How to Automate Your Staffing

8/13/2019 How to Automate Your Staffing

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Andrew McCauley: This is Podcast No. 33. In this episode, we are going to talkabout when you need a strategist and when you can hire an expert. We are goingto talk about sites you can use to get expert help and examples of obs that youcan post on these sites.

Voiceover: Have you picked up our online survival guide yet? Get prepped forthe future of online marketing by going to www.AYBGuide.com.

Andrew McCauley: !ey, e"erybody# This is $ndrew %c&auley. Welcome toPodcast No. 33. This is our final episode of the '(part series that we ha"e done on

automation and it)s been a pretty good series. Today)s topic is all about staffing.

!ow can you get the right people to do all of the stuff that we ha"e ust beenspeaking about in our pre"ious podcasts* !ow can you get them to do what youwant them to do for "ery cheap and to get them to do it when you want it and on

time* Now, I could not do this podcast without the lo"ely !eather Porter. !ey,!eather#

Heather Porter: !ey, $ndrew# !ello, e"erybody# Welcome back. We lo"eha"ing you guys listening in ust so you know.

Andrew McCauley: +ust for your information, we lo"e ha"ing you here.

Heather Porter: +ust for your information. o, yeah, this is a cool episodebecause it is, like you are saying, it)s no. ' of our series, so we are ust wrappingup right now about automation and tools and ideas and concepts you can use in

your business to help your day(to(day operations to be a lot more easy and sa"eyou time and money. o, this one is all about staffing and, like $ndrew said, we

are going to be running through some websites that we use that we know about aswell to gi"e you some examples of really what kind of help can you actually get on

these websites, what sorts of obs can you post and when you should stay awayfrom these sites and also consider ha"ing a strategist help you on your business as

well. o, I am excited. hall we get started*

Andrew McCauley: We shall get started. +ust to let you know, ust last night I

did a li"e presentation of all of these automation series again and I am going tosay that the most fun that we had was probably for this particular part of the

presentation because it really opens people)s eyes up to what)s possible especially

when it comes to not ust sa"ing money doing things but actually how much timecan be le"eraged by other people doing the crap that you don)t want to do and itwas fun watching people)s faces last night at the presentation and their eyesopening up and ust got smacked at what people will do. I showed some examplesand we will talk about some of those examples today but what people would do forso little money these days. It was funny because a lot of the focus was on -Well,how do they sur"i"e* and the topic turn to -What do they do with the little

amount of money that they get* and I said -$t the end of the day, that)s probablya lot of money for them and don)t waste your time thinking about that because

they are the ones who are offering to work for it. They are not sla"es. /ou are notpaying a sla"e dri"er or anything like that. They ha"e chosen to do that ob, theyput their hand up and that)s how they are making a li"ing. If they are doing itand they are happy to take that money and they do a good ob then I say usethem as much as you can.

0isten here1 http122autopilotyourbusiness.com2podcasts233(how(to(automate(your(staffing2

et a copy of our 4nline ur"i"al uide here1 http122aybguide.com

www.autopilotyourbusiness.com
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Heather Porter: $nd some of the sites we are going to talk about too, I meanthese are not ust outsourced o"erseas people but these are westerners as welland they use these sites as a great opportunity to get introduced to you and theywill gi"e you introductory prices as a result. o, there is a lot of different ways of,

I suppose, using these sites to position yourself for work which is 5uite interesting.o, $ndrew, I ha"e one in 5uestion for you. 6o you know what it is*

Andrew McCauley: /ou are going to ask me if my brain has expanded this week*

Heather Porter: In so many ways, yes, but the 5uestion is what ha"e youlearned this week*

Andrew McCauley: What ha"e I learned this week* I ha"e been digging into

some local pages and local listings. Now, local pages and local listings are big ifyou are a bricks and mortar business and it)s "ery important that you ha"e your

listings up to date and the reason I say this is because we did some research for acompany recently about what people were saying and what was their onlinefootprint basically 7 we ha"e our maga8ine called Online ootprintand this is exactreason we called it Online ootprintbecause e"erybody has a footprint whether you

like it or not 7 this guy doesn)t ha"e much of a web presence but he has lots ofretail stores and the retail stores are popping up on directory listings, they are

popping up on oogle Places, they are popping up on /ellow Pages, people arewriting re"iews for these retail agencies and whether he likes it or not, people are

doing it and what we disco"ered was that he wasn)t acti"e in getting good re"iewsfor his businesses. Therefore, when people were unhappy, they more likely towrite a bad re"iew than a good re"iew. I mean, in general people are more likelyto write a bad re"iew rather than a good re"iew. When they are unhappy, they

tend to go out of their way to make sure people know about it. o, he had somebad re"iews on some of these sites. Now, he may ha"e only had one or two badre"iews but the thing was that they stuck there, they weren)t pushed out or theyweren)t disappearing or engulfed in good re"iews9 that was ust bad re"iew by

itself which is the only re"iew for these retail outlets and he ne"er saw that, hene"er checked it. ome of the other things that he ne"er knew or checked was

that some of the listings were actually saying that he was closed e"ery day. Theselisting agencies do their best they can to find the right and correct information butit really is up to the business owner to make sure these listings are up to date andcurrent. o, one other thing that was 5uite fascinating was that a competitor ofthis guy thought that he would go in and fill in this guy)s details. o, he filled inthe address and the phone number, although I am not sure if the phone number is

correct but he put his own website in there, the competitor)s website was in thisguy)s listing. o, when someone was doing a search for his business and they

clicked on the website, it took him to somebody else)s website.

Heather Porter: o, as a brick and mortar business, how would somebodyactually go and find all their listings* 6o they ust oogle their business name andthey look up*

Andrew McCauley: /eah, that)s a start. oogle your name, put the suburb orthe town or the city that you are in because what that usually does is what theycall a geography tag and it tells the search engines that it)s looking for somethingthat)s locali8ed and you will find when you put like your suburb like for instance

North %elbourne you will find that the listings will pop up because the name of

your business and the suburb are an exact match.



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Heather Porter: /eah. $nd I will say 5uickly on that too nowadays when I amlooking for new businesses or some ser"ice businesses to go to like I had to go getmy hair chopped off and I mo"ed recently. o, I was trying to find a new placeand I actually oogled in my suburb for hair places and what made me start

thinking and researching was the re"iews, exactly as you are saying. I was goingthrough oogle places and all different local listing sites and I was reading re"iews

and there is one place down the street from me had this really bad re"iew and Iam thinking -4h yeah, they are going to be great. I can walk to them. :ery cool.I read this re"iew and I completely started doubting them that I e"er wanted to goin and I wonder if they, like you are saying, also know that this really scathingre"iew is sitting there on the site ruining their reputation.

Andrew McCauley: /eah, really and they probably don)t know and here)s thething. The re"iew could ha"e e"en been written by a competitor and it could be

completely false. o, the owner doesn)t e"en know that a; it)s is sitting there, b;it)s false and they are losing business. Now, you may be a person that goes andsays -+ust by the way, I am not coming to your place because of the re"iew butthere would be another thirty of you that don)t say anything and they ust mo"eon. o, one thing I do want to stress is this is not ust for local businesses with

bricks and mortar. /ou can actually create your own listings for your business ifyou are home based as well. o, think about that. o, that)s what I learned this

week. !eather, what about you* What did you learn* What crossed your deskthis week*

Heather Porter: 4h, yes. $mongst the hundreds of proects, this is the one thatstood out the most and it)s more of a reminder and I think it)s important for

e"erybody listening to ust remember this as well. o, what it)s about is P6


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Heather Porter: ?"en better.

Andrew McCauley: $nd I am -It)s a little strange but then I reali8ed what hewas doing9 he had links there inside the report that took you to his own sales pageor his own product page and it was a great way to share report, it was a currentreport, it was something that was topical at the time and people wanted to see it.o, they shared it and he got some great "irality out of it. o, good pick up. oodone.

Heather Porter: There you go. o, with that said, I think we should go aheadand get started in our staffing automation episode and what do you want to startwith on this topic*

Andrew McCauley: Well, I think we might start with what sort of things can getoutsourced, what sort of help can you get because as entrepreneurs we are all

wearing different hats and multiple hats at the same time and sometimes you ustsort of look at it and go -Where do I e"en start to get help* and sometimes it)sgood ust to@ 0et)s put a list together of some of the things that can getoutsourced and then we will talk about the sites that we can go to, some of the

pitfalls of those sites and some of the good things about those sites and then wewill gi"e some examples of how we ha"e used people from these sites to do certain

things and some of the things, belie"e it or not, you ha"e already seen the resultof.

Heather Porter: 4h, yes. o, stick with us and we will tell you exactly what thatis.

Andrew McCauley: /es, that)s the call to action.

Heather Porter: ?xactly.

Andrew McCauley: o, let)s look at some of the things that we can getoutsourced for your business.


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Andrew McCauley: /up. 4ne of the big ones, $dmin $nd &lerical. $dmin andclerical is a big one, ust keeping things up to date. It might be accounts oraccounting and that sort of stuff, it may be bookkeeping, it may be answeringphones or responding to emails, helpdesk and that sort of stuff can be a big. o,

there are sees a lots of people out there, lots of ser"ices out there that you can usefor admin and clerical. 6esign and multimedia, "ery similar to IT and

programming. There is a lot of lot of countries that are good at that but you canget so many people. There are so many different people who ha"e all sorts ofgood design and multimedia skills.

Heather Porter: /es you can get like "ideo editors or people to do your "ideo

intro and outro, your bumpers, things like that, things for your podcasts which wewill talk about later. o, yeah, there are huge amounts of talent all o"er the worldto help with those things.

Andrew McCauley: ?xactly. Writing and translation. I mean I am not a big fan

of writing articles but I look to people to actually do some writing for me. If it)s aspecific topic, I will ask them to write a topic for me. I will read it and make sure it

suits my style and my branding and then I will post it but I ust know I don)t ha"eto go and do the writing. Translation and transcription is another part of that aswell. Then we got personal assistants. There is a lot of personal assistants outthere which is pretty similar to admin and clerical. What sort of things can you getthem to do is really limitless. Whate"er you are doing more than once a day, youshould get someone to think about doing that for you.

Heather Porter: /eah, like I had an assistant from $merica who mo"ed o"er toIsrael for a while and she)s incredible, she is trained in $merican uni"ersities. o,

it)s not ust personal assistants that you think you know them which are all basedsay in the Philippines or other de"eloping countries. I mean you can use the site)sresources we are going to talk about to find people in your own countries as welle"en. o, it)s 5uite interesting.

Andrew McCauley: /es, yes, yes. $lright, so shall we get on and talk aboutsome other sites that we like to use and what)s good and bad about those*

Heather Porter: /eah, we would lo"e it.

Andrew McCauley: $lright, kick off.

Heather Porter: $lright. 4ur first one and actually we are using this one as wespeak, www.?lance.com and it)s an incredible site where you can go to get

maority of e"erything we ha"e ust talked to you about abo"e. o, web design,you can get admin and clerical, you can find people that can do copywriting, you

name it but let)s talk a little bit about the nuts and bolts of ?lance. o, if I were togo to that site and I am interested in say getting help with my website, $ndrew,

then what would I need to do to use that site to get that kicked off, that proect*

Andrew McCauley: $lright. o, you want to sign up for an account. $n account

on ?lance is free and in fact, you know what, I am going to mention the other twosites right now because they all work fairly similar before we get right into ?lance

but we will come back to ?lance specifically but the other sites that we likewww.o6esk.comand www.uru.com. uru and o6esk and ?lance are all sites thatoperate in "ery similar way. o, now that you know what the other sites are, I willexplain how ?lance works specifically and you will find that o6esk and uru workssimilarly as well. o, you set up an account, all of them are free, it doesn)t cost



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you to set up an account, you set up some banking details, so you might put your"isa or your %aster&ard in there, you might put your PayPal account in there aswell and what happens is you will do a search for@ There is a couple of ways to goabout it. What did you say* 6id you gi"e me a specific ob*

Heather Porter: Well, let)s ust do it. o, say I ha"e a WordPress site and I needhelp, I need some pages created and things changed and mo"e around on it. o,let)s use that as an example.

Andrew McCauley: 4kay. o, there is a couple of things you can do.


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they ha"e done in the past and then from time to time, if it)s a bigger proect, I wille"en ask to email one of the persons that)s left reference, one of the referees andactually say -Aeally tell me about this person a little bit more. I ha"e actuallydone that for some people I ha"e worked with in the past for phone apps. I was

happy with their work and I said look -I am happy to be a referral if you want andI had a few people contact me off of I think it was ?lance or o6esk, one of those

sites, saying -!ey, you know, I am thinking about using so and so ser"ices andyour name was there. What do you think about them* and I was more thanhappy to be really truly honest. o, like $ndrew is saying, think of this like you arehiring somebody to come into your "ery own office and treat it in that way.


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she)s not going to grab the money and run away and disappear and I will ne"er seeher again because if she did that, my money is still safe9 I will tell ?lance that)swhat happened and they refund me the money. he knows that she is not goingto get work done or she is not going to do a whole bunch of work for me and send

it off to me and then I take it and I close the account down and she will ne"er seethe money. o, it)s a pretty safe deal. o, once I see the work, I might say -/ou

know what, let)s change some things here. Please change it. he will go backand change it and so on and so on and when I am happy with the ob, then I say

-Aelease the funds and the funds get gi"en to her, I ha"e got the work, e"eryoneis happy, no one is missing anything. In all my times of using ?lance for different

obs, I think I ha"e had one person that has not gi"en me the work, I ga"e themoney 7 and I shouldn)t ha"e done it 7 I ga"e the money for o"er C3 dollars at theend of the day, so it wasn)t a big deal but I ga"e the money to buy some physicalstuff that they needed for the ob and then ust disappeared9 they ha"en)t been on

?lance since and I put in a dispute but it)s C3 dollars. o, it)s one of the thingsthat you learn from but it)s extremely safe, it)s extremely geared towards world

global working conditions.

Heather Porter: It is, yeah, and it)s perfect for those of you that are growing

businesses that don)t really ha"e a need for full(time person in that role, they needto cut cost. 0ike we were saying before, any of the types of things we ha"e talked

about whether it)s from a personal assistant to a programmer, somebody that canhelp you with a website or software or an application, this is a great area for you to

go and research because you can get that contractor(based work that you needespecially as a growing business. 0et)s face it, a lot of us can)t go out there andhire a full(time staffer to fill that role. o, we lo"e these resources. They are easy

to use, safe to use and you get some great results.Andrew McCauley: o that)s www.?lance.com, www.o6esk.com andwww.uru.com. They are our choice. There are others out there. There is aplenty of others out there but these are the ones that seem to be the biggest.There is another one out there called www.Aent$&oder.com. That)s more gearedtowards the IT industry but once again they ha"e a whole range of differentprofessionals in there.

Heather Porter: There)s another one too I will bring up calledwww.6esigns.comwhich is also a site that speciali8es more in graphics. o, it)sa great site to get logos and also web design and print work, any graphical sort ofthings that you need to.

Andrew McCauley: There is a little bit of a difference with . 6o you want toexplain the difference and what)s different about that than ?lance as far as theauction sites go*

Heather Porter: /eah. o, basically, you post a proect and you explain what

you are looking for, whether it)s a logo or whether it)s a brochure or whate"er it isthat you need and then the people that are in that site, the workers in that site,they are going to bid on your actual proect. o, you can then go through and findand negotiate people that are in your price range also based on their talent le"el aswell. o, it)s ust a little bit different in that way I suppose where it)s more of abidding site rather than ust a marketplace of all sorts of price points.

Andrew McCauley: /es, yes, yes. $lright and then there is one other site which

is extremely addicti"e, terribly addicti"e actually.



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Heather Porter: /ou lo"e this one.

Andrew McCauley: $nd the thing is that you can get anything and I meananything on this site. Now, before I gi"e you the name of that site, it does comewith a warning and that is that there are good 5uality people on this site and thereare some a"erage 5uality people and that site is www.


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also is that they gi"e you little flags of countries so you can see what country theyare coming from too. o, you might be looking at an accounting ob and see thatthe accounting person is from a country that doesn)t use your accounting methods.o, that may not be a good idea to use that person. o, you can get to know

where they are coming from as well. This one has got -I will write a one pagesales script for your product or ser"ice. That)s pretty cool. Now, once again, go

through and check the re"iews, see what people are talking about and see if thatperson is good. 4ften they will ha"e "ideos about what they do on their


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Andrew McCauley: ome of the cra8y ones are out there. /ou can actually getre"iews for your products too9 people will do re"iews for you.

Heather Porter: /eah.

Andrew McCauley: o, if you ha"e got a product, you are looking for a re"iew,

they can do a re"iew. If you are looking for someone to scream your name outloudly while they ha"e got pink hair in a car park, you could probably find that aswell. o, there are all sorts of cra8y things out there. !eather, I don)t know if youe"er saw this one but I wrote some words down about some friends of ours and Igot a guy to sing it. !e created music for it.

Heather Porter: Now, I did not.

Andrew McCauley: ?xciting. I ga"e it to him as a gift and I said -!ere you go.

This is ust for a laugh and he filmed himself playing guitar and singing the song.It was for G dollars. I mean, how cheap is that to get someone to create a songand sing it for you for G dollars.

Heather Porter: I was suddenly feeling it would be really fun to do is to go onthere and get people to sing, scream, whate"er they do -I lo"e $utopilot /our

=usiness e"erywhere in the world and film it. We could put a compilationtogether.

Andrew McCauley: There you go.

Heather Porter: $nd there are so many creati"e and silly things you can do.

Andrew McCauley: !ere is the challenge. I am going to put one in this podcast.

!ere is our


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Heather Porter: /eah we don)t ha"e need for a full(time bookkeeper orsomebody who come in and do all that stuff. o, that)s why we are doing that.4ne word of ad"ice I guess to all of you guys around the whole staffing thing iswhen you need strategy in your business 7 let)s ust, I guess, set out from the

start 7 strategy and creation of different pieces of content and things in yourbusiness is a "ery different situation. $ strategist is somebody that really

understands how to plug e"erything together and they look through sort ofdifferent filtration process. o, they might look at a WordPress website and say

-$lright, you ha"e to ha"e the right copy, you ha"e to ha"e your lead funnelcreated where you are gi"ing away really good opt(in, ha"e you hooked up youroogle analytics, ha"e you done this, this, this, this* and I am not going to gointo all the bits and pieces of that but a web designer or a programmer issomebody that you will say to them -I need a website and then they design it.They are not looking through the filters of is this a marketing machine, is it going

to be automated for you. They are not going to ask those 5uestions because theyare not thinking in that way. o, I guess, the key point here is you definitely do

need strategy, you need somebody that)s going to help you position your companyand use these tools that we ha"e talked about in the right way but once you ha"ethat, you can then get the right pieces of the pu88le to fill in once you know whatyou need and they can "ery 5uickly and "ery easily tell them how to go aboutachie"ing all the different things you need in your business.

Andrew McCauley: /eah, yeah, well said, well said. =efore we mo"e on, I think

we ha"e got a couple of listener 5uestions and I know we got one listener 5uestionfrom last week.

Heather Porter: We do.

Andrew McCauley: We ha"e a shout out too. I think we ha"e got someone whohas left us information that we really appreciate.

Heather Porter: I would lo"e to shout this out actually. In of our episode on ourwebsite which is www.$utopilot/our=usiness.com2Podcast, actually this is for?pisode No. J which was our sales automation episode, ary 7 thank you ary%or5uist 7 he suggested an ama8ing tool and I actually researched and checked itout. It)s called umroad and umroad is a platform where you guys can easily sell

digital information and it actually hooks up your PayPal and helps you store yourfiles like $ma8on 3 which is a big storage ser"er and it does it all "ery easily. o,

I ust wanted to say ary thank you for lea"ing that comment, taking that momentand sharing that with all of our listeners. We appreciate that.

Andrew McCauley: /es. Thank you, ary. $wesome# ood, good. o, what)sour listener 5uestion* We ha"e someone who sent some information in. What did

they want to know*

Heather Porter: 4kay the 5uestion is -When you are talking about automation

for your financials, the episode for $utomating /our


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could ha"e come up with today, we could ha"e had another GD sites that dooutsourcing like ?lance but we ust wanted to make sure that we co"ered some ofthe ones that were a little bit out there but more in the entrepreneur)s sort ofrealm as well. We could ha"e definitely mentioned those and they are good tools

to use. 6efinitely look at those. If you are already using those, stick to using.They work really well but we were trying to get some different "iews not e"eryone

sees all of these tools like we can and the one we can)t see them we ust comeacross them and we wanted to share those with e"erybody.

Heather Porter: ?xactly.

Andrew McCauley: ?xaclty.

Heather Porter: Nice one. $lright, $ndrew, I think we ha"e now officially cometo the end of our automation series.

Andrew McCauley: 4h my god#

Heather Porter: o, what does is that mean* We ha"e to come up with a newtopic for next week, don)t we*

Andrew McCauley: /eah, what are we going to do* /ou know what we shoulddo* We should do an inter"iew next week.

Heather Porter: /es, we ha"e ne"er done an inter"iew for those of you who arelistening. I mean, we are on@ What are we on* ?pisode 33, right*

Andrew McCauley: 33. We ha"e ne"er done an inter"iew. hould we do an

inter"iew with somebody that)s going to be more exciting than us*

Heather Porter: I think we should and you know why* =ecause ob"iously the

internet changes really fast and there is so much information to share with youguys and we ha"e access to some incredible experts, especially now since we ha"e

launched Online ootprintmaga8ine which now we are publishing I think@ we on?dition '.

Andrew McCauley: ', yeah.

Heather Porter: /es, that)s coming out. o, as a result of that we ha"e reallygotten access to some incredible people all o"er the world and we thought whydon)t we bring some of them into our show here and really ha"e a great inter"iewsession and get the great meat out of their brain, the ama8ing things and sharethat with you guys and like to gi"e you an idea ust as a 5uick teaser what the

types of talent that we ha"e access to. We are talking some of the top socialinfluencers from the


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Andrew McCauley: 6one.

Heather Porter: 6one.

Andrew McCauley: 6one. I lo"e it, lo"e it, lo"e it. $lright, so if you are listeningto us through iTunes, please lea"e us a re"iew. +ust gi"e us fi"e stars. 0ea"e a

re"iew for us. That would be great.

Heather Porter: We would lo"e for you to pop on by

www.$utopilot/our=usiness.com2Podcastand on that ( that)s our podcast website7 you can sign up to get updates, we ha"e bonuses on there, we ha"e an incredible

resource page with all sorts of really cool little links and things that we talk aboutplus we ha"e all of our show notes which ha"e links. ?"ery time we mention a link

or a business or a tool in any of our episodes, we put the links underneath thatepisode on the website. o, we would lo"e for you to pop on by o"er there and say

hello and lea"e us your 5uestions or comments.

Andrew McCauley: $bsolutely# $lright, !eather. Well, that)s a good episode.

o, thank you "ery much.

Heather Porter: Thanks, $ndrew.

Andrew McCauley: 0ook forward to it. Take care e"erybody and ust as a tasteof another

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How to Automate Your Staffing