Ric Thompson - Increase Productivity & Efficiency With Done For You Solutions
By: Ric Thompson
Ric Thompson is an internet visionary who has secured his spot as today's top behind-the-scenes industry giants for the past 12+ years. He is the co-founder of a number of companies, including Healthy Wealthy nWise, Small Business CEO Magazine, and Internet Marketing TNT, and countless successful startups. He has a great passion for creating wealth while leaving a positive impact on the world, and he achieves this with the support of his wife and business partner, Liz Thompson.
Ric was an entrepreneur since his college years, and one of his first business ventures with Liz was an internet service provider and tech consulting company in West Virginia. Despite the fact that they lost 40% of that business thanks to the tragic events of 9/11, Ric and Liz managed to pick themselves up and work their way back to success. Ric's latest venture is an innovative virtual outsourcing company called Done For You Solutions, which is poised to revolutionize the way outsourcing is done around the world.
TAMMY LAWMAN: Why should a company think about outsourcing?
RIC THOMPSON: That's a good question. Let's just focus on entrepreneurs. For most people in business, their company is them. Maybe they have a spouse working with them. That's what it is. Most of us are solopreneurs. You have 40, 50 or 60 hours a week. It's a very finite amount of time. You have 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You have to sleep, recharge, and eat.
If you have a family, you have family concerns. There is only so much time that you can put into it. At the end of the day, if you want your business to grow, you have to have more time in the day because everything that gets done takes time. That's just a fact of life. If you're out of time, that means you need to leverage somebody else's time, and that means outsourcing.
That's just the way it is. I talked about that myth. A lot of people get sucked into that myth-I certainly did-that the great lifestyle is just me, online, and the world. Here I come! Nobody succeeds alone. You have to have that team, those hours, and those extra skill sets as your company grows. Those are all valid reasons to start outsourcing.
TAMMY LAWMAN: Ric, tell me what types of businesses can benefit from outsourcing services?
RIC THOMPSON: Any business that needs more time leveraged in their operations can outsource. By that I mean online or offline. It doesn't really matter. The whole point of the matter is that when it comes to growing your business, there are two ways to go. You can get employees, either part-time or full-time, or you can outsource.
That's pretty much it. You have to have that extra time and more skill sets than you as an individual possess. If you want your business to grow, nobody can succeed alone. You have to have a team. My professional opinion is that it's faster, easier, and cheaper to go the outsourcing direction.
TAMMY LAWMAN: Great! Tell us what types of tasks your particular team excels in.
RIC THOMPSON: That's a big question. It seems like every client we talk to wants something new and different. There's the example I've given of report creation. Research is a big one. You have a certain amount of research you want to get done. Maybe it's to promote products or you want to start a new website and you need some research on your niche of products to promote.
There are things like email management, content for letters and blogs, posting the stuff, managing your newsletters, and managing your social media. The list goes on and on. At the end of the day, ask yourself what you're spending way too much time on. What is eating up your time on a regular basis? Then have a conversation. Let's see if we can outsource that.
TAMMY LAWMAN: Ric, can you explain how the process works if people want to work with you to outsource some of their tasks?
RIC THOMPSON: Sure. What we do is we set up a call. Once someone signs up for virtual assistant work and you've committed to hire the VA for at least 20 hours a month, we set up an initial call to chat with you directly and say, "What are you trying to do? What are you trying to free up? What skill sets do you need? What information can you provide us so that we can match you up with a good VA who's doing something similar or the same thing already?"
We go from there. What kind of reporting do you want? What works for you? The default is once a week, but some people want it every afternoon. That really comes down to you. The point, in other words, is that once you've said, "Yes. Let's go ahead. I want to get rocking and rolling," we do that call that's not billed against the 20, 40 or 80 hours that you've committed to doing.
That's just part of the package to get things up and running so that you know it's being done along the direction you want it done. Everybody wants a virtual assistant to do something a little bit differently in a little bit different way. We've designed the system to be flexible to your needs and your desires.
TAMMY LAWMAN: How do you handle delicate or confidential information? Is there a specific process for that?
This article is just a small portion of an hour-long interview, and is only one of several interviews conducted for Internet Marketing TNT. If you'd like to see the full call, as well as other interviews in this series, simply visit
http://www.internetmarketingvips.com/imvips5.html
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