How To Automate Traffic Generation With West Loh And Tyrone Shum
by Tyrone on August 13, 2010 - 8 comments
I am delighted to be able to talk and share experiences again with West Loh whom I’ve had a podcast interview with last year where we talked about living a fulfilled and passionate life. In this video podcast interview West asks me about automating traffic generation through outsourcing, which is something I knew a lot of people wanted to find out about.
So if you would like to learn more about my secrets to leveraging and automating my traffic generation, for this blog, then join me and West in this video:
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Transcription Of Today’s Video
West: Okay folks, welcome to the call today and I’ve got Tyrone Shum on the call which I’m really excited about. Welcome Tyrone!
Tyrone: Thanks West, thanks for having me on the call today.
West: Now, the reason why I got Tyrone on the call today is because one, he’s making some serious lifts and downs in the outsourcing arena and that’s actually in the area where I’ve talked to people in the past how to find people online and have people work for them. Having discovered Tyrone’s work, I’ve actually learned a hell of a lot in Tyrone as well and I think what he has to offer has kind of enhanced what the old literature on outsourcing and automation has been all about. Today we wanted to talk about creating a lifestyle business rather than just an Internet business and maybe focus on some of the things that you can automate. This call will be ended to people who are looking to get into it but also it will add some value to people who already currently are doing it and looking at streamlining their processes. So Tyrone just give us a really quick piece for people who have known or heard of you before, a really quick rundown on your story and how you come to be where you are.
Tyrone: Cool. All right well, quick story was I’m from Sydney Australia. I started back in 2005 with my own first Internet-based business in Dragonboating. It’s just an E-commerce-based store and we had exclusive distribution of Dragonboat products all across Australia. For people who don’t know what a Dragonboat is, it’s where 20 people sits inside boat with paddles and just paddle down and race against each other. It happens pretty much every Chinese New Year and monthly all across Australia and these events are very big with a very, very tight niche there so if you haven’t done it before, hop in and test it out. I’m pretty sure it’s one of local talent here in Australia otherwise, it’s pretty sure it’s also big over in the U.S. and Europe as well. That was my business which I’ve sold and I started Internet marketing or Internet-based businesses after doing that as well just for my experience but prior to that time before I jump into starting my own blog and membership site and got into lot more details about teaching outsourcing people, I was struggling inside the Dragonboat business. As it was successfully making a six-figure income, I was working 60+ hours a week and because of that, I had to try and find a way to get out of it. I knew it because the Dragonboat business was a system and it was just something that I could easily outsource and find people to run it. When I did discover Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Work Week, that led me to look at strategizing my business and turn it into automated business so that I could outsource work as little as I can. It broke that business down from about 60 hours a week when I was working it down to about 10 hours a week. What I had done was outsource a lot of customer support which is taking a majority of my time, handling and dealing with all the sales inquiries and also packing and dispatching all the paddles across.
West: So the foundations were already there Tyrone and you were pretty good at this.
Tyrone: I was recently good at this. I was making a decent figure from my business and also having everything running but I was the one working, doing all the work but when I start to automate it and get it outsourced, I realized wow, how much of the time saving and leverage I could do for myself. That’s where I decided okay, people are asking me how do I do it and how do I set it up so I decided to teach people. I sold the Dragonboat business and started teaching people about outsourcing this as where I’ve really focused on where my passion in.
West: Wow, I guess that’s one of the first lessons already on the call. It’s basically you’ve listened to what people want and decided that it was a need and you catered to that need. You did create something in and tried to flag it to whoever. It’s definitely a demand there so tell us about the transition Tyrone from your Dragonboat business to applying outsourcing to your online businesses. So now you run a blog as well and you’ve got some other online ventures as the Dragonboat at the time.
Tyrone: Yup, well what I did was as I have little bit more time on my hands, I am working only 10 hours a week, I wanted to fill it up with something more interesting and more exciting as much as I design my lifestyle around that and have lot more freetime. I thought it’ll be fun to actually teach people as well and get into blogging because I wanted to share with people what I do as well. Interestingly enough, when I started sharing about these things, that’s when I started getting people subscribing to my blog and also checking it out, reading and following what I was doing. Then that’s where I created and got the demand for people for me to create the course Mass Outsource Mastermind which is teaching people to outsource their business and automate it and live the 4-Hour Work Week if you choose to decide that you want it. That’s where I really started it off from and then from there, I’ve grown my subscribers and readership between to about anywhere around 5,000+ subscribers at the moment and what I’ve noticed as well is I decided to implement few different systems like affiliate marketing and doing a lot of stuffs like that and been getting a lot of huge success with that as well. There are a lot of things that I’ve done but a lot of them are automated and all my virtual team basically once I’ve done a content production, it goes straight through to them and they post it for me, and have all these systems automated and distribute it for me and so forth and manage my blog.
West: Great, fantastic. Let’s sort of start from the beginning Tyrone, if someone’s looking at making the transition to outsourcing or maybe they sort of started or dabbled into it, what’s the first kind of strategic thing should I be doing or what kind of things should I be doing in order to look at a foundation for their new reenergized business that works hopefully without them?
Tyrone: Yeah, well first thing I learned just from experience. I’m going to talk about from my experience for this was that I wish I outsourced from the beginning before I even started the business. I realized at the beginning yes, some people may be starting out and they go, “Okay, I don’t have much cash and bit strapped to invest money into hiring people…” but it’s actually more work investment because what happens is it speeds up the process and it can grow your business much faster.
West: It’s a huge mistake isn’t it? Look, I’m going to admit that I’m guilty of that as well.
Tyrone: Don’t worry…
West: And, a lot of the people that I talk to now come to me and they say, “West, I’d like to start right now but I’ve been going for so long. I don’t know what to outsource and I don’t know where to start.” They just keep spending their time on small things…
Tyrone: And doing it all themselves.
West: Yeah, just trying to save a couple of hundred bucks and it’s cost them thousands.
Tyrone: Exactly, I’ll give you an example. When I first started the Dragonboat business, I thought I’ll just spend my time to creating the website and I actually dealt in program to PHP and even my background I used in Computer Science, I graduated Computer Science degree in UNSW. I did have the technical knowledge but the thing was it’s never ending. When I started creating the Dragonboat website, upload it and set it all up and things like that, I end up spending all my time doing all the technical side of things and I didn’t focus much on generating income from the business so that helped me back for good 3 to 4 months or so because all I was doing is developing the website, getting it out there and just trying to make it work. Whereas when I decide to hire someone who’s a programmer full-time, you can imagine that it only took him about a week to do the whole thing that I could do. I’m not an expert at PHP programming or computer, website building, WordPress and all that, I have the knowledge but I’m not an expert. Obviously, it took me about 3 to 4 months to learn and also to do it, whereas this programmer I hired, it took him a week. So imagine the time that I could have saved over those 3 months where those 3 months, I could have been spending the time and generating additional income, sales and so forth and outsource it. It cost me currently still $500 a month full-time for a programmer and I could have made easily $10-20,000 within a month just from selling products and so forth.
West: Exactly.
Tyrone: That was the biggest, biggest mistake I learned was to do it all myself and the first thing I usually topped with “outsource first” is if you’re running an online business, do all the technical stuff and get that all outsourced. If you decide to create a website or blog, just get it outsourced first, find someone to work for you even part-time just to setup your blog, setup your website. Even if you look at my blog right now, the Tyroneshum.com, I didn’t do any of that. I got someone to design the graphics, build it and put it all together. I did some and taught changes that I like but I didn’t physically go in there and program them myself. That was all completed within about 2 weeks so it’s pretty quick.
West: Well, I have to say pretty similar story with me Tyrone is that if you look at the history of my blog, it actually stood very static and very simple for about 3 or 4 years.
Tyrone: I think I noticed that.
West: Yeah, until I decided to get a full-time guy and just within 2 weeks, it was transformed and it looks fantastic that is something I couldn’t have done. The other point that I wanted to ask you is that people have said you know, “If I hire someone full-time, I don’t have enough work for them. That’s a big problem to me because I don’t want to always be feeling like I always have to be on someone’s back.” I don’t know about you but in my experience, when someone comes on board, there’s always stuff to do. Isn’t it?
Tyrone: Definitely, you may think that there’s not enough stuff to do. Well what I usually do is I firstly start off maybe if you feel that there’s not enough stuff to do, get the things that you think that you’re currently doing is non-productive. As I said at the beginning, website development, programming, handling customer support, those were the things that I outsource first to my full-time programmers and also my virtual assistants. Even just by doing that, you’ll realize that it does take a lot of time even though you may think that it only take me 2 hours a day to do all that, but when you get it outsourced, it does free up that time. Then, once they’ve learned those systems you’ve got them in place, and you feel that they’re completing it say, instead of 40 hours a week or they’re probably doing it 10 hours a week then those 30 hours a week, you could give them a full training course as a turn-key solution. I’ve given one of mine to do turn-key solution to do affiliate marketing for me. From there, she’ll go out and do the research, compile the content and send it over to my programmer who’ll compile the website for her, and then once it’s done she’ll setup all the rest of the systems to be able to promote and market other people’s products. I’ve made commissions through that, and I didn’t have to do any of the work to implement it and she did all the work as well.
West: So at the very basic, they can just pay their own wage from doing what you tell them to do.
Tyrone: That’s right, exactly. And, that in itself is already enough to cover for themselves. If you can imagine just hiring them for say, $300, $400 a month, then they’re making that minimum $400 a month plus doing the work you’re giving them on top of that, you’re actually on the surface. It’s uncommon for people not to be able to make money just from having someone doing the work because instead of you doing it, you’re getting someone else to do it, so that’s the power of outsourcing.
West: One other thing is you can leverage them. I mean if these people are paying themselves off, you can grow and you can grow quickly it’s not going to be a big drain on your cashflow.
Tyrone: Exactly, so that’s the biggest thing I recommend. Start finding someone at the beginning even though if you feel that you can’t do it, just borrow some money at the beginning just to start even. I’m pretty sure you’ve got at least 3-400 bucks just to put aside for hiring someone for the first month or two anyway. That’s how I found where I would probably recommend doing in starting at first anyway.
West: Absolutely. The other point I wanted to ask you Tyrone is you mentioned the word “turn-key” solution before and that concept that I think is pretty awesome because it basically doesn’t involve you and you can do whatever you want but intentionally when we explore this part, this is where you sat down, looked at the concept that makes money, put together a strategy, put together the tasks that they have to do, so you do the conceptual work and the brain, mastermind behind it. Then, you just basically give it to them on a platter and they just do their thing. Is that it?
Tyrone: Exactly. Well, it counts back down to 80/20 principle which is the Prieto’s Law where you should be spending at most 20% of your time to be able to think and create those concepts and strategies and once they put it together, let them do the 80% of the work which is where the Prieto’s Law comes in. Which allows us to be able to go okay, we’re just here as being the knowledge thinkers and the people who create these ideas and then all they’re doing is doing the action or taking action on completing the work for the things we’ve done.
West: That’s pretty cool coming from a tech guy! This is a revelation to me from someone who studied Computer Science.
Tyrone: Well, I’ll be honest with you. When I was in UNSW, I didn’t pay too much attention in the Computer Science classes. All my lectures that I did or I went, I did one in Physical Education which I love about health and sport, and the rest of them are Management subjects that I did. I did Business Management as one of my lectures and also one in franchising, and also I did another one in Human Resources Management as well. So those are the subjects that I’ve topped and got lots of distinctions in taking those. Whereas in my Computer Science subjects and computer programming, probably I got passes and stuff like that. You can imagine where my passions were and where I think I had something enough from.
West: Absolutely. So when are we going to see some bodybuilding pics of you on your blog Tyrone?
Tyrone: I don’t know about that one. I was even thinking about it actually, I was thinking, “Showtime: Bodybuilding with Tyrone Shum”
West: Wow, you can tell of anything with anything about these days aren’t you?
Tyrone: I don’t know, it’s been too revealing by request.
West: Fair enough, fair enough. I completely understand. So moving back to the automation and creating a lifestyle business. I wanted to talk now about some tools that you use because you’ve just made a post I’ve noticed on your blog and for people who haven’t seen it yet, go and check out the videos. Also, you’ve sent a broadcast email that has pretty much the links to all the tools that you use, but in this call if people haven’t read the blog or the email yet, let’s chat some of your private tools that you use in your business, for your staff, and things that really work that really completely free up your time and possible a worthy investment in taking on. I’ll share some of mine later if there’s time.
Tyrone: The first tool that I use pretty much on a daily basis just to check out and also to manage the team and making sure that things are running is the project management system. The project management system is key to any business and the system that I use is called ActiveCollab. You can buy that once-off or you can pay a monthly fee. It’s $400-$500…
West: 400 something. Yeah.
Tyrone: Yeah, $400 something for one-off license. You can install it on your server and maintain and keep it all for you so all your content are protected and so forth. But the key behind that system is that it allows not just one but multiple people to be able to login to the system and check out the projects that you have there. You can upload all like hundreds of hundreds of projects in there if you have that many running at the same time, and you have multiple staff managing, running and completing tasks. What I like about the project management system is that they’ve got Milestones in there, you can setup Tickets, you can also setup Discussion in there, you can also setup checklists so they can follow step by step on what needs to be done. As I said at the beginning, we’re really the thinkers and knowledge-processing people behind all this. So if you’ve setup your projects step by step and have them correctly trained in there with all the systems in place and the videos inside it, they can easily just hop in there, follow the systems and just do their work and complete the tasks.
West: Yeah, absolutely because I was actually watching some of the videos in Tyrone’s course which is fantastic course in the zone right? If you get a chance, definitely you check it out. One area, you put the passwords in and the logins so they don’t have to ask you for that and you put in all your training videos which you can use Jing Project to shoot free style or Camtasia if you want to do it more elaborated or in Mac you use Screenflow. Once you’ve done the work once, you know whoever you hire can just come in, log in, watch and off you go.
Tyrone: Absolutely. That’s what I found as being the most key and the crucial component of running an automated business. Without that, I can’t imagine myself being able to email them and having to communicate with a system like Google Docs or something like that. It just centralizes everything. I’ve had numerous members ask me “How did you manage to let them and feel free to access all your logins and so forth?” I think the thing is you just got to put trust into these people at the beginning. You get to also see where you’re going to hire. The people I hire is mostly directly from the Philippines, and they’re very loyal, very honest type of people and very, very hardworking type of people. So far in my experience, I’ve been very lucky and fortunate that they haven’t done anything that has been dishonest or wrong to my business that’s why I trust them 100% or 200% in my business. That’s why all my login information, private data, everything is all inside the system so that they don’t have to come back to me and ask me “Tyrone, can I get access to this, can I get access to that?” Otherwise, don’t want to just bug you down and delay a lot of your projects and moving forward to growing your business. Just want to add as well, one really good tool that I’ve been using a lot and also my virtual staff have been using is called LastPass. If you don’t want to store your information inside your project management system, you can use a software called LastPass which gives you access and also your staff access to the passwords on a secure server. If that’s something that you care for, you check that one out. It’s on LastPass.com
West: Awesome. I was going to say the same thing and haven’t had any problems with it. I think you’ve got to be smart with your hiring process. You’ve got to get them to jump through some hoops and you’ve got to test them.
Tyrone: Yep.
West: The people who come through for you, you’ve done the best that you can. If you blindly hire, then you know you’re asking for trouble.
Tyrone: Yeah exactly, you guarantee trouble. You just get to test them. Give them a run usually within the first two weeks or so, once you’ve hired someone you’ll know if they’re right for your business or not. If it’s not right, move on to the next one and just have to move on as quick as you can but once you’ve get them on board and they’re part of your team, nurture them, look after them, make sure you have lots of communication with them at the beginning, train them well and then just really give them lots of encouragement support. Everyday, when I get something back from them, I always thank them and say that they’re doing an excellent job and also that they’re doing excellent work. I always just compliment them and just give them a lot of encouragement and I find that they grow a lot faster and also they’re really committed to your business. That’s really a key-point I think.
West: And I find when you do that, because I give bonuses as well, they actually take more initiative and when you’re supposedly haven’t had time because you’re having a holiday and you haven’t had time throwing a few more things in the project management system, they’ve already done this and this. You’re like hey great job, keep it up!
Tyrone: Compliments always take you further so just remember they can never ever get to me in compliments. Always give them a good high-five, or just a nice compliment by saying thanks to them and keep up the great work always works.
West: Definitely. So tell us about how you kind of structured your week and possibly your interaction with your staff. I know Tyrone you have many interests outside of the Internet and I know you love what you do online but you also tell us before you’ve been bodybuilding, you like playing sport, you like going to places and experiencing new cultures that sorts of stuff and obviously you need time to do that. So tell us how you’ve managed to get that balance because many Internet marketers and people working online, they really don’t have that balance and it’s a skill and art itself.
Tyrone: Okay, let me just start off with I tried to stay healthy and as fit as possible and that’s something that it’s crucial to success because looking after yourself, eating right, training well and staying healthy basically by doing exercises is a key. I’m usually a pretty early bird type of person and I usually meet my gym buddy in the gym to train pretty early. I’m usually down by about 7 o’clock in the morning training for an hour and a bit. After I do that, that’s my first session just to get my energy levels up and really get started on my day. I’m kind of having bit cozy breakfast and I’m not doing much first thing in the morning. I’m kind of lazy around and watch a bit of TV and afterwards I probably hop on and start around 10 o’clock just to catch up with virtual staff to see what they’re doing. I hop on to the project management system and just look up and see what the progress is and if there’s anything that needs to be done urgently or they need to follow up, I’ll just save it if it’s been done and followed up. The majority of time, I don’t have to worry much because they do follow up all that for me and I just leave them on their hands.
West: So you inspect what you expect but you don’t get your hands dirty in the technical stuff. Beautiful.
Tyrone: Yep exactly, there’s no need for me to do that because that’s why you’re hiring them for. And, really most of my times I’ve spent time building relationships with people like yourself, and other Internet marketers, bloggers online and also I love to do interviews with people. Just really socialize with people to catch up and to see what things are going on. From there, onwards, I just produce content. It’s pretty flexible in my schedule, it’s not like rock-solid stuck in there where I have to go at 10 o’clock I get to do this, or 11 o’clock I have to do that. I only probably do that about 3-4 hours a day by choice that I wanted, because that’s what I enjoy doing. When you do something that you enjoy and you’re passionate about, it just becomes natural and you just have fun doing it. It does not feel like work for me, other people say that it’s work well for them it’s work. But for me, it’s just something that I love doing and I love helping people and I love teaching, I love sharing with people what I do. Then rest of the time we plan holidays. We plan to go to Bali in the next month or so, there’s a lot of things that we’ve got up and coming. Been just doing a lot of chilling out, catching on my hobbies that I enjoy doing as well.
West: Definitely because a launch especially is pretty time expensive isn’t it?
Tyrone: It is, it is. I think the things is you’ll put on the hard yards at the beginning and you make sure you have the systems in place. Once the systems are in place, it’s very easy for anyone to follow. For example, producing content from my blog, you might think that I do it everyday but I don’t. I spend probably once a month and I produce the content in bulk and just get it all done, and once it’s all done, I get my virtual assistants to get it posted for me on those days. I basically have a calendar which I put into place and that calendar lists out exactly which days I want these posts to be going on. All they do is they upload, produce the content and syndicate the content online for me and they manage the comments and so forth for me too.
West: I actually do the same thing with WordPress. There’s a scheduling tool where you basically you may get your guide as you schedule in the content. I’ve got content on my blog coming up until I think December this year.
Tyrone: Fantastic.
West: I don’t have to work on any more content until December this year if I walked away. That’s one of the automation tools that I really like but I’m sure there’s another ones that you use as well for marketing.
Tyrone: There is. There is something that I’m going to mention as well. It’s great to be able to use WordPress for scheduling for text posts and potential audio posts but for video posting it’s a little bit difficult because YouTube, Viddler haven’t had a scheduling tools. To overcome that, I use an online tool called TubeMogul and what I can do is I can upload and majority of my posts are videos so everything that you see is mostly in video online for my blog. I use TubeMogul and I upload all the videos up there but it doesn’t get sent out all on one day. It gets sent out on a scheduled time or scheduled date according to your calendar. That allows you to syndicate the content at the time or the date that you need it to be. If you use that tool, you can distribute to YouTube, Blip.tv, Vimeo, Viddler, all those big services, you can get the content out there distributed very quickly as well. It doesn’t cost anything, it’s free actually to that on a monthly basis as well. So that’s what I use to distribute content and have it syndicated out to lots of networks so people can check out the content too.
West: Sure. A great idea is to teach your virtual staff how to use the automated software so you name it on how to do it yourself.
Tyrone: Well yeah, I was going to say that as well. I’ve got the training materials and I’m not giving it if I haven’t already done it. I have already trained them how to do it, it’s already in the project management system. I’ve got if I remember correctly, 5-step process which they just follow step by step how to do; they take the content from the video site TubeMogul, click on the day to distribute it then after that they’ve got the audio file which they grabbed from Amazon for me. The transcript sorry, was previously done because that’s something that they have to do and they just schedule the post for me. Once it’s done they manage the content posting for me. Actually that post that you just saw that came out that was really scheduled previously and I forgot that I’ve done that and you saw it. Thanks for reminding.
West: No, it’s great when you log into your own blog and there’s new content up there and you’ve completely forgotten about.
Tyrone: It can be a problem actually sometimes because you go, “I thought I did that 6 months ago.”
West: Yeah but it’s definitely a good sign that what you’re doing is automated and you know, you’re free to live your life out however you want and you’re pretty comfortable that it’s going to carry on. Those are really good tools Tyrone and you can plug the same content for articles, with article distribution with lots of article distribution software, and there’s lots of automated article rewriting software particularly because Google and other sites tend to penalize duplicate content so you want to give it a different spin. I like to get my virtual staff to use the automated software and just check it, give it a human flavor so for me, English is important when hiring someone. For the most part of the Philippines, I found that English are pretty good but there are obviously people who specialize in it more than sort of the college graduates which Tyrone recommends staying away. I’m nothing against college graduates, we’re all college graduate ones but if you’re looking for fast results, you don’t want to be de-experienced for those college grads. You want them who’ve already had their experiences before they come working for you.
Tyrone: It saves you time to retrain them again because if they’re fresh out of college, you’ll spend a lot more time training them than someone who’s already had bit of experience and also who’ve worked in a workforce situation. They already know what a schedule’s like whereas with a college grad they might be going “It’s my life and I can do whatever I want.” so sometimes work is not getting done properly and that’s the reason why.
West: Then there are some online PHP type of automation programs that I’m seeing like for example the pop-up on Tyrone’s page and the “invite your friends” sort of viral invites, all these tools kind of save you tons of time doing it automatically. If you were to email each of that people and ask them to invite a friend, that would just take you ages but there are tools that we have at a disposal that we could just give to our developers for example just to implement and it’s all automated.
Tyrone: And that’s the beautiful thing. A lot of things here because WordPress is such a widely used system out there, they’ve got so many free plugins that you can just install, get it up and running straightaway. For example the TweetMeme plugin and the FaceBook share button, and also all these other excellent tools out there, it just automates everything for you. So as soon as a blog post comes up online, it automatically tweets onto your Twitter account, sends it to your FaceBook and you don’t have to physically have someone there posting it. Actually talking about that as well, what you need to do before you do hire someone as a tip to let you know how to streamline and get automation much faster, is look at the systems you currently have in place and see what you can automate with the technology and system without having to hire someone to do it first. If you can do that, it would also save you ample amount of time getting people to do. That’s what I think I also learn as well was with my Dragonboat business. There’s a lot of manual processing that I used to do until I got someone to program and create a software and automate it, it just blew my away that I could automatically send invoices to people without me doing it myself.
West: And one other program brings to mind Tyrone is a Macro program where basically you can automate any tasks down on a computer. Correct me if I’m wrong Tyrone but it remembers sort of the pixel that the cursor is on the screen. It clicks in sequence that the sequence teaches you to click. Anything that you have done online, you can schedule and it can remember the cursor clicks. It’s basically anything that you do online can be automated to a certain extent. Obviously I always have someone to check it later, you know if you’re using it to paste stuff, if you’re pasting it for $10,000 extra that’s going to cost you so you’re not going to do that. Sort of things like that.
Tyrone: Yeah I think if you can actually implement something like that, like Macros and so forth, those things will really, really save you a lot of time. Imagine if you sat there and you got someone to click through there 10 hours a day just clicking through to post articles and so forth that you can have a system to do that automatically for you. Wow, you could have saved yourself a lot of money too.
West: Absolutely, one of the things I’ve just done recently is I bought an extra computer. I don’t ever intend to use it. It’s used for 2 things, it’s used for automating tasks that I don’t want happening on my working computer and it’s also used when my virtual staff need to login remotely. If I have a big video that I get edited or big video file, on my end I don’t want to upload 2GB DVD video so I have my video on my computer and they basically edit and upload it from there. I give them access, I teach them how to do it and that computer is pretty much for my virtual staff to login once they had problems with getting in cPanel from their IP. When their IP is having problem with getting blocked from my webhost, we just go through all these hassle and I’m going to login to cPanel from here. By the way I use Teamviewer and LogMeIn for that, both free software that work fantastic. Teamviewer if it’s only a one-off login, LogMeIn if you want to get permanent access and they can just login whenever they want. The only catch is you have to leave your computer on all the time, obviously you’ll not get access to a computer that’s switched off.
Tyrone: Of course, that’s a really good idea. That’s something new that I just learned from you today. Actually that’s not bad to setup a separate computer to do this specific type of stuff. Yeah, if you can give them to click through and do that for you, you can just leave the computer on but obviously if you’re traveling, you won’t be able to do that too often.
West: Yeah, the thing is if you need to access anything while you’re traveling, I just use my iPhone. I have a Teamviewer app on my iPhone and LogMeIn in that and I can access my computer from wherever I am on the world. It’s beautifully on the iPhone and you can check on them if you want to as well so it’s something that’s kind of worked for me and it’s good little thing that I just thought I have implemented.
Tyrone: That sounds interesting and kind of give it a shot but whenever I travel anyway, I don’t usually take any technology stuff with me.
West: Well, that’s fine, I mean obviously you put on your computer only with what’s relevant on the virtual staff. One other thing I wanted to mention just before we wrap up because it’s been pretty content-packed call, is the fact that Tyrone before we actually we went live, we were actually talking about implementation. You’ve heard a lot of good things on the call today. What Tyrone does because he tends to forget what he’s learned on a call or calls so he basically implements it immediately. So Tyrone tell us sort of your process around that because one of the things I’ve noticed about you is when you hear something or something comes by you that you know that’s going to work and you’d like to even test, it’s happening almost immediately.
Tyrone: For me, I’m not the type of person who doesn’t like to put things off for too long. When I said too long is it happens on a day and I forget about it. It’s not multi-tasking as well but seeing that’s something is going to be important and something is going to be important in the business, I’m going to implement it straightaway. I’m emphasizing “get to implement it”, not me but someone else to implement it for me. What I did was recently I was reading up I think John Chow’s new e-book that was distributed around and I saw this e-book which has 3 new components that I was recommended to implement which would help increase my subscribers and possibly double it. The first one was to implement that pop-up box that would pop up in front of my blog which would encourage people to subscribe to my newsletter. There was a saying that as soon as you put that in, you’ll probably get at least double the subscription rate so I thought all right, let’s give that a shot. I thought okay I’ll send that straight over to my programmer so I created a new ticket inside my system.
West: Let’s just preface this by saying Tyrone and I both are huge fans of pop ups. We actually think it’s a little bit rude but what we also do is we implement and we test the measure and we decide based on the results. So tell us what happened Tyrone.
Tyrone: What happened was I was getting pretty sign ins anyway because I have my subscription box just above my post so people look at them and they subscribe and so forth but I thought I’ll give this a shot and see how it goes for a week. To my amazement, it was true, it did double my subscription and opt ins to my subscriber base and a lot of people have been also commenting as well on the feedback and content that I’ve been providing for them. I did give value to them straightaway and also that they did come on to my database. But the key thing that I wanted to emphasize was I didn’t implement it myself. I implemented that by getting my programmer to do it. All I said to him was just in the ticket, “Please just go over here to do this. Copy this code in and implement it straightaway.” Because I didn’t want to go in and look at all that code and see where to paste that little snippet of Javascript.
West: Absolutely and if you’re even less technical when you do what I do and I don’t know whether he’s cheating or not, I say go to this URL and copy what they’ve done. Don’t copy it exactly and put your own spin on it but I want this to happen on my blog. You don’t even have to know how it works and you don’t have to know anything about coding.
Tyrone: I’ll be honest to you, I have copied a lot of people’s type and styles of blogs. When you see my blog, you’ll notice that it’s quite similar to another program that I have been mentored and coached by. He says it’s no problem because he thinks it’s great that his system works really, really well.
West: I like to use the word modeling. Let’s just edit that copy Tyrone. We model great people with people who actually have succeeded in the past and why would you don’t want to reinvent them.
Tyrone: Exactly, what I do is I just get onto Jing. If I like something that looks good and it works, and I found that it works well for my system, I just hop onto Jing and I’ll just point it out to them and say please just model off this type of style or this font, etc. and when you get it implemented. Once it’s done, just send it to me, make sure it’s right and when it’s done, it’s done. I don’t have to physically go in there and change the code and other stuffs on programming.
West: You want to do Tyrone but you’re holding yourself back from.
Tyrone: I don’t. I don’t see myself doing that ever again so once I’ve had my programmer, I’ll never ever jump back to coding myself. I love talking to people and I love communicating and doing videos and just building relationships with people so I focus on them. That’s where I succeed best.
West: Beautiful. So let’s kind of wrap up. I want you to tell people who haven’t heard of you before about your amazing 10 video series on outsourcing because they’re free. You don’t have to pay Tyrone anything for those. They teach you and give people really good insight into how you’ve created what you’ve created online. Tell us really quickly about that for the wrap up.
Tyrone: Sure, if you want to access and download them, I’ll show you step by step on how to be able to outsource your business. From the beginning, where to find people, how to hire them and also how to pay them and then how to manage them in a project management system. There are 10 free videos that I’ve got in there. You can download it at MassOutsource.com, I’ll spell it for you, Mass, M-A-S-S Outsource, O-U-T-S-O-U-R-C-E.com, and apologies for the spelling but if you want to access that, that’s pretty easy to get down there. Otherwise, you can hop onto my blog and you can access those 10 free videos as well directly by subscribing to my blog at Tyroneshum.com spelled T-Y-R-O-N-E-S-H-U-M.com so definitely if you want to find out more about it, just come onto the blog and download the 10 videos. I’m more than happy to help you guys to anything that you need.
West: Yeah, I have to give a raving testimonial for that. I’ve been to Tyrone’s course and it delivers. It delivers in every way for me, it gives you step by step, it gives you templates, everything that you need. It even gives you training videos for your staff. So there’s no stone left unturned and it’s just one of those easy to consume sites where you continue at your own pace and implement wherever you want. Definitely it had helped me and increased my knowledge and I’m applying what I’ve learned from you so thank you for that. In summary Tyrone for someone looking to outsource and wondering what to do next, what can you say to these people?
Tyrone: Well, if you just try to follow and look at my success, not trying to brag about myself but I’m just taking a lot of action. And, the thing that I notice that a lot of people do is they just listen on a call and they listen to the interview and go yeah this is a great idea but the problem is they don’t take enough action straightaway. So if you did find anything that you think that’s close to you and you felt that you can implement and start straightaway, just take action on it. If it means giving up some of your time to trying to find resource to do or implement to outsource virtual staff, just go ahead and just do it. I can guarantee you if you just take that little small action and take those baby steps, you ‘ll achieve a lot more than not doing anything at all. I’ve just taught a lot of people in my course and members that you just need to take action with what I teach you. If you follow the systems, I guarantee you that you’ll get there and just do it. That’s all I can say, like Nike, just do it.
West: Absolutely, people you’ve got to model Tyrone. So thanks for talking. It was Tyrone. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Tyrone: Thank you. It’s been an absolute pleasure to be able to share with you these things so I hope people can take away this nice content and just do something with it, that’s all I can say.
West: Absolutely, cheers.
Tyrone: Thanks.
What you will also learn from this interview:
- How Tyrone creates a lifestyle business with outsourcing
- How Tyrone leverages his Internet Marketing needs through videos
- What systems did Tyrone use to automate tasks and implement through his virtual staff
- How Tyrone setup the 80/20 rule with his virtual staff
- 3 key components to help increase your traffic generation through outsourcing
I hope you enjoyed this interview and I look forward to seeing you taking action by implementing all the points that West and I have shared in this video podcast. Feel free to share this with your Twitter and FB friends and comment right below to share your experiences as well. I’d love it!
Also, to find out more about West Loh and his teachings in creating a passionate business and lifestyle, visit his website at WestLoh.com. Thanks so much for spending time with me today and see you in my next podcast!
To Your Lifestyle Business Success,
Tyrone Shum
Lifestyle Entrepreneur

My name is Tyrone Shum and I'm on a journey to outsource and automate my business to allow me to work only 12 hours a week. On this website I share with you my outsourcing strategies to achieve this goal and I have a passion to teach others about what I do. Read more
[..YouTube..] Get the audio from this video at thetunify doht cohm.
[..YouTube..] wow, can you get some traffic to your own damn video?
[..YouTube..] If you wanna download this mp3 goto audioripit doht cohm.
[..YouTube..] Hey Tyrone! I really appreciate the tips you shared in this video. Great Content. I look forward to future videos.
Hello Tyrone! The content of the video was very interesting. Thank you for sharing all the good experiences. I just stumbled to your blog from The Smart Passive Income blog and I’d like to learn more from you guys. Thanks for generating good content!
There was one thing that you might want to keep your eyes on: the volume levels! Your voice was OK but West Loh’s was much louder so I had to be quick with my volume controls
PS. Hello from Finland!
Hi Juuso,
Thanks for letting me know. I’m aware of this issue as the Call Recorder software seems to be recording at different levels. I will get that fixed.
Cheers.