Outsourced My Life

I’ve always been a fan of the article / story by A. J. Jacobs “My Outsourced Life” for Esquire Magazine.  It is one thing to read about someones experiences, but hearing the story “first hand” in front of an audience is something entirely different (read better).   Listening to him tell the story through recorded audio was a blast!

It was also nice to hear what happened past the original article.  He also touches on some of the points discussed in some of the comments on this site including the effect of outsourcing work from the US to other countries.

Give a listen to the whole recording below.   (Note, it’s about 15 minutes long and contains some strong language)

If for some reason the embedded audio doesn’t work, click here.

I posted this on the 4hourworkweek forum and while not directly about outsourcing, there is a significant tie in:   If you fully outsource your life, they you aren’t tied to a specific geographic reason.  If that’s the case, then you’ve got a LOT of flexibility with where to live.   Here are my thoughts I wrote in my forum post:

I’ve been working hard to generate a passive income. Fortunately even thought my income isn’t 100% passive yet, it IS 100% free of geographic requirements / ties. I’ve been able to accomplish this in large part due to my utilization of outsourcing work to virtual assistants.

In a nutshell I can live anywhere in the world and my income will remain the same.

So, here is the question:  Where should I live?   I’m open to living anywhere in the world.

My requirements:

Relatively Inexpensive:  No reason to move from where I am (California) if it isn’t going to be cheaper to live.

Family Friendly:  I’ve married and have two kids in elementary school.  I need to ensure that my family feels happy and safe and that my family will get the education and social interaction that will prepare them for the rest of their lives.

Stable Political Structure:  Some areas in the world are cheap, beautiful, etc. but the political issues may not be very stable.  Related to the above, I don’t want to pull my family somewhere that isn’t going to be friendly / safe.

Decent Climate: Living in California has spoiled us.  We’d love to live somewhere with a moderate climate… (we’re more sensitive to extreme cold, i.e., not big fans of lots of snow).

So, any suggestions?   In this huge world we have and my flexibility to move wherever I want regardless of income, where would you suggest?

NOTE:  I did open this discussion up to the whole world, but don’t feel the obligation to think only outside of the US.   If there are wonderful places in the US that meet these requirements I’d love to hear them!   Speaking of which, this is a great tool for finding places in the US to live based on various criteria:  http://www.pfbestplaces.com/default.asp?pageAction=Search

Looking forward to your replies!

   No, it isn’t what you are thinking!  

For the past 18 months people have been pestering me to create an account on Facebook.   I’m already a huge fan of LinkedIn for business networking, but just haven’t had as much interest in starting up with Facebook.    Well, about 12 months ago my wife got bitten by the Facebook bug and was then infected from head to toe.  The symptoms were diverse, but she had an acute case of “sit-at-the-computer-all-dayitis”.  She was infected AND addicted!

I don’t remember how or where it hit me, but I realized one of the great powers of  outsourcing is leveraging a utilization of resources.   My wife had become an expert at navigating Facebook and loved to comb its pages.   Seeing that she was one of the main proponents of me starting a Facebook profile I asked her if she would create an account for me and get things started.   Of all the requests I’ve made to her in the 8 years of marriage, this one was probably the most well received!

Before I knew it, I was on Facebook with pictures, friends, and even “pieces of flair”.    My wife started inviting my offline friends and co-workers to connect.   I remember specifically one late Saturday night when I got a call from a co-worker at 11:30 pm (usually not a good sign).   I answered, “Hello?” and was greeted with a loud voice responding, “YOU CAVED!!!” i.e, “You said you weren’t going to signup with Facebook and I just got your friend request!”   I simply replied with, “I’ve never logged into Facebook in my life… not once!”    After a few moments he understood what had happend… I had leveraged resources in a brand new way… wife outsourcing on Facebook!  

In a few weeks I’ll probably log into “my” account and start playing around.  It will be nice to login to Facebook and already have pictures loaded, a few “about me” statements posted, and a plethora of friends waiting for me to start poking!

So, what do you think?   Are there other aspects of social networking that can be outsourced?    I would ask, “What other ways can I outsource my wife?” but if she reads this… I’ll need to outsource my funeral planning.

I’ve been following the adventures of a guy named Jed who has embarked on full implementation of the principles listed in the Four Hour Work Week.  His blog, The Newly Rich, has some great examples of what did and didn’t work during his experiments outsourcing to a virtual assistant.

He originally took the same path as a LOT of people who just finished reading the 4HWW and started out with GetFriday and a few alternatives.  He ended up with a stateside college student and has been having good success.   I’m especially excited that Jed started a new post series called Outsourced Wednesdays where he’ll post a weekly sample of a project he’s outsourced along with the responses from his virtual assistant.   

Honestly, I wish more “buyers” would blog about their outsourcing experiences.  It is fun and educational to read detailed examples of correspondence between buyers and providers.

Jed has even started up a new company called Having Things Done.  He’s even listed out some of the philosophies behind Having Things Done where he addresses many of the hurtles and problems people have been experiencing with other VA services.

I’ve been really happy with my experiences outsourcing with oDesk so far.  Their system of tracking hours and providing me with visibility into what my providers are doing is wonderful!

In the past 5 months I’ve posted about 6 different “jobs”.  Each have been hourly based and while each were instigated by a specific need / project, they all had potential for longer term relationships.

Well, this changed.  I had a VERY specific project that I don’t anticipate, at least not immediately, the need to employ someone long term or on an hourly bases.   I needed a shopping cart created for one of my sites.  Nothing fancy, just osCommerce installed with a few modifications and plugins.   I’ve installed OSC a few times myself, but I’ve never really dove into modifying it or hiring anyone to do so.  I didn’t want to pay someone hourly for something I had no idea how long would take.

Three (well actually two) options presented themselves:

RentACoder - Used them many times in the past for project based work.  While I’ve had great success with them in the past, their system isn’t the most user friendly and payment to providers isn’t super straightforward.  Their system is based on a per project system and they have a bunch of tools and policies in place to make sure a buyer gets what they were promised.

oDesk - As mentioned above, I love their hourly platform but I haven’t tried their project based option.  Payment for hourly projects is super easy and straightforward.  Their per project system seems to still be in its infancy and seems to be lacking some of the tools / policies that RAC has developed over more years of experience

eLance - Well, I signed up a few months ago, posted a project, wasn’t terribly excited about the responses I received.  Their UI looks really clean, but there wasn’t really anything that was there to pull me away from RAC or oDesk.

In the end I went with oDesk.  Posting projects is pretty straight forward and I’m assuming that payment will be just as easy as they have been with hourly providers.   I’ve already received about 25 project bids and have chosen a programmer.  I’ll keep you posted with how things progress.

My questions for you:

Do you prefer hourly or project based pricing models?  When and why?

As you may know I’ve struggled finding constant work for my VA.   I’ve got a few brothers that are in varied businesses and we often help one another out with advice and projects.   I’ve offered up my VA to do basic level tasks (research, data entry, etc.) for them whenever they need it.

Well, one of my brothers finally took me up on the offer.   He needs to locate the company info (CEO name, company contact info, etc.) for about 100 companies.   In almost all cases the info is available on the websites… we just need someone to visit the sites and compile the information.   What a perfect project for my service provider!  I asked him if he had a budget for the project and he said that as long as I provide him with samples of the work as we progress then he’s fine with whatever it takes to get the job done.

I asked my brother to send me a layout of what he wanted in an excel sheet along with a row already filled out as an example.  I took the sheet, refined it (based on my experiences so far communicating with outsourcing providers) and added as much detail on how to proceed.

The bad news… my provider is out on a scheduled vacation so I’ll need to wait a while until she’s back to begin work.  Fortunately the task isn’t super time sensitive, but I’m pretty impatient about the opportunity to give my brother a taste of person to person outsourcing.

Has anybody else outsourced their assistants to someone else?  If so, did you do it:

1. Indirectly like I’m doing - Basically my brother knows I’m outsourcing and is providing almost all the info, I’m just lightly managing and sending the project along
2. Directly - For example:   VA, meet my brother… brother, meet my VA.

There are a plethora of blog entries and forum posts that reference poor experiences with the companies mentioned in “The World Is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman and “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferriss .  Specifically, Brickwork India, YMII, & GetFriday.com.  Many people have expressed their displeasure with the quality of work and lack of communication.   Many hypothesize that this is due to the huge influx of demand to these two companies and their inability to handle the growth.  Some say it is just the nature of outsourcing to India and other countries.

In my post, What Is A Virtual Assistant? I received a few great comments.  Two questions (in my interpretation of the comments) have been raised:

1. Can a provider who charges only $4.00 an hour really provide quality work?
2. Is it even possible to find “good” providers under $15.00 an hour?

I personally can’t definitievely answer the first question because I’m still new to outsourcing, but if the taste I’ve had so far is an indication, then I believe the answer is yes.

The second question is the one I want to focus on.   Tim Ferriss makes it sound like it is pretty easy to find someone for $4.00 per hour.   I’ll say this, it is difficult to find quality providers at this rate, but I believe it is possible.   A few points brought up in the comments mentioned above say that many of the outsourcing service firms have raised their rates.  That may be true, but there are plenty of companies that still have rates around $6 - $8 an hour if you are willing to commit to 40 hours a week.

Okay, $6 - $8 an hour is great, but it isn’t $4.00 an hour.  What if the die hard worshipper of “Four Hour Work Week” is absolutely determined to find a Virtual Assistant (yes, I’m going to keep using this term until there is a widely adopted alternative to VA) that is $4.00 an hour?

As I mentioned before I’ve found a great virtual assistant success using oDesk.  I may have been lucky, but I found a very inexpensive provider that has really helped me get a bunch of stuff done.  What if this provider decided to break up with me and end our relationship?  Would I be able to replace her with another similarly skilled and inexpensive virtual assistant?

Well, as a test I did a search on oDesk for administrative support providers that had at least 50 hours of oDesk experience and had a rating of 4 out of 5 stars.  This returned 20 providers that matched this criteria.  Not a ton of results, but the search proves there are experienced providers with good reviews who are available for work.  If I expand my search a bit by increasing the rate to under $6.00 an hour and at least one hour of oDesk experience then I get 103 virtual assistants who want to work for me!

For reference I thought I’d post some information about the VA I’ve been using who is under $4.00 per hour:

• Education: Bachelors in Biotechnology and a Masters in Business Administration
• Worked for a large bank in India doing data entry & customer support
• Top rating on tests for English and Telephone etiquete

Keep in mind I’m not expecting providers in the $4 - $8 per hour range to be Jack / Jane of all trades or tbe able to do everything I’d expect from a US based $30 per hour VA.  With that said, I think there is a huge market for admin assistants to do things like:

• Data entry
• Internet Research
• Email filtering / first tier support
• Other general admin assistant tasks
• Basically any task you’d give to a college intern

What do you think?  Are $4.00 an hour person-to-person virtual assistants a viable option for small to medium sized businesses?

On my Virtual Assistant Break Up? post I’ve received some very excellent comments.   In fact one theme has emerged and I’d like to devote a new thread specific to this important subject.

The issue is this:   There are different opinions of what the term “Virtual Assistant” does and will eventually mean.   I use the term very generically, basically anyone that is providing services to me that is remote and not an employee (the term employee can even be wildly interpreted).   Others see the term “Virtual Assistant” to be more specific, to be used only for people with the proper credentials.

In internet years the term is pretty old, but with books like “The World Is Flat” and “Four Hour Work Week” pumping up attention to the concept it has become more difficult to pin down an exact definition.   It will be interesting to see how the VA industry develops.  I’d love to have all of the people that commented on the Virtual Assistant Break Up thread to reply to this post with their thoughts on the following:

As the profession / industry develops and becomes more regulated and governed what do you think will happen with the term Virtual Assistant?

Do you think that:

1)  The term “Virtual Assistant” will become generic and new terms or co-terms will be used to differentiate certified providers from those that simply have a computer and an Internet connection.
2)  The term “Virtual Assistant” will become the identifier of certified / licenced professionals and other terms will be used to refer to people that, based on some of the comments above, should not be classified as “Virtual Assistants”

I believe that regardless of the certification and terminology used there will always be demand for low wage, lessor skilled providers.  For now I think 99% of the world is calling these people “virtual assistants” and it will be a long time, if ever, that the term “Virtual Assistant” only applies to certified providers with 5 years of personal assistant, office manager experience.

To those of you that consider yourselves associated with the traditional Virtual Assistant industry, what would you suggest we call these people that work remotely and independently at hourly rates but have never worked as a PA / office manager and are not certified or licenced?

One of my blogs needed a few simple changes to the WordPress theme.  The theme was already in excellent form but I wanted some basic modifications.  I’m by no means a theme designer, but I’ve hacked enough themes to know approximately how long the project would take… maybe 3 - 5 hours of work max for someone with a decent background with WordPress theme design and no more than 10 hours for someone with only a little experience.

In my previous postings on oDesk for designers and virtual assistants I had become acquainted with a few companies that manage a plethora of providers with diverse skill sets.   Each company said they would provide me with contact info for designers with WordPress experience.  After a few back and forth emails with the providers I decided to zip up the theme and email it to them along with the list the 3 simple changes I needed made.  Two different individual quoted me for outrageous amounts of time.  One guy said 40 hours and another, get this, said it would take him 3 weeks of full time work!!!

I sent each of them emails saying, “I believe there is a miscommunication here.  Do you understand this project is for edits to an EXISTING theme… not the design of a new theme from scratch?  This project shouldn’t take over 5 hours to complete.”

… I didn’t hear back from either of them.

So, I’m either totally off my rocker and am confused at how tricky it is to move a column in a WordPress theme, or I’m experiencing the problem many buyers seen in this space:   Providers come into hourly based systems (like oDesk) and quote really low hourly rates.  Unfortunately they end up taking extremely longer to complete the task and the total cost of project ends up way higher than it should have been.

So, is this happening because providers are intentionally taking advantage of the hourly system or because some low rate providers just don’t know what they are doing and therefore the project takes exponentially longer?

In my frantic search to find examples of work that I can outsource I found some fantastic outsourcing articles:

• Outsourcing, a case study
• 10 Reasons Why I Won’t Outsource and the follow up

Four Hour Work Week:

• The Newly Rich - a family’s account of how they live the 4HWW.  I read every post and had to refrain from commenting on each one!
• Four Hour Work Week Success Video