secretbonus
Junior Member
- Mar 24, 2009
- 103
- 31
There are lots of words for this. SOP (standard operating procedure) OOP (Order of operations), workflow, streamlining, to do list, tasks, even checklists are similar, etc.
The point is you want to record every step invovled in a task so that anyone following it would do everything you needed AND nothing that you didn't. Point A to point b the fastest.
Once you have that you can try to produce. I would aim for a 25 minute timer. Some studies showed pomodoro "time boxing" with 25m on and 5m off the best method of productivity. Longer sequences without break lead to distraction, longer rest time lead to lower production. By determining your output in "1 pomodoro" you can multiply by 2 and convert to earnings per hour.
You may want to test other methods. They didn't test every combination of activity and you have to determine that for yourself. Some people get very distracted the longer they work and others can work for 2 hours in the zone.
For me I have tried task switching with a 5m/1m timer and try to do something to stay physically active or get my heartrate up every now and then plus bathroom breaks, water break, etc. Once I get into the flow I can start increasing my work times proportionally with my break time and then start peeling my breaktimes back.. The point is you have to allow for some "off time". I would say 50m of effort per hour which is over 80% efficiency is at least a good measurement as a target.
Once you can calculate this you can estimate the replacement value per hour. The cost if you hired it away.
The Idea---Do this for all tasks, determine that which is most worth your time. Do that, outsource the rest.
---
Advanced idea: Drop servicing...
Consider hiring Fillipino workers or from India or wherever to follow this process. Generic workers that you have to train cost less but if you have a system to train them. Find ways to improve the speed of the workflow and you increase their output per hour.
The idea is, any idea that can make money online, people will pay for parts of that business to save time and you can sell that. Later on you can build your website, run ads and upsell the service and make it the complete package for a markup as people don't want to shop around and waste time and never get anything done. THey'd pay for someone who can consistently deliver all the steps. Once you have a process you try to see if someone else can do that process for less money than people will pay you. Once people will pay you, you can hire people to free your time and scale.
You can try to repeat this for every process, but probably some tasks won't be worth your time and you are better off hiring someone who already has their own process to deliver the output.
Maybe someone who has succeeded has some ideas. I can't speak from experience as there are a lot of parts to get this off the ground just as in any business and I have a job and have to figure out how to mange the time I do have better. There are a lot of logistics and also excuses and distractions and other things to learn that becomes a form of procrastination from doing. So don't do what I do and spend so much time learning. It's probably better that you just start experimenting and testing things and get going.
So you could build e-commerce sites, webpages, articles, content, ebooks, graphics, web page design, website flipping, newsletter content, tools, software, video marketing/ads, audiobooks, video courses for sale, or selling courses on udemy, marketing, seo agency, webmaster/coding services, etc. There's plenty of choices as the internet has become a pretty big place for business over the years, and there are always people paying to save time and experiment with new things as well.
The idea is- Find/pick a market to work towards a complete system, and as you grow your team you can hire them for less than you get paid for their output and then if/when you don't have any buyers, they can work on the "priority 2 task" of building up your business. And once you figure out say the estimated 3 year return on your time, you might start raising prices aggressively if it makes more sense for them to work on your business. You still need to have enough cashflow coming in to pay everyone and grow your business if you want but this would be how you could scale into something big.
So if you're planning on publishing on kindle, long term you might create a high ticket backend product plus some downsells, create a book to promote the product or service, (imagine if selling 500 $10 books become 5 $5000 clients or 5 $150/month subscriptions for the next 3 years. That might change what you can spend on ads. You may even plan to build a secondary market that sells a training course on "how to sell high ticket items", and then you teach them how to do everything you're doing... And then, once you have them paying for this and accessing a private facebook group, you can follow up with them and ask them if they had the time. If not or no response you can offer a completely done for you buiness and sell it to increase your cashflow and quick flip all the work your employees are doing to a higher markup since you've already presold the complete package. This works for almost any "how to", Here's how to sell t-shirts as a business... struggling? "We will sell you the designs, upload them to the site, send targeted ads, do SEO, write a product page designed to sell, etc." If you can become the low cost producer of the item, you ought to be able to give them a deal better than they could find, and still be a great deal to you because you're getting consistent cash up front that you can reinvest.
My ideas are always bigger than my actions, so here's to the people whose actions and organizations are big but their ideas are not.
The point is you want to record every step invovled in a task so that anyone following it would do everything you needed AND nothing that you didn't. Point A to point b the fastest.
Once you have that you can try to produce. I would aim for a 25 minute timer. Some studies showed pomodoro "time boxing" with 25m on and 5m off the best method of productivity. Longer sequences without break lead to distraction, longer rest time lead to lower production. By determining your output in "1 pomodoro" you can multiply by 2 and convert to earnings per hour.
You may want to test other methods. They didn't test every combination of activity and you have to determine that for yourself. Some people get very distracted the longer they work and others can work for 2 hours in the zone.
For me I have tried task switching with a 5m/1m timer and try to do something to stay physically active or get my heartrate up every now and then plus bathroom breaks, water break, etc. Once I get into the flow I can start increasing my work times proportionally with my break time and then start peeling my breaktimes back.. The point is you have to allow for some "off time". I would say 50m of effort per hour which is over 80% efficiency is at least a good measurement as a target.
Once you can calculate this you can estimate the replacement value per hour. The cost if you hired it away.
The Idea---Do this for all tasks, determine that which is most worth your time. Do that, outsource the rest.
---
Advanced idea: Drop servicing...
Consider hiring Fillipino workers or from India or wherever to follow this process. Generic workers that you have to train cost less but if you have a system to train them. Find ways to improve the speed of the workflow and you increase their output per hour.
The idea is, any idea that can make money online, people will pay for parts of that business to save time and you can sell that. Later on you can build your website, run ads and upsell the service and make it the complete package for a markup as people don't want to shop around and waste time and never get anything done. THey'd pay for someone who can consistently deliver all the steps. Once you have a process you try to see if someone else can do that process for less money than people will pay you. Once people will pay you, you can hire people to free your time and scale.
You can try to repeat this for every process, but probably some tasks won't be worth your time and you are better off hiring someone who already has their own process to deliver the output.
Maybe someone who has succeeded has some ideas. I can't speak from experience as there are a lot of parts to get this off the ground just as in any business and I have a job and have to figure out how to mange the time I do have better. There are a lot of logistics and also excuses and distractions and other things to learn that becomes a form of procrastination from doing. So don't do what I do and spend so much time learning. It's probably better that you just start experimenting and testing things and get going.
So you could build e-commerce sites, webpages, articles, content, ebooks, graphics, web page design, website flipping, newsletter content, tools, software, video marketing/ads, audiobooks, video courses for sale, or selling courses on udemy, marketing, seo agency, webmaster/coding services, etc. There's plenty of choices as the internet has become a pretty big place for business over the years, and there are always people paying to save time and experiment with new things as well.
The idea is- Find/pick a market to work towards a complete system, and as you grow your team you can hire them for less than you get paid for their output and then if/when you don't have any buyers, they can work on the "priority 2 task" of building up your business. And once you figure out say the estimated 3 year return on your time, you might start raising prices aggressively if it makes more sense for them to work on your business. You still need to have enough cashflow coming in to pay everyone and grow your business if you want but this would be how you could scale into something big.
So if you're planning on publishing on kindle, long term you might create a high ticket backend product plus some downsells, create a book to promote the product or service, (imagine if selling 500 $10 books become 5 $5000 clients or 5 $150/month subscriptions for the next 3 years. That might change what you can spend on ads. You may even plan to build a secondary market that sells a training course on "how to sell high ticket items", and then you teach them how to do everything you're doing... And then, once you have them paying for this and accessing a private facebook group, you can follow up with them and ask them if they had the time. If not or no response you can offer a completely done for you buiness and sell it to increase your cashflow and quick flip all the work your employees are doing to a higher markup since you've already presold the complete package. This works for almost any "how to", Here's how to sell t-shirts as a business... struggling? "We will sell you the designs, upload them to the site, send targeted ads, do SEO, write a product page designed to sell, etc." If you can become the low cost producer of the item, you ought to be able to give them a deal better than they could find, and still be a great deal to you because you're getting consistent cash up front that you can reinvest.
My ideas are always bigger than my actions, so here's to the people whose actions and organizations are big but their ideas are not.
