Book Review: Scaling Your Business with MOD Virtual Professionals

Scaling Your Business with MOD Virtual Professionals is a nice short book. Yes, it is also an infomercial, but it is a valuable book in itself. You don’t need to hire MyOutDesk to get the value of the content. The Sticky Challenge itself is easily worth the price of the book.

However, because it was written with pitching the business for MOD in mind, it has a couple of major …

CONS

1. Appealing to Everybody.

In the effort of gaining as big of a market share as possible, the author committed the main marketing sin and didn’t properly narrow down for whom this book is the best option. Small business owners is really an extremely broad category.

So, let me distill it to a few points, as I understood the concept:
a) You already have an established business

It is not just the idea or the business in a shaky startup phase.

b) Your business is healthy enough so you have some spare funds

And it’s much less than you’d think. Consider, how much you’d need to pay to hire someone for two hours a day in your country? I guess, it’s something north of $10 per hour, $800 a month. You can easily hire somewhere between half- and full-time in Philippines for this amount.

c) You already have some clarity what to delegate out

If not, do your homework first. But Scaling Your Business with MOD Virtual Professionals can actually help you with that.

d) The tasks you want to delegate out are digital

This is the crucial point. For example, my business is fully online. I cannot even count in how many countries are located people who worked for me. But I have a buddy, Rich, who has an alarm-installing business in the States. He needs first hands-on help on-site; this is a bottleneck for his growth. Hiring virtual professionals would do him no good.

But if the task you have in mind requires only the Internet connection and a phone number, you are good to go.

e) Icing on the cake: it involves sales

Then it’s a no-brainer. If I were you, I would’ve hired MyOutDesk on the spot.

2. Internal Lingo.

Yes, Daniel explains every time what a specific acronym or phrase means. Still, the book is chock-full of the terms straight out of his company’s Business Scaling Manual. It’s more than a bit annoying, and it spoils the reading experience.

On the other hand, if your business fits the points from a) to d), getting this book is a no-brainer. You can grow your business quickly, save plenty of money in the process, and even have some positive social impact as a byproduct. Have a look at the …

PROS

1. Impressive System.

It’s clear that MyOutDesk is a well-oiled machine which worked with (and for) hundreds of various small businesses. They have a step-by-step manual for scaling up a small business.

The book is too short to contain the full system. But it does a great job at outlining it. Thus, you have an opportunity to follow the lead of someone who has been there and done that. You can avoid costly mistakes you’d have done by fumbling and stumbling.

2. The Sticky Challenge.

You cannot improve what you don’t measure. In case of solopreneurs, tracking your time and workload is a must.

And I love how Daniel proposes to do it: by writing down each and every task you are doing on a separate sticky note. It’s hands on, physical, it has less chances to be forgotten (since that stack of sticky notes is staring right at you on your desk).

Afterward, you have the physical documentation you can easily work with: categorizing your tasks, ranking them on if they give you energy or not, assessing how doable is their delegation.
Awesome. Simple, smart, very doable, and it can be turned into a habit really quick.

3. Hiring for the Outcome.

I’ve already worked with Virtual Assistants and freelancers. Hiring them for the specific output beats hiring them for tasks, big time. It also makes more sense from the perspective of a business owner. Plus, it makes the hiring process easier, because you have the clarity of what you actually want to achieve.

4. Customer-Oriented Culture.

Daniel claims that every single employee of yours should have the customer-centric attitude:

Ensure that what is paramount to every single employee is to directly get and keep customers, with no exceptions.

It makes sense in every setup, but doubly so in the virtual one. When you act from the paradigm of getting and keeping customers, whatever you do will be for the benefit of a company. No matter if it’s accounting, invoicing, social media management or cold-calling.

Of course, it is your role, as the owner, to build such a culture. Yet, the first step is to realize, this is indeed a glue of your business. Then, even people working remotely for you from all the corners of the world, can do a good job with a minimal supervision.

5. Well Written.

Scaling Your Business with MOD Virtual Professionals is a relatively short book, and that’s great. The author doesn’t waste your time beating around the bush.

I liked how the book is full of facts and figures. The numeric illustration of how much of a difference it makes hiring for a small business? Priceless.

Apart from the internal lingo, this book provides a smooth reading experience. There is an ideal balance between content and stories to make the main points memorable.

Summary

I already have a small team of virtual staff. I started exactly like Daniel prescribes: I found small tasks that could be delegated out, and hired people very part-time to take them off of my plate. The relief was instant and hard to describe. Hiring allowed me to grow the business, even when I worked on it very part time (2-3 hours a day).

Two people from my team are from Philippines, and I agree 100% with the author about Filipinos’ work ethic and talent pool.

Definitely, Scaling Your Business with MOD Virtual Professionals is worth reading. If you struggle with hiring for your business, if you have even two hours a day of digital work in your business that can be outsourced, you shouldn’t hesitate for one minute, but buy this book and make it a reality.

After all, the difference between the revenue of solopreneurs and small businesses hiring employees is fourfold. This is a low-hanging fruit which can make a difference in your business and in your life.

The post Book Review: Scaling Your Business with MOD Virtual Professionals appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

You may also like...