Outsourced My Life

This past week I had the great opportunity to go to a conference where Tim Ferriss, oDesk CEO Gary Swart, and eLance CEO Fabio Rosati all presented (see blurry camera phone pic above).

The topic was true to my heart:  Creating a Virtual Workforce

A lot of wonderful information was shared during the discussion and I don’t think there is a need for me to repeat it here.   Suffice it to say that much of what was discussed expands upon what Tim covers well in his book and can also be found at the oDesk and eLance websites.

At the end of the session I left with a renewed excitement over the opportunities for accessing a diverse workforce throughout the country and the world and the tools used to manage the processes! Now, I’m off to oDesk to hire me some more VA’s, programmers, and designers!

BTW, do you think the whole concept of a “virtual workforce” is just a fad, or are we seeing the tip of the iceberg?

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)

The audio can be found 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: (more…)

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, (more…)

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.