Hey, this is the Daily Overpass!
My name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today, I wanna talk about the benefits of your support team.
Okay, it's Wednesday morning, I'm still on my one-week family visit to Maine.
I walked out to the woods behind my dad's house, not too far so I don't have to wear
orange but just far enough to set up the camera and everything like that.
And you know what?
Just I look pretty bad as of the moment.
I don't usually look like this.
Usually, I'm wearing like, you know - I'm an app developer, I don't really go out with
camouflage and stand out on the woods, you know, but I'm so out of my element trying to - trying
to blend in literally here, right?
Anyway, the biggest problem I have at the moment, just being out here, is the lack of
internet.
I mentioned this last week that I may have trouble with internet, but it actually, hmm,
kind of worse than I thought.
So like, I have internet, so my provider in England works in the States too, but, it doesn't
work out here, out in the countryside where my dad lives.
So, my phone doesn't have any internet.
Uhm, in case I can ask other family members to turn on their hotspots occasionally.
But I can't do anything big like upload videos.
Even yesterday's video, after I recorded it and edited it, I drove into town, like 10
miles in the town, and went to McDonald's and just started uploading it there.
And it took like 3 hours, and eventually we went to another place coz it just wasn't working.
But, you know, we're making it work.
It's actually - it's not too bad.
But, you know, I couldn't - (laughing) I couldn't live here!
So, you know, it's one of this things where I think - when I'm at a situation like this,
it's - it would be really painful if I didn't have my support team in place.
And a lot of times I've talked - I've talked before about, you know, I have my team and
I've shown you, guys, in the early episodes where we had like - a weekly team meeting
and everything like that, but I don't really acknowledge a lot of the things they do.
On weeks like these where I - first of all, we have time zone differences.
So, somebody emails me in the UK, at certain hours, I won't be able to get to it.
We also have internet issues where I can't respond to things throughout the day and it's
- and we have a couple of people who are handling this while I'm away.
So we have, in the Philippines, we have Rowena, who's my, I guess uhm, virtual assistant.
She handles a lot of things.
She'll do like, you know, she'll transcribe the videos, she responds to app reviews, she'll
uhm, she'll answer emails more promptly that I can sometimes, coz that's the big thing
with clients, right?
If a client emails you or a new prospect emails you, you don't want it to be 2 to 3 days before
you can respond.
So, it's good to like have a quick response to some questions or follow up information
and then even if you're not able to actually directly address them, you start getting - start
getting things moving at least.
If you can't act quickly, you wanna make sure that- even like if you sent me an email
and I just started saying, "Okay, I'll do the research and I'll email you back, " you
don't think I even got the email at all.
So, it's good to respond to those.
And that kind of stuff she does all the time, anyway.
So it's - you know - and we also have Sandee, who's our designer, and she's been - she's
been doing loads of stuff with the social media.
She's also - does the thumbnails for these videos and stuff like that.
So, it's really good to have that team in place.
Anyway, I just wanna say thank you to my team out there, to Rowena and Sandee, who are doing
this work while I'm away.
But also, the rest of you, guys, I want to see - a lot of you, guys, are one-man bands
like me.
You - you're an app developer, you do the stuff and you respond to all the support queries
that come in on your own.
You might respond to all the clients that email you, all this kind of stuff.
But eventually, it gets to a point where it could be, you know, too much, right?
And this is one of the things where a VA or having somebody, like a freelancer, who works for
you on a part-time or full time, is really, really beneficial.
I've struggled with this for a long time.
if you're like me, you may - you have probably read the Tim Ferriss book "The 4-hour workweek.."
when it came out like ages ago, and you fell in love with the idea of having the virtual
team and the virtual assistant and everything.
I know I did.
But I had a really hard time getting that set-up.
I went through a lot of people trying to get that to work.
You know, it's really hard to get process in place and make list of things that you
can actually handoff to somebody else.
So, if you're like me when you're stressed out a lot of the time, if you could go through
and make list of things that you definitely have to do and things you can give to somebody
else, and also things that you could do better - that don't require your personal touch.
Like responding to the YouTube comments, that's something I do.
You know, everytime there's a response on YouTube, that's always me.
If it's a response to a Google Play review, that's always her.
If somebody - well,
most of the time it's her.
if there's - if somebody email, if you, guys, email and you asked for me, I always respond.
But if you don't ask for mne, a lot of times, it might be her.
So, it's really is something you might want to think about.
Like it's - it's so much - it's so much easier to be independent.
And that's kind of one of the thing we all want.
We don't want the boss, we don't want responsibility, we don't want the hassle.
So, it's easier to do things yourself.
It's more efficient to do things yourself.
Efficient?
Maybe not efficient but it's more - everything will be done the right way, the way you want
it done if you do it yourself.
But that's not scalable, right?
You can only handle so much.
And if you haven't thought about getting a VA or getting somebody on your team, on a
full or part-time basis, it's something you should consider.
I mean, it's a kind of thing on weeks like these I couldn't live without.
Anyway, I know I'm rambling on here.
I'm gonna go out and uh, have a good day.
I hope you, guys, have a great day!
And that's it!
I'll talk to you, guys, tomorrow!