muselife

p r e s e n t s

SOURCE
C O N T R O L
systematic outsourcing for the dangerously ambitious
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david walsh

Start Here Core Concepts

Mindset Reason Why Expectations Necessity over novelty Ethics, quality & a dash of ignorance. Systems > Skill An Ideal System

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Starting Out
Anchoring Horse rst, then cart. Outshoring, Conlancers, O sourcing & Freetractors Commitment

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Recruiting your workforce Money Geography 101 To source, or not to source? Cubicle Ops: Outsourcing your 9 to 5

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Operations & Arsenal

Workow Communication Taskmastery Arsenal

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Wrapping Up Resource Reference

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Start Here

OUTSOURCING SCARES PEOPLE.

If you havent already, you need to experience this rsthand. Next time youre in an eclectic bar or social setting, casually seed the discussion with the O word. Youve just pulled the pin from a conversational livegrenade - its explosion creating the most magnicent show of biased half-truths and uninformed, misdirected fear youve likely seen since the last election. Youll get rumblings of a crippling recession, tirades of patriotic rhetoric and the obligatory bigoted remark toward a foreign country by someone who doesnt even have a passport. Theres also usually someone like me, listening intently with rmly held tongue, knowing theres just certain people that dont respond well to economics and logic. If you and I are ever in the same place when that bomb drops, I want to be absolutely certain its your eyes that catch mine with an understanding wink - not your ears that ring with sympathetic silence.

Consider this your invitation into the international players club. With it comes access to a endless reserve of human capital, a quasi-supernatural ability to work while sleeping, and an awe-inspiring means to progress at a pace wildly disproportionate to your capabilities.
What we have at our ngertips gives us a means to realize absolutely any ambition bigger than ourselves. No skill unknown, no problem unsolvable - there is nothing we cannot make happen if we just know how.

If you call yourself an entrepreneur & that doesnt excite you, you arent one.

Outsourcing, simplied.
There is something you love, something you would choose over all else. Each day o ers us 24 hours to do with as we please. Sleep demands some of it, but time sleeping need not be time lost. To live extraordinary lives, we need to own our hours. The fewer hours we control, the less fullled well be. If we want to own our time fully, we need to stop doing worthless things. The act of doing doesnt make it important. Being the person that does it doesnt make it important. To stop doing something ourselves, we need to eliminate it or enable someone else to do it. Always seek to eliminate rst. If its not possible, we remove ourselves from the process. To enable someone else, we need to unpack the strategies we use to perform. Its often rather unconscious. Once we know what we do and how we do it, we need to nd others to do it for us. To nd the right person, we have to look in the right places and ask the right questions. After we have someone, we simply communicate our needs and oversee the process. All of this must be done systematically and without consuming more time than it reclaims. Its time to do this, and do it right. Your eeting time hangs in the balance ... and thats a loss you can never recoup.

Read Before Reading

CAVEATS & BLANKET STATEMENTS GIVING ME PERMISSION TO SAY WHATEVER I WANT GOING FORWARD
Its entirely possible that by the end of this youll think Im just another arrogant capitalist who doesnt want to work hard. Its also possible youll think I actually know what Im talking about. Im not going to ease the blow of any hard facts. If you want to feel good, go watch Oprah. Its time to get real and were summoning Dr. Phil. I nd it insulting when statements are wrapped in that warm blanket of delicate diplomacy so well keep this very simple and direct. Im not a man of few words so this isnt a short read - but its only as long as needed to push my knowledge into your head. I guarantee you there are points and perspectives ahead that stand to save you not only money, but countless hours lost to experimentation and trial-by-re. In other words, dont call a rm in Virginia and ip out when they arent quick to compete with the $2/hr o er you saw on Elance. Everything pertaining to virtual assistants (VAs) is specically referring to assistants outside of the United States. The domestic VA industry is thriving and I have zero experience working with anyone in it. It should go without saying that experiences, rates, terms and any number of factors will di er by eliminating the jump to another continent.

A NOTE ABOUT ASSISTANTS

What this is...

A way of thinking about your capabilities An approach to intelligent, systems-driven outsourcing An adaptable set of resources and tools which you can shape and extend to suit your situation Absolutely enough to do serious damage, greatly multiply your force and e ciency, and make money from it.

What this isnt...

A directory of virtual assistants Rigid, nely-tuned, all-encompassing software that accommodates all scenarios An excuse to suspend judgement and critical thinking as you start hiring Focused on novelty, no/low-value, outsourcing tasks A way to multiply e ciency in doing more of something worthless to begin with

Core Concepts

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Mindset

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GETTING OUR HEAD RIGHT

No system or software can compensate for the wrong mindset. Without the right mindset, you wont experience the power you have in your hands with your ability to outsource e ectively. Ill mention two ways of thinking that will not jive with what were doing: the employee and the prima donna.

shoulders. With so much going on, its always shocking how much time they have to remind you of just how necessary they are.

We arent making ourselves unimportant or obsolete. Were simply maximizing the time we have to focus on what actually individuates us.

The Employee Mindset

Employees expect to be managed by someone else. Outsourcing demands managing employees of your own. Being an employee is ne, as long as you dont actually think of yourself as one.

We each get the same 24 hours in a day and the average person uses them very predictably. Your ambitions and passions are anything but average, which is why were adopting an equally ambitious system for ensuring theres time for both. Since we can never technically increase the total time available to us in a day, it is absolutely critical that we use the time we have intelligently. What could be more intelligent than distributing its consumption to others, leaving you clear to explore passions?

The Prima Donna Mindset

Theres a di erence between being the only person that can do something and simply being a person that does it. We all know one of these self-important diva types that walk around with the world squarely on his or her

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Reason Why

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REASON WHY
Outsourcing for the sheer sake of doing it can feel like taking up an instrument you dont enjoy the sound of. At every moment, youll be asking yourself why youre bothering with it. Eventually youll give up chasing an end that wasnt even compelling from the beginning. Having a driving force, an underlying pursuit, as a reason why is not an ideal - its a requirement. You need something that relentlessly demands more of your time and attention. Everything else needs to enrage you for daring encroach on your time. Menial, low-value tasks entering your reality need to feel like your accountant walking in on you during sex - and standing there stubbornly until you sign-o on some paperwork.

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Expectations

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EXPECTATIONS
Outsourcing is an extension of yourself and your core capabilities. If you are disorganized, outsourcing wont change that. If your outcomes are undened or unfocused, outsourcing wont change that. If youre an anal-retentive taskmaster that tracks every cent with ten years of alphabetized receipts - outsourcing wont change that (though youll know precisely how much money you wasted nding out). We each have glaring weaknesses and are less-thancapable in some area. The di erence between mediocrity and excellence is not self-improvement - its brutal selfawareness. In the same way that the rst step in addiction recovery is admission of a problem, the rst step to absolutely crushing it on a daily basis is knowing what we shouldnt be doing ourselves. Once we work that out, its time to create a system that compensates for any weaknesses and ensure certain activities are never demanded of you.

Learning how to manage people is a life skill. Without it, you will never realize your potential simply because you cant take on as much and will take on tasks that are outside of your core competency. If outsourcing is something youve played with and it hasnt worked for you, youve done something wrong. Yes, maybe your team/assistant disappointed you - but its your responsibility to manage the situation and replace them with someone competent. You run the show - you are in charge now.

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Necessity over novelty

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Once the media got a hold of it, personal outsourcing became a novelty. It turned from eliminating low-value business tasks to getting someone to stand in line for you at the post o ce so you can use the regained time to send a Tweet about how someone is standing in line for you at the post o ce.

DONT HIRE A VA TO... Aggregate more blog posts for you to read Clean up a 10,000 entry contact list for 9,950 people you never talk to Manage your fantasy football league

We are not trying to free up time to sit around and read more blogs. We cant get excited that an assistant can dig up album artwork for even the most obscure albums in our iTunes library. Assigning low-value novelty tasks to an assistant doesnt change the fact that its low-value.

The only thing worse than ine ciency and misusing time is paying an assistant to maximize that ine ciency.
If you're focused on making money or supporting your lifestyle, forget about organizing your bookmarks, schedule your own dentist appointment, and focus your assistants on the highest-value, income-producing tasks. Once you've e ectively automated or systematized those, you can start paying your VA to start ironically sending out 1,000 greeting cards on Arbor Day.

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Ethics, quality & a dash of ignorance.

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Were not here to argue ethics. If youre reading this, youve almost assuredly moved beyond misconceptions and are ready to act. Im unfortunately unable to resist using this as a selfconstructed soapbox on which to share some thoughts. Arguing the ethics of outsourcing is an exercise in futility on-par with debating intelligent design with a hardened atheist, or getting the Bloods and Crips to settle it all on Family Feud. Yes, you can try but making money is much more fun.

LESSER KNOWN FACTS ABOUT OUTSOURCING

Outsourcing funds terrorism I came to know this from someone that was shocked to learn India is not in the Middle East, nor are they a major supplier of the worlds oil resources. Outsourcing is directly responsible for the

Everyone youll meet knows someone who has been a ected by globalization, for better or worse. Someone watched their job move to Beijing. Someone else had a nightmarish customer service call with a man whos real name was denitely not John. People tend to form rigid opinions from limited experience or information. These people shouldnt make you angry - they should make you sad. Pay them no mind. The best revenge is outsourcing well.

current recession faced by the United States. Further discussion revealed this person also was not familiar with Bernie Mado and still thought they banked with Wachovia. Outsourcing directly violates the laws of [unnamed major world religion]. Ironically, this person was visibly intoxicated. You could likely add more unsolicited, wellresearched facts youve heard from coworkers or relatives.

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QUALITY IS UNIVERSAL
The mere suggestion of non-American labor has a funny way of grabbing the attention of any person in a room that blindly assumes nothing of quality or excellence can come from outside our borders. These are also the people that wont acknowledge a Toyotas existence because it wasnt assembled in Detroit. Quality, craftsmanship, e ciency, pride in your work none of these things respect arbitrary national boundaries. Italian wines, German automobiles, Swiss watches - all of these things are what they are because people take pride in their craft. Excellent work - wherever it comes from - depends on your ability to create the proper incentives to inspire it.

WHY GO ABROAD? THINK OF ALL THE BROKE COLLEGE STUDENTS.

This is not complicated. At the end of the day, it costs our friends in India or the Philippines less to go enjoy an afterwork beer than it does for their American equivalent. Dollar-for-dollar, we can derive more value by going abroad for certain tasks than we can by hiring here. Certain decisions are simply nancial. National pride wont pay your rent, and new American jobs arent created by entrepreneurs going broke on menial tasks. We are a nation of hustlers, entrepreneurs and freemarket capitalists. The American Dream, for lack of a better phrase, moves us all to action, instills aspiration and creates a strong undertone of discontent. Sometimes youll nd more consistency working with people in countries that have a healthier respect for the status quo, and can draw a tremendous personal pride from being in a position of service.

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Systems

Systems are as reliable & predictable as human beings are not.

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Skill

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In the spirit of giving due credit, I want to be clear that Im heavily channeling principles from Michael Gerbers book The EMyth in the pages ahead. To not cite E-Myth for the sake of claiming never-before-heard concepts would equate to a preacher omitting God from his sermons to ensure he isnt pulling from the Bible. Orchestrating a system allows us to reduce our involvement by turning what we do into processes and anticipating decisions so we can empower others to make them.

Orchestration is the elimination of choice at the operating level of your business. If you havent orchestrated it, you do not own it. - Gerber
Our system is the set of rules, tool and processes that make outsourcing worth the e ort. Without a smart system around it, outsourcing can steal more time than it saves. If every single situation is handled di erently, or as if its the rst time, we havent improved anything - weve simply added more complexity and introduced new costs. For the system to work, it cannot depend on any one persons expertise or talent. Rather, it depends on process to create results. To replace people (the rst one being you) with process, we need to actually know what it is we do on a regular basis. Once we break down the things consuming our time, we can realistically decide if our involvement matters.

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SYSTEMS OVER SKILLS

Sometimes the simplest way to dene something new or unknown is by drawing comparison to something known. When were dealing with systems - and the notion of relying on them - its tting to pit them in opposition to skilled people. Imagine for a moment that youre starting a business. Youve seen successes and demand for growth is undeniable. You hire aggressively and do so based solely on talent. Youre wagering your entire companys future on nding and keeping the highest level talent possible. You run the a company for a few years. Things are alright until your 3 top talents decide to go start their own thing. Your 3 most loyal, protable accounts then become their 3 most protable clients. Without your team, you suddenly cant o er the results that built your reputation. This is where systems and people start to behave predictably di erent.
Systems dont leave you for a better paying system Systems dont act in their own best interest Systems dont fear change Systems produce predictable results, untouched by mood or state of mind Systems dont care where in the world they operate from Systems dont get pregnant and take a year o Systems dont question their purpose, quit and go travel the world Systems dont only operate for 8 of every 24 hours each day Systems dont spend 2 hours every week talking about the next episode of LOST Systems dont spend another 2 hours every week talking about the last episode of LOST Systems would laugh at the idea of sleep... if systems could laugh.

In short, people should not be doing what systems can. We are meant for more. 24

OUTSOURCING GIVES OUR SYSTEM A PROPER HAZING

Im not here to bag on exceptional people. In my life, Ive worked alongside and gained unshakeable respect for a lot of people. Its a deep respect for such people that I emphasize that there is no reason you should not pair those people with intelligent systems & processes. The better your systems are, the less risk they face of being pulled away from the work that gives them the highest level of fulllment or utilizes their purest skill. The rst (and if self-employed, only) person you should start dening systems around is yourself.

Proactively replace yourself with smart systems now, or wait until someone does it for you. Either way you look at it, a system is in your future.
Specialized ability can always compensate for absent or weak systems, but each time you work harder to make up for a missing system, your foundation weakens. You create greater dependence on your ability to perform and maintain. This is functional but not sustainable. It assumes you want to continue doing exactly what it is that youre doing - indenitely. Its time to design systems aimed at enabling the most unskilled of individuals to create acceptable results. Systems eliminate the fragile dependence on specialized skill or knowledge. In other words - systems can remove you as a bottleneck in your own processes.

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An Ideal System

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Goal: Dene a scalable, process-driven workow producing consistent outcomes with minimal intervention.

Think of the following as the Match.com prole of your outsourcing system soulmate. Not your ideal assistant, but rather the system that will allow you to keep your assistants on-task and on-schedule. As you read ahead, feel free to start scouring your hard drive for a hot self-portrait and begin mentally composing a creepy, over-eager rst email.

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NEWBIE-FRIENDLY
Your system loves the new guy.
Imagine if every new recruit to enter the United States armed forces was trained di erently. If it were entirely up to the discretion and style of whoever found themselves in charge, we would not have a world-class national defense - we would have a poorly run fraternity. Thankfully Im not more of a military bu - as this is likely where I would insult an entire nation by using them as an example. Your system clearly communicates guidelines, expectations and terms to each new assistant. Your system minimizes dependence on you to repeatedly explain your operations. Your system gets someone up and running immediately, and ensures the results will be as close to the previous person as possible.

USER-AGNOSTIC
Your system doesnt care whos using it.
Bad systems refuse to cooperate with anyone but specialists. Smart systems are indi erent to you and simply expect you do whats expected. Imagine if mirrors only reected images of people they felt were attractive. Wed have more broken mirrors and more demand for plastic surgeons. You system is unaware of and indi erent to your VAs personality, moods, location, language and level of skill.

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MODULAR
Your system keeps everyone on a need-toknow basis.
Not every assistant or new hire will need to handle every aspect of your life or type of task. When hiring a researcher, the requirements and expectations are di erent than hiring a programmer, writer or freelance designer. Your programmer doesnt need your Amazon credentials and your graphic designer doesnt need your web server login credentials. Your system must be modular and support only the necessary tasks of its operator.

ORGANIZED
Your system has obsessive-compulsive disorder.
No more digging up old les. No more emailing attachments back and forth. No more chaos. Your system expects everything to live in its proper place and sets rules to ensure they stay there. It also needs to go make sure the oven is o . Three times. Your system must keep any les, documents, credentials and information in a well-organized, shared, central location.

EVOLVING
Your system learns from its mistakes.
Elements of your system should track whats been accomplished, whats changed, and who changed it. As new scenarios emerge, your system has a place to hold new rules to simplify for the future.

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Starting Out
A little less conversation, a little more outsourcing.

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I get it. I need it. I have no idea where to start.

Except those already doing it, nearly everyone I talk to about this reacts with something like the above. Theres a wealth of theory out there but it doesnt take much Googling to realize the how gets breezed over. You clearly see the power in this. Entrepreneurs get it. We just need to ll in that gap between potential, theoretical benets and actual benets. Youll know youre dealing with actual when you notice youre somehow producing work or output without actually doing the work. Actual is the slightest tinge of guilt you feel after cashing a ridiculous check for something that was done while you were tearing up a dance oor in Prague.

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Anchoring
Before we start hiring, theres just one more thing we need. We need to get over ourselves.

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KNOWING WHEN TO SAY NO

One of my purest, strongest reasons to absolutely own my time is to immerse myself in psychology. Its been my reason why for years. One study Im obsessed with is NLP (neurolinguistic programming). I mention that because drawing parallels between applied NLP techniques and e ective lifestyle design is inescapable. Two particular concepts are tremendously helpful when were dealing with outsourcing: anchoring and strategies. Strategies well get into later but anchoring well talk about now. Anchoring, simply stated, is pairing a trigger with a response. The classic example is Ivan Pavlovs dogs, which he trained to salivate with hunger each time a bell was rung. A trigger (bell ringing) created a predictable, repeatable response (salivation). He actually did this rst with small children by punching holes in their cheeks to install salivation-measurement devices, but that one tends to sidetrack people from the grander point. I digress.

How does that apply here? We need to create and reinforce a deeply-rooted mental anchor triggered by repetition, futility & monotony. Those feelings are your bell - your trigger. We need to interrupt the pattern of just doing it. Anytime you nd yourself doing something youve done before, or something that makes you painfully aware of your own mortality and the eeting nature of time... just pause. You have choice. Ask yourself what the underlying process looks like, and more importantly, if you are the person that has to do it.

Just because I can do this doesnt mean I should.

If the process is frequent or unnecessary enough to draw your attention to it in a negative way, dont ignore it. Remember the phrase above. You dont necessary have to do something just because you always have. Say No.

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Horse rst, then cart.

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Getting this right requires starting in the right sequence. This is where nearly everyone goes wrong and cuts themselves o at the knees. Its entirely backwards to seek out an assistant without clearly considering what theyll actually be doing for you. Dont start by worrying about who will do it. The people you need are out there and ready to start immediately thats all you need to know. Before we search for help, we need to know what we actually need help with.

THE STARTING SEQUENCE

1 2 3

Identify everything you dont want to do

Unpack your strategy used to complete each

Enable someone else to do it for you

... and Repeat step 2 & 3 for every new unwanted activity that enters your life. 35

IT ALL ADDS UP
Roughly quantify how

80 /20
80% of this page is worthless and unnecessary to your life. It should insult you. Stop giving it your attention.
Seriously, stop.

much time you actually spend doing these lowworth, generic or supporting tasks. If it doesnt seem that bad, consider how many others just like it youre spending time on. The time mounts up and the value remains the same: low. Its safe to assume youre familiar with the Pareto Principle (or 80/20 rule) by now, so Ill simply state that it directly applies here.

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Identify
everything you dont want to do
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From memory or over the course of a few days, consider your personal and work life, with an emphasis on any incomeproducing activity. Note any low-value activity that consumes more than 15 minutes of your life. Were not concerned with knowing how we spend all of our time - thats unnecessary. Were only concerned with the things that make us hate our life and wonder when we became a drone. If it doesnt bother you or feel unnecessary, we wont gain much from eliminating it. You already know what these things are. If you cant pick them out, you may not have something else youd rather be doing so eliminating them is low-priority. If you cant build this list easily, you probably dont need an assistant. To get your mind turning, heres a random personal set of activities Id prefer disappear forever:
Any personal nance process that doesnt end with my hand pulling cash from an ATM Writing code that I dont nd fascinating or innovative Anything requiring I press 0 to talk to a customer service representative Learning any technology that clearly has no application to my larger plans Setup, support, maintenance or troubleshooting of any sort Low-level editing and proofreading of large writing projects Researching uninteresting topics to support larger decisions Google Adwords & SEO absurdity Selling cars online and ltering inquiries Gathering or otherwise interacting with large sets of data Accepting or placing any call involving an 800 number

Some of your activities are infrequent or random, while others are foreseeable and recurring. Focus on the latter, as youll get the most value from turning them into a generic process.

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Unpack
your strategy for getting it done
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UNPACKING STRATEGIES
Earlier, I referenced strategies as something wed nd useful. The key to recapturing your time is hiding in the relationship between strategies & a well-orchestrated system.

A strategy is the sequence of thoughts & actions you perform to produce an outcome.
By unpacking the strategy we use to accomplish any task, we give ourselves a way to turn a once-specialized, individualized process into a generic process that can be operated by someone else. There is immense power in this. Unpacking is entirely enabled by making explicit the actions and decisions which are otherwise made unconsciously or too quickly to acknowledge. Computers require clear, explicit, linear operating instructions. Our specialized processes act in much the same way, but like a computer, they can occur in the background without requiring much resources. We need to step into our sequence of decisions and actions, capturing every single one. Once youve identied a number of things youd rather not spend your time on, we can tear them apart and learn how to enable someone else to do it.

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Lets pick an example and step through it: Setting up a new, customized Wordpress blog
Its simple. Ive done it dozens of times for friends and myself, and its not even how I create my income. Its annoying, repetitive, monotonous and, frankly, Id rather use the 30 minutes to go pet a dog.

Explicitly dene every action performed from start to completion

Sketch this out on paper rst. Do not be concerned with maintaining the order/sequence of actions. What were doing is unpacking the almost unconscious process we step through every time we do this. This will accomplish two things: It will bring to the surface any unnecessary steps or aspects of the process ripe for improvement. It will force you to logically separate your individual role in the process from any steps that are generic and can be performed by anyone.

Distinguish between variable & xed actions and note any decision points
Note any action that introduces a decision or variation each time the process is performed. If something changes or requires a decision, well call it a variable action. If its performed identically each time, its xed.

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Clean things up and create some order from the chaos

I quickly move into a simple mind mapping tool like MindMeister to sort things out. I do this simply because it enables me to sort out my thoughts quickly and rearrange as I go. Variable actions or anything involving unique information are marked with the lightning bolt. Notice how few steps actual change or require a decision. In other words, I am entirely worthless for most of this process. Anyone can do it for me if I simply provide a few pieces of information.

42 If you want to play with a live version, Ive shared it here.

( Password: sourcecontrol )

< pause for e ect >

Unpacking small tasks reveals their hidden complexities. It also shows us how little of what we do actually benets from our doing it. Time to start only doing the things which hold our impression when theyre done.

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someone else to do it for you

Enable

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Create a document that presents the sequence of xed actions

Have you ever bought something from IKEA that required assembly? Recall the simplicity of the instructions. There are no words, yet somehow - starting with a box full of elements - you end up with a sleek Swedish bed frame. As our boy DaVinci said, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Those wordless assembly instructions must take a considerable time and thought, but reducing returns and frustrated customers is worth it. We arent going so far as eliminating words, but we simply want to create a set of clear instructions for the steps that are the same each time.

What about the variable steps and decisions?

Our reusable Process document handles everything thats the same each time. Our task assignment handles everything thats di erent. Thanks to our unpacking exercise, we know which actions vary or require decision. We simply need to include those details with our task.

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Create any supporting demonstration media or output samples

Annotated screenshots, a recorded screencast, a sample of a nished product - choose whichever is su cient to make sure the process is clear and leaves little room for confusion. Id always suggest including a sample of what you expect the completed task to look like. For example If its data collection or other work, ll out the rst few records of a spreadsheet to show what you expect the formatting and content to look like If its transcription, include a chunk of sample transcription with formatting, timestamps, speaker prex, or whatever else you expect. If its a highly repetitive process with minimal variance, a recorded screencast of the end-to-end process is a simple way its done properly every time.

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I had to d o it.

At this point, we know 3 things clearly:

What you shouldnt be doing yourself -&What steps someone else must follow to do it for you -&What information we need to contribute to enable them to perform the task

Next, you need to nd your replacements.

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Outshoring, Conlancers, O sourcing & Freetractors

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Unless you have some strange permutation of dyslexia, youll notice there was something o about that title page. You have denitely heard these terms used incorrectly in the past. If you caught it, this section wont teach you anything new. If not, read on.

OUTSOURCING & OFFSHORING / FREELANCER & CONTRACTOR

Conversationally outsourcing and o shoring are used interchangeably (read incorrectly). If youve ever brought up your excitement to start outsourcing around the wrong person, you know that certain words carry assumptions, stigmas, and preconceptions. If youre on the hiring side of equation, these terms all speak to one desire: I want or need someone else to do [this] for me. The specics around this should create your rst decision fork. Certain tasks are clearly best matched with certain people and work styles. Lets make simple distinctions so were clear going forward...

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OUTSOURCING
Sure I could do this, but someone else can do it more e ectively, in far less time. [...] No, I am not hurting my country. Outsourcing is generally motivated or driven by the promise of gained e ciency or more intelligent use of energy in a given time period. In the context of this book, were focused on outsourcing at the individual, solo-entrepreneur or small-business level - which is just my way of saying that we want to keep it simple and avoid going broke before it gives us some benet.

OFFSHORING
Its nancially or operationally in our best interest to take [this entire part of our business] abroad. You will each be spending the next 60 days training the people who will be taking your jobs. O shoring is a subset of outsourcing. It may lead to the same result, but implies an underlying motive to simply cut costs. Its less about nding better, faster and more about nding cheaper equivalent. O shoring shifts an entire operational/functional unit abroad to take advantage of some clear benet, such as richer resources, lower wage demand, more accommodating laws and so on. At the individual/personal level, there are not many occasions to use this term correctly.

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CONTRACTOR
Stop telling me about the vision and the 5-year plan - just tell me the hourly rate and when the project starts. Whenever Ive entered a rm as a contractor (or consultant), I considered myself a mercenary. Youre hired to come in, do exactly what you do better than anyone, and move on to the next thing. Unlike freelancing, contracting doesnt necessarily demand the same level of personal investment in your projects and clients, as the engagements are often short term or highly focused on a certain need. Contractors often work on-site with their clients.

FREELANCER
No... no. Im not unemployed. I work for myself. Its called freelancing. Weve gone over this before. [...] Yes. Im doing more than okay with money. [...] Wait, let me take this call - its a client. The clear alternative to the rigid structure of employment by anyone other than yourself. Freelancers stands to make the most drastic lifestyle improvement by intelligent outsourcing of non-core tasks. The line between freelancer, entrepreneur and small-business owner is delightfully blurry, and one often implies the other two. Freelancer and contractor are also used interchangeably depending on industry. Youll hear contractor more in the technology, engineering and government space, while freelancer is heard more in the creative world.

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Commitment

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TWO PERSPECTIVES
Theres two approaches you can take when youre considering who youre going to start an outsourcing relationship. Theres no irreversible consequences to going one way versus the other, but rather its a decision youll make based on your budget, current workload, and outlook. Im referring here to whether youre hiring a part-time assistant solely for clearlydened tasks versus hiring a full-time assistant thats committed and engaged during time between new tasks. If were anything alike, that may have created a strange, unidentiable discomfort considering my use of the words relationship, commitment, engaged and irreversible consequences. I promise you its nowhere nearly as complex as love. When it comes to hiring assistants, we keep no strings attached.

Lets take a look at both arrangements so you can consider what options you have.

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PART TIME
On-demand assistance for clearly-dened tasks
Hiring part-time is the obvious and most straightforward approach. Find the skills you need, focus them on a set of tasks, and pay for only the time necessary for completion. Repeat as necessary and scale by adding additional assistants of similar or complimentary skill sets. Hiring part-time means they should be available full-time, but likely will only be working for a portion of that time. For getting familiar with working o shore, this cant be beat. It gives you a way to experiment with your system and understand whats required to turn your work into their work.

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FULL TIME
To start, a full-time assistant does everything youd expect of a part-time. Period. The additional cost is the obvious consideration - and by that, I do mean consider it. Wheres the potential rumbling beneath the surface here?

The intention is to maintain a serious backlog of highvalue work that immediately receives attention during any downtime not committed to more clearly-dened tasks.

You secure their downtime.

To be clear, this is not the same as investing in a longterm employee. With a full-time VA, we still acknowledge it could end at any moment. We arent sending him to conferences and team-building retreats in the mountains, nor are we dealing with insurance and 401(k)s. We simply get an increased time commitment to focus on furthering our ambitions and ventures. Im not suggesting you hire full-time and just trust them to use it wisely. Its hard enough to get someone in your own o ce to close YouTube so we arent naively expecting it from an assistant we have no established personal connection with.

Having someone always on seriously extends your bandwidth and allows you consider opportunities di erently.
The rst reaction to this is usually a question along the lines of What work do I have that could possibly keep someone busy full time? - and thats a valid question, but worth looking at in another way. The person we are right now is based on decisions weve made in the past. Some of those decisions were based on our perceived capabilities. By multiplying our capabilities, we create new choices as to how we process opportunities and ideas. When you only have a set number of hours in your week, you process opportunity di erently than when you know you also have the hours of another person (or more).

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ON BEING REALISTIC
Assuming youre hiring part-time, theres a few things to keep in mind. You rarely actually need your VA as much as you think you will. Remember, when you consider periods of time - a day, a week, a month - youre talking about applied e ort. Think of your assistants time more as you would a freelancers, not as a salaried employee. Were focused on rewarding e ciency, not availability. We want your VA to be as e cient as possible, especially considering you are probably only one of their numerous clients.

Eliminating your 50-hour work week requires more than paying someone else to work them for you.
You are still supporting those hours - youve just moved from supporting with your time to supporting with your money. Your ability to hand o highly time-consuming tasks is only half of this. The other half is cutting those hours (and corresponding costs) down as much as possible with an intelligent system.

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Recruiting your workforce

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WANT TO FIND THE BEST ASSISTANTS? YOU CAN FIND THEM ALL AT HTTP://WWW.
One thing you will not nd in this package is a directory of the best virtual assistants and rms. If you need to take a moment to feel upset or ripped o , do that now. [...] Finding good assistants tends to be the most hands-on, frustrating part of the process and consequently where a lot of people quit.

Why does everyone have such a hard time?

If you want to understand this, think back to around the time The 4-Hour Workweek gained serious attention. Suddenly you had a lot of people - many who had never hired anyone in their life - rushing to do it. Screening and hiring good people is a universally frustrating business challenge and has little to do with outsourcing. Add to it the fact that a lot of people spreading stories of a nightmare experience arent necessarily coming from a position of business experience. Pile on language issues and the absence of any face-to-face interaction and it should be no surprise that this has gotten skewed into a bigger issue than it is. Theres more. They also all tried to hire them from the same places, at the same time. Theres a scene in the lm A Beautiful Mind 1 , where mathematician John Nash has a revelation involving game theory. A group of women, lead by a stunning blonde, enter a bar - prompting John and his friends to discuss strategy: If we all go for the blonde, we block each other. Not a single one of us is going to get her. So then, we go for her friends. Theyll all give us the cold shoulder. Nobody likes to be second choice. What if
1

FILM CLIP ON YOUTUBE

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nobody goes for the blonde? We don't get in each others way, and we dont insult the other girls. Thats the only way to win. Thats the only way we all get laid. [...] The best result comes from everyone in the group doing whats best for himself, and the group. Lets just say the hot blonde rms got more inappropriate advances than they were prepared to handle. The massive, well-deserved success of Tims book showed us one of two things happen to good rms upon an inux of demand: they get expensive, they get over-allocated or they get sloppy. Nowadays, the best rates dont necessarily come from well-publicized rms with a day of the week in their name. The landscape changes constantly. Publishing a directory of rms only reinforces a bad cycle. More importantly, it reinforces focus on individuals over systems and over-emphasizes the need for exceptional people.

If the success of your outsourcing can be attributed to the talent of individual assistants, youve got more work to do.

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SO, YOURE JUST GOING TO LEAVE ME HANGING HERE...?

Having said all of that, I dont want you to get stuck on something as preliminary and essential as actually nding assistants. Though recommending specic assistants or rms would go against everything Ive said, I have absolutely no qualms recommending a few avenues you can start exploring.

The Big Players

Established marketplaces like Elance and oDesk can certainly bring candidates to the surface. My major issue with sites of their size is that I nd myself wishing I had an assistant to handle my search for an assistant. Youll get oods of proposals that, for the most part, start to blend together into a blur of capabilities, resumes, rates and endless follow-ups. The issue youll nd most frustrating is nding some way to di erentiate between the proposals. The key is to use these sites for lead-generation and take the screening process into our own hands. Pushing eligible rms toward your tailored screening application is a solid way to lter down to only those worth considering. On the plus side, larger sites can provide priceless feedback ratings and comments from prior clients and projects.

Experience-based feedback from former employers is your best friend. Ignore it at your peril.

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Local Flavor
If you were looking for a job in your city, youd likely nd yourself crawling your local Craigslist and similar sites. Ultra-local classied sites are every bit as popular in di erent parts of the world. For instance, dont be afraid to dig in to foreign Craigslist or other localized, community boards. Look for sites that are actually based out of countries youre exploring. Think about this. If you were longing to start a relationship or meet someone from a specic country or culture, youd likely start digging around PlentyOfFish or Match and do some ltering for the culture youre so attracted to. Unless youre planning to pick up and move, that would make perfect sense. Geographic proximity is entirely relevant. However, when hiring VAs, it couldnt matter less. There is no reason you shouldnt scour local marketplaces, job boards and resources for people seeking employment. Though they might be searching locally, youll absolutely nd many are prepared to work internationally. If you were an USbased freelancer looking for work, theres no reason you wouldnt entertain o ers from around the world. Its no di erent when the situation is reversed.

Theyre also the least likely to be the ones trolling massive job sites looking for wide-eyed, Paypal-ready Americans hiring a VA to manage social networking proles for their cats.

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nix the middleman

$$

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If an American answers the phone or their headquarters lives on your soil, its a red ag. I make that statement entirely based on cost, not quality of service.

When youre just getting started and want to understand this process, relying on a domestic middleman is a form of laziness. This isnt the place to look for shortcuts. Channeling your outsourcing through someone else

The moment you introduce a middleman especially one operating on domestic wages - costs must go up.
You are either paying more overall to cover the extra point-of-contact, or theyre employing lower-wage talent to support their operating costs. Either way, you get less for your dollar. If you have any doubt in your mind about this, keep in mind the reason Im telling you: Through Arsenal, Ive been that middleman and taken those cuts on projects that would have otherwise cost far less - and those cuts were coming from a client budget, not an underpaid team.

overlooks the importance of bulletproof systems and concise, direct communication channels. In real estate, a property manager supports the owner and takes on much of the responsibilities to keep everything in order - but the owner almost always managed their rst property personally. In the same vein, there will be a time when you can consider letting someone else handle the grind work, but doing so yourself trains your gut and gives you insight you wont get otherwise.

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SCREENING
Identifying capable VAs is about controlled testing. By this, I mean you need to create a simple, repeatable system for screening candidates and eliminating noise. You cant intelligently compare and judge a set of candidates without a control factor. Presenting a group of candidates with a brief screening test acts as an initial ltering mechanism, immediately eliminating the people that arent willing to invest even minimal e ort. Structured screening ensures you are judging the actual candidate, rather than your own ability to clearly and consistently communicate your needs and expectations.

process may feel like novelty, but for the people on the other end this is life and this is their career. They expect professionalism, clarity, and a means of demonstrating their value to you. If an assistant refuses to complete a brief screening form, disregard them. If you walked in to Starbucks to apply for a job, it wouldnt come as a surprise when youre asked to ll out an application. Why should hiring VA be any di erent? If youre taking this further to actually request they demonstrate their capability on a task, do o er to pay them for the time required to complete. Think of it as o ering a co ee to a candidate whos lling out a screening test.

Finding solid assistants is about peeling back the layers of touted capabilities and nding their core strengths & limitations.

Some of the major screening criteria includes... Single Point of Contact Will there be a single point of contact or will you be shifted between VAs? Its important that you have a single POC, but also should have an additional contact as a fallback. Were all human, we all get sick, experience family emergencies or wake up hungover and skip work.

It should go without saying, but I will say it anyway: you are interviewing applicants for a job, and should treat the process with that level of structure. At rst, the

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For time-sensitive tasks, you need to be clear on expectations. Work Hours When do they work and when are they available for communication? Do they work according to your time zone or theirs? If youre in the USA, this is clearly more important when working with India, China and the Philippines among others.

realize his insecurities with his English skills were a major sticking point.

Hire hustle. Hustle is universal. Hustle wins, every time.

As a rule, pick the person that is most proactive - the one

Core Capabilities Youll quickly notice that most rms and VAs will literally claim they do everything. Theyll list every conceivable tool, technology and skill as something they can handle with ease. Clearly this calls for clarication. Rather than sift through their claims, Ive found its easier to insist they note what they cant or wont do. You may have to phrase this as less of an ego-hit for them, but the purpose is to identify what they absolutely will not do for you. For example, I worked with one VA who I discovered was paralyzed toward all phone-related tasks. It took a rather awkward email exchange to

that shows the most hustle. Its as simple as that. He or she will be the one that messages you regularly to followup, elicit your needs or explore tasks you shouldnt be doing. These types always create the most impressive results. Theyre genuinely concerned with your success and pushing you forward because they realize it creates more opportunity for them as well.

See resources for a sample Applicant Screening Form

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STARTING
Securing a VAs time is usually just a matter of saying Lets get started. Unlike traditional hiring processes, kicking o a relationship with a VA is generally as simple as sending them an agreed-upon payment via Paypal or similar. Its important to clearly note that payment details in your transaction, in case you nd yourself in a dispute situation requiring Paypal intervention. Prior to issuing any payment, present your VA a form to complete which includes all necessary details about their rm or themselves if they work solo. This should include their full contact details, o ce address, instant messenger names, payment details, and so on.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW
Though youll certainly review on a task-by-task basis (especially if you arent satised), its equally important to summarize and review at a higher level. This isnt an elaborate process. At the end of each 2- or 4-week period, depending on workload, Ill pull all tasks and note each one that hasnt been completed or was screwed up. Send this to your VA and be clear that you expect a response with explanation, clarication, or conrmation that they understand what was incorrect. In the same way you dont want to make the same mistakes twice, we need to extend that to our assistants and make sure everything is a one-time ordeal.

See resources for a sample New Hire Form

See resources for a sample Performance Review

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Rs W

Money

P B
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Negotiating payment terms with your VA can feel an awful lot like negotiating your mobile contract with the guy inside the AT&T kiosk at the mall.
You nd yourself asking if your unused hours will rollover to the next billing period, whether rates change on nights and weekends, and ask about replacement & upgrade policies. Fortunately, unlike the typical mobile provider, your VA isnt focused on completely screwing you and securing your soul as ransom.

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AN IDEA OF COSTS
The rate di erences between rms and assistants can appear drastic and seemingly random enough to make your head spin. If you want to experience this, it takes nothing more than a free post to Elance, oDesk or similar. Youll see enough rate variance for a single task to make you think there are factors that matter far more than something as inconsistent as cost. Allow me to clarify the common reactions with a thoroughly unscientic, statistically unresearched chart...

$50 $38 Rate $25 $13 $0 Too cheap to be good... Too good to be true...

$45

$3

$8
#*$@! Ill just do it myself.

In all seriousness, rates can be a major point of confusion. The solution is to stop basing decisions solely on rate and focus on qualitative factors. For instance, on Elance and similar sites, the most valuable piece of information you have is feedback from previous clients. Similar to eBays Seller Feedback system, this often will be your decision-maker or dealbreaker as to whether you want to consider them. As is true with all business connections, listen for personal recommendations from people you trust, or in your industry.

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DOLLARS & CENTS

To present some hard numbers, Ill refer to specic tasks or types of work Ive worked with and the corresponding rates. All rates and gures are in US dollars.

WORK TYPE
General/Personal Assistance Low-Level Data Tasks Biographical Research Voiceover (USA)

RATES WEVE USED

$6.50 - $11 (varies by rm) $3.50 / hr $7 / hr $8-$10 per recorded minute (average); included editing, revision, and le naming/organization

LUMP SUM, TIME & PER ITEM

Certain tasks arent suited for hourly billing. Transcription and data entry/cleansing are two examples of what may call for more granular billing. Customer/technical support calls or transcribing audio to plain text may be charged at smaller minute intervals. Further organizing, formatting or structuring the transcription requires more e ort. When youre dealing with massive sets of structured content (nancial data, form/database input, etc) youll often see rates per-entry/per-record.

Language Translation

$50 for 250 words/phrases; included phonetics & native characters As low as $8/hr and as high as $60/ hr+

Web/App Development

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ALLOW ME TO SAVE YOU SOME MONEY

Clearly the overall scope and complexity of each task and project will vary. For smaller, simpler work, its often safe to just clarify the task, get someone moving on it and see how it turns out. If you did your part properly, youll usually be pleased with what you get back. On the other hand, massive projects requiring a full team should be handled di erently to account for unforeseeable problems.

Taking a pre-determined timeout 10%-20% into starting a massive project can mean the di erence between serious payday & painful paycut.
An early project I managed with Arsenal demanded a team of 5-6 assistants working full-time over a number of weeks possibly months. We had no real idea at the outset and thats where the 10%-20% play proved its worth. After only a week of e ort, one of the team members built a set of smart scripts that turned a monolithic data nightmare into something laughably simple. The obvious move to tackle only a sliver of a huge project is only one of two lessons to be taken from this. The second gave us a lesson in ethics. My VA running point on this project absolutely did not have to share what was happening behind the scenes. They could have enjoyed soaking up our full budget over weeks or months - but didnt. Few moves could have gained him as much trust as that one did and it said something powerful about their attitude toward cultivating a relationship.

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Just as were chasing more time by working smarter, anyone you employ will (or at least should) be doing the same. Sharp VAs will know when tasks can be automated or scripted on their side of the world too. Making that decision is based largely on whether its going to be a recurring task, and without much variance. When you expect something to be recurring - even if not indenitely - share that expectation in your task details. Clearly state that these tasks should be turned into a process and scheduled, unless doing it will seriously raise the price.

Paying a bit more the rst time is worthwhile if it means it takes half as long next time. You also dont want to be billed for 20 hours of work each time someone presses his F11 key to run a script.

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 ubicacin ! elhelyezs
( Location )

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Choosing who should take on a task doesnt have to be di cult. Find the person that is best suited for the job and pay them what theyre worth. Nothing magic happens when you cross oceans and timezones. Start your search locally. Expand your search radius until you nd who you need. Personal outsourcing simply represents the willingness and capability to expand that radius globally.

There is absolutely no reason to opt for someone halfway around the world if you can get the same caliber work for equivalent cost domestically. Now, those are clearly two huge conditions and the very reason we explore options abroad. Generally speaking, getting work done by two equivalently capable people - in two economically di erent places - will introduce a cost decision. Your budget may not stretch as far domestically, while the quality or timeliness may su er if going abroad hurts your ability to oversee and communicate expectations. If the cost benet is taking you o shore, lets take a

Working old school, with someone local, face-to-face is still the absolute ideal for all but the completely reclusive.
The real distinction is far less about domestic vs. abroad, and entirely about local vs. remote. If you look beyond timezone, currency and language nuances, you realize working with a domestic, yet remote, freelancer is essentially the same process and workow.

glance at our world...

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Geography 101
An unobjective, heavily experience-biased assessment of global capabilities.
No individual or agencys experience is enough to constitute a complete picture of the world. Im making no such claims. Ive experienced as many jaw-droppingly impressive projects as I have astonishingly bad ones. Its all just feedback. Whats important is what you take away from each one and how you apply it to the next.

Learn from the outcome, adapt accordingly & move forward. Repeat until you nd what works for you.

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BANGKOK, THAILAND (GMT+7)

Top-notch language translation work done by both locals and ex-patriate residents.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES (GMT+8)

Some of the most authentically warm, amicable teams Ive had pleasure of working with. My occasion to work with a group in Manila spanned 8 weeks and included over 300 children testing a new virtual world. The team leads were exceptionally wellarticulated and punctual - which is impressive considering we were working at a 13 hour time di erence.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA (GMT+10)

Everything you would expect from having your work done in the States. Aussie dollar is weaker and the supply of qualied creative labour exceeds the demand. You can expect to pay from 30-50% less than in the US.

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BUDAPEST, HUNGARY (GMT+1 DST)

The largest project with a Hungarian team su ered from hellish communication problems with our development teams. There was a painfully lax attention to detail and maintaining integrity of

BUCHAREST, ROMANIA (GMT+2 DST)

Low rates, reasonable English skills. Abundance of quality design skill, but required extreme detail to get good results.

NEW DELHI, INDIA (GMT+5:30)

Nicely matched expectations for the right type of tasks. Less-than-impressive results on analytical tasks & freeform document. E ciency and rates is unbeatable combination on low-complexity, high-volume tasks.

BEIJING, CHINA (GMT +8)

Ultra-e cient turnaround times and overall operations. Solid, consistent quality for animation and creative deliverables. Language barrier proved an issue

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN (GMT+5 DST)

Highly satisfactory programming deliverables to-date. Functioned as expected and per specications.

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (GMT-3)

Caliber creative work youd pay premium prices to nd in the states. Prefer to work higher degree of creative freedom. Less than impressive on hitting deadlines.

compared to others.

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To source, or not to source?

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After only a small number of botched deliverables and blown deadlines from assistants, I realized the importance of forming a few governing principles to vet potential projects and eliminate the constant need to explore a task to decide if it was ripe for a VA to tackle. I essentially started making decisions between freelancers and foreign rms by asking myself a strange, but obvious question...

Is this task a function of the left or right brain?

You can usually o oad left-brained tasks without hesitation. Youve probably known since 3rd grade which side of the brain handles what sort of cognition, and which side loves what. The split looks something like the following (...and I felt the visual was appropriate):

Left: logic, facts, math, science, pattern& order-seeking, comprehension, detail, grounded in reality

Right: creativity, spatial perception, belief, risk, feeling, symbolism, impetuous, meaning-seeking, abstract thinking

Get your team handling the procedural, programmatic & repetitive, leaving you free to get creative, be impetuous, take risk & focus on the grand scheme: your lifestyle. 79

If it bores, angers, or fails to spark any re in you, it should nd its way onto a computer across an ocean.

FOR CLARITY, LETS SEGMENT WORK INTO THE FOLLOWING BUCKETS...

Research Design & Creative Writing & Voice Data

Development Mechanical Setup & Maintenance

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RESEARCH
Research may come across as something subjective, calling for discretion and rational ltering - but the majority of extremely high-value research you could need is just plain laborious. Searching, aggregating, consolidating and formatting consumes 90% of the e ort - and the time. Deriving meaning or actionable value usually takes only a few moments, and nearly never longer than the front-loaded e ort. Niche market research summaries, biographical outlines, health research - all of it is worth pushing abroad. One exception worth noting stems from lacking context. Its easy to forget that assistants working from another country dont share our cultural, societal and historical points of reference, assumptions or biases. This can actually give you refreshing objectivity and in the past has turned me on to conclusions I might have otherwise missed. So, to sum up: The diverse, well-structured research a foreign team can compile, at minimal cost, is the perfect excuse to test a VA. Judging by projects Ive moved from start to nish, youll be asking why you werent using lunch money to outsource your grade-school research papers. Sure, they might completely miss the nuances of Lincolns latent homosexuality, but youd be the only kid in class with 84 pages of semantic di erential analysis on the ve conicting Gettysburg Address transcripts - and somehow you would have written it only the night before - while playing Nintendo. EXAMPLES
Niche market & keywords Biographical Personal brand work Health issues & concerns Researching new interests & ventures Emerging technologies Travel planning & events Language learning Competitive / landscape analysis Book/topical summaries

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DESIGN & CREATIVE

Creative work belongs in the hands of creative, aesthetically-focused individuals. Never entrust your brand or ideas message of appearance to someone whose rst instinct asks Can this be done in Excel?. Yes, I actually know some that hired a VA to design a website. They delivered what was clearly a spreadsheet exported as HTML. Joking aside, it was as clever as it was atrocious and useless.

Opening up your design deliverable from Bangalore can feel like opening a late-90s time capsule & shu ing through the Internets baby photos.

Creative tasks often fall out of the low-cost/high-value outsourcing sweet spot. Admittedly some of the most exceptional creative work in the world has emerged from all points around the globe - your job is to simply be sure the person you hire - wherever theyre from - has the creative spark. Often youll want to consider Central/South America for lower rates on top-notch creative work.

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The Luxury Necessity of Choice

Creative work is all about choice and iteration. Committing your full budget to a single persons concept is narrow-minded and drastically caps the value you get for your investment. Outsourcing is concerned with getting the highest value from our investment, and the highest creative value comes from options.

Rhetorical question: If you have $500 to spend, would you rather get 1 concept... or 25?
Without question, the smartest way to outsource creative work is through contest-style showdowns. After publishing your basic requirements and preferences, dozens of designers will weigh-in on the challenge. Youll get numerous terrible ideas and a solid mix of excellent ones. While using a site like Elance or a single freelancer can create the Do I seriously have to pay for this? dilemma, competition-style sites create the much more enjoyable Which one do I choose? dilemma. Contests let you experience the contribution of numerous freelancers, while only paying for the best one.

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Crowdspring & 99designs

Both of these sites o er the same thing: hosted design contests. You are guaranteed to receive a minimum of 25 submissions or you are not required to pay. That said, you are required to select a design from the pack once youve hit that threshold. Assuming you set a healthy, respectable budget for the work, its extremely unlikely you wont see a concept that knocks you o your feet.

Brandstack
Rather than dening a brand and visual elements from scratch, Brandstack o ers a massive marketplace of unique identity packages that have not been claimed or developed into a real brand. Designers create mock branding packages, including name, domain name, logo design and (coming soon) websites that are available to you for exclusive-rights purchase. Very interesting concept that can prove to be a huge timesaver when your highest priority is moving forward.

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WRITING & EDITING

Surely a man in Beijing can compose a breathtaking work of poetry & prose. Asking him to do it in an unknown language can turn breathtaking to headshaking.

Native creativity
It should be glaringly obvious, but Ive seen the mistake made too often to not mention outsourced writing. If youre in need of polished creative or persuasive writing work, hire writers whose rst language is your own. Expecting exceptional writing from someone for whom English is their 2nd or 3rd language is naive and generally doesnt end well. Naturally there are exceptions, but banking on nding the exception to save a few dollars is a low-value risk.

<technical> writing is an entirely di erent story

If youre dealing with indexing content, rigidly structured, consistent or more technical information, the pressure on native uency isnt as high. Simply stated, if the intended use or goal is primarily reference or resource, you may be able to expand your search. If youre aiming to win hearts & minds, youd be wise to seek out that guy who writes Obamas speeches. Im sure he has freelancing friends who he beat out for the job.

</technical>

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DATA
Stealing your life from you, byte-by-byte
I understand that sounds like a Fox News headline, but I am entirely serious. Organizing and interacting with data and information has become a dangerous mix of ubiquitous & easy. Normally, simplifying a once-complex process is good. It means we can get it done in less time. What is more often true is that we simply do more of it, because we can. If archiving or labeling an email message required that you type a 40 character command-line string, and wait 60 seconds - every single time - youd suddenly have a hellish, chaotic inbox - and all would still be right in the world. We forget just how much time we spend dealing with or managing information in everyday life, and even more-so if our income depends on our pushing data around. Its time to start leaving unavoidable data work to someone else.

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Any occasion where that requires you open a spreadsheet should call for a questioning pause. From now on, anytime you see a grid in your life, take for an extra breath and run it through a time-versus-value lter.

Be careful with this, as youll get to a point where the sight of a crossword puzzle prompts you to ballpark what it would cost to have your assistant do it.
The beauty of data is its structure. Structure lends itself well to automation and systems. Alternately, if all those quality moments you sharing with data are because it lacks structure and usefulness, its time to turn your hard work into a process governed by rules someone else can dwindle their life away enforcing.

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DEVELOPMENT
Development tasks involve programming desktop and mobile applications, as well as web application and site development. Whatever language youre looking for, youll nd a world of developers waiting to tackle anything you send their way. Of all the types of work suited for outsourced teams, programming is absolutely the most manageable. Were dealing with functionality and clear, dened expectations so theres often less room for error or miscommunication. It can certainly happen (and happen catastrophically if you arent careful), but well-managed projects should go smoothly.

MECHANICAL
This goes back to the earlier mention of forming an anchored reaction to repetition. If a well-scripted chunk of code or carefully-recorded spreadsheet macro could replace the human element of a process, its prime to disappear from your reality. Start to listen for and feel the reaction we train ourselves to ignore: the moment you realize youre doing anything that a fairly unimpressive robot or piece of software could do just as adequately. Thats your cue to stop.

SETUP & MAINTENANCE

Particularly if you make your living online, consider the sum-total of hours spent registering domains, setting up blogs & email accounts, pulling analytics - the list goes on and theres no just one last time in sight. Ongoing, recurring tasks are, understandably, as necessary as they are tedious. Pause to consider the decision-tree you unconsciously move through each time. Unpack it and capture it in a way that can be replicated.

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Whats left?

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It might seem like I essentially just listed every genre of work and told you to send it overseas. That isnt the point. I want to lay out whats possible. Your passion more than likely lives in one of those spaces. The other work keeping you from spending every waking hour on your passion lives in there too.

Eliminate anything you dont love.

Thats the point.

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Cubicle Ops:
Outsourcing your 9 to 5
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Whether youre running a company, broke & homeless, freelancing o an island or dreading Monday morning - you are always an entrepreneur if its in your DNA. In every one of those scenarios, youll see opportunity others never will - to innovate, rethink, question and be unreasonable. Killer entrepreneurs nd themselves in traditional jobs all the time. Bills are bills, rent is rent and a job can be a key part of executing your larger designs. In short, no 9-to-5 job can hold back hustle. There should be no convincing needed to turn you on to the idea of outsourcing your daily grind to free up o ce time for more important work: your own.

While an employee looks at a paycheck and sees his worth, an entrepreneur sees capital, like an kid grasping his allowance... eyes on re with possibility.
Blowing your paycheck on a plasma TV has about the same redeeming value as paying an ice sculptor to carve a bust of your head. It perpetuates your situation, creates the need to work for yet another check, and disrespects time by treating it as something that will never run out.

Using that money to create income-generating products, eliminate low-value work from your life, or seed a new venture - that makes you unstoppable.

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Your 9-5 job is absolutely no excuse to hold back. It can actually be a huge opportunity.
To emphasize, join me in one of my favorite pastimes - making major life decisions based on a polarizing, grossly oversimplied hypothetical model of reality:

In one scenario...
Youve become appallingly ine cient at your job. You show no marked improvement over time and promotion is nowhere over the horizon. Theres no talk of giving you a raise because, honestly, more than a few people around the o ce forget you work there until they need something from you. Youre only measurable contribution to the company is the weekly inner-o ce email digest of lolcatz images and painstaking management of some fantasy sports league draft.

In the other...
You produce like a machine. People are careful not to ask for your help because you have a way of just doing it for them in half the time. Youre also an enigma. In at 10am, gone for 2 hours over lunch, and a ghost by 4. Timestamps also show you churn out some of your best blog posts during work hours. Youre given a heavy assignment end-of-day Wednesday and somehow its done the next morning. This confuses the manager who assigned it, as he noticed you were seven doublewhiskeys deep at happy hour that same night.

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Its time to turn your day job into your outsourcing testbed & international playground. Corner desk strongly recommended. OUTSOURCE, INSOURCE, CROWDSOURCE, EMPLOY AN ARMY OF THE HOMELESS... JUST GET SOMEONE ELSE TO DO YOUR WORK FOR YOU
However you do it, the point is the same: use your paycheck to bankroll any person, process or tool that will reclaim your time. All of the usual principles and rules apply so theres no reason to reiterate them here. Below are a number of suggestions specic to opportunities only found within a company:

Repurpose
Look for commonalities between what youre working on and resources available to you solely through your job. Sometimes the problems youre thinking of hiring someone to solve are already taken care of, if you just know where to look. Archives of past work, resources, methodologies - it all may be relevant to eliminating your need to work as much.

Inversely, look for any opportunity to steer internal priorities towards serving your purposes. Push to only adopt and take on the type of work that is prime for outsourcing or automation.

Stop trying to be brilliant and start covertly making your brilliance unnecessary. 94

Leverage
If you work with talented people, open your eyes to what they can contribute to your larger plan. Dont look halfway around the world for a solution or skillset sitting halfway down the hall. Though it may not make sense for them to do the work, youll get a clearer idea of what needs to be done. Let experts help you identify and shape solutions, then task execution to the right people.

Automate
Assuming you intend to maintain your ow of income, theres a tricky balance to consider when automating. You can quickly draw attention to just how unnecessary your e ort is once youve replaced it with a keyboard shortcut or a set of customer service auto-responders. Think back to that kid in grade school who handed in his homework way before everyone else. You might have been that kid. The reward usually involved clapping out erasers or reading ahead to the next chapter. In other words, more work. Elementary school and the working world are all-toosimilar. Sometimes its better to keep your brilliance to yourself, giving you more time to draw awesome battle scenes on the back of your paper.

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Operations & Arsenal

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Workow
Creating a consistent workow you can fully manage while standing in an Apple store or sitting in a Cambodian hostel.

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Workow Considerations & Criteria

Communication
Minimizing unnecessary conversation, taking risks and learning from unexpected outcomes. Centralized communication and task requirements

CRITERIA
Relies on free services whenever possible, or as low-cost as possible without sacricing quality of service

Tasks
Eliminating ambiguity, enforcing structure, chunking big tasks into small ones, setting limits, and illustrating processes.

Avoid reliance on desktop applications unless absolutely necessary Cloud (web-based) storage of as many resources as possible. This includes email, documents, deliverables, reference media, supporting les for tasks, contacts, etc. Simple mobile capability to support capture of prompts for future tasks

Tools
Your toolset for keeping everything in motion, from anywhere in the world.

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Communication
Minimizing unnecessary conversation, taking risks & learning from unexpected outcomes.

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DONT PAY TWICE

We need to ensure communication with our assistants doesnt consume the same amount of time we gain by utilizing them.
Breaking even should never be the goal. Replacing every 30-minute task with a 20-minute conversation is simply replacing one form of waste with another, and the were paying twice for the latter. Once with our time, again with our money. Its like buying a 100-pack of Ramen Noodle soups. Not such a good deal when you consider what 100,000mg of sodium costs your health.

as a manager closing the door to his o ce. Be clear with them on this.

Over-communication
Over-communication can be as big an issue as a lack of. Your process should eliminate the need for as much as possible. Sometimes youll nd a VA that beats every task to death with redundant questions or trivial details. If the questions are legitimate, ensure you add them to your process instructions so they never come up again. On noncritical tasks, take a risk and let your assistant solve minor problems. Low costs and low consequences create a perfect lab for controlled experimentation. They will either get it right, or theyll screw it up. Usually it falls somewhere in the middle. Anything undesirable gives you new insight into your process and its variables.

Digital Do Not Disturb

Occasionally youll hire an assistant that likes to start a conversation every time you sign-in to an instant messenger service. Their intentions are good, but it becomes stressful,as you dont want to ignore your employee. We need to digitally convey the same message

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Taskmastery
Communicate expectations, details & deadlines systematically, in a centralized, shared, reusable format.

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Assigning tasks is an art-form of sorts. Not a particularly sexy one, but an art-form nonetheless. A lack of clarity and explicitness can make your money disappear with truly impressive speed. Trust me when I say taking another 90 seconds to get your assignments wording right can save you a week of wasted time and money.

Your ability to communicate your needs clearly, consistently & concisely determines whether or not youll crush it on the playing eld of the at world.
To be sure I properly beat this point to death, Ill pull in another core NLP principle...

The meaning of our communication is the response it produces. To be misunderstood is never the other persons fault - its our failure to communicate in a way they can understand.

Lets take a look at what a well-formed task looks like...

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Good tasks

Short Constrained Illustrated Clear Structured

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Short fuse, small chunks

Keep individual task deadlines under 72 hours whenever possible. As mentioned earlier, chunking large tasks down is always the way to keep quality in-check.

The following sentence is false. The preceding sentence is true.

Good tasks arent worded to create confusion. Theyre simply written, direct, and leave no room for interpretation or ambiguity.

Caps & Constraints

In addition to a deadline, consider that your task may need a cap on the hours it can consume. If the level of e ort or complexity is unknown, a small task can turn into a lost cause. Real-world example: Id been banging my head against a wall on a technical problem. It wasnt even important. My ego wouldnt let me source it until I felt su ciently conquered. I nally did, and my VA decided it was worthy of the e ort youd invest if you were on the verge of curing cancer. My ego, and my failure to include a time cap, cost me 50% of that months retainer.

Illustrated & Demonstrated

If youre assigning an audio transcription task, include a sample audio clip and sample of the nal, formatted transcription. If an annotated screenshot or screencast would eliminate all confusion, its reckless to not take the time to include it. Real-world example: I once asked a VA to collect the content from of a massive website. It was straightforward. Go to each page, copy the text, and paste it into a spreadsheet. Repeat this on every page. Two days later, I had a robust, useless spreadsheet full of raw HTML code from about 800 di erent pages.

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Structured
Structure ensures consistency. For all non-creative tasks, look for ways to structure the task and its expected results. Think about programming languages. They function by unchanging sets of rules and conditions. They have no case-by-case discretion and we know what to expect because of that. For example, a spreadsheet is always smarter than a free-form document unless theres a reason it cant work. Sequential numbering and other simple structures make multiple revisions much simpler, as you can resolve problems by providing a list of row/cell numbers.

CLARITY ENABLES SCALE

I realize this may come across as a complex description of a simple idea, but theres a reason Im going into this level of detail. For small, low-consequence tasks, you can be less concerned with this. Its honestly not a big deal if your VA goes to Zappos and orders shoes in the wrong color.

What Im giving you is the power to do serious damage with your teams and coordinate complex, specialized task assignments without trembling with doubt as you preview the nished product. 105

Tasks

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TASK PROCESS
The following is a loosely structured process for dening a task workow. Adapt it to suit your needs.
Any new task will be added to the tracking document, including all information required for your completion. Any relevant les will be added to Google Documents and/or Box.net If shared using Google, document will be prexed with the task number (e.g.: 18: RawData.xls) If shared using Box.net, document will be added to a numbered folder within the Tasks directory. The number matches the task number. (e.g.: Box.net > Tasks > 18 > RawAudio.mp3) Assign tasks via email. Task should be referenced by task number and direct VA to view the shared task details document VA will add task to tracking sheet and set status All assigned tasks must be responded to with a conrmation email. When possible, VA should include the expected date of completion. All task-related les and communication is to be prexed with the corresponding task number to enable quick email searches for related communication

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Resources & Files

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The following is a simple set of rules and details for managing resources, accounts logins and les. It is included in the Sourcecontrol Process & Expectations template. Accounts & Logins
Account details are available in the shared Accounts & Resources document. Any tasks requiring information notlisted in that document should be requested directly. Any new information provided is to be added to the end of the document unless otherwise specied.

Files
The following types are to be shared as Google Documents Documents (.doc, .txt) Spreadsheets (.xls) Presentations (.ppt) PDFs Archives (.zip) Audio Videos All other types should be shared using the corresponding task folder on Box.net. If le is not related to a task, le should be placed in folder labeled Dropbox.

Sharing les may raise questions of security. Lets take time to cover that now. 109

Security, fraud, identity theft & the coming Apocalypse

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MORE TIME > PEACE OF MIND

If the fear of nancial fraud or identity theft is enough to overshadow the benets of recapturing your time, its possible that you have no real need to start outsourcing. It may be more novelty than need. Outsourcing or any distribution of workload stems from either need or pain. If you cant do it fast enough, dont know how to do it, or dont want to do it - hiring a VA is a godsend. Largely baseless concern for security and fraud is nothing compared to the feeling of reclaiming time. Im not prescribing recklessness - we just need to make sure healthy caution and doesnt transform into fulledged paranoia. Im not proposing you leave your newborn child under the care of your assistant. I wouldnt recommend you publicly Tweet your credit card info to your VA, nor should you photocopy your passport and send them your original. Make a point to approach with the same neutral, healthy skepticism youd trust when making a purchase online. Conrm the basics are in-place

(encryption or similar protection of sensitive data) and then stop worrying about it.

PROTECTING INFORMATION
Non-Disclosure Agreements & other faades
Di erent tasks present di erent concerns. If youre dealing with legitimately sensitive information, covered under non-disclosure agreements or similar, its fair to demand the same of your assistants. They are simply a sub-contractor who you are ultimately responsible for. Ive never had an assistant refuse to sign an NDA, but I also never breathed a sigh of relief when it came through the fax machine. In most situations, its a component of formality within a larger dog-and-pony show. Enforcing even the most airtight NDA is usually far too expensive and time-consuming to be worthwhile. If its necessary to increase trust or move a project forward, do it - but dont y to Manila with your notary to get the signature.

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time. Why? Of those two people, whos more likely to go

If someone intends to rip you o , no document will turn them into an ethical person. Trust people, not their signatures.
To be balanced, it would likely be much more di cult to pursue legal action across international lines. Just be smart about your business, wherever it is.

to Dell.com and buy servers to start the next Google? Theres no inherent security in doing business here. Do recall that we are the home of Enron and a number of banks I wont bother naming. The Better Business Bureau wont help me if a freelancer walks away with my deposit, nor will they if your virtual assistant disappears

Use It or Lose It
Dont expect deposited funds to sit around gaining interest. Have you ever knocked on your bosss door at 4pm Friday and asked for some weekend work to make up for a light week? Me neither. Dont expect it from your VA. Unused deposits are like unsold airline seats - at some point, they lose all value. Its your responsibility, not your assistants, to gauge how much work you actually need done. If you commit to 40 hours a month and use 10, dont expect a refund. Youre more likely to get money taken o your dinner bill for that steak you didnt nish.

PROTECTING YOUR MONEY

Theres no major risk introduced o shore that isnt every bit as present - if not to a greater degree - domestically. When I stop to think about it, Ive always felt more comfortable sharing my credit card details with someone gratefully working in a Bangalore call center than I am sharing it with an American college student working part-

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If you do underutilize your deposited balance, your VA will likely be happy to use that as occasion to sell you on a longer-term retainer. For instance, there was one occasion where I failed to use a modest $400 USD within 30 days. Months went by and it was unreasonable to expect them to still deliver on that balance. They o ered to give me the full value if I committed to an additional 2 months at a drastically reduced rate. A good o er and one I quickly accepted.

Now Im entirely in favor of aggressive ascension and making breaking into new roles. I love to see it. There was one problem with the situation: somewhere along the way, the money situation got out of hand. After depositing funds into one rm, he moved to the next. Its not exactly surprising that his new rm wasnt keen to let him work against a deposit they never received. Its equally unsurprising that his rst rm never heard anything about my deposit. The point here is this: stay on top of the people you consider to be available to you and ask that they inform you of any moves that will impact your money.

Brazen careerism: Not distinctly American

On two separate occasions, we forwarded new tasks to an assistant - only to nd out theyd left the rm to join another. After tracking him down (ironically via one of his now-former colleagues) and re-connecting, his email signature changing over time said it all...2 (First) Hrithik Roshan Asst. Manager, Fresh Start Assistants
2

(Second) Hrithik Roshan Manager, Stopgap Ltd.

(Third) Hrithik Roshan Vice President, Hotshot Ltd.

Names/rms clearly changed for privacy

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The Unpredictable & Unforeseeable

You should expect that things are going to happen that you dont expect. Thats called life and has nothing to do with outsourcing. Realistically, most of what you task to an assistant will have enough exibility to handle such surprises. The simple, proactive way to handle this is through shared progress and tight deadlines.

I was working with a VA once that was literally hit by a bus on his walk to work. From a PDA in his hospital bed, he e-mailed to let me know his work would be a day late.

Shared progress
If something unexpected occurs and you have to shift to another assistant, the last thing you want is a week of hard-work sitting as a le on their desktop. Demanding (and enabling) shared, centralized les and revision is the smartest way to prevent trouble. Numerous le versions shared via email with multiple collaborators creates chaos.

To borrow a concept from the database world, we want a single version of the truth, and we want it kept current.

Tight deadlines, small chunks

Keep your tasks as short as possible. Break tasks down into chunks that result in some useful progress that can be built upon - even if its by someone else.

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Arsenal
Your toolset for keeping everything in motion, from anywhere in the world.

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There is no single tool that can keep this all running smoothly. That is not an excuse to neglect it. It creates an impetus to build your toolset before things get out of hand.
When we consider managing an assistant or team on a regular basis, something becomes clear: theres a lot of moving parts. Files, di erent communication channels, tracking progress, dealing with problems, payments - it adds up. Proper planning now prevents chaos and avoids feeling like weve simply started paying others to create a new job for ourself. Once everything is setup, it will feel like the perfect tool. Everything will ow together nicely and youll be glad you took the time to think it through. No technology can replace the core human interaction and critical thinking required to keep things running smoothly between you and your teams, but the right tools go a long way. What follows is a set of services and software - most of which you already know and use - which work together to create a solid arsenal for managing tasks and people.

Dont underestimate simple & free. This toolset enabled me to coordinate distributed teams & numerous complex product development cycles... for 6 months through 10 countries, with only a backpack and a Mac.

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COMMUNICATION
Email
Gmail is the only way to go, particularly considering our workows hinge access to shared Google Docs.

Virtual Mailboxes
Grasshopper (formerly GotVMail) is the killer solution for creating a respectable presence and managing extensions and forwarding. You can setup voicemail boxes for di erent parts of your business or venture and route calls to external numbers, without sacricing consistency and brand.

Voice & International Calling

Skype is the clear winner for international calling, and its a standard amongst capable VAs. Its also been my saving grace on foreign soil more times than I can count. If youre intending to take your ventures on the road, neglecting Skype is only slightly less convenient than leaving your passport at home. There was only one time abroad that I didnt have access to Skype. I remember it well. To make it through a conference call with an investor, sans Skype and in need of a quick solution, I ended up totaling $120 USD via botched $20 SIM card rells as I took the call at the counter of a Hungarian convenience store.

Instant Messenger
If you use Gmail (which you absolutely should), Google Talk is the most convenient, as its fully integrated. Manage your presence and make it clear to your assistants that you are not to be disturbed if youve set your status as Unavailable.

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SHARED DOCUMENTS & FILE STORAGE

Google Documents
Nearly everything Im suggesting hinges on an adoption of Googles shared Microsoft O ce destroyer. Under everything, Im placing tremendous emphasis on mobility and and the ability to be untethered to one location. Keeping our les in the cloud and o our hard drives supports that. If your assistant wont adopt Google Documents - assuming youve decided its the smart thing to use - you should think twice about using them. Yes, youll still get things done and everything may be okay - but this o ers a solution to a very avoidable form of chaos and frustration.

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Box.net
At rst, it may feel unnecessary to add an external system for les. Email attachments do work nicely, but become a legitimate pain in the ass the moment you introduce revisions or additional collaborators. Box.net is the service to use for storing documents that cannot be managed with Google Documents. Always attempt to use Google as your rst choice, as it reduces confusion and nicely centralizes your assets. For the les Google doesnt handle (such as your recorded screencasts, audio les, data les, etc), Box.net provides a simple, clean interface with built-in sharing features. Pairing access to shared Google Documents with a Box.net storage space is all youll need for most tasks. The free account is su cient for most things, though you may want to upgrade to handle larger les and a few other features.

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MOBILE
Evernote lets you capture absolutely any type of content and keeps it centralized for you. Capture images and text via your mobile device and theyre kept in sync with your account. Use this on-thego to capture anything relevant to a future task. Establishing a clear, simple workow with you assistant to capture task reminders can be helpful. I started out by simply sending a note to my own email address from my mobile. Gmail would label and ag them. The trouble is, they get buried and you forget all about it. Sometimes you miss something important. Consider sending these to your VA instead, who can be asked to collect them and prompt you to act on it next time you talk.

INSTRUCTION & REAL-TIME PROCESS CAPTURE

Jing is free and its absolutely all you need to capture, annotate and share screencasts and still images. Screencasts are the closest you can get to actually allowing someone to read your mind and do your work for you. Each clip is limited to 5 minutes max which enforces concise instructions. Simply add each screencast to your Box.net Screencasts folder and provide a descriptive label. Name these logically so you can refer to them directly when assigning tasks.

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STRATEGY UNPACKING & PROCESS DOCUMENTATION

Always start with simple pen and paper to capture the major actions and decisions. Once it gets chaotic or starts feeling complete, a mindmapping tool is is a perfect way to formalize your process. Youll likely form a habit of seeing the underlying process in every new task you take on. MindMeister or similar makes documenting that process a pleasure, and everything is stored online.

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PAYMENTS
Paypal is the staple solution and its accepted by any assistant worth considering. If they dont accept Paypal, its likely you received their resume via international mail, in a beat-up manila envelope with 84 stamps on it. The additional benet of using Paypal is the provided Visa debit card, which is linked to your account. It immediately noties you via email of any purchases, which makes it a card you can comfortably provide to a VA if needed.

BOOKMARKS
Delicious has been around for years. You may already use it to manage your bookmarks. In addition to documents & les, another key item well be sharing with assistants is web addresses. We can keep these out of our emails and task lists by centralizing them in our Delicious account. Use the a tag va:resource for all general resource links. This will serve as their single point of reference. Use the tag va:## for any links related to a specic task. For example, links relevant to task #12 would be tagged va:12. You can get a Firefox (and Safari) browser add-on that make adding/managing much faster.

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Wrapping Up

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Everything from here forward is focused on enabling you to use the ideas weve been talking about. Like any tools, its entirely up to you how theyre used. Outsourcing is a force multiplier enabling you to take on more of what you love than ever before - and more importantly, do less of what you never enjoyed to begin with.

Thanks for reading. Now go do some damage.

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Resource Reference
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HOW TO USE THESE RESOURCES

The intention is to create a system that balances structure with exibility. We want to minimize the number of steps required to accomplish any given task, and provide enough exibility to support the unavoidable variation between di erent types of work.

The minute a system or tool adds weight or friction to the process, simplify it or re-think it entirely.
A system is only meant to increase productivity, not structure it into inaction. If it feels like more trouble than its worth, this may indicate you dont have enough of a workload to justify using an assistant.

Adapt everything to work for you

This is not presented as the denitive system to be adopted blindly. Rather it is a framework I have found to be e ective through testing and use. Consider it a starting point which youre absolutely encouraged to adapt to suit your needs.

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Contents
Information Process & Expectations Accounts & Resources Tasks Task Details Task Tracking Process Instructions Process Variables & Decisions Process unpacking People Application Form New Hire Details Swipe File 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143

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Sample Job Posting The Introduction Letter Test Performance Review

144 148 149

Required Reading Narcissism, Sharing & Respect

Share the love. Heres the deal... Respect

150 153
155 156 157

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Where are the les?

All documents are provided as public Google Templates at:

Sourcecontrol: Shared Document Templates & Samples

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NAMING CONVENTIONS
For simpler reference and organization, Ive used these simple rules for the prex of all shared le naming:

PREFIX
P#

TYPE
Process Instructions

NOTES
Google Document; Outlines the steps or details for a particular process.

SC#

Screencast

Video/Flash: Demonstrates a system in real-time to show the process, or some subset of it. Stored on Box.net in Reference > Screencasts

Any task assigned to a VA. Every task is given the next number in sequence, T# Task regardless of status or which VA its going to. We use this to match up communication (emails, etc), les and task metrics (hours used, cost, etc)

Any document containing information not related to only one specic task. R# Resource or Reference This includes VA resources such as our Processes and Accounts documents, and any centralized reference material. This makes it faster to provide instructions for new tasks which depend on info in various documents.

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Information

131

PROCESS & EXPECTATIONS

Clearly denes handling of tasks, communication & other expectations.

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ACCOUNTS & RESOURCES

Master accounts & resources document, shared with your VAs
Depending on how many assistants you are working with and the type of work you have them performing, you may not need to share nearly this level of detail. You can either create a few documents with di erent sets of information, or simply keep this document private and supply information as-needed. Payment information or other sensitive details can be provided on an asneeded basis if used infrequently.

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Tasks

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TASK DETAILS
Master task assignment sheet, shared with your VAs
Rather than emailing lengthy task details, we want to centralize as much as possible. All tasks are to be numbered and added to this shared document.

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TASK TRACKING
New task form & metrics spreadsheet
Every task lives in 2 places. The details of the task lives in our Task Details document. The hours and costs live in Task Tracking (shown here). The form is only intended for your use, and feeds directly into the Task Tracking sheet. It simplies adding tasks for tracking. Your VA is expected to update the sheet as progress is made.

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PROCESS INSTRUCTIONS
Sample sequence of process steps to be shared as reference with task assignment
Process instructions enable your VA to complete an assigned task. In addition to the Process, you may also want to reference complimentary screencasts, illustrations or output samples.

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PROCESS VARIABLES & DECISIONS

Sample document to note task-specic variables/decisions which enable a VA to perform a process
Assuming weve turned what we do into a process, weve identied what actions and steps require unique information or decisions. These things will vary each time the process is performed, so we need to communicate that with our task assignment. In the example weve used, only a few pieces of content is needed to enable a VA to perform our Wordpress installation process. A spreadsheet such as this sample could be included along with the task to provide that information.

I realize this may seem to add weight or complexity to our process, but consider a scenario where you need to setup 100 new blogs with 100 di erent titles spread across 10 di erent servers (unlikely, I know). Using this method, a simple spreadsheet enables your team to do the rest by following our process instructions.

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PROCESS UNPACKING
Sample mindmap showing the explicit breakdown of the formerly specialized, repetitive process behind installing a new Wordpress blog
Absolutely any process can be broken apart into its component actions and decision points. Using a mindmap or similar method allows us to, as the name implies, map out our mental processes. This is a critical element of enabling others to do our work for us. Click here for a live version of this mindmap (Password: sourcecontrol). Its not intended to be perfect, or necessarily correct, but it conveys the process.

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People

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APPLICATION FORM
Screening form used when seeking new VAs
If using a service like Elance or similar, youll be ooded with interested rms and independent assistants. Theyll claim to o er you the world, and o er it cheaply. To cut through the noise, create your own screening form and direct all candidates or shortlisted applicants to it. Tailor this based on what you need and demand.

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NEW HIRE DETAILS

Simple details form for new VAs
When starting a new assistant, this provides a simple, centralized way to capture and store their key contact information and details. When working with certain VAs, I found I was constantly receiving emails from di erent addresses and IMs from various names. Presumably they were involved with more than one rm, or simply mixing personal and business email. Keeping this organized cant hurt, and doubles as a contact list as you need to reach out to assistants you havent used in a while.

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Swipe File

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SAMPLE JOB POSTING

The following is a well-tested posting Ive used on a number of sites (such as Elance) and received a strong response. Its quite specic, so youll want to adapt to suit your needs.
Entrepreneur/business owner seeking the assistance of efficient personal assistants, working remotely from outside the US. Work to include various tasks on an as-needed basis, both of a personal, technical, and business nature. Example Technical Tasks: - Data cleaning, migration, conversion, collection - Web-related technical issue resolution Example Personal Tasks: - Ordering gifts, arranging appointments, organizing information, travel arrangements/ research, etc. - Personal finance tasks; paying bills, resolving simple financial matters, making phone calls to retrieve information or resolve overdue bills - Research; in-depth online research into a broad range of topics; creation of research outlines and vendor comparison

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... and more as time goes on. Your fee structure must be on an as-needed basis (hourly or per-task rate). Individuals must have the support of a team, rather than work alone. Immediate response to required tasks is considered essential. Any delay in response or missed delivery will be considered unacceptable and no further work will be considered. Must be well-versed in English language for composing emails/letters and making phone calls to US-based businesses/individuals. Selected vendor will be asked for a brief phone call (via Skype) to discuss the position. Competitive hourly rate is essential, as well as experience working with similar US-based individuals. Please include hourly rate and brief details about yourself/your team in your responses. Also requested is a number of work/project delivery examples from previous assignments.

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NEW HIRE WELCOME EMAIL

Once youve found someone youre ready to start utilizing and worked out terms, its smart to send a proper kick-o email with all the resources and details they need.
Hello, To get things started, I want to provide you with links to various resources and information youll need for our time working together. PROCESSES & EXPECTATIONS Please carefully and thoroughly review the shared document titled Processes & Expectations. I expect that you will closely follow the systems and rules defined in that document. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to let me know. ACCOUNTS & RESOURCES All essential account information and resource access is available in a shared document titled as such. If you need any information for a task, please refer to this document. If what you need is not included, contact me. TASK DETAILS All task details are to be stored exclusively in the shared document titled Task Details. No task details will be emailed directly. Every task will be given a unique number which I ask that you include in all task-related emails or messages. Any supporting files will be included in one of two places: Google Documents and our Box.net account. The file/folder names will always include the the task number.

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TASK TRACKING Any time and cost tracking is to be kept in the shared spreadsheet titled Task Tracking. This document is to be checked daily and the hours must be kept up-to-date. Any time/cost related notes should be added to the tasks Assistant Notes field. FILES & REFERENCE Any files required for a task will be added to the shared Box.net account. This includes screencasts and other supporting documentation for certain processes. I will often refer to files stored here when assigning a task. EMAIL Please setup the following email signature to be used for all outgoing correspondence on my behalf. I must be BCCd on all outgoing emails. --{Assistant Name} Personal Assistant to {Your Name} {Assistant Email}

A note about email... You may want to setup e-mail aliases for your assistants to maintain your personal or business brand. I simply create forwarding addresses for an assistant. By doing this, you can have someone email support@yourdomain.com and it will direct as necessary. Ive also set it up so certain VAs can send outgoing email under my domain.

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THE INTRODUCTION LETTER TEST

Whether you just do it to feel like a bigshot or with serious intentions, having your new assistant compose an introductory email is a favorite rst task.
Its a stealth test of their English skills and creates a convenient excuse to have your VA email your friends, family and co-workers from previous jobs. If theres a better way to intrigue, ingratiate or alienate (depending on the recipient), I dont want to know it. The following is an unedited attempt from a previous assistant. I dont recommend you use it, but I do recommend you get one of your own.

Dear Mr/Miss/Mrs. __________________: The purpose of this letter is to briefly introduce myself as David's Walsh Personal Assistant. I very recently joined the company and am taking over some initiatives likemanaging schedule and communications on behalf of Mr. David Walsh. I am very keen in speaking with you and helping you on any matter related to my employer. Accordingly, as a first step in my customer familiarization process, I would like to shoot my contact information to you personally. As your new point of contact I believe that my paramount concern is how both David Walsh and I can better serve your needs, requirements and any thing that you need help on. I look forward speaking with you and learning more about your company in the near future. Sincerely, {Assistant Name} Personal Assistant to David Walsh

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PERFORMANCE REVIEW
Now & again, its helpful to look at an assistants overall performance and weigh out the good versus bad.
Ive noticed the mention of a shortcoming is usually all it takes to see clear improvement. Things to consider... Going beyond stated time allotments (unless they dont charge for it)

Hello, Below is a brief review/assessment of the last [time-period] working together. I would like to continue working with you over the next [time-period], though there are a few points to discuss: General: [Any general notes or issues. Its also considerate to include positive feedback or recognize where theyve excelled.] Task-Related:

Disregard for task deadlines Failure to use shared documents or other timesaving tools youve provided

[Review every task assigned and mention any task-specific issues or oversights] Total hours used: ## Total payment: ####

Not following actual processes to achieve result Communication issues

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Required Reading

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Youve likely noticed that, within every niche or area of interest, there seems to emerge the same 3-5 books that absolutely everyone refers to as essential reading. Its easy to develop a reaction that says Shocking. The same books. Again. More often than not, theres a good reason theyre on everyones list. With product creation and outsourcing, I see no exception.

E-MYTH REVISITED / MICHAEL E. GERBER

Something Im constantly surprised to not to hear amongst the lifestyle design and outsourcing set: maddened praise for Gerbers E-Myth. Regardless how long its been in circulation, Id argue it is still the most signicant, actionable model for creating scalable, low-friction businesses. If you havent expired at least one full highlighter between the covers of this book, youre an entrepreneurial masochist. The parallels Ferriss (rightfully) shares with Gerber are as relevant to muse creation and lifestyle design as they were to brick-and-mortar businesses when it was rst published in 1985. I re-read it each time I plan or kick o a venture, and get something new from it on every pass.

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THE 4-HOUR WORK WEEK / TIM FERRISS

If you havent read this by now, it likely means you dont have the internet yet either - in which case, I have no idea how you acquired my book. Thats actually quite impressive. Regardless, you should look into getting both. It goes without saying that Tims made a massive contribution to the community that hes largely responsible for creating.

THE WORLD IS FLAT / THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Another staple read that turned the (apparently at) world on its side. Take a look to the left and youll notice my rst sentence is just describing the actual cover. I can assure you the pages between the covers are worth consuming. Friedman invigorated serious discussion around the ethics and implications of globalization and a shifting world economy. He also served up a delicious double-helping of reality to any careerist arrogant or naive enough to think the government could legislate-away globalization, allowing them to live warmly in the womb of the United States job market.

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Narcissism, Sharing & Respect

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David Walsh
David is behind Muselife, a community blog focused on fueling the ultramobile entrepreneurial lifestyle through systematic product creation. He is the founder of Arsenal, an agile outsourcing process consultancy. Presently, hes immersed in the development of M6 System, pairing a methodical six-part approach to muse/product creation with purpose-built tools to bring it to all life. If youre intrigued to dig deeper, youll nd what youre looking for at www.muselife.com/about/.

lets have a meaningful 140-character conversation lets fuel that lifestyle youre working so hard to design

twitter

@dvdwlsh
blog

lets have a lengthy exchange of words lets get o the internet & do what our grandfathers did

email

dw@muselife.com
drink

muselife.com

sazerac

muselife

arsenal

AMBITION

DANGEROUS

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Share the love.

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Heres the deal...

I want this information in the hands of any person with the brass to actually do something with it. Anyone can read, but far fewer can do.
Its also a product which took considerable time to create, atop years behind the experience. Anyone pretending there isnt a nancial motive behind something like this is probably trying to sell you something.

Whats cool
Blog or otherwise write about anything in here. Just attribute it.

Whats not cool

Selling it as your own product Changing the name and selling it as your own product Translating it into another language, selling it as your own product and thinking no one will notice

BLOGGERS/WRITERS
Freely post or otherwise share any content from this book as part of your posts or conversations on any of the topics it covers. Id ask that you simply attribute it using my name and site: David Walsh ( www.muselife.com ) For any other scenarios, simply drop me an email and well make whatever youre doing work.

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Respect

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An informal list of shout-outs and attribution

Seth Hosko, Arsenal partner, citizen of the world and fellow musemaker. Tim Ferriss (4-Hour Workweek), whos book is quite possibly the reason youre reading mine. Michael Gerber (E-Myth), the God of intelligent system design. Jean-Patrick Bisson, whose outsourcing experience contributed to some of our notes on location.

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Hustle.

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