I've noticed that you read my blog a lot, THANKS! Lemme know if there's ever anything I can do for you email me, twitter me, or facebook me
As your business grows or as you get more and more serious about succeeding with your business you’re going to need to hire some assistants. Justin and I have been through our fair share of assistants, and if you’ve ever heard Justin speak about his first assistant you’ll know that it was a hard lesson learned. The guy new nothing, Justin spent so much time training and prodding the assistant along that we wasted hundreds of dollars and hours of time.
Since then we’ve built a process for hiring assistants and outsourcers and I’ve landed some outstanding assistants. We’ve built such a great team, that Justin and I are often asked how we’re finding these high quality people. So I thought today I’d cover a lot of the questions I’ve been asked so that you can overcome the fear of outsourcing and start moving forward with your business.
Q: Where do you hire assistants & outsourcers?
A: I have two places I hire from frequently. First is Scriptlance.com, the other is Craigslist.com. There are other sites, but these are the two that work for me so I have never found a reason to go anywhere else.
Q: How do you choose between hiring from Craigslist.com or Scriptlance?
A: When I am looking to hire an assistant (someone that works part time or fulltime) I go to Craigslist.com. I have found that on Craigslist.com people looking for work at Craigslist.com are looking for long term work that’s either part time or fulltime. Whereas, the assistants/outsourcers at a site like Scriptlance are looking for project work. Don’t get me wrong, the outsourcers you find at Scriptlance could be interested in fulltime work, however many of them have a team that all work to fulfill projects fulltime – instead of working fulltime for one person.
Q: How do you find a “good” assistant?
A: this is a great question – and one that’s hard to answer because each person is looking for an assistant to different tasks. You’re also going to be a different type of boss than I will, however I’ll do my best at telling you what I look for. First, I am looking for an applicant (or bidder) that has “hustle”. What I mean by “hustle” is that they are willing to go above what I asked for and give me the next step up. They didn’t make a complaint, they weren’t cocky about what I was expecting, they just did what I asked and then took it another step further.
For example, my full time personal assistant, knows I like things documented – she also knows that I live off of spreadsheets – so anytime she does a task that has multiple inputs (such as creating multiple websites with different log in information) she automatically documents each site, the login info and links everything in the spreadsheet for me. I didn’t have to ask her for it – I just asked her to create the websites and she knew that I’d like to have all that info together so she “hustled” to be on top of what I like as a boss. You’re going to look for an applicant that hustles either with their bid, or by submitting their application (we’ll talk more about this in a minute).
Q: When outsourcing on sites like Scriptlance, how do you pick one?
A: This question requires a specific example and is WAY too long to type out. So I create a quick video of my last Scriptlance project so you can see how I chose and the thought process that goes into hiring on Scriptlance.
Picking A Bid On Scriptlance.com
Q: At what point in your business should you consider outsourcing?
A: From day 1. Now, Justin is going to hate me for this because he went 2 years before I “let” him outsource. You see when he first started, we were living on a $1300/month budget for our 3 person family. That isn’t much – in fact it JUST covered the necessities and very little luxuries. So when he would ask to spend money to hire someone to do a task for him, I would say “cant you just do that yourself”
What I didn’t get at the time was that while someone was doing that task, Justin could have been working on another task therefor killing two stones in one. He also didn’t have to learn how to get that task done. This is a very hard lessons – especially for those that are already on a tight budget. My suggestion to you, if you have NO budget for outsourcing is to “hustle” to make your first sale – then reinvest 75% of that into an outsourcing budget so that you can get more work done in less time.
Also, look over your budget – there’s often $50 that you can cut out and use towards your outsourcing costs. For $50, you can get videos transcribed, a website install, logo designs, product graphics, the list goes on. $50 can be the answer to getting you over your hurtle – instead of spending $50 on an ebook that shows you how to make graphics – spend the $50 and get the graphics done for you so that you can move on to another project that will make you money.
Q: How much money coming in should you have before outsourcing?
A: As I mentioned above there are loads of tasks that you can get outsourced for less than $50, so you should be able to outsource as soon as you get serious about making money online. However, when it comes to hiring full time or part time assistants you’re going to want to make sure you’re costs are covered. If you have a startup budget, plan an assistant into your budget so that you’re getting the most of your money. If you’re anything like Justin and me, you don’t have a start up budget for your online ventures.. so you’re going to wait to hire a full time assistant until you can justify the costs. Start by outsourcing small projects in the beginning and when you’re making enough to cover their costs without digging into your household budget then hire a part time assistant that you can move to full time when things start to fly for you.
Q: How would hire a writer/assistant – a person who can do both?
A: To be honest I haven’t hired a person to do both from the starting point. My personal assistant started out as a part time writer. After 1 month I moved her to full time writing. Then she would ask me (constantly) if there was anything else she could do for me. So I asked her if she knew how to transcribe. She said she had done it once before, but would love to try it out again. From there she started writing and transcribing for me. Then I added on a few miscellaneous tasks like creating Weebly pages, submitting her articles to article directories etc.
Finally, because her English was so good and she seemed like she could think on her feet I decided to try her out with support emails for our membership site. When she did well with that I decided to bring her on as full time assistant and started creating short videos (using jingprogect.com) that would teach her how to do all the miscellaneous tasks I needed an assistant to do on the spot when I couldn’t.
If you were looking to hire someone, make a list of all the tasks you need them to do on a daily/weekly basis. Put those tasks in your job listing so that they know what you’re looking for – if you don’t list the type of tasks they’ll be doing then you’ll have writers applying for tasks that may be more technical (or vice versa).
The way I see it, is I’ll hire a writer first – because that is the task that is most time consuming and required skill. Then I’ll train the writer to do the technical tasks like submissions and posting to blogs/websites. If you went the other way around and hired a tech assistant and asked them to write they may not be able to.
Q: What to look for when hiring, which bid to take if there’s multiple offers.
A: When I am hiring I look for the bid that stands out in the crowd. They have sent me a private message they wrote a personal response to my ad – so I know they actually read it. They may have even created a mockup (if it was for a design project).
Earlier today I caught a twitter message that linked over to this interview. The CEO of Elance.com, Fabio Rosati describes how to find and hire outsourcers online. He gives some great tips for hiring, but I especially liked when he covered the “types of people that rely on freelance/online assistant jobs.”
BusinessWeek interview with Fabio Rosati CEO of Elance.com
Some Tips Fro My Expereinces:
- When hiring list all the tasks you need done. Then group together common tasks and hire for the specific group. Hire a writer to handle all the tasks that require fluent writer. If you’re looking for backlinks, submissions, website installation/editing then hire a technical assistant.
- Test out an outsourcer first with a small project – then bring them on for a longer term if they do well. A couple of times I’ve hired a person for a project and when they did well I asked if I could keep their information for future projects. Then I would write them and say I have 4 projects this month are you available to do them all? This works out well for having a handful of assistants that you can rely on because you know their work quality and they know what you’re expecting.
- Check out their prior work and reviews – Scriptlance.com and other sites like them have a great system. They allow each outsourcer to create a profile where they can upload portfolios and sample work. On those profiles you can also view their reviews. I highly suggest checking out those reviews to find out more about the programmer if you’re unsure on whether to pick them over another. I normally only do this when I have two programmers with similar prices and feedback and I just need a little more info to make my decision.
- Downtime – what should your assistant do when you havent assigned a project
Backlinks, writing articles, etc. I also have a “misc task” for my assistants so that there is never any wasted time. They know that if for some reason I they haven’t heard form me that day and dont have a project to work on then they should fill their time by bookmarking posts on my blog or writing articles on a list of keywords I’m targeting.
I’ve tried hard to cover a lot of the specific details from my experiences with hiring and training assistants. There’s obviously loads more we can cover, but this should get you going in the right direction. I’m not sure why but many people have fears about outsourcing, but as I mentioned in my last post – it’s just the “Fear of the Unknown” – once you get going you’ll see that it’s not so bad and actually very helpful!
All it takes is action!
