A friend of mine used the term “outsourcing my coffee needs” for his trips to Starbucks. He doesn’t have a coffeepot, never buys coffee beans, ground coffee, or paraphenalia.

Outsourcing can also help you simplify your life. If it’s not worth paying for, maybe it’s not worth doing in the first place.

Melvin: Read your post and spit coffee on my screen from laughing. You really hit the (nail) on the head. C.

As a litigation/transactional attorney I’ve been emailing dictation to the UK for about 2 years now. It is great. Anything my secretary doesn’t finish by quitting time gets emailed to England. While I am home playing with my kids it all gets processed and when I show up the next morning it is sitting my my secretary’s inbox for processing. I am in the process of changing vendors (possibly to India) and I can’t imagine going back.

www.macsparky.com

Great thread!

Fantastic thread! Thanks, Merlin!

I love that so many of you are sharing names of companies you’ve tried. I find myself checking back for more, and thinking deeply.

What would really improve my life and biz is an inexpensive marketing outsource. I don’t need website services, but if I had someone to design direct mail pieces, tradeshow collateral, write press releases, etc. it would change everything for me.

American companies are WAY too expensive, and I’d be happiest if the materials were in a program I can edit myself such as Publisher or Word. I don’t want to spend $200 on a flyer that I might only use once! So either make them myself (time-consuming) or don’t get around to it. I’ve browsed on eLance before, but found American marketing firms charging full-bloat prices.

Anyone have an overseas marketing/graphic design resource for me?

Check out Team Double-Click at http://www.TeamDoubleClick.com.

This is a virtual staffing agency which matches client needs with virtual assistant’s skills. If you need someone a few hours a week to answer telephones or if you need someone 10 hours a week to run a drip campaign, write your press releases or maintain a shopping cart, Team Double-Click can make that match for you.

Here’s the boilerplate:

Launched in 2000, Team Double-ClickSM is the country’s foremost virtual staffing agency. Maximizing the experience of founder Gayle Buske, a staffing expert and with over 20 years of business experience, the company offers small businesses an economical, but productive alternative to on-site staffing. For more information about Team Double-ClickSM, visit www.teamdoubleclick.com.

Check out the new press release about a fast quiz the company offers on its website entitled, “Do I need a virtual assistant?” It will help you to determine if you really need a VA and if so, how many hours would be suitable. Some clients only need two hours a week while others can contract for 20 hours a week or more.

http://www.openpr.com/news/22979/Do-I-Need-a-Virtual-Assistant.html

The author is a fake - http://www.ivygateblog.com/blog/2007/05/timothy_ferriss_outvaynering_vayner.html

If your income is directly and measurably proportional to the number of hours you spend working, outsourcing tasks that don’t produce income makes sense. I could see it working well for sales people and lawyers. But for salaried workers, an increase in productivity, although broadly helpful, does not directly result in increased pay. This makes it more difficult to measure the value of outsourcing.

Doug - I’ve been thinking the same thing but you’re the first other person I’ve seen comment on it. I listened to an interview with the author and he makes it seem very simple to decide to outsource tasks but for salaried workers, or even commission-based jobs you’d have to make sure you spent that time you saved through outsourcing doing something that would at least generate enough income to cover the cost of the outsourcing. That is if you want outsourcing to be both a cost and time saver as the author seems to suggest it can be.

Melvin, you rock.

Who, did anyone else read the title “Have you tried outsourcing your wife?”

I love, love, love hearing people talking about “outsourcing” their lives! I own a business that does personal assisting from basic errands (like grocery shopping) to large scale projects (like a move). So, it allows people the benefit of a PA, without having to have someone on the payroll full-time.

I have said many times that we outsource all sorts of things in life (how many of us have picks and drills for at home dentistry?). I love that we live in a place where there are companies you can pay to come to your home and “scoop poop”. As a US business owner, I would of course, rather people hire someone insured and local (I’m still big on looking a new client in the eye).

In order for a PA relationship to work well, I think there are some very key components 1) The PA much be quick-thinking and have the ability to employ independent judgement. Confidentiality, enthusiam, integrity and attention details are also “must-haves”. 2) The client must be willing to give a trust and let go so the qualified PA can do their job.

Here’s to hoping you can all find more hours in your day!

Hello, I am a personal assistant and my employer is paying me to read blogs he may be interested in and post responses on his behalf: Great post, Merlin. I could not live without my personal assistant and am not sure how I survived without one. I’d highly recommend outsourcing and am seriously considering giving my assistant a raise.

I have both secretaries/PA for work (actually 5 of them), and a virtual PA for home and the rest of my life. The virtual was the hardest to choose and to get up to speed but is now fully equivalent to the full-time real-physical presence people. However - it took physical meeting to feel confident in each others abilities, and it requires a different type of delegation. There’s just something easier if they can pop their head round the door and ask ‘did you mean…?’ even compared to emailing. So as with so many things in life - communication is VITAL. The other thing is that I took on my VA before getting broad band internet (years ago) and to be honest, a lot of what we set out to do initially with a VA is now just as easy to self-administer with a high-speed internet connection. This means my VA stuff is now high-level delegation, not ‘scut work’, and often involves the VA hiring ‘physical people’ to undertake domestic tasks (ie things that at the end of the day still need a physical presence).

First, hat-tip to Merlin for first introducing me to FHWW.

So far I’ve only posted one experience, but I’ve had a few others to report on that will be posted soon:

http://thenewlyrich.com/category/outsourcing/

The real struggle I’ve found thus far is finding tasks that are time-consuming enough to outsource, but that don’t require either YOU to do them (i.e. signing up for insurance, etc) or a physical presence (most errands).

Unfortunately, the truly mundane tasks—showering, getting dressed, eating, haircuts, even sleeping are non-outsourceable. Though it does seem a natural fit to outsource sleeping to someone halfway around the world.

Don’t tell my professors this, but I have used Google Answers to do research for me. I state a simple question and depending on how much you’re willing to spend, some of those “re-searchers” give great detailed answer.

Does using services like housecleaners, landscapers and financial planners count as outsourcing? Because I’ve always thought of them that way, and I’ve been using them for years.

After reading Tim’s book I researched a few of the companies that Tim mentioned. I then requested a proposal from Brickwork. They are located in Bangalore India. I exchanged a few emails and a long SKYPE call to explain what I needed. My Account manger was and is very knowledgeable and knew what I wanted. They sent over a contract and a wire transfer address. I wired the money into my account $500.00. I was then assigned an assistant. We exchanged some emails skype calls and skype chat to communicate. He has performed exactly as needed. I am really pleased with my assistant. If he is stuck we chat via skype or call via skype. Utilizing a VA has taken a big project off my list and finished it much quicker than I could have. I highly recommend utilizing the global community to outsource some of your tasks.

Not exactly “outsourcing,” I suppose, but we pay someone to cut our lawn. He does a fantastic job, does it three times faster than I would, and I never have to worry about it. Big time saver, and very reasonably priced. It costs me less than the billing time I’d lose to do it myself….

I’ve had my American Virtual Assistant for 2 years now, and she’s been a god-send for this solo-preneur. Over that time, we created our own system based on the GTD ebook for Outlook and a hosted MS Exchange Server. She books all of my appts and handles all customer service such as chasing down leads for introductory consults, managing clients with frequent schedule changes, and mailing out workbooks and dvd sales off our website. She’s more patient than me, and buffers me from clients who can be annoying from an administrative standpoint. It keeps me from getting burn-out by them.

The downside of having an AMAZING American VA, is she’s $40/hour. I try to keep her to around $500/month, but last month squeaked up to $1000 because I had a lot of leads she had to follow up on.

I’m confident enough in working virtually that I am considering hiring out of the country for OTHER less-important jobs. I’m reading that book too right now, trying to decide what? else can I outsource now?

Jaya,

Not really an overseas outsourcing design firm, but I’ve found designoutpost.com to be a lot like what you are looking for. You post your job, put up a small contest prize, and designers submit different designs. It’s all done through a forum. You can give them feedback and make changes until you have exactly what you like, then you choose the winner, he delivers the files and you deliver the cash.

Takes about a week or two and $50-$500 depending on the task. My whole website was designed (very well) by them and it cost $400. You could probably do fliers and postcards for around $50 - $100.

I outsourced my GTD research of new ideas and implementations to a guy named Merlin over at a site called 43Folders.

I have found him to do a pretty adequate job of keeping me informed of developments to help me remain productive in many facets of my life.

:-)

Melvin,

I do the same too! That even gives me extra-time to maintain my gardener’s blog too!

Melvin’s post has left me in pain from laughing, but virtual assistants are not a laughing matter. My wife has worked on and off for years like this and it is a front end loaded scenario.

You spend time establishing a “tuned” relation with your VA and then when delegating you find less time on explaining and more responsibility can be shifted.

It’s a great idea if you don’t want the overhead of an employee and are computer literate

i have had very mixed results with outsourcing. i used to own/run a web-based store and we tried outsourcing our fulfillment twice. the first time was pretty much a disaster. the second time was not only better, it was the single best business-decision we made; radically changing everything about how we ran the business — and how we felt about running the business — for the better.

i have also had various personal assistants at different times over the past few years and some of those experiences have been bad, some ok, and some great.

i think that the primary difference that makes the batsonian difference is the quality of who/what you are outsourcing to. in the case of the personal assistants especially, it comes down to whether and how well they consciously or unconsciously practice what a wise friend of mine calls “the yoga of anticipation”.

in addition to that fundamental outsourcee quality, i think another important determiner of how well it is going to work is how repetitive the task is. with a very repetitive task, you may spend some “config” time up front, but once that is done, you often end up with a machine of accomplishment that, from your point of view, ends up being liberating beyond what you might have imagined.

otoh, with tasks that are not so repetitive and require more creative intelligence to interpret and effect, it puts more and more of the pressure on having an unusually great resource to outsource to — which statistically lowers the odds of a lovely outcome.

Fantastic thread!

I’ve also started experimenting in outsourcing. As a fledgling blogger hoping to soon go pro, my life is far too hectic to maintain a standard routine. I recently decided to outsource some of marital duties to leave more time for more entrepreneurial tasks. Listening to podcasts while commenting on blogs and at the same time trying to maintain an erection was just too overwhelming. Fortunately, the fellow I outsource my gardening to had no problem tackling the extra work, and for a very reasonable fee. Has anyone else had similar experiences?

For me the neatest part is that people do stuff while you’re sleeping and you wake up with results. The inherent delay can be quite useful I think.

But, like everything else, we have to have a clear mind and write really clear doable discrete tasks or it’ll just be lots of questions back and forth.

Even if you’re not a lazy schmuck (like me) it makes sense to increase productivity like this. I could see lots of apps.

Sounded like a great idea. I’m fortunate to have both a secretary and office manager as well as a deputy to take most of my load off so I can work on the real fun stuff and try to stay well above the runway most of the time. I liked the idea of the virtual assistant to handle some mundane tasks like fixing up some web pages and drafting letters so I tried GetFriday in Bangalore.

It took several emails over the course of 2 weeks just to get them to email an application to me. I faxed it to them immediately upon receipt and called their toll free number to activate the account. After several calls and emails over the course of another 6 days, I finally got an email from a different person with the application form attached and instructions on how to submit my application.

At this point, I’m just going thru the motions to see if this outfit can get their own process right, much less handle my mundane tasks.

This particular outfit is definitely bush league. I’d be interested in a similar service from a company that works if anyone can recommend one.

I have also used a US based VA for several years with great results. Like Jaya my VA handles all my appointment setting, accounting, & expense tracking. She also handles my drip marketing, event planning and helps me to source resources for client projects. She costs me about $50/hr and I use about 40 - 50 hrs/month.

I have used other VA for research, phone screening of job candidates, and other tasks, all to good effect. The key is to create a procedure, so that you have thought through the task in advance. I use the “Natural project planning model” from D. Allen as a guide. My rule of thumb is if I think I’m going to do it more than twice, and someone else can handle it, I’m going to create a procedure and move it out.

There is no way that I could have grown my business to its current level without VA assistance. It’s my #1 secret weapon.

I have considered outsourcing my personal finances, but I’m nervous about doing that overseas and can’t yet afford to do it in the states, but I continue to think about it.

What other tasks are people actually outsourcing?