

Ten and step eight, but I'm going to put those in the right order, whereas for me to sit down and type out a word document, that would almost be a punishment. And I just loved when I could realize, wow, I can just show you what I do because that's more of my style and great, you do that. And it was so easy for them because then I didn't forget anything because I wanted this very specific outcome. And to your point about the creativity with the whether it be an accountant or when I would ask people to sometimes do social media images, it's OK, great.

Here's the generic area I'm working within. But now I'm not going to tell you anything more, but I would do a micro project. Hey, do the you know, do five, you know, social media posts for me within this framework, but actually want your creativity because I've already seen enough what I do and I don't really like my creativity artistically, but let's see yours.

But learning that balance and being able to play with that I think was something was so great for me and so important. What you said about if you've not gotten it down to an S.O.P, then you said to me, you still don't know what you're doing. You're still kind of dabbling and that's OK. But why wouldn't you do it? Why wouldn't you have it down pat? And certainly if you're a solopreneur that has family counting on you. Being able to know that your family could pick up something if you become sick and whatever is even transitional business plans, if something happens to you, all these different possibilities, I guess I can't see why you wouldn't have an S.O.P.

And I found that once I get something down on S.O.P, sometimes it's annoying for me because it's not my talent. But once I get it, it feels so liberating because like you said, I can do it in about half the time, even if I'm kind of tired at the end of day. So I just kind of fall through this, but even more so I can more likely give it to somebody who loves doing stuff like this and is good at stuff like this and will do a great job.

And my only concern is if they can simply execute what I do. And most of the people that I find, if they're good at what they do, they can do what you tell me to do. And if there's a mistake, then it's just on me to say, OK, hey, here's how I'd like it differently. What would you say as you've worked with people? What are the risks of outsourcing? So we've talked a lot about the pros and we've talked a lot about the risks of overspending become a little bit more in depth other than, of course, just wasting money, not getting the job done.

What are some of the other risks for people with outsourcing when they consider doing that? Of overspending is definitely one thing, and I would just go ahead and I'm just saying that to not get the job done, but not getting the job done by the person in the proper time frame. And that's why I keep emphasizing emphasizing good as Sophy's, because that can delay if you don't give the information and also the communication. So if you don't give the proper information, communication to the outside.

So they spent longer time on the job to be done, therefore charge more. So there should be a balance between the experience level of the person you are working with and the training that you give to them, the time which will result in the time they work on the process. So the more experience the person you can say that, the less guidance they need and they need, they know, the more. So that's not the perfect recipe either.

So that can be very experienced person who is giving like a better quality job. So this can happen. But generally speaking, the more experience, of course, the less training maybe. But of course, they are changing more. So you can go down to the experience level if you can give better training and more training. So this is like, again, a balanced kind of things which you based on your abilities of training, and they have to figure out ways.

And there are a lot of factors to work with. So that's how I like to have my clients to give a better training and maybe go with a lower hourly rate because we can manage it. We can set it nicely. So and this kind of effect goes to Camp David when it comes to about legal stuff and taxation. I wouldn't say too much of it, to be honest, but to have the best God is it right the first day, of course, on these cases.

So, yeah, this is communication. I keep mentioning communication. That's that's a big risk to to go away and strongly communicate and communicate things. And there can be like that story, the first story I've ever heard about outsourcing of jobs with one of my interviewees in my video interview series, and she thought that she was trying to coach the assistant to have her, but it didn't really work out there. So she so that she will hire a secondary assistant for keeping the first one.

But then the first of all, I realized that there will be a second one. She went nuts. So she goes completely crazy stalker and then post bad reviews about her fake names and fake accounts. So this is kind of a terrible thing and I'm not really sure how to avoid it, because if you if I say that you should know the people, you shouldn't listen to your instincts, that she has her instincts and they said that it's OK and still was not.

So this is what I had. But and that's why I like to say that I have been working with my sources for a while. So maybe it's not just about my instincts, but my experience is also something that becomes important so that there are a lot of risks you have to be aware of. But it's like even if you take an aspirin, you also have to accept that there is a risk by taking the medicine or any minor surgery. You also have the risk associated with having your employee in house also has some sort of risks.

And you also managing it is just maybe a more traditional way so that I feel more comfortable about this. It's not the traditional way to set up a business with outsourcing, but there are risks which can be managed. And that's that's that's the main point of it, I think. Absolutely.

And I think one of the things you mentioned, the idea of being clear with them to clear your S.O. piece are the less time it takes them.

I remember the first time I did outsourcing. I found myself on calls explaining what I wanted while the persons on the call, so they're billing me for the time, which they should, that's there's nothing wrong with that because I'm taking up their time. And I started realizing, OK, I need to do this ahead of time or I need to be willing to basically pay somebody to take my notes. And a lot of it was that I hadn't thought out what I wanted first.

And some people I have a story, I think out loud. You know, 30 minutes later, I'm still thinking out loud. This person is wondering, OK, Wade, what do you want from me? And so for me, it became more of, OK, first let me write this down and assume I'm giving this to somebody like you said, that's either at a not so much a lower educational level, but the lower at least a lower familiarity level, somebody from a different field.

So still an intelligent person, but a person who doesn't know my field and say, great.

So here's what I would need to happen with the step by step. And that's the part where for me, I think if you're not willing to do the S.O.P, you're probably not ready to outsource in the same way that if someone says, Wade, I want to be your coaching client. Great. How much is your coaching program? What's this higher number? OK, well, yeah. Did you read my book? No, no, I don't read your book.

I don't tend to read your book with it. You don't want to read my ten dollar book, but you want to do my multi thousand dollar coaching program. I'm not sure that's going to work out well, you know, it's one of those things where you say, look, the easier part, the lower risk intentionally set up in the models so that you can see if we're a good match, you sit down to skip that. And that's I think as entrepreneurs, sometimes we have this tendency.

So I'll sell my way out of that or I'll buy my way out of that or I'll just throw money at it or a Wade.

Did you know how inexpensive some of these outsourcers are overseas? I'll just throw you're still throwing money at it. You're still throwing away money. And it's even worse, as you know, it's so frustrating for the freelancer if the freelancers are professional to say, come on, you don't have your stuff together, you're not respecting my time and you're really and they can tell if you're not treating them like a professional. And so I think that's something that people miss when they think this outsourcing thing, they see the currency exchange.

OK, that means I won the lottery. Well, if you buy a bunch of bad real estate or expired food from the grocery store, that doesn't help you. It's just you just got a lot of stuff that's really not so good for cheap. One of the things I'd like you to comment on, if you don't mind, as you talk about this idea of not firefighting and focus more on being creative, your company, and maybe I should go on that little bit more in the beginning.

We've gotten deeper in this. But what does that mean to you and what does that look like for a client of yours? How do you know when a client of yours has that? Or how do you know when a person who thinks they might want to be your client? We say, no, no, you actually don't need me. You're already there. What does it look like when a person is being the creator rather than the firefighter in their company?

So somebody who is Fire-fighting is someone who is juggling all the vehicles, wearing all those different hats, heads of finance, marketing, struggling with the email list and not being able to provide a quality a good quality service for you, for their clients, or even if they can if their marketing efforts would go well and some more clients would come, then it would be a disaster and he couldn't cope anymore. So this is the situation. It's kind of stabilized.

But but we should look into the future.

I had a client who my image, my offer for a for the email management. And he didn't get really the email because his image was already so crazy that I couldn't find the event. So, yeah, this kind of situation was kind of already late, but it's worse than before. It's OK. What I really think that if you are a businessman, if you created a company of business, you should not be the employee of your business. You left your previous job as an employee because you wanted to have a business.

Forcing yourself again in an employee doesn't have it will become the bottleneck of the whole business, because if you're still struggling with the whole story during the holiday, then you will not have the vision of the time to have the vision to think ahead. So this is what in principle means this to me. And the reality then, yes, you're going to have to go through one hundred mess every day. You don't have to manage the two or three different freelancers.

It's not your job to post every day on social media. It's not your business and these kind of things. Yes. You don't have to edit your videos yourself. Someone else could do these kind of situations, which I think will be important and be the creator. And I'm also very, very happy to talk about this kind of with my clients, if they trust me to talk about their business, because that's that's something which is really exciting. That's how to go about what to bring out of the current situation behalf have how to proceed, what is what what their clients want, what can be a very cutting edge solution for that.

For them, that's really exciting. I remember when I was in business school and I had to write my final thesis and I went to interview different companies and they were like kind of close because I was not inside. I was a student, even though we had the non-disclosure agreement. But they said they can talk. And now with my clients, I am kind of on board. And the fact that so many different companies business is just opening their gates and showing me what's going on, it's really inspiring to me.

So that's how I stay connected and I stay motivated in the whole process, because that's just that's just amazing how the entrepreneurs create something out of nothing so important. Thank you for that, one of the things that I found has been. Sort of a test for me to decide if I should be bringing somebody on, as am I excited about growing this business and is it about more than just me? So one of the businesses I have is something that I've done for years.

I'm certainly committed to maintain the standard for my clients, but I'm not really passionate about growing it for the next 20 years. And so that's a business where years ago I did hire employees for that and outsource people. And right now I just kind of manage it. Even though I could hire somebody. I'm not looking to grow it because it would take more energy, it would take more excitement, more drive to do it. And so that's something that for me was almost a red flag to say, OK, Wade, you want to be going to hire more people because now you're just eating what your profit of this business that's making money for you and it's doing well.

But if you don't have the passion to grow it. At least in my experience, I've not found that I can hire people that are outsourced or even employees for that matter. They're going to be more excited about Grundmann business than I am. So if I'm not, that was something more for me to say, OK, hold off. And then with the other things, the other challenge I find some people run into, and I certainly did at one point I got so passionate about a project, but it was not yet cash flowing and I was considering going into debt for outsourcing and not so much credit card debt yet.

But I had this business a making me money and saying I want to take the money from business and fund business B, which is not yet making money. So hold on, Wade business has already got your life going. Well, you're got to take from that on the hope of business.

1. This is still an improvement and it was so tempting. Like I want to scale this on and grow this, but this is its own entity.

It's supposed to be making money. It's supposed to be doing something of its own as well. And just like the soapies, I'd look myself in the eye and say, OK, you're not ready to do this yet and you don't have it down yet. And you might or might not want to. But as much as this might not excite you and this is one of the biggest challenges with working for days or for hours or sometimes the things that work really well aren't that exciting and they pay well.

But because we've gotten good at them and then they become predictable. So now they're boring. Yeah, but they pay really well. And the stuff that's really exciting sometimes doesn't pay. So I think that's one of the things that for me is something I've had to watch out, whether it's buying the new gadget, taking a new course or outsourcing, having almost too idealistic of a vision. And I just think of it, if I cannot do a certain task at all thinking that I'm going to hire somebody who's going to magically make that happen for me, I think is sometimes a little too much.

At what point would you say that? Somebody who's looking at hiring people to outsource. When are they when somebody being unrealistic or having too high expectations as far as what to outsource or can do? Like if someone were to tell you what really can outsource you do for me and what would you say? Oh, now you're starting to get into dangerous territory where you're you're kind of being little too optimistic. How do you make distinctions or divisions in that?

OK, first, let me put a very big exclamation mark here. Don't outsource if you are not generating cash. And then I said the exceptions because. Yes, OK, but accounting, taxation, outsourcing as soon as you can, even if you don't have any money. But you can really get screwed if if this is nothing. So this is an exception. But and yes. You right. So red flag. Don't expect an outsource to create your moneymaking business.

That's your job. So your job to make the money and create the business and the edge of the Soul Work you if they would be aware how to create the moneymaking business, they would do dumpsites without you. So I think that that's really, really crucial. Also don't really outsource your unique selling point. So if something is really you and this is what your business is about, don't give it outside of your VM against exceptions that have writers who make chapters or parts of their novels written by by someone else, but they fill out the whole idea.

Apple is producing part of the iPhone, not in-house, but like outsourced. But they still have the whole design and everything. So it can be clever and smart. But keep your unique selling point as much so to the core, the core of your business. Keep it for yourself and also keep keep the money generating power for yourself as well. So you need to be the one who creates this button, who is able to proceed with this. That's why you need time.

That's why you need the extra time to be able to have the ability to expand this moneymaking part even more. Awesome. Yeah, one of the things and I'm going to make reference to it and people can get it on your website, you're outsourcing decision guide, I think is phenomenal. And I'm not going to show it here because then people might say, I don't need to get it. You need to get it.

If you're even thinking of outsourcing, whether you decided to to do business with Zofia or not, I just found that as somebody who who teaches this as well, some of there's overlap in some of what we teach your guide. And this is a perfect example of when somebody really dalven at something. It's so clear, you know, does the task generate revenue? And then you have if this than this, if that done that and you have these very simple questions as far as helping the person decide to eliminate something, should they automate it or should they outsource it?

And that's something that just for me, I've again, I think it's so brilliant the way you explained it in such a simple way. And that's where I think sometimes as entrepreneurs, maybe not all but the style of entrepreneur that I am. I need the hard nosed sometimes because I have that well, see, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm creative.

And the entrepreneur gods, you know, they've done these things for me as opposed to realizing. Yeah, well, Wade, you also were raised well in the family, born in perhaps one of the more fortunate parts of the world. And there's a lot of things that have gone your way as opposed to why I'm so talented and I like having things.

If something just isn't supposed to work, I like to know that. I mean, that's something that sometimes we either get through wisdom the hard way or we get from somebody that knows what they're talking about. And for me, you're outsourcing God, which was so simple and so tight. And so right on target was so huge for me just to understand that, and then also you're your piece on the fundamental outsourcing mistakes, both of those for me I found to be so true.

So just for the people, what you're listening on the podcast to watch on the video, both of those guys, if you're looking to get into this, check those things out. And this is, by the way, if you're somebody listening who's even thinking of starting a business or having a podcast or giving away content, this is why you give away content, because this will let you see she'll be able to see, oh, you person that's attractive to work or not.

And guess what? She's outsourced that part to technology that's been automated. Someone's going to get to you know, and this is how some of this works. People say, well, how do you know this person does this? And that was one of the things, you know, when you're choosing podcast guests to say yes or no to, you have to look at what they have on their website or what they're doing. And I do that when I'm doing that.

And when I saw that you had this together again, that was so clear for me that you know what you're talking about and can help people. And then also that you're very clear that, hey, if it's not a right fit, please don't don't come my way. Go to Do it yourself. I think that's one of the truest marks to me as a professional of somebody who can tell somebody, yes, I'm great for you if these things and if I'm and I'm not great for you if these other things.

So that leads me to my last formal question I'm thinking of is there's kind of these two scenarios, one, which is you decide as as a solopreneur or as an entrepreneur, I'm going to manage the outsourcing. And that's going to take and maybe it's because you have the constraints if you have a little bit of money, but you have a lot more time so that you might you know, that might be one of the reasons you do that as well.

And then the other side, you have the idea of a done for you service or somebody managing it, which sounds a lot more like what you do as far as being that link between the client and the freelancers. What are the pros and cons of each and maybe as the last God, how does the person know where they should start if perhaps both of those are even an option for them?

So if you feel that you have the confidence and you have or what is required to train and choose and fight right to good pitch on the up work or whatever, go ahead and get your help. So that's that. I think if you have the confidence for this and that, it's going to be. All right, then go ahead. Don't be too overconfident. So be a little bit cautious because anything can happen. So get your plan, OK?

Yes. So you can do it. If you feel like intimidated by the idea of outsourcing, then then why not speak for her? But even if you have the confidence of mine, ask for a question. And I wanted to mention that for this outsourcing decision. As for now, I still offer a free consultation. I still have a few spots for free consultation, so I am happy to work on it for like half an hour and talk to you about your needs.

And also regarding my services, I find it very important that I don't necessarily charge extra on what I do. If someone outsources through me my contacts, then basically my my service comes to an extra. So if you have any doubts about your outsourcing decision, why not seek for has been that? That's the question. I am really, really curious about your business and I would love to just talk about how you can expand it beyond your desire to have some extra help.

Awesome.

Thank you. Yeah, and that's one of the things I think people forget. You know, if you were about to make a big investment deal or buy a real estate property, or maybe that's a bad example, because a lot of people buy real estate, have no idea what they're doing. I've done that. But if you're about to make a big purchase of something you didn't understand and someone said, hey, you know, this purchase could cost you or outsource it, just even the outsourcing contracts might cost you.

Usually they're going to be in the thousands to perhaps tens of thousands over the years or more.

Wouldn't you like a little bit of guidance to where you're going before you get going? I think a lot of people think it has to be all or nothing as far as doing this. And what I like about what you're doing is you're giving people admission to say, look, you can still talk to me and you don't have to be committed to me forever. You can still get some information, some expertize and and do it that way, because I think outsourcing is in a lot of ways just providing a lot of flexibility for people and creativity for people to be more entrepreneurial.

I prefer as I've moved on in my career, I prefer working with, at least at this stage, and I am I operate more as a solopreneur with outsourced help. I love working with people that are freelancers because they are by definition also entrepreneurs. In fact, they often some of them don't even see themselves as entrepreneurs, like, yeah, you're an entrepreneur, you're working for yourself. Or even if they do have a job and they're freelancing, usually there's a lot of pride in that work that they're doing.

And so I feel like I don't have to deal with almost the childrearing part of it, you know, raising children.

I just get to deal with something that's an economic adult. And so that can be so great. And like I said, I've I've made my definitely my share of mistakes. So my mistakes at least are in the 5000 to 10000 range or more. So had I known of somebody like you ahead of time, I would have been wise to take advantage of that. Not sure I would have. I might have been too foolish to. I actually I took a course that helped me in how I learned about a lot of it.

So I should take that back. I learned from somebody who's really good at it.

But where can people connect with you to learn more? We've talked about your stuff. And of course, for those of you on YouTube or on the blog, we'll put the links there. We'll also put the links to loom and up work in five or so. You can see those if you're not familiar those, how can people get in touch with you to get some of your your manuals and then perhaps to connect with you for a consultation? Yes, please remember my prosthesis.

That's what I use everywhere, so I have my website, my process, that is so I'm not benis, but if it's a good play with the words. So my process, that is that's my culture.

And please find me on Instagram at my prosthesis. Check out my YouTube channel, which is currently with a lot of interviews. But I'm going to change it more to have some educational videos and outsourcing. So it's God also my processes and I am on Facebook with my processes and make sure to follow me, at least on Instagram, because I'm going to share some very, very cool online training on the outsourcing decision and how to manage that risk. Awesome.

Thank you so much for taking your time to help our audience. I really feel what you're doing is so aligned with what we're looking to do and. Everything you said, there's not been a single thing you've said that I would say, nope, everything you've said is in line with what I've either. Well, I shouldn't say thought that I've experienced and or learned the hard way. Again, it can be done different ways. But like anything else, usually you're about to leverage things if you're about to outsource.

People say leverage is awesome. Yeah, well, if you buy bad real estate, that's leverage is not awesome. That's a bad thing. By bad stocks. Leverage is not awesome. If you make poor hires, leverage is not awesome and it can add up quickly. So definitely encourage you at the very least, do the research, get your S.O.P in place, definitely get some feedback from her manual's and is always looking forward to helping you make more money, impact more people and do that in less time so you can better enjoy your family, your friends, your life.

Thanks for listening, everybody.