In this video, we discuss how to clone yourself. Sorry for all you mad scientists out there, this is a video on how to clone yourself from a work/productivity perspective, not from a laboratory perspective. 🙂

You’re getting overwhelmed and you start to think, would it be great if I had a clone of myself to help with all this work?

The idea is good, but you really don’t want another YOU. Someone with your exact skills, experience, and capabilities will want YOUR job, not to work on your boring work!

Instead of finding another person with your exact skills, instead, we need to automate part of your work and get some of the rest out to a talented team. This team doesn’t have to have your exact skills, they just need to have some of the skills to do some of your simpler work. This might include work like:

• data entry
• Internet research
• travel itineraries
• graphic design, etc.

Clone Yourself by Automating #

The first step is to automate as many of your tasks as you can – let computers do the work for you. You can automate using one of the following methods:

• macros
• look for automation in the software you are using
• Zapier
• talk to a programmer

Zapier is a great tool for automation because it lets you create connections between online services you already use.  For one client, I set it up so that when people downloaded a trial of their software, the person downloading was automatically added to their CRM, and a task created for follow-up. This used to have to be done by hours of copying and pasting.

If you don’t think something can be automated, talk to a programmer. Almost anything can be automated with a talented programmer.

How to Clone Yourself using a Virtual Assistant #

Think of a virtual assistant as an office assistant or office manager who works remotely. They can handle a lot of your routine work, saving you hours every week.

Outsource Yourself #

You can also outsource time-consuming tasks or tasks you lack skills in (I often outsource graphic design because I am bad at it) to other freelancers such as graphic designers, web designers, and others.

Want help with cloning yourself and automating your tasks? Contact me for ways I can help.

– Garland Coulson, “Captain Time”