You’ve worked tirelessly to build up your business, but now that is growing you’re getting overstretched and don’t know which way to turn. One simple solution would be to outsource tasks to Latin America.
But we get it…
It’s hard to let go of the steering wheel. Things have gone well so far precisely because you’ve done everything. Surely no one else could do it better than you.
But why not try it out by hiring someone, a qualified full-time remote employee to take the load and outsource tasks?
Ah, yes.
Money!
A permanent salary, taxes, perhaps pension liabilities, and who knows what other red tape workspace provision, soon adds up. Before you know it, the math just doesn’t make sense. Back to square one.
But wait! There is another way.
You can outsource tasks to a remote worker from Latin America, that is talented and highly skilled, motivated, with good English.
Now that does make sense. And best of all, once your remote worker is trained, and up to speed, you can concentrate on what matters the most – building your business without being overwhelmed with the day-to-day running of it.
We know what you’re thinking: what could I get from someone in Latin America to do for me?
Well, there are specifically skilled remote workers from Latin America you can hire on our site and outsource tasks like web designing or web development (and we’ll talk about that in a little more detail later), but in the first instance, it really makes sense to think about hiring a Virtual Assistant, or a VA.
This is someone who is already qualified but who you can train up to carry out many of your daily duties, things that eat into your time and take you away from the “big picture.”
Incredibly, you could hire a full-time VA for a reasonable salary when compared to the US or Europe.
What can a VA do for you?
You can outsource tasks to a VA and have them carry them out. Every business is different and will have specific needs, but generally speaking, all could make use of a VA for:
- Customer service (answering emails, tickets, or your website ‘live chat’)
- Email Filtering and managing spam
- Managing your WordPress sites and blogs
- Writing content (for your website, social media posts, email newsletter)
- Being an active admin on your social media channels, engaging with customers, and finding relevant conversations to join on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and more
- Research (your competition, new markets, marketing ideas)
- Running your journal (scheduling, organizing tour Google Calendar, making reservations or travel planning)
- Driving traffic to your website or affiliate business
- Forum and Blog posting
- Database management (finding or updating contact details, customer details, etc.)
- File and storage management (are your files randomly kept all over the place, like Dropbox, or Google Drive, on your desktop or hard drive?)
- Data management and reports (spreadsheets, charts)
- Transcription of Audio and Video files
- Basic bookkeeping (perhaps using your software like Xero, Sage or QuickBooks)
- Errand running (purchasing gifts online, flowers)
And that’s just for starters!
Can you imagine how much time you’d save if you no longer had to worry about that list of tasks? Go on, try to guess how much of your time is spent on them. Is it 50%, maybe more like 75%? We bet it’s closer to the higher figure.
That means by hiring and training a VA, you’re going to free up most of your time.
So, now you’ve got yourself a VA and trained them up (we’ve also written about how to train remote workers here), how might you use your free time to grow your business? Tackle it correctly, and before long you could be hiring more remote workers and get yourself an excellent virtual team.
How can you use your freed-up time to expand?
Now you’ve got someone else to do all your time-consuming tasks, and you can set about taking your business to the next level.
What do we mean by “concentrating on the big picture”? There’s a whole book we could write on growing your business (and many have!), but for simplicity’s sake, here we’ll take five simple steps that every small business owner/entrepreneur/internet marketer/agency owner, should consider:
- Generate ideas
- Develop a strategy
- Build goals
- Create actionable steps
- Measure results
Generate ideas
Everyone’s heard of blue sky thinking. Sit back, clear your head and let your mind come up with new ways of conducting your business – new market opportunities, new products, whatever it might be that challenges you as a business owner to look for new revenue and growth opportunities.
Develop a strategy and outsource tasks
Pool together all your ideas. Discard the frankly ludicrous ones, though they were fun to think about, and piece together those that can fly. Think more deeply now on your specific plans and develop a written strategy, something that you can hold up and guide you. Treat it as if you were developing your first business plan all over again.
All of this will concentrate your mind. You’ll find it liberating, we promise!
Build goals
Once you’ve developed your strategy, set out some goals. Everyone needs goals, and targets you hope to reach, be they sales, new customers, social media followers, debt reduction, or whatever. Add personal goals, such as undertaking training to learn new skills or reading one book a month. Personal development should be a vital thread of any business strategy.
Actionable steps
While your plan and goals may look great, you might start wondering how on earth you’ll achieve them. Things seem so much clearer when you break them into actionable steps. And remember, you’ve now got a brilliant VA to help you get going. Taking just the first step is enough to propel you forward.
Measure results
You’ve set your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs), but these are next to useless if you never take the time to measure how you’re progressing. If you easily meet a target, stretch it. If you fall short, ask yourself why and change your strategy to reach it.
Measuring and producing reports is something your VA can help with.
There’s a sixth and a seventh step here. Sixth would be fine-tuning steps one to five regularly. Seventh would be expanding, once you start being successful.
And guess how you can expand? That’s right, by increasing the size of your team. So you can outsource tasks
How do you increase your remote team?
It’s not uncommon to have more than one VA to outsource tasks.
As business improves, outsource tasks, two helping pairs of hands are better than one. And as you’re first VA is by now so well on top of things, he or she can help you train up your new remote workers.
Perhaps you’ll allow them to enjoy some job progression by taking on a more senior role, with a little increase in pay?
As you look to grow your business, you’ll likely need services that can be provided by skilled workers in Latin America, for an affordable salary that costs comparable to remote workers in the Philippines.
If you’re involved in the world of internet marketing or e-commerce, then you have a website, or you’re looking to build up your portfolio. To do this, you need a developer, a designer, and quite possibly a content writer.
Developers
Big software corporations have operations in Latin America precisely because the workforce is experienced but low cost. However, you could tempt a well-trained web developer, with more than five years’ experience, to join you full-time for just a few hundred dollars a month!
You can build websites from scratch or give your web developer something off the peg, like a WordPress theme, and get them to build it out with functionality and templates that are perfect for you not to mention building more complex software such as apps for mobile and web.
They’re adept at all forms of programming and regular webmaster tasks, like keeping your website updated technically and running as smoothly and as quickly as possible.
Final thoughts
If you are an entrepreneur or have a small to midsize business you can find talented professionals for an affordable salary. These professionals can help you by taking care of your everyday repetitive tasks freeing up time for you to work on more important aspects of your business. Although there are other outsourcing destinations, Latin America should be at the top of the list for the reasons listed above. Happy hirings!
