Welcome to a brand new section where I'm going to be giving you lots of tips so that you can successfully
run your business.
And in this lecture, we're going to talk about how to build your team.
Because as your business grows, you are going to need help.
So how are you going to do that?
Well, let's start off by talking about what not to do.
So what happens typically is you start off on your own, or perhaps with a friend or a partner building
your business, and then when it grows, you feel like you need to move into, say, bigger premises
or take on actual employees.
Now, there's nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that that's going to cost you an awful lot
of money and also consume an awful lot of your time that could be spent better elsewhere.
And it's for that reason that I would strongly suggest an alternative.
And that alternative is to use outsourcing with virtual assistants.
Now, we already visited this concept when we were talking about how to scale your orders, and I showed
you the website onlinejobs.ph, where you can find all kinds of amazing assistants to help you with
pretty much any job you can think of.
In addition to that, you can also use Upwork.
And also Freelancer.com is another great source and by doing it in this manner, you can build a much
more flexible and dynamic workforce.
By way of example, if you have a problem with an employee with a real employee contract in order to
get out of that contract, that is going to be a lengthy and costly process.
However, if you have a problem with a virtual assistant, you can simply change virtual assistant.
So having established that outsourcing is a very attractive alternative, how do we actually outsource?
Well, first of all, you need to find a reputable source, which we've already talked about.
Secondly, you need to only outsource what you have done yourself.
And I've put in brackets here for at least six months.
But to be honest, it's difficult to put a time on it.
What I'm really saying is only outsource something that you truly understand yourself.
And the reason for that is twofold.
First of all, you can teach the process properly to the person that you're going to use.
And secondly, if they're not doing a good job, you can spot that immediately, and therefore you can
change virtual assistant.
And then next up it has to make financial sense.
Obviously outsourcing comes at a cost.
And you want to get, as ever a ten x return on your investment.
So let me give you an example.
And this is a common one.
What typically happens is that you have way too many orders to process yourself during the day.
If you were to continue doing that, you would lose focus on the rest of your business and therefore
your business is likely to suffer.
However, if you outsource order processing, somebody's going to take care of that for you.
You're going to be able to process orders more efficiently.
You're not going to miss orders.
And the time that you have free to build up your business will also undoubtedly benefit you enormously
financially.
And so what should we outsource?
Well, I suggest that you do outsource order fulfillment for the reasons that I've just talked about.
I also suggest that you outsource content creation.
And I put here for advertising.
So when we were looking at those various advertising techniques, you saw that it involved an awful
lot of content creation.
Again, you're going to get perhaps slightly overwhelmed by that as your business grows and your efforts
might be better used elsewhere, and therefore outsourcing content creation to continue to drive customers
to your site to make sales.
And that's the key point here, because of course, you want that financial return may make an awful
lot of sense.
And then finally, I suggest that you outsource paid advertising if and when you come to do it.
As I said before, you don't necessarily need to do paid advertising to have a very successful business,
but if you do, you're also going to find that that is a very time consuming process.
And it is also somewhat repetitive.
It is in fact quite easy to give paid advertising after a certain period of time, perhaps six months,
to a virtual assistant to help you out.
So that's what you should outsource.
But what about what you should never outsource?
Well, I firmly believe that you should never outsource customer service, and the reason for that is
that one of the keys to success, and this is super, super important, based on my many years of doing
this, one of the keys to success is to remain in close contact with your customers on a daily basis,
if possible.
Why is that?
Well, they are a goldmine of information.
They will give you all kinds of valuable feedback, both positive and negative, about your business.
After all, what your customer thinks about your store is the most important thing, and so you can
take that feedback and use it to continuously improve your business.
Now, if you outsource that, what's going to happen is that somebody else is going to tell you what
the customer said.
And if you do it that way, trust me, an awful lot gets lost along the way.
You want to hear it directly from the customers themselves.
And it's for that reason that I strongly suggest that you never outsource customer service.
The other thing that I suggest you never outsource is product selection.
Now, I know in the beginning product selection can seem a little bit overwhelming, but trust me,
as time goes by, you're going to develop almost a sixth sense for identifying products that will sell
on your site.
And the reason for that is because you properly understand who your ideal customer is, which.
As I've mentioned multiple times throughout this course, is one of the most important things to success
with your business.
Now, if you outsource that, it is highly unlikely that your virtual assistant truly understands who
your ideal customer is in the same way that you do.
So I think for that reason, it's quite easy to see where the problems could lie, and therefore it
is way better to always do product selection yourself.
So there you go.
I really hope you enjoy those tips on how to build your team as your business grows.
But on a practical note, when you bring on new team members, how do you give them access to your business
and most importantly, give them the appropriate permissions?
Well, as you can see, I'm over here on the settings and users and permissions where it clearly states
that it's here that you can manage what users can see or do in your store.
And to actually make that happen, what you will need to do is to create a staff account which, as
you can see, is not included in the basic plan.
Now, just to say, if you've already watched the lecture on sales channels apps, then you'll already
be aware of what I'm about to show you.
But for completeness, and just in case you haven't seen that lecture, I'd like to show you again here.
And so in order to create a staff account, you would need to upgrade your plan going from Basic to
Shopify, which as you can see, is ideal for small teams.
And you can also see that allows you to add up to five additional staff accounts, which is more than
enough to take your business to the next level.
And that's the important part.
At this stage, you would be taking your business to the next level, greatly boosting your sales and
therefore being able to easily absorb the additional monthly fee.
But when you do get to that exciting moment, you now know how to build your team.