Work in progress!

[sharla]

I usually look at books, read them partially and then put them back when in Books A Million. Then I go home, find them cheaper on the internet and order them--IF I found them to be really really good (99% of the books arent).

The day I picked up this book (7 months ago) I read the first half of the book, and outlasted my kids at BAM. They were begging to go, and we had been there for hours, and there was no way I was leaving without this magical book. So I bought it. Then I read it -- and then again (that is saying ALOT!). Then I forced my husband to sit thru while I read excerpts to him (that is saying even more!). Then I bought a whole bunch of copies and I have been giving them to all my other business owner friends.

We own two corporations that we started, one 8 years ago, and one this year.

I have been having a hard time incorporating some of the things in the book into our lives and businesses, that is for sure! The first thing I did was contact Your Man in India. They were too busy to even talk to me, so I went to another one that came up online as a competitor. Catch Friday, out of Thailand. They insisted that I go with a full time VA (bad idea for a first timer!) that proceeded to do nothing (except drive me absolutely nuts) for a month and I was out $600! I did not get one single thing done from them. It was ridiculous the amount of my time they wasted.

I went back to the book at that point, rereading it word for word, and came across ELANCE. Now my experience after 6 months is that you get what you pay for. I am in Arkansas, and the median wage here is fairly low. But my VA's (yes--plural--I have worked up to three--I thought that would never happen) do my projects without complaining, I pay two of them $12 per hour and one $5 and they are all in the US. They each do different things for me, and the agreement from the start was that they cant go over 10 hours per week each. That keeps them from draining my on projects they dont understand.

But the chapter about outsourcing I wish was twice as long as it was. It just seemed to leave so many questions unanswered for a total newbie to outsourcing. I read that chapter more than any other, and still had a feeling of needing more.

I have problems finding programs that can work across the internet--like I need a contacts program that I can access, and so can they, tracking phone calls, emails and different times of contacting each one. I cannot find anything that works properly for this (suggestions would be great). I want to be able to export or backup the information in a format that if I were to stop using the program we could still have the info (like excel, word or pdf).

We use Editgrid for excel worksheets to be shared. We use Onebox to be more mobile yet accessible. (Partly against the 4HWW policy, but I couldnt make it work any other way).

Anyway, I love the concepts, and the book was written with such pizzaz that I absolutely love it. But there are so many things you just have to work out on your own I guess.

[shanerbock]

Hi Sharla,

Welcome! I have used many outsourced resources from programmers to VAs, etc... I too agree that there needs to be a better way to track all of the work... a communication tool, a document management platform, and a project management platform.

I suggest you try basecamp (http://www.basecamphq.com/) Its actually pretty good, and might provide enough for you. I still think something built specifically for VA management would be a great thing... Maybe we should build one

Make it a great day!
Shane

[nightowl]

I started to spend to much time trying to review all the tasks I have my va to complete as well as all additional products on elance and guru that it was becoming a full time job!

I just recently started using www.rememberthemilk.com it is free and really does the trick for me. Plus there is an offline mode to and a mobile phone mode, so if i think of something I need done while out watching the sunset with a glass of wine, I can add it to the task list.

The only thing that's not perfect about it now is that you can't upload documents. Most users get around that by using google docs and just adding a link to the document in google docs. It's good for when youva is working on word documents or spreadsheets. However, the downside of google docs is that you can't upload pdf or images as far as I know.

Now I am playing with 4shared.com and you get 5gb space for free. I am really liking that.

Try out Remember The Milk dot com!