7 Areas of My Life That I Outsource So I Can Focus on Business

Bract fungus.

7 Areas of My Life That I Outsource So I Can Focus on Business

Timothy Sykes

When it comes to focusing on clients and providing each person I partner with

the time they deserve, I have found there is nothing better than to outsource.

I outsource in an effort to make better use of the time I do have

and to put myself in the best position possible to do my best work possible.

Here are seven outsourcing opportunities that are worth the extra effort and money:

1. Private chef

A private chef is something I am very fortunate to be able to afford. It may seem like a luxury,

but it is something that I truly believe helps me to be the best business man I can be.

It is so important to put the right fuel in your body and to keep yourself healthy.

Unfortunately, many of us are too busy to take the time

to eat right and feed ourselves the healthy food we deserve.

With someone to help me stay on track, I have kept myself healthy and filled with natural energy.

2. Trainer 

Along with eating right, having a trainer to help me stay fit has been a huge help.

As many entrepreneurs know, the demanding life of a busy professional

can make it seem impossible to take care of yourself. Working out regularly, even when I’m tired, keeps me healthy, gives me a natural source of real energy and it helps me to relieve built up stresses and frustration. I am able to take on demanding days

in the way I do because I dedicate so much time to keeping my body fit.

3. Assistant

My assistant is there to help me with so many tasks that normally would eat up my day

in a very unproductive manner. By having an assistant to cover certain things for me,

including chores, filtering through emails and paying bills, I am able to clear my mind

and clear my workspace and focus better on the more important client-centered tasks at hand.

4. Travel agent

I travel a lot, as many entrepreneurs do. I used to spend a lot of time researching and booking

 every part of my trip. It takes a long time to do this, and it actually ended up causing me

a great deal of stress when determining all of the logistics. 

I now use a service to do all of this for me. It can figure out the details 

and make sure everything is booked. It makes travel seamless during my trip 

and requires no hair-pulling when it comes to the booking process. 

5. Stock research 

This is something that I outsource, but I don’t have to hire anyone to do. This is a great way

for those with a limited budget to get some help and save themselves some extra time.

I subscribe to countless chat rooms and newsletters as a way to get ideas from outside sources

to determine which stocks are hot. It's a great way to stay on top of my game,

without having to do all of the legwork myself.

6. Accountant 

My accountant is very important to me. I run virtually every expense by my accountant.

He managed my taxes, my charitable foundation, everything.

It saves me so much time, keeps me on track and I know my money is being managed properly. 

7. Lawyer 

Every single contract goes through my lawyer, no matter what the situation may be,

and I mean everything. I even handed him the contract for my wedding planner before signing.

He takes the time to read all of the fine print and makes sure I’m not signing anything

that could haunt me later on.

Having this team behind me in all of my efforts has helped me better manage my time

and to become a better resource for my clients. I do these things so I can be my best version

and focus more on business. Learning when and where to outsource my time

was a long lesson to learn, but one that today I can say greatly contributes to my success.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244495

You can TCR software and engineering manuals for spontaneous recall – or pass that exam.

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I can TCR an instructional/academic book around 20 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

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All aspects of regular, each-word reading and education.

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www.innermindworking.blogspot.com         gives many ways for you to work with the stresses of life

www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com         just for fun.

To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”

Take Charge of Your Life and Achieve Your Goals

Flourish in harsh conditions.

Start the day/your goals with: I am

You can TCR music, poetry or self development material for internal knowing.

I can Turbo Charge Read a novel 6-7 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

I can TCR an instructional/academic book around 20 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

Introduction to Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

A practical overview of Turbo Charged Reading YouTube  

How to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Emotions when Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?

www.facebook.com/mreenhunt

www.pinterest.com/mreenhunt

Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:

www.turbochargedreading.blogspot.com    

All aspects of regular, each-word reading and education.

Turbo Charged Reading uses these skills significantly faster

www.innermindworking.blogspot.com         gives many ways for you to work with the stresses of life

www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com         just for fun.

To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”

Diary of a start-up: Generating sales as a new

Parts working optimally together.

Diary of a start-up: Generating sales as a new

Andrew Needham

Here, Needham talks about how he and his team have tackled sales strategy…

At this month’s board meeting, our investor Martin McCourt, former CEO of Dyson,

summarised running a business into two broad areas: driving the top line and control. 

There are a number of areas I focus on every month under these two sweeping headings

and January has been good in terms of generating sales, 

a core component to driving the top line.

Spending time with customers, understanding their needs, what they think of your proposition

and building relationships is the life-blood of any business. It’s why I have been working closely

with my host relations team to teach them as much as possible about the sales process 

and how to drive sustainable revenue streams for HeadBox 

by building long lasting customer relationships.

In fact, January 2016 has been HeadBox’s biggest revenue month to date!

One of the hardest things my team has had to learn this month is that it’s okay to ask for business. We have spent a lot of time with our hosts in recent months, listening to their needs

and what they want from us; how we can drive more inquiries and bookings for them.

We work through our product offer and marketing initiatives and how this will benefit them, 

so it seems natural to “ask for their business” 

even though I am always surprised how often people don’t.

Often when you have followed the steps below and combine them with a great product

the answer you get is “yes”…

Listen, listen and listen again

I remember when I was setting up my first company Student Pages in the 1990s 

and I was taught an important lesson. You have two ears and only one mouth so use them 

in that order. Understanding what your customers want by actively listening to their needs

rather than talking at them is critical to ensuring how best your proposition can help them.

Listening to your customers also helps you to innovate and come up with new ideas

that you had not previously considered as well as find new solutions.

These conversations always ensure that your business is moving in the right direction.

Sell the sizzle and not the fat

Once you understand what it is that your customers want, you need to be able to match

your proposition to their needs. So it’s worth spending time working through in detail

your product offer; not just what it is and who it is aimed at but also why it is different

and how it is going to benefit your customers.

I break this  down into FABs – features, advantages and benefits.

All too often we obsess about our product features when all our customers want to know is

what are the advantages and the benefits of those features to them.

I have found that being able to articulate these succinctly and clearly is key.

Customer objections are good

When our customers tell us they don’t like something about our offer

we like to tell ourselves that they are wrong or they haven’t understood properly.

Customers will never buy something from you if they have concerns that are left unanswered.

These can cover all sorts of areas from the audience and the product to how

you are promoting what you’re doing to the value and price. And sometimes it is not clear

at the outset what the real objection is so you have to ask “Why? Why? Why?“ 

until you do. Understanding why your customers are not sure is key to helping you adapt

so that your product offer fits what they need.

People love to buy not to be sold to

We all know the sales structure; pre-approach, introduction, hook, bridge, body, demo, close,

but ultimately people buy because they like you as much as they like what you have to offer.

The old adage that people buy people first is true so building relationships with your customers

by getting to know them and spending time with them is something we have being doing

a lot of this month. It’s often when you’re not in a business environment

that you are able to learn the most about your customers and what they want.

http://startups.co.uk/diary-of-a-start-up-headbox-on-generating-sales-through-client-relationships/

You can pre-read all your course material for internal knowing.

I can Turbo Charge Read a novel 6-7 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

I can TCR an instructional/academic book around 20 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

Introduction to Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

A practical overview of Turbo Charged Reading YouTube  

How to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Emotions when Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?

www.facebook.com/mreenhunt

www.pinterest.com/mreenhunt

Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:

www.turbochargedreading.blogspot.com    

All aspects of regular, each-word reading and education.

Turbo Charged Reading uses these skills significantly faster

www.innermindworking.blogspot.com         gives many ways for you to work with the stresses of life

www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com         just for fun.

To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”

How prioritising customer care helped our start-up shine

How prioritising customer care helped our start-up shine

Aron Gelbard

The business is a team of 25 based in South-West London,

and sends several thousand bouquets of flowers per week across the whole of the UK.

Here, Gelbard explains how he went from start-up to scale-up and achieved fast-growth success

by always putting the customer first…

In the years since co-founding Bloom & Wild, I’ve learned that you have lots of disadvantages

as a start-up competing with established incumbents in an industry –

 they have large customer bases, established brands and more resources.

But the one advantage you do have is that you fundamentally care more about your customers.

This is because you’ve put everything on the line for your business

whereas for employees of your competitors, however passionate they are, it’s still their day job.

I’ve found that putting this obsession with care at the heart of everything we do is something

that our customers notice and comment on, and is also hugely motivational to our team.

This may sound obvious, but it has taken us a lot of discipline to put this into practice

as we’ve moved from being a concept (flowers through the letterbox)

to a high-growth company with an ambition to become the UK’s favourite online florist.

I was recently invited to participate on behalf of Bloom & Wild to be a member of Scale Up Club,

an initiative for promising high-growth young companies organised by Silicon Valley

comes to the UK, which also includes businesses like graze.com 

and language learning app Busuu.

In preparing for a series of roundtables with other start-up founders, I tried to crystallise

how we put our care for our customers at the heart of everything we do

and how this has helped us earn the title of a ‘scale-up business’:

1. Hire people who are passionate about creating something 

    and delivering a fantastic experience

As a founder, you’ll always care a huge amount about your business. 

But you’ll stop being able to do everything yourself because there’ll be too many things to do and it won’t be good for your health!

I also realised early on that there’s no one task or process that someone else on my team

isn’t better than me at doing (the curse of being a generalist founder).

As you start to trust others with important jobs that are critical to your customers’ experience,

you realise that you can only do so if they care deeply as well. 

I’ve found that people who are deeply excited about our mission, 

and that put in the effort and care to turn that mission into a reality,

are the people we need on our team. And in fact, there’s a strong correlation between

our best performing employees and those that seem to care the most!

2. Design your experience for how your customers actually shop

For Bloom & Wild, like almost all companies, a big part of our business is about mobile.

Every business today is serving customers who are spending many hours per day

on their mobile devices, including more mobile browsing time than desktop browsing time.

Any customer-centric experience needs to be easy for customers to use 

when and how they want to, and this has to include mobile. 

We obsess over every possible way to reduce the need to type on a mobile screen! 

As a start-up, another mini-advantage you have is that you aren’t encumbered by legacy IT systems and so you can more rapidly design a mobile first experience compared to a competitor whose existing infrastructure prevents them from doing so.

3. Understand and eliminate customer anxiety

The best thing you can do is talk to as many people as possible and understand how they feel

when they need to make a transaction, and what makes them anxious.

I once read an interview with Uber’s Travis Kalanick and he explained that Uber

decided to eliminate the ability to leave a tip, and to instead build this into the price,

because he didn’t want his customers to worry about whether to leave a tip,

how much to leave and how this would vary across cultures.

In online flower gifting, the equivalent anxiety we unearthed was that customers worried

that their recipients wouldn’t be at home to receive their flowers,

and so they’d have to call them up and ruin the surprise,

or risk the flowers being left in a recycling bin or such and potentially never arriving.

This was our rationale behind designing packaging 

that allows flowers to fit through the letterbox.

4. Be obsessed with your customers and their feedback

One of the few advantages of your size as a start-up is that you can personally find ways

of both listening to your customers and turning their feedback into a reality.

I try to personally answer customer phonecalls or emails every day, and I regularly reach out

to customers who have come up in our website’s error logs to understand what went wrong

and fix it for them – this also helps me stay on the front foot

and make sure we are resolving any technical or product issues really early on.

It’s so hard for a large organisation with many layers of management

and process to replicate this and to make change happen quickly, so take advantage of it!

http://startups.co.uk/how-prioritising-customer-care-helped-our-start-up-shine/

You can TCR software and engineering manuals for spontaneous recall – or pass that exam.

I can Turbo Charge Read a novel 6-7 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

I can TCR an instructional/academic book around 20 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

Introduction to Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

A practical overview of Turbo Charged Reading YouTube  

How to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Emotions when Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?

www.facebook.com/mreenhunt

www.pinterest.com/mreenhunt

Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:

www.turbochargedreading.blogspot.com    

All aspects of regular, each-word reading and education.

Turbo Charged Reading uses these skills significantly faster

www.innermindworking.blogspot.com         gives many ways for you to work with the stresses of life

www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com         just for fun.

To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”

Confidence.

Confidence and self-belief stem from positive thinking,

talking to others, plenty of practise and in some cases, training.

Although we aspire to have more of each, we often struggle to find them.

Our confidence and the belief we have in ourselves can show in many ways - our behaviour,

our mood and the way we carry ourselves. Individuals who lack self-belief and self-confidence

will often find that certain areas of their lives will be affected. Relationships, career, lifestyle

and state of mind can all take a hit unless some action is taken to improve these qualities.

On this page we will delve deeper into the causes of a lack of confidence

and will discover how a life coach can help with confidence building.

We will also discuss a number of techniques than can enable ‘quick wins’ 

in boosting your self-belief.

Do you lack confidence and self-belief?

Suffering from low confidence and self-worth can be debilitating, but the good news is

that they both can be developed with the help of confidence coaching.

When you start, the first thing to do is understand your current level of self-esteem.

You then have a base to build upon, gradually increasing your self-worth and confidence 

over time until they become deeply ingrained facets of your personality.

Self-esteem and self-confidence are thought to be made up of a number of factors.

These include: physical presence, social confidence, status confidence, peer independence,

and stage presence. Your behaviour, your body language, how you react to different situations

and how you speak can depict your confidence levels and the amount of belief you have in yourself. Confident people are typically more positive about themselves, whereas those who lack confidence often think negatively and could benefit from confidence coaching.

If you are lacking self-belief and confidence you may feel:

uneasy and shy

uncertain of what you want and who you are

a sense of worthlessness

negative thoughts about your abilities and yourself in general

you are unable to enjoy and relax in situations that you’d like to

as if you haven’t got a sense of direction in life.

On the other hand, if you are full of self-belief and confidence you may feel:

greater enjoyment of life in general

comfortable when facing new challenges

excited about new opportunities

confident about your opinions and ideas

a great sense of achievement

respected by other people

at ease in social situations

able to be yourself

sure of yourself and what you want.

Both self-worth and confidence can be developed

through confidence coaching either by yourself or with a professional.

It may, however, take some time to build upon your current confidence levels.

The amount you can gain from coaching is usually very rewarding and is well worth the effort.

How can life coaching improve my confidence and self-belief?

Life coaches come equipped with the tools and techniques to help you develop your confidence

and self-belief. Confidence coaching is designed to help you raise your self-image

and create a positive outlook on life, starting from within.

Life coaching may be able to help you challenge your beliefs that you have about yourself,

boost your self-esteem and help you build a strong and positive self-image.

If you truly believe in yourself, so will others.

Deeply ingrained confidence and self-worth will make life more enjoyable, exciting and satisfying.

Self-belief or self-confidence

Self-belief or self-confidence are thought to be the way that you feel about your skills, abilities,

looks and behaviours. A person who has high confidence levels may learn things quickly,

trust that they can complete tasks to a good standard or appear attractive to others.

By definition, self-confidence means to have faith in or trust yourself.

However, confidence can also be described as the way that we project ourselves to others.

We don't have to truly feel confident in our abilities, looks or capabilities in order to appear confident to others. Many people can portray an image to others of complete confidence

while shaking with fear on the inside. This is a protection method used by many to cover up

for a lack of self-esteem or other feelings about themselves

that they would rather not acknowledge or show.

Self-worth or self-esteem

Self-worth or self-esteem describe the way that you feel about yourself regardless of your looks, achievements, or other things you may feel confident in. It is closely associated with pride

in your yourself and the amount of self-respect you have. If you have high self-esteem

you are typically happy in your own skin and you have a good opinion of yourself.

Self-esteem relates to the way we compare ourselves with others. This can cover a number of things such as whether we think we are as intelligent, attractive, loveable, successful or worthy as others.

Having low self-esteem can really affect your mood. Feeling that you are worth less than others

may lead you to strive for perfection but never feel you have achieved enough.

If you suffer with low self-worth or low self-esteem you may feel depressed, low, guilty,

and you might try to prove your worth to others. You also may avoid situations

that could cause anxiety or challenges you feel you cannot to cope with.

Self image

Self-image can be explained as a mixture of the self-esteem and confidence.

It encompasses the impressions you have of yourself, covering things like looks,

abilities, skills, sex, age, successes, career, intelligence and more.

It also covers the impression you have of yourself and how you feel about yourself.

Confidence at work

Being confident at work is crucial for career success.

It doesn’t matter what work situation you are in - be it just starting out or running a company –

confidence plays a massive part in the day-to-day activities in most occupations.

Having a strong sense of self-belief can have a massive impact on your effectiveness and enjoyment in your job. It also affects how we communicate with friends and colleagues.

Being confident in the workplace enables you to be situationally proactive, assertive and focused. Having true confidence not only allows you to have a positive impact at work,

it also helps you make choices that will benefit your home life too.

Here are a number of areas that a life coach could cover with you if you are struggling with confidence at work:

leadership coaching

management coaching

small business coaching

conflict resolution

public speaking

anger management

stress management

executive coaching.

If you distinctly lack confidence at work more than other areas of life

and do not believe you warrant the success you have achieved, you might have imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome

Imposter syndrome is when you cannot seem to internalise your accomplishments.

The persistent feeling of inadequacy may haunt you, even though there is definitive proof

that your achievements are the result of hard work and talent.

You may experience feelings of intellectual fraudulence and severe self-doubt.

You will feel like you aren’t a competent, successful individual, you are instead imposing as such. ‘Imposter’ feelings can come in many forms, but they tend to fit in the following three categories:

Feeling like a fake

You may feel like you have deceived others into thinking that you are more competent that you are. You don’t think you deserve your professional position or success.

This is typically coupled with the fear of being ‘found out’.

Statements that you may identify with:

“I am afraid of the time when my colleagues discover my lack of professional knowledge.”

“I often come across as a more competent person than I actually am.”

Your success is attributed to luck

You may have a tendency to feel all of your success is down to luck or another external variable, rather than your skills and perseverance.

Statements that you may identify with:

“This won’t happen again.”

“I just got lucky.”

“This was a total fluke.”

Downplaying success

Oftentimes when you achieve things that others congratulate you for,

you will discount your own success.

You may feel that the achievement itself could have been accomplished by anyone.

Statements that you may identify with:

“It’s not that big of a deal.”

“It wasn’t that important.”

“The reason I did so well was because it was an easy task.”

The imposter syndrome is not an ‘all or nothing’ type of mentality.

You may only identify some of the feelings in certain situations,

or you may know friends or colleagues that exhibit some of these traits.

If you have imposter feelings, you can take positive steps towards changing them.

A life coach can offer help and the motivation to get your professional life back on track.

The benefits of a positive mental attitude

There are plenty of ways to improve your self-confidence. Some may work better for you

than others. Yet the main thing to remember is that you need to truly believe in yourself

in order to start making the changes you strive for. If you lead with positive thoughts

then you are more likely to accomplish your goals. This can be seen in medical miracles,

successful sports people and in children who are usually more open about their self-belief.

Most improvement techniques for self-confidence are based around the power of the mind

and body to work together in order to achieve the results you are looking for.

A positive mental attitude will help you overcome many obstacles by enabling you

to do things with the incredible power of your mind.

In contrast, a negative attitude will create negative actions feelings,

results and low confidence levels.

The beauty of any technique based on a positive mental attitude is that you don’t need to know

the outcome of an action in order to be able to do it, you simply need to believe you can do it

and your body will loyally follow. This may not always happen straight away

and will take a lot of practise but is a proven technique that can produce results.

"Whether you think you can or you can't, you're probably right." - Henry Ford

Confidence building tips

Here are five ways to help build your confidence.

You can use these between life coach sessions, or on your own.

1. Try to remove negativity from your life

If you are constantly doubting yourself, you might have to evaluate your inner circle of friends

and family. It can be tough, but if people are the cause of your lack of confidence,

you may have to let them go. Even a temporary break from a person that’s causing these feelings can offer a real positive step towards confidence building.

2. Change your body language

You can slowly start confidence building by changing your body language.

This starts with your posture, eye contact and smiling.

A simple smile with your shoulders back emanates confidence.

Smiling will not only make others more comfortable around you, it can make you feel better too.

Try to imagine a person who is smiling with good posture - this person looks self-confident.

3. Avoid accepting failure

Don’t give up and accept failure. You are able to find a solution in nearly everything,

so why would you want to throw in the towel?

Succeeding through perseverance can be one of the best confidence boosters.

4. Be prepared

Whatever you are facing next, learn everything there is to know about the subject.

If you are prepared and knowledgeable, you will be self-confident.

5. For particularly tough instances, create lists

Sometimes life can get too much for us and makes it really difficult to keep up our self-belief.

If this happens, try sitting down and make a list of all the things you are grateful for in your life,

and a separate list of all the things you are proud of accomplishing (no matter how small).

Once complete, pin the lists up somewhere you will regularly see them.

This will remind you what a great life you already lead –

it can be especially powerful when your self-confidence is waning.

http://www.lifecoach-directory.org.uk/articles/confidence.html

You can TCR specialist and language dictionaries that are spontaneously accessed.

I can Turbo Charge Read a novel 6-7 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

I can TCR an instructional/academic book around 20 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

Introduction to Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

A practical overview of Turbo Charged Reading YouTube 

How to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Emotions when Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?

www.facebook.com/mreenhunt

www.pinterest.com/mreenhunt

Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:

www.turbochargedreading.blogspot.com    

All aspects of regular, each-word reading and education.

TurboChargedReading uses these skills significantly faster

www.innermindworking.blogspot.com         gives many ways for you to work with the stresses of life

www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com         just for fun.

To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”