Outsourcing Tears and Fears and Meeting the Challenge

It’s hard to believe it’s almost 2 weeks since I last posted. But it’s been a real “head down” time for me. I’ve had my son to get sorted for the new term and his Woodcraft camp, wedding dressings to peruse with my daughter, friends and relatives staying and re-engagement with the whole oustourcing thing.

So, here I am again in my favourite cafe, skinny cappuccinno and ham and mozorella panini ordered, ready to write. If I’d stayed at home the tasks of the day would have taken over and it would have been an even longer gap between posts.

So, where did I leave off?

. . . I was off to find 20 likely candidates to email.

This time I foccused most on English language skills. I sent 20 emails and received 11 responses, 2 of which were to say they were no employed elsewhere. After some emails back and forth where I was looking primarily for examples of content they’d written, I chose 2 people from the remaining 9 to take on on a trial basis. John Jonas of Replace Myself recommends taking on 3 to 4 with a view to finding 1 good candiate. But I’m glad I only chose 2. Even that was a lot to manage.

One was primarily a writer (I’ll call her Elaine) and I had most hopes for her. The second (I’ll call her Ann) had some SEO experience as well so I set her off with a 5 Day Traffic Blitz project from Web2Mayhem.

After 2 days I could see that that Ann was going to be a better choice. They were both very keen and both worked hard but Ann followed directions more precisely and actually had a better standard of English. To be fair, Elaine’s English was very good compared to other writers I have tried over the years but I found myself editing more of it.

I’m the first to admit that my standards are very high and I was tempted to go with “good enough” and keep Elaine on but my gut was telling me not to. That opened a whole ‘nother can of worms.

I felt really, really bad telling Elaine I didn’t want to keep her on when I knew she was desparate for the job and had tried her best.

I normally deal with this type of situation by coming up with a load of rational reasons as to why I should keep her on and then doing so. This just makes matters worse as I’m really just delaying the inevitable.

This is an old pattern of behaviour that doesn’t work.

I could see the most likely result of ignoring my feelings now would be that I would have to tell her later, anyway, that I didn’t want to employ her. And it would feel even worse, having raised her hopes and I would have grown more and more frustrated.

I was surprised how hard this was for me and ended up becoming very tearful over the whole thing. But, better out than in!

The next time I have to do this it will be less emotional and the time after that, easier again. So I feel I’ve made a big step forward with this.

I’m never going to have a successful business if I can’t make the hard decisions. And, of course, that is also true for you.

Although, what’s hard for me may be easy for you, whatever your personal challenges are, they will need to be faced and taken on.

But, ultimately, this is good. This is what makes us feel alive. It’s a bit scarey at first but there’s such a sense of achievement and movement that it’s well worth doing.

So, if anyone needs a bit of a support with a challenge they’re feeling stuck with, please feel free to contact me and I’ll do my best to help you tackle it.

Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing Coaching, Outsourcing, overcoming fear, Success Mindset, Web 2 Mayhem

No related posts.