Utilize Core vs. Mechanics to Build Your Business

Separate the core and the mechanics of your business and you’ll see you have too much on your plate. Learn how outsourcing can take over the mechanics while you focus on your core business.

Pete Williams is the real deal. He runs real-world businesses that generate millions and puts to work the strategies he teaches. After years of the drudge of common internet marketing strategies, he’s busting out of the mold to find real results. He’s cleaning up the world of internet marketing in a new way.

He agreed to write this piece for me to share with all of you. I hope you find it as valuable as I do.

As a business owner, it’s difficult to take a step back and really look at how your business is functioning. It can be even more difficult to change your role in it. I’ve learned over the years that to truly be successful, you have to delegate out the little stuff so you can focus on the overall vision. This is the idea of core vs. mechanics. Mechanics are those everyday operational tasks like bookkeeping, invoices, and basic customer service. The core of your business is marketing, product development, and networking.

The Mechanics of Your Business

Let’s take a look at exactly what the mechanics of your business is. To do that, you need to separate your core business from your mechanics business. Let’s look at businesses that utilize tools, for example baker, plumber, graphic designer, etc. In this case, you have a core skill set and love what you do. As a business owner, it’s also important to love and understand marketing, PR and other business essentials. If all you want to do is bake cakes, you need to bring someone in to deal with those business essentials to help you become and stay successful.

Mechanics are items that are repeatable. Things you can write a system to. Let’s expand on the bakery business. While you have a level of creativity, there are systems you’ve developed. These include shopping for ingredients, inventory the items left at closing time, cleaning the shop, closing up at the end of the day, even your everyday recipes have a system another employee can help you with.

Let’s look at some of the other tasks that may be eating up your time. How long do you spend at your desk in the mornings answering email, posting to your Facebook page, updating other social media and looking for forums to post in? A lot! These are all things that can be delegated and then finalized by you.

The Core of Your Business

The core of your business is the tasks that you need to be doing in order for your brand to expand. These tasks include marketing concepts, product development, direct interaction with the client, branding and more. Most of the core business happens in the ‘before’ unit. This is where the marketing, quotes, and sales take place. Think of everything that happens before the actual delivery of the product and these are your core tasks.

The During & After Units

The ‘during’ unit is the actual production of the product. This can be a core, mechanic or something in between. It really depends on how hands-on your products need to be. Let’s go back to the bakery. You are the creator and decorator, so the product really comes from you. But, maybe you can delegate the mechanics of the cake creation. You can hand a recipe to an employee to bake the cake.

The ‘after’ unit is the actual delivery of the product, the payment process and follows up with a client. This is mechanics. Hire a driver; send a completed invoice and a customer survey card.

The Numbers From Afar

You need to be engaged with the finances of your company, but you don’t need to hover over the numbers. The importance of a bookkeeper is high to take much of the mechanics off your desk. They take on the task of handling invoices, collecting payments, executing payroll and organizing your expenses.

All you need are reports at the end of your day showing sales, invoices paid, expenses and where to write the checks. This will save a ton of time that can be better used in the core areas of your business.

Geo-Arbitrage & Your Business

The word outsourcing has almost become a cliché with the surge of internet marketing. Cliché as it sounds, it works. Outsourcing can help you remove the mechanical tasks from your desk, provide jobs, and save you money. Outsourcing isn’t just for online businesses, big brands and storefronts alike can benefit from bringing on external employees to help with the mechanics of your company.

Let’s take a moment to look at geo-arbitrage. This is where you are able to outsource those extremely mechanical tasks. You can provide a good job to people out of the country at a strong wage and, because of the exchange rate, are able to do it at a low-cost to your business. This can be done with low skill jobs and a strong mechanical system. This is where order processing and email filtering comes in. When your company gets an email from a client it can be read over by an outsource employee, they assess if they can answer the question (through FAQ’s and other training you’ve provided them) or if it needs to be forwarded to your office for a more personal and in-depth answer.

Outsourcing may also bring about the idea that a stranger is handling your business affairs. What if they don’t represent your company the way you want? What if it isn’t done right? The answer is: you are only assigning out the mechanics of your business; the tasks you have systems in place for. The book Getting Things Done is a great example of how you can push aside the little tasks to focus on making forward movements in your business.

Further Breakdown of Mechanics

Let’s take forum posting as an example on how to break down your mechanics into even smaller fragments. Regardless of the business you’re in, it’s important to utilize online marketing platforms to get your name out there. An active involvement in industry forums is a great way to build your market leadership, generate interest in your business and make valuable connections with other business owners. You may feel you need to do all the posting, but that can eat up precious time you could be using to build your core business.

Outsourcing forum posting moves that mechanical task off your desk while still meeting the need. There are numerous steps to forum posting. Before you can even think about posting you have to research the forums that best fit your industry, products and services. Then you need to scan through and find the posts that you want to comment on. Lastly, you have to think about and clearly define the comment you want to share. Is it important for you to be involved in that process? Absolutely! You want to represent your brand in the best way possible, but consider outsourcing all the research involved. If you were presented with a list by your virtual assistant (VA) at the end of the day of the top 5 relevant forum posts questions, it would cut your forum posting time down massively. You can even take it a step further. Visit those 5 threads, record an audio response, and then get your VA to do the transcription, cleaning up and posting.

Consider your accounting team. Are they spending time inputting invoices when they could be creating a more efficient system or giving personal attention to clients? The idea of delegation goes all the way down the tree. Ask your management team to take a look at their departments. Do they feel bogged down with mechanical tasks that can free them up to work more efficiently? This is an opportunity for you to improve your business.

The key takeaway is to step back from your business responsibilities and take a look at the core business and the mechanics. Are you spending too much time on the mechanics? If so, you’re neglecting the core. Outsourcing is merely a form of extreme delegating. Apply the same idea of clearing your plate to that of your key departments.