E-myth Revisited

You just sold me I went to Amazon.com and bought the Bob Morrison book, it was a steal, Postage and everything just about $8.00. Can't beat that. Can't wait to read it. Thanks, Friends.

Originally Posted by Ankesh

I've been juggling 2 very promising new big projects since a few months now. I don't want to give up one of them - although working on both together is delaying them both...

Yeah, I kinda know the feeling.

Originally Posted by Ankesh

Hiring some one to read my emails. I usually spend 1-2 hours everyday - when I work - on emails. How do you outsource emails when all of the emails are not related to any specific project? Its a scary thought - training someone and teaching them how to answer questions for 6 different projects. At the same time, its not a job I can outsource to more than one person...

Where are all the emails coming from? Are a majority of them from a specific website of yours? Are a lot of the questions the same? If so, there are a lot of programs out there for support ticketing systems.

I'm sure you've seen them. Users can select from a list of topics and ask their question about that topic. They are then sent an auto reply answering questions about that topic and asked "did this answer your question?"

If yes - the ticket is closed.

If no - the ticket is routed to whoever you specify for that topic.

If your emails are coming in from a variety of sources, it would obviously be much more difficult and I don't see an obvious solution.

Originally Posted by Ankesh

Hiring a project manager. Right now, I over look the day to day work. And supervise 2 people working for me. But would like someone else to take this over. The problem is transitioning - how do you hire a CEO without giving away a lot of control - when your company is so small?

Why do you want the control? Control causes headaches. I used to think I needed to control everything. Now I think totally opposite. I try to give that control away to people smarter than me (not hard to find) whenever I can.

I use Basecamp to check in on things whenever I want to and I can see what's going on with all of my stuff on one screen, any time.

I know you've seen Basecamp, but probably only very few things that it can do. It's the best online project manager in existance....

http://www.basecamphq.com/

I've got three businesses that run on one Basecamp account.

You can assign different people or companies to different projects and give people different levels of access.

For example - each business only sees their own stuff and is not able to see what the others are doing.

All the updates and project statuses are posted there for me to see.

My lawyer and accountant have access to all projects, but only to contact whoever they need to. People that don't need to see that stuff don't have access to it.

If we set up with a new vendor, I can add that vendor to the project so they can communicate with whoever they need to but not have access to things they don't need to see.

It's really cool and a great way to keep all communications in one place and sorted in a logical and easy to follow way.

Jim

Ankesh, you mention about things backing up and having more to do if you take a day off. That tells me that you may need to backtrack a bit and do a flow sheet analysis to find and eliminate the bottlenecks. It probably doesn't have to be ultra sophisticated since you do have a system, of sorts, in place, but you do need to take note of WHAT needs to be done, in what order, and by whom.

If things are bottlenecking then one of several things are true:

1. One person or portion of the system has too much to handle or is not up to the task so it needs to be looked at and possibly broken down a bit. Also consider some additional training as appropriate.

2. The tasks are not clearly defined so people doing them do not know exactly where their priority tasks are coming from and when, and how to handle them and then hand them off to the right person/department when completed.

3. If you are the source of the bottleneck (which I suspect in one instance at least since you have extra to do when you return after a day off) then you need to get busy and train someone else to do what you'd ordinarily do so you don't have to double time things to take a day off.

No matter what the problem, if things are bottlenecking, a flow chart will help you sort out the problem. If you see a place with 5 source inputs and only 1 output, you have a potential bottleneck in most cases.

A small example: if a machine can cap l bottle per round and the bottles are coming in 3 per round, there's an obvious imbalance there and changes need to be made. Same thing with people and tasks.

Hope this is some help.

Sandi Bowman

Sandi Knows what he is talking about, Flow charts were use by Joseph E. Cossman to expain lot of his course. They work for bottlenecks and other things.

You should have detaiil plans for all the jobs that people do in binders. This is in EMyth the book that some think I did not read. Every one in business should read it once or twice a year or even every month. He even wrote a book about contracts and doctors. Did you even go to a doctor and have to wait and wait. Yes I know you have. He had a great plan for them. But how many doctors would do it? They are part of the emyth problem.