Will Pemble here. Thanks for your article. Heck! Thanks for your whole website!

I’ve been successful in business almost entirely because I know how to get things done… without always having to do things myself. BEFORE I HAD THE MONEY FOR AN ASSISTANT, I still had a clear vision of what I wanted, where I wanted to go, and how I wanted my various businesses to help people.

And because I had a CLEAR VISION, and was able to communicate that to others, I was able to ASK FOR HELP, and get it!

Sometimes, friends, co-workers, or relatives would help me because of those relationships, and sometimes we’d work out some kind of deal, usually based on the success of the venture.

But NEVER in my life have I found it impossible to get help. Money, or lack thereof, is ONLY AN EXCUSE for inaction.

In order to help people get things done without having to do everything themselves, I also built The Pemble Assistant, which is a virtual assistant/concierge service. It costs about $30 a month, and you’d be amazed how much we can help. I built the service because I’d have killed for this kind of help back in the day. Check it out at http://www.Pemble.com.

So, here’s to you, Erica! Naturally, if there’s anything I can do to be helpful, let me know.

Kindly,
Will Pemble, President
Pemble.com, Inc.
http://www.Pemble.com

Good point, and it’s why I suggest you do a 30-day trial. Saying “no” is an empowering thing — it helps you gain perspective on what is really worth your time.

“There is a kind of satisfaction that comes from doing things free for other people who need it, that you cannot get any other way.”

That’s true, but there’s also a lot of burnout if you do too many things for other people while undercutting your own momentum. Steve Pavlina calls it “lightworker syndrome”, and I see this fairly often with folks who really want to do a lot of good in the world. Find a balance. If it’s really worth doing, it will still be worth doing after a 30-day trial.

@Dave - Overcommitting yourself? Well, whatever works for you! When I overcommit myself, I just feel overwhelmed and depressed…but this is definitely a personal thing.

Thank you for the comments!
-Erica

Eliminating tasks that don’t need to be done is the hardest thing for!

Couple of ways to do this:

1. Overcommit yourself. What doesn’t need to get done won’t get done. The key to this is to NOT go into crisis management mode… easier said than done, but it’s a main technique of mine, and my life is fairly low stress (albeit busy as ‘ell).

2. For any particular task, ask yourself WHY it needs to done. If there isn’t a bottom line return (or CYA if necessary), then it can get pushed back in the stack. This is much harder for me to do than overcommitting… partly due to rewiring myself from a pure research mode where serendipity is often found in “low value” activities.

I suspect that as I become more successful, I’ll go full circle. In not-very-humble opinion, most of current crop of high powered CEOs could do with another tour through the corporate mail room once or twice a year. I look forward to that myself.

@Rico: EXCELLENT point. I can’t believe how many people forgot that in the recent real estate boom. They were so busy assuming they’d get rich with appreciation that they forgot that most real estate investors have made their fortune through cashflow. Great comment.

@Anne: Definitely. I offered some tips in my previous blog post How Can You Have That Perfect Flow State More Often?

@Stew: Definitely…thank you for commenting!

@Dale: Agreed. You and Dave’s posts have made it pretty clear what I need to write for my next post in this series. I want to address some of what both of you have said. I will be posting that here in the next week or two!

Thank you all for the great comments!

-Erica

1. Every single person I have read that advocates outsourcing everything including personal work has either a passive income stream or a semi-passive income stream (low hours/week work). Every single person. I bill my time directly by the hour. Paying someone else is essentially me paying that person from my own sweat and toil, which means I have to work MORE to make the same amount of money. This is not to deny the validity of your post, just that it doesn’t work for me, yet…

2. Every single person I have read that is successfully outsourcing spent *years* doing everything themselves. They didn’t wake up one day and say, “Hey! Let’s start a new business! I’ll just outsource everything!” No. They started out doing all their own books, all their office work, errands, cleaning the toilets, everything. I am absolutely convinced that is a necessary evil. To repeat: every post on this topics starts with “I did everything myself for years…” And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

All of the above being said, I am actively subcontracting a fair bit of work now, and look forward to outsourcing more, as more passive revenue comes on line.

Always a fan, -d

I feel like too many people get hung up on the proper way to calculate their real hourly rate. The true power of this exercise is that it forces to you to start leveraging other people’s time. The most successful people in the world achieved their astronomical hourly rates with the help of others.

I’ve read that Bill Gates has earned on average $100k / hr since 1986. He could not have achieved this rate without the thousands of people who work for him. 64,000 people work for Mircrosoft worldwide. Bill Gates has effectively harnessed their collective efforts to make him the richest man in the world.

I believe, as an entrepreneur (in business and in life), I cannot afford to do everything myself that will be required for me to be successful.

Your 30 day exercise would help me practice delegating and stop micro-managing tasks that should be done by someone else. Also, I need to learn to effectively communicate my expectations to my assistants.

The only thing I’ll add is that it’s always better to eliminate tasks that don’t need to be done, rather than outsourcing them.