WEBVTT 00:00.020 --> 00:05.570 Welcome to a brand new section where I'm going to be giving you lots of tips so that you can successfully 00:05.570 --> 00:06.590 run your business. 00:06.590 --> 00:09.890 And in this lecture, we're going to talk about how to build your team. 00:09.890 --> 00:13.010 Because as your business grows, you are going to need help. 00:13.010 --> 00:14.840 So how are you going to do that? 00:14.840 --> 00:18.560 Well, let's start off by talking about what not to do. 00:18.560 --> 00:23.600 So what happens typically is you start off on your own, or perhaps with a friend or a partner building 00:23.600 --> 00:28.520 your business, and then when it grows, you feel like you need to move into, say, bigger premises 00:28.520 --> 00:30.350 or take on actual employees. 00:30.350 --> 00:34.610 Now, there's nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that that's going to cost you an awful lot 00:34.610 --> 00:39.380 of money and also consume an awful lot of your time that could be spent better elsewhere. 00:39.380 --> 00:42.950 And it's for that reason that I would strongly suggest an alternative. 00:42.950 --> 00:46.910 And that alternative is to use outsourcing with virtual assistants. 00:46.910 --> 00:52.220 Now, we already visited this concept when we were talking about how to scale your orders, and I showed 00:52.220 --> 00:57.800 you the website onlinejobs.ph, where you can find all kinds of amazing assistants to help you with 00:57.800 --> 00:59.780 pretty much any job you can think of. 00:59.780 --> 01:01.910 In addition to that, you can also use Upwork. 01:01.910 --> 01:07.850 And also Freelancer.com is another great source and by doing it in this manner, you can build a much 01:07.850 --> 01:10.250 more flexible and dynamic workforce. 01:10.250 --> 01:15.530 By way of example, if you have a problem with an employee with a real employee contract in order to 01:15.530 --> 01:19.250 get out of that contract, that is going to be a lengthy and costly process. 01:19.250 --> 01:23.780 However, if you have a problem with a virtual assistant, you can simply change virtual assistant. 01:23.780 --> 01:29.720 So having established that outsourcing is a very attractive alternative, how do we actually outsource? 01:29.720 --> 01:33.980 Well, first of all, you need to find a reputable source, which we've already talked about. 01:33.980 --> 01:37.670 Secondly, you need to only outsource what you have done yourself. 01:37.670 --> 01:40.400 And I've put in brackets here for at least six months. 01:40.400 --> 01:42.620 But to be honest, it's difficult to put a time on it. 01:42.650 --> 01:47.360 What I'm really saying is only outsource something that you truly understand yourself. 01:47.360 --> 01:49.280 And the reason for that is twofold. 01:49.280 --> 01:53.420 First of all, you can teach the process properly to the person that you're going to use. 01:53.420 --> 01:58.010 And secondly, if they're not doing a good job, you can spot that immediately, and therefore you can 01:58.010 --> 01:59.480 change virtual assistant. 01:59.480 --> 02:02.600 And then next up it has to make financial sense. 02:02.600 --> 02:04.490 Obviously outsourcing comes at a cost. 02:04.490 --> 02:07.970 And you want to get, as ever a ten x return on your investment. 02:07.970 --> 02:10.070 So let me give you an example. 02:10.070 --> 02:11.300 And this is a common one. 02:11.300 --> 02:16.520 What typically happens is that you have way too many orders to process yourself during the day. 02:16.520 --> 02:21.320 If you were to continue doing that, you would lose focus on the rest of your business and therefore 02:21.320 --> 02:23.150 your business is likely to suffer. 02:23.150 --> 02:28.220 However, if you outsource order processing, somebody's going to take care of that for you. 02:28.250 --> 02:30.740 You're going to be able to process orders more efficiently. 02:30.740 --> 02:32.060 You're not going to miss orders. 02:32.060 --> 02:37.400 And the time that you have free to build up your business will also undoubtedly benefit you enormously 02:37.400 --> 02:38.240 financially. 02:38.240 --> 02:40.460 And so what should we outsource? 02:40.460 --> 02:45.440 Well, I suggest that you do outsource order fulfillment for the reasons that I've just talked about. 02:45.440 --> 02:48.290 I also suggest that you outsource content creation. 02:48.290 --> 02:50.060 And I put here for advertising. 02:50.060 --> 02:54.950 So when we were looking at those various advertising techniques, you saw that it involved an awful 02:54.950 --> 02:56.480 lot of content creation. 02:56.480 --> 03:01.910 Again, you're going to get perhaps slightly overwhelmed by that as your business grows and your efforts 03:01.910 --> 03:07.640 might be better used elsewhere, and therefore outsourcing content creation to continue to drive customers 03:07.640 --> 03:09.500 to your site to make sales. 03:09.500 --> 03:14.600 And that's the key point here, because of course, you want that financial return may make an awful 03:14.600 --> 03:15.650 lot of sense. 03:15.650 --> 03:21.140 And then finally, I suggest that you outsource paid advertising if and when you come to do it. 03:21.140 --> 03:26.630 As I said before, you don't necessarily need to do paid advertising to have a very successful business, 03:26.630 --> 03:31.070 but if you do, you're also going to find that that is a very time consuming process. 03:31.070 --> 03:33.350 And it is also somewhat repetitive. 03:33.350 --> 03:38.510 It is in fact quite easy to give paid advertising after a certain period of time, perhaps six months, 03:38.510 --> 03:41.150 to a virtual assistant to help you out. 03:41.150 --> 03:42.920 So that's what you should outsource. 03:42.920 --> 03:45.230 But what about what you should never outsource? 03:45.230 --> 03:50.930 Well, I firmly believe that you should never outsource customer service, and the reason for that is 03:50.930 --> 03:56.540 that one of the keys to success, and this is super, super important, based on my many years of doing 03:56.540 --> 04:02.660 this, one of the keys to success is to remain in close contact with your customers on a daily basis, 04:02.690 --> 04:03.710 if possible. 04:03.710 --> 04:04.640 Why is that? 04:04.640 --> 04:06.920 Well, they are a goldmine of information. 04:06.920 --> 04:12.410 They will give you all kinds of valuable feedback, both positive and negative, about your business. 04:12.410 --> 04:17.420 After all, what your customer thinks about your store is the most important thing, and so you can 04:17.420 --> 04:21.740 take that feedback and use it to continuously improve your business. 04:21.740 --> 04:26.090 Now, if you outsource that, what's going to happen is that somebody else is going to tell you what 04:26.090 --> 04:26.900 the customer said. 04:26.900 --> 04:31.040 And if you do it that way, trust me, an awful lot gets lost along the way. 04:31.040 --> 04:33.890 You want to hear it directly from the customers themselves. 04:33.890 --> 04:38.090 And it's for that reason that I strongly suggest that you never outsource customer service. 04:38.090 --> 04:42.380 The other thing that I suggest you never outsource is product selection. 04:42.380 --> 04:47.750 Now, I know in the beginning product selection can seem a little bit overwhelming, but trust me, 04:47.750 --> 04:53.690 as time goes by, you're going to develop almost a sixth sense for identifying products that will sell 04:53.720 --> 04:54.620 on your site. 04:54.620 --> 04:59.780 And the reason for that is because you properly understand who your ideal customer is, which. 04:59.990 --> 05:05.300 As I've mentioned multiple times throughout this course, is one of the most important things to success 05:05.300 --> 05:06.380 with your business. 05:06.410 --> 05:12.020 Now, if you outsource that, it is highly unlikely that your virtual assistant truly understands who 05:12.050 --> 05:14.960 your ideal customer is in the same way that you do. 05:14.960 --> 05:19.550 So I think for that reason, it's quite easy to see where the problems could lie, and therefore it 05:19.550 --> 05:23.000 is way better to always do product selection yourself. 05:23.000 --> 05:23.990 So there you go. 05:24.020 --> 05:28.670 I really hope you enjoy those tips on how to build your team as your business grows. 05:28.670 --> 05:34.880 But on a practical note, when you bring on new team members, how do you give them access to your business 05:34.880 --> 05:37.550 and most importantly, give them the appropriate permissions? 05:37.580 --> 05:42.530 Well, as you can see, I'm over here on the settings and users and permissions where it clearly states 05:42.530 --> 05:46.700 that it's here that you can manage what users can see or do in your store. 05:46.700 --> 05:51.920 And to actually make that happen, what you will need to do is to create a staff account which, as 05:51.920 --> 05:55.190 you can see, is not included in the basic plan. 05:55.190 --> 06:00.200 Now, just to say, if you've already watched the lecture on sales channels apps, then you'll already 06:00.200 --> 06:02.150 be aware of what I'm about to show you. 06:02.150 --> 06:06.950 But for completeness, and just in case you haven't seen that lecture, I'd like to show you again here. 06:06.950 --> 06:13.220 And so in order to create a staff account, you would need to upgrade your plan going from Basic to 06:13.220 --> 06:17.240 Shopify, which as you can see, is ideal for small teams. 06:17.240 --> 06:22.910 And you can also see that allows you to add up to five additional staff accounts, which is more than 06:22.910 --> 06:25.130 enough to take your business to the next level. 06:25.130 --> 06:26.420 And that's the important part. 06:26.420 --> 06:31.340 At this stage, you would be taking your business to the next level, greatly boosting your sales and 06:31.340 --> 06:35.300 therefore being able to easily absorb the additional monthly fee. 06:35.300 --> 06:40.340 But when you do get to that exciting moment, you now know how to build your team.