Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I've got an audio excerpt from an answer I provided on my YouTube channel. You can check it out at thejonathanstarkshow.com and it'll redirect you to YouTube if you're into watching videos. Otherwise, you can just listen to the audio here on the podcast. Enjoy. Hey, Jonathan here. I've got a question from my satisfaction. Maybe that's what it is. And the question is this. Do you ever outsource or delegate outreach or another part of your sales funnel? Okay, this is a totally fair question. I do use the term sales funnel. It's the term that's used, so I need to communicate using words that are commonly understood. But I honestly don't think of what I do as much as a sales funnel. I think more of sort of the content market. You probably call these videos and my email list and things I share on social media. You probably think of it as content marketing, and it is technically content marketing. The way I think of it, though, is that I'm trying to find a way, a scalable way, to help the most people I can at once. And the result of this is a sales funnel. I don't really think of it that way. I'm not conscious of it all the time, certainly when I'm doing it. I'm just like, how can I help some people on YouTube today? But I recognize, of course, that that turns into a raised awareness in the marketplace and that it's going to attract people to want to learn more, and then they end up going down this funnel path. So the question is, do I delegate any part of that? And yeah, sure. Not just delegate, but I'll automate as much of it as possible so I can scale it, so I can have a bigger impact, so I can reach more people with this message of ditching hourly billing and how to stop trading time for money, get out of the feast-famine cycle, increase your profits, actually have profits for the first time ever. So yeah, I mean, I use Drip for automation. I have a VA who does an amazing job with things like this video, helping me run the YouTube channel. The thing that I do not outsource, and I think it's a dangerous thing to outsource, is the thinking part. So if you have people just writing for you and you're not—this is a slippery slope because there are times when it does make sense to pay people to write for you. That is true. But for me, the creation part, the one thing that I do not want to outsource and I think would be a bad idea to outsource in my particular business would be to outsource the actual thinking. And for me, the actual thinking comes from answering questions like this. It's not live, but I'm answering it live to a video camera, the actual writing of my daily email. If I outsource that to someone else, I would stop growing. So for me, answering questions in public, whether it's the mailing list or Twitter or LinkedIn or YouTube, doing that is what causes me to get better. So for me, it's kind of like research and development or product development. And if I outsource that to someone, that particular piece, I would stop having new insights. And I don't want to stop having new insights. I could. I could pause and I could say, all right, I've got a boatload of insights. I could create products based off all these things and segment my audience and do all of that stuff. And that's not my—that will work for other people. That's not the way—it's just not the way I want to spend my day. So you need to decide what you want to outsource. If you're planning on outsourcing the main thought leadership piece of whatever it is that you do, if that is what you do, then that makes me a little nervous. You need to be pretty sophisticated to pull that off, I think. It can be done. People do it. But it's not the way I run my business. But you can absolutely automate and outsource tons of other stuff. You don't need to personally be syndicating your content on Medium or whatever or editing these videos. You don't have to do editing your podcasts. You don't have to do that. So outsource as much of that sort of—the stuff that isn't creating new value and is really just the downstream activities that need to be done to distribute or publish the material. But the actual thinking part and the deep thinking part, it's a little bit scary to me to outsource that. I'm going to say it one more time. You can do that. If you're running a business where you just want to be an entrepreneur and you're going to sell the business in three years or you want to get acquired by Google and you're going to get a bunch of data scientists or a bunch of subject matter experts to kind of create a blog and attract traffic and do SEO, you can do that. It's just not the kind of business I built. And the question was, do I ever outsource or delegate outreach or another part of the funnel? Yes, I automate and delegate stuff that doesn't require me thinking about pricing pretty much. So if I'm thinking anything where I'm creating answers to questions

I could outsource it, I suppose. I could find people who kind of drank the Kool-Aid, have read my books, have been through my courses, and start to ask. Maybe someday I will, but I don't see that happening right now. Anyway, the point is, the answer to your question is yes, but be careful about the things you outsource. I guess that's my final answer. Okay. I'm Jonathan Stark. If you have a question for me, you can hashtag AskJonathan on LinkedIn, YouTube, or Twitter, and we will find it, and I'll answer as soon as I can. See ya. Would you like to learn how to get paid what you're worth? How about selling your expertise and not your labor? We work through all of this together in the pricing seminar. Pre-registration starts soon, and you can sign up to be the first to know when early bird pricing is announced at ThePricingSeminar.com. That URL again is ThePricingSeminar.com. Hope to see you there. Hey, Jonathan again. Do you have questions about how to improve your business? Things like value pricing your work instead of billing for your time, or positioning yourself as the go-to person in your space, or maybe productizing your services so you never have to have another awkward sales call or spend hours writing another custom proposal. Book a one-on-one coaching call with me and get answers to these questions and others in the time it takes you to get ready for work in the morning. Best of all, you're covered by my 100% satisfaction guarantee. If at the end of the call you don't feel like it was worth it, just say the word and I'll refund your purchase in full. To book your one-on-one coaching call, go to JonathanStark.com slash call, C-A-L-L. That URL again is JonathanStark.com slash call. Hope to see you there.