I have really grown to love the two of you, lol! You give such great advice and offer so much help, and I appreciate it so much.

Currently, I am a stay at home mom who has sacrificed working to be home with my little one. I am broke and spending many late nights at my computer trying to get my blog and PLR store off the ground.

I have been feeling like there is something missing in my efforts. Ideally I would like to only be working 4 days a week for 4 to 5 hours each day. I know it can work but I’m lost and confused. I feel like I’m constantly spending time on the wrong tasks. Nicole I purchased Blog CPR which I love, and I am doing a review of it on my blog as we speak! Melissa, is your course something that could help me? I would love your advice on what I should do at this point.

Thank you both for being so encouraging and inspiring :o)

Nicole and Melissa, my struggle right now is trying to get everything done (especially since I still work part-time out of the home), and so I’ve really begun the process of outsourcing. I listened to the videos that Melissa did, and I found them VERY motivating. It has made me realize that this is what I have to do to get my business moving. I also want to connect with other people in this business to form some great friendships and affiliate partnerships. It’s all very exciting and overwhelming too.

Yes, we have gotten recommendations and researched the places before we had them do stuff and gotten contracts.

Our 1st problem was finding good editors/proofreaders. We got names recommended tried them out on a trial basis but then when it was time to do the big stuff they would miss a lot. So Mike is back to editing again.

We then had cover design problems. We decided to use a “large firm” to do our covers and our printing, warehousing and distributing for our print books. We had a contract and tried to work with them but the cover samples they sent us were horrible!

So 1/2 way through the new cover process we just dumped their graphic guy. We could have fought them on it but by the time we tried to “work with them” to try and figure it out (they wouldn’t just let us out of the contract) and then had to take them to court if it didn’t work we just were tired of dealing with it and flushed the $1300 we had spent so far on covers.

Then we got some names from when Mike went to Nams for cover people and at first it went ok but then the lady wasn’t getting them done and we had books we had to get out. We did get our covers but had to fight hard to get the last of them and that was another bomb as far as saving us time. We could have just had the covers done ourselves for as much time as we spent trying to get her to get them done.

Then as far as the company doing the warehousing and distributing that was a case of the work got done but it wasn’t that great and we could have done it ourselves had saved $6,000-$7000 in fees.

The taxes. We just moved so our cooperate taxes are not so easy this year. The accountant we found said it would be $2500 to do our taxes. So we sent them to Mike’s aunt out of state who is a CPA and said “sure I would love to do them”. Well, she filed an extension and then never did them. So Mike had to insist that she send everything back so he could get them done before the 15th and now has spent 3-4 days on them. 🙂

I’m not sure where we are going wrong. I totally get that our time is worth some $. Right now we are earning enough for Mike to get paid but mom and I are basically doing our part for free. Right now we are kind of at the stage of trying to figure out if we keep going or go ahead and stop as soon as Mike can find something else that pays the bills. He’s a video producer and would really rather get back into video.

Anyway, I am going to keep checking out your info. on outsourcing. When he does get the video going we will need someone to take over his part of the business if we keep it going.

I definitely agree with Melissa – and this sounds like a great topic for Expert Briefs, as well.

1. Ask for recommendations.
I can’t possibly emphasize this enough. Maybe talk to Kelly McCausey about which of her interns are standing out. They will be looking for clients when their term is done.

2. Did you get an agreement in writing prior to payment?
It concerns me that you had no recourse but to walk away from $10,000. Are you saying you did not get any work done? Or that it was done poorly?

3. As for the taxes, I had to go through two accountants before finding my current one. My husband keeps our books, but our accountant does the actual taxes. We pay a couple of hundred of dollars a year for this.

The fact that this keeps happening really concerns me.

Either –
1. You guys aren’t communicating well up front with your contractors.
or
2. Your hiring skills need some fixin’.

Your next hire may need to be a lawyer. That’s kind of loss is really upsetting to me.

Talk to me. We’ll see if we cant’ figure it out. 🙂

Hugs and so very sorry for your experience.
N

I’m so sorry to hear about your experience with outsourcing Tawra!

Did you ask other people for referrals or did you just find those people on your own? I’ve always found that the best people are those who’ve come recommended to me or those I find within my own community (paid forum, etc.).

You could try http://killercovers.com/print-design. I’ve used them for an ezine newsletter template and they did a great job. I know that both Ali Brown and Lisa Sasevich use them too (Ali recommends them).

As for taxes, I’ve never sent them out. Instead I use a reputable local accountant. Do you mean that you found someone and then mailed out your taxes to have done?

The first step is to go to other people who are outsourcing successfully and ask them for recommendations. I was looking for another transcriptionist because the one I usually use was too busy, so I asked Nicole (who is a close friend and who I trust immensely) who she uses and she pointed me to her lady 🙂

It’s the same as asking your friend if that new restaurant in town is any good. If she says, no the food and service is crap, then you’re probably not going to go, right, because you trust your friend.

Most of that was in trying to outsource the graphics for new book covers, warehousing and shipping of our print books. Another huge problem was sending out taxes to be done, they didn’t get done and now Mike is having to do them.

That’s the kind of stuff that has discouraged us from outsourcing. It seems we keep trying people out but always ends up backfiring on us.