For those of you who don’t know, I hired an outsourcer almost exactly 3 months ago. Well, to be more exact I hired my first outsourcer four months ago, but he didn’t work out so well so I hired my current virtual assistant after letting the first guy go. That’s how business goes sometimes!

Of course, the reason I hired somebody in the first place was to help me get things done. And truth be told, my VA is excellent at that. What I found, however, was something of an unintended consequence, and in speaking with one of my colleagues who also recently hired a virtual assistant this side effect is not unique to me.

What did my virtual assistant bring to the table besides helping me get my work done?

Answer: Focus!

You see, even though I’ve been doing this for almost 3 years now I was never very focused. Sure, I wanted to make money online and I have always had a burning desire to be able to stay home with my kids, and not work outside of the house. And because of that desire, I’ve had some  pretty good success. But, I’ve always viewed what I do as “working at home”.  I never thought of it this way, but what I discovered is that for me this view was very limiting.

Enter – radical change in thinking.

When I hired my VA, the way I think about what I do went through what can only be described as a seismic shift. I stopped focusing on making money online, and started focusing on how I can effectively grow my business. This may not seem very different when you look at it first, but for me the difference is huge.

You see, when I was trying to make money online I was looking for “opportunities”. And even though I have some good successes, skipping around really didn’t help. In fact, I would go so far to say is it really held me back.  Now don’t get me wrong, some of the skipping around was necessary as part of the learning curve in discovering what worked and what didn’t, but I probably spent way longer in this phase that I needed to.

Lucky for me, I don’t give up easily and I’m very stubborn!  And this trait of being stubborn and has been a big part part of my success so far.

Anyhow… Back to the subject at hand.  I think the thing that caused my shift in thinking was the fact that every week, I had to prepare work for my virtual assistant to do, and to be honest I didn’t want to look stupid and like I didn’t know what I was doing.  So I started to focus. I had to decide what path I wanted my business take, so that I could use my worker in an efficient manner.

I started looking back at what works for me, and big surprise it was almost always good keyword focused content and back linking. I mean DUH! Who would have thought, right?

So, that is what I had my outsourcer start working on. It is also what I started working on more of myself.

Because of this focus, I started looking at what I could do to grow my business instead of how I can make money online right now. The difference this has made has been huge. Here are a few of the ways that both my business and I have benefited.

1. I am much happier with the product that I’m putting out. It’s always been very important to me to provide value to customers, and building sites like I do now that are focused on quality keyword content instead of what ever “trick or technique” will get them to rank in Google makes me much happier.
2. My sites are ranking better. One of the things that I decided to do when I switched from a “make money online” philosophy to the “build my business” philosophy is to really learn SEO, or search engine optimization.  Since I wanted to make my money through natural Google rankings this was vital.  The difference between what I was doing before and what I’m doing now is that I am building slates in a way that the search engines like, but I’m not trying to game the system or use temporary loopholes.
3. I’m making more money. At this point, my income is growing faster than it ever has before. I think a lot of that is because, I’m focusing on what works for me and I’m doing what I enjoy.

My final thought is, if you are struggling in with making money online you been at it for while and know what works for you and what doesn’t, the thing you probably need to change the most is your focus. You need to stop looking for the next best thing since sliced bread, and start looking for what is going to build your business in the long-term.  At least that what that’s what worked for me. I don’t think you need to hire somebody to get there, that was just my catalyst.

To your success!

Heather

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