FBC – 210 – What’s the best way to get stuff done by others

What's the best way to get stuff done by others?

Today, we are going to cover one of the most important things you need to do if you want people to do stuff for you. If you forget to do this, just like I did, you are in for a world of trouble.

This very simple team can preserve you from headaches and high costs.

So working with developers is a skill. You need to acquire the skill. I think I told you that already in a previous podcast. It's not as easy as people think. Creating something like a development is a science. It's an art.

So you need to perfect it. So just be prepared for the fact that the first time you want to develop something, it may be very long and tedious and frustrating because you think that the person doesn't understand what you want to do. OK, so one thing I can tell you is to use some software called Loom. www.loom.com.

This is the best thing there is. I mean, this is the absolute best. The thing I use the most in my business. I record videos and stuff. So if you need to get something developed, what I suggest is you show it visually to the developer. I think I already told you this.

So you will prepare a list of things you want the developer to do. You prepare everything beforehand. So you have your tabs ready and stuff. There is a little bit of preparation. But trust me, if you had to type all that stuff, it will take forever. I have done it in the past. It's a nightmare.

Once I started doing this, the number of back and forth with the developer was divided by a factor of 20. It's crazy. It works because it's visual. The guy can actually see exactly what you want. And it’s free!

The way I organize things is this. I will divide the screen into three different sections. So the first is the header. The top of your site if it's a Web site, for example. Even if it's a like an application or something, you'll tell them; here in the header you have this. Bam, bam, bam.

What's the best way to get stuff done by others?

All right. I like this blue just like on this Web site. On this page, you see that blue? That's the blue that I like. I like the menu presented, just like on this Web site. Here's the URL and you can go get it and stuff. So you work in the header section. You give them everything they need.

And then you create another section and you tell them. This is the body of what I want. So the body is basically what's in the middle of the of the Web page. And you do the same thing. I would like to have a video here. I like this video player there. Can you do that? Oh, I like this button. And for the colour, I want that.

And, you know, stuff like that. Do that and it's going to work wonders. And then you do the same thing for the footer.

Right. So honestly, once you've done that, I mean, for the developer, the margin for error is pretty much zero. OK. Because they've seen exactly what you want. Just this year, how many tools did I have developed? I'll say between six and 10, something like that.

All right. Because the developer, you have to pay them, so if they were going in the wrong direction and then all of a sudden you're like No! This is what I meant. Well, it's an additional let's say, spent 10 hours creating whatever he thought was what you want it. And then next thing you know, he needs another 10 hours to reverse the change. So you just lost money there.

So my aim is to make sure that you don't lose money, you don't lose time. So make sure always when you are developing something and especially for something you already do today manually. And you want to automate it or make it better and scale it and the stuff, show the developer exactly what you're doing.