The #1 Fear: “Sweetheart, Did You Buy
a Porsche in China?”
I’m sure you might have your fears. AJ certainly did:
My outsourcers now know an alarming amount about me—not just my schedule but my cholesterol, my infertility problems, my Social Security number, my passwords (including the one that is a particularly adolescent curse word). Sometimes I worry that I can’t piss off my outsourcers or I’ll end up with a $12,000 charge on my MasterCard bill from the Louis Vuitton in Anantapur.
The good news is that misuse of financial and confidential information is rare. In all of the interviews I conducted for this section, I could find only one case of information abuse, and I had to search long and hard. It involved an overworked U.S.-based VA who hired freelance help at the last moment.
Commit to memory the following—never use the new hire. Prohibit small-operation VAs from subcontracting work to untested freelancers without your written permission. The more established and higher-end firms, Brickwork in the below example, have security measures that border on excessive and make it simple to pinpoint abusers in the case of a breach:
Employees undergo background checks and sign NDAs (nondisclosure agreements) in accordance with the company policy of maintaining confidentiality of client information
Electronic access card for entry and exit
Credit card information keyed only by select supervisors
Removal of paper from the offices is prohibited
VLAN-based access restrictions between different teams; this ensures that there is no unauthorized access of information between people of different teams in the organization
Regular reporting on printer logs
Floppy drives and USB ports disabled
BS779 certification for accomplished international security standards
128-bit encryption technology for all data exchange
Secure VPN connection
I bet there is a fair chance that sensitive data is 100 times safer with Brickwork than on your own computer.
Still, information theft is best thought of as inevitable in a digital world, and precautions should be taken with damage control in mind. There are two rules that I use to minimize damage and allow for fast repair.
1. Never use debit cards for online transactions or with remote assistants. Reversing unauthorized credit card charges, particularly with American Express, is painless and near instantaneous. Recovering funds withdrawn from your checking account via unauthorized debit card use takes dozens of hours in paperwork alone and can take months to receive, if approved at all.
2. If your VA will be accessing websites on your behalf, create a new unique login and password to be used on those sites. Most of us reuse both logins and passwords on multiple sites, and taking this precaution limits possible damage. Instruct them to use these unique logins to create accounts on new sites if needed. Note that this is particularly important when using assistants who have access to live commercial websites (developers, programmers, etc.).
If information or identity theft hasn’t hit you, it will. Use these guidelines and you’ll realize when it happens that, just like most nightmares, it’s not that big a deal and is reversible.
The Complicated Art of Simplicity:
Common Complaints
My assistant is an idiot! It took him 23 hours to book an interview! This was the first complaint I had, for sure. 23 hours! I was heated up for a shouting match. My original e-mail to this first assistant seemed clear enough.
Dear Abdul,
Here are the first tasks, due at the end of next Tuesday. Please call or e-mail with any questions:
1. Go to this article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12666060/site/newsweek/, get the phone/e-mail/website contacts for Carol Milligan and Marc and Julie Szekely. Also find the same info for Rob Long here http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12652789/site/newsweek/.
2. Schedule 30-minute interviews for Carol, Marc/Julie, and Rob. Use www.myevents.com (username: notreal, password: donttryit) to book them in my calendar for next week any time between 9–9 ET.
3. Find the name, e-mail, and phone (phone is least important) of workers in the U.S. who have negotiated remote work agreements (telecommuting) despite resistant bosses. Those who have traveled outside the U.S. are ideal. Other keywords could include “teleworking” and “telecommuting.” The important factor is that they negotiated with difficult bosses. Please send me links to their profiles or write a paragraph describing why they fit the profile above.
Look forward to seeing what you can do. Please e-mail if you don’t understand or have questions.
Best,
Tim
The truth is—I was at fault. This is not a good debut demand, and I made fatal mistakes even before composing it. If you are an effective person but unaccustomed to issuing commands, assume that most problems at the outset are your fault. It is tempting to immediately point the finger at someone else and huff and puff, but most beginner bosses repeat the same mistakes I made.
1. I accepted the first person the firm provided and made no special requests at the outset.
Request someone who has “excellent” English and indicate that phone calls will be required (even if not). Be fast to request a replacement if there are repeated communication issues.
2. I gave imprecise directions.
I asked him to schedule interviews but didn’t indicate that it was for an article. He assumed, based on work with previous clients, that I wanted to hire someone and he misspent time compiling spreadsheets and combing online job sites for additional information I didn’t need.
Sentences should have one possible interpretation and be suitable for a 2nd-grade reading level. This goes for native speakers as well and will make requests clearer. Ten-dollar words disguise imprecision.
Note that I asked him to respond if he didn’t understand or had questions. This is the wrong approach. Ask foreign VAs to rephrase tasks to confirm understanding before getting started.
3. I gave him a license to waste time.
This brings us again to damage control. Request a status update after a few hours of work on a task to ensure that the task is both understood and achievable. Some tasks are, after initial attempts, impossible.
4. I set the deadline a week in advance.
Use Parkinson’s Law and assign tasks that are to be completed within no more than 72 hours. I have had the best luck with 48 and 24 hours. This is another compelling reason to use a small group (three or more) rather than a single individual who can become overtaxed with last-minute requests from multiple clients. Using short deadlines does not mean avoiding larger tasks (e.g., business plan), but rather breaking them into smaller milestones that can be completed in shorter time frames (outline, competitive research summaries, chapters, etc.).
5. I gave him too many tasks and didn’t set an order of importance.
I advise sending one task at a time whenever possible and no more than two. If you want to cause your computer to hang or crash, open 20 windows and applications at the same time. If you want to do the same to your assistant, assign him or her a dozen tasks without prioritizing them. Recall our mantra: Eliminate before you delegate.
WHAT DOES A good VA task e-mail look like? The following example was recently sent to an Indian VA whose results have been nothing short of spectacular:
Dear Sowmya,
Thank you. I would like to start with the following task.
TASK: I need to find the names and e-mails of editors of men’s magazines in the US (for example: maxim, stuff, GQ, esquire, blender, etc.) who also have written books. An example of such a person would be AJ Jacobs who is Editor-at-Large of Esquire (www.ajjacobs.com). I already have his information and need more like him.
Can you do this? If not, please advise. Please reply and confirm what you will plan to do to complete this task.
DEADLINE: Since I’m in a rush, get started after your next e-mail and stop at 3 hours and tell me what results yo
u have. Please begin this task now if possible. The deadline for these 3 hours and reported results is end-of-day ET Monday.
Thank you for your fastest reply,
Tim
Short, sweet, and to the point. Clear writing, and therefore clear commands, come from clear thinking. Think simple.
IN THE NEXT several chapters, the communication skills you develop with our virtual assistant experiment will be applied to a much larger and obscenely profitable playing field: automation. The extent to which you will outsource next makes delegation look like finger painting.
In the world of automation, not all business models are created equal. How do you assemble a business and coordinate all its parts without lifting a finger? How do you automate cash deposits in your bank account while avoiding the most common problems? It begins with understanding the options, the art of dodging information flow, and what we will call “muses.”
The next chapter is a blueprint for the first step: a product.
Go with the Flow
Here is a flowchart of 4HWW from reader Jed Wood, who has used it for faster decision making, more output with less input, and more time with his wife and children.
Q&A: QUESTIONS AND ACTIONS
1. Get an assistant—even if you don’t need one.
Develop the comfort of commanding and not being commanded. Begin with a one-time test project or small repetitive task (daily preferred). I advise using domestic help for language-intensive tasks and using foreign assistants in the early stages to improve the general clarity of your communication. Pick one from each group and get started.
The following sites, split up geographically, are useful resources.
U.S. and Canada ($20/hour+)
http://www.iavoa.com (International Association of Virtual Office Assistants). Global directory that includes the U.S.
http://www.cvac.ca (Canadian Virtual Assistant Connection)
http://www.canadianva.net/files/va-locator.html (Canada)
www.onlinebusinessmanager.com
North America and International ($4/hour+)
www.elance.com (Search “virtual assistants,” “personal assistants,” and “executive assistants.”) The client feedback reviews on Elance enabled me to find my best VA to date, who costs $4/hour. Similar marketplaces with positive reviews include www.guru.com and www.rentacoder.com.
India
www.tryasksunday.com ($20–60 per month for 24/7 concierge, free one-week trial). AskSunday is one of the sophisticated new kids on the personal outsourcing block. Their site was nominated the #2 website of the year in 2007 by Time magazine. Just dial a 212 (NYC) area code and get routed to well-spoken assistants in India and the Philippines. I use this service 80% of the time, as most tasks take less than 10 minues to complete. For longer projects, there are teams available for $12/hour.
www.b2kcorp.com ($15/hour+) From Fortune 10 oil companies and Fortune 500 clients to Big 5 accounting firms and U.S. congressmen, Brickwork can handle it all. This is reflected in the costs of this pure suit-and-tie operation—business only. No flowers for auntie.
www.taskseveryday.com ($6.98/hour for a dedicated virtual assistant) Based in Mumbai, available via phone and e-mail from the U.S., UK, and Australia. Must choose between 20 or 40 hours per week and pre-purchase hours.
www.yourmaninindia.com ($6.25/hour+) YMII handles both business and personal tasks and can work with you in real time (there are people on duty 24/7) and complete work while you sleep. English capability and effectiveness vary tremendously across VAs, so interview yours before getting started or assigning important tasks. Important: Following the publication of the first edition of this book, there have been some complaints of lower quality and up to four-week wait lists to become a client.
2. Start small but think big.
Tina Forsyth, an online business manager (higher-level VA) who helps six-figure-income clients achieve seven figures with business model redesigns, makes the following recommendations.
Look at your to-do list—what has been sitting on it the longest?
Each time you are interrupted or change tasks, ask, “Could a VA do this?”
Examine pain points—what causes you the most frustration and boredom?
Here are a few common time-consumers in small businesses with online presences.
Submitting articles to drive traffic to site and build mailing lists
Participating in or moderating discussion forums and message boards
Managing affiliate programs
Creating content for and publishing newsletters and blog postings
Background research components of new marketing initiatives or analysis of current marketing results
Don’t expect miracles from a single VA, but don’t expect too little, either. Let go of the controls a bit. Don’t assign crap tasks that end up consuming rather than saving time. It makes little sense to spend 10–15 minutes sending an e-mail to India to get a price quote on a plane ticket when you could do the same online in 10 minutes and avoid all the subsequent back-and-forth.
Push outside your comfort zone—that is the entire point of the exercise.
It is always possible to reclaim a task for yourself if the VA proves incapable, so test the limits of their capabilities. Remember Brickwork’s suggestion: Don’t limit yourself.
3. Identify your top five time-consuming non-work tasks and five personal tasks you could assign for sheer fun.
4. Keep in sync: scheduling and calendars.
If you decide to have an assistant schedule appointments and add things to your calendar, it will be important to ensure what you both see is updated. There are several options:
BusySync (www.busysync.com) I have two Gmail accounts: one private account for me and one for my assistant, where general e-mail is sent. I use BusySync to synchronize her Google Calendar with iCal (Mac calendar) on my laptop. I have also used SpanningSync (www.spanningsync.com) successfully for the same purpose.
WebEx Office (www.weboffice.com) Share your calendar online while masking personal appointments. Can be synchronized with Outlook, and also offers document sharing and other assistant- or team-friendly features. I suggest you compare this to synchronizing your Outlook with an assistant’s Google Calendar.
COMFORT CHALLENGE
Use the Criticism Sandwich (2 Days and Weekly)
Chances are good that someone—be it a co-worker, boss, customer, or significant other—does something irritating or at a subpar level. Rather than avoid the topic out of fear of confrontation, let’s chocolate-coat it and ask them to fix it. Once per day for two days, and then each Thursday (M-W is too tense and Friday is too relaxed) for the next three weeks, resolve to use what I call the Criticism Sandwich with someone. It’s called the Criticism Sandwich because you first praise the person for something, then deliver the criticism, and then close with topic-shifting praise to exit the sensitive topic. Here’s an example with a superior or boss, with keywords and phrases in italics.
You: Hi, Mara. Do you have a second?
Mara: Sure. What’s up?
You: First, I wanted to thank you for helping me with the Meelie Worm account [or whatever]. I really appreciate you showing me how to handle that. You’re really good at fixing the technical issues.
Mara: No problem.
You: Here’s the thing.16 There is a lot of work coming down on everyone, and I’m feeling17 a bit overwhelmed. Normally, priorities are really clear to me18 but I’ve been having trouble recently figuring out which tasks are highest on the list. Could you help me by pointing out the most important items when a handful need to be done? I’m sure it’s just me,19 but I’d really appreciate it, and I think it would help.
Mara: Uhh … I’ll see what I can do.
You: That means a lot to me. Thanks. Before I forget,20 last week’s presentation was excellent.
Mara: Did you think so? Blah, blah, blah …
LIFESTYLE DESIGN IN ACTION
THE BEST TIMES TO SEND E-MAIL
>
You’ve suggested people check e-mail only a few times a day. Here’s a twist: I reply to e-mails when it’s convenient, but I time it to arrive when it’s also convenient for me. In Outlook you can delay e-mail delivery to any time of day. For example, when I return e-mails at 3 p.m., I don’t want my staff instantly zinging me responses or clarifying questions. (This also prevents e-mail chats.) So I hit send, but it’s delayed to arrive later in the evening or at 8 A.M. when my employees arrive the next day. This is how e-mail was meant to be! It’s mail, not a chat service.
—JIM LARRANAGA
14. To leverage global pricing and currency differences for profit or lifestyle purposes.
15. Information technology.
16. Don’t call it a problem if you can avoid it.
17. No one can argue with your feelings, so use this to avoid a debate about external circumstances.
18. Notice how I take “you” out of the sentence to avoid finger-pointing, even though it’s implicit. “Normally, you make priorities clear” sounds like a backhanded insult. If this is a significant other, you can skip this formality, but never use “you always do X,” which is just a fight starter.
19. Take a little bit of the heat off with this. The point has already been made.
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich - Expanded and Updated Page 14