A while back a wrote a post called 4 Tips to Not Get Screwed on Elance which has gained some controversy and even some backlash from the Elance community, mostly from freelancers who wrote me up as some type of slave driver.

Well, since that post more than 2 years ago, I have clocked up A LOT more experience with Elance, oDesk and a bunch of other outsourcing sites. I have had many full time, part-time and freelancer staff and have learned a bunch more since I wrote that post.

First things first.

I completely stand by everything I wrote in the first post, and think it is excellent advice to cover your own ass. I understand this might irritate some people, but the fact of the matter is those people probably haven’t put up their own hard earned money onto a site only to had it flushed down the drain buy someone in another continent.

Of course, I would prefer to be able to put up a nice fluffy ad, sign little hearts above my i’s and frolic around a paddock while my work gets done, my business grows and my cash flow is controlled. Unfortunately I don’t live in a fairy tale and shit happens.

Even after I wrote that post, I have still had many disturbing experiences with outsourcing sites. Mostly from NOT following my own advice. I’ve had many delayed, disregarded, over priced and under delivered projects, again and again.

In fact, I have come to the basic rule that 50% of all outsourcing hires are going to fail within the first week. Please read that stat again, because it’s RIDICULOUS compared to a normal business.

Even guys I know who are based in the Philippines and have staff in house in their own office, think that a 66% stick rate after 1 week is doing well.

With these kinds of figures as an employer, it only makes sense that you need to be much tighter in not only your hiring process, but you project schedules, time tracking and more.

I am not running a start up in SF. I cant hire a few college grads, give them Mac Books and iPhones and expect them to sleep under their desk every night. Its hard enough getting virtual staff to show up everyday.

After my additional experience with virtual staff, there are a number of things I have learned. I will go into screening these concepts in later posts, but here are my 2 biggest takeaways:

1. Communication skills, Communication skills, Communication skills, Communication skills repeat etc...

Communication skills are EVERYTHING when dealing with virtual staff. Since you have no way of directly managing them, if they are a poor communicator, chances are your project is going to fall through before it even starts.

This should be your key screening metric during interviews, technical skills, processes and tasks can all be learned. But someone that doesn’t know how to do something, and never tells you that don’t know how to do it, is where everything falls down.

I will do a whole post if not multiple posts on screening communication skills.

2. Work Ethic / Current Situation / Motivation

Whatever you want to call it. We used to just call it “current situation” basically what it means is WHY does this person want this job? Do they NEED it? Are they EXCITED by the project? Will this be their primary focus? Do they already have multiple other clients and projects that are of higher commitment than your project? How much do those projects pay? What proximity and level of commitment will the worker commit to your project?

These are all questions that need to be asked when making the hire.

I have studied human resources and organisational structure and I completely understand this is not modern, traditional or textbook way  of approaching, hiring or managing staff in a traditional business.

But outsourced work is not traditional business. Ideally you want to create a collaborative culture or a fun working environment, but a REQUIREMENT is to get the job done in the most cost effective manner and thus the process becomes much more transactional.

With all the above being said, that doesn’t mean once you hire someone who you work well with you can’t empower them. On the contrary you should, but just make sure you screen thoroughly before relaxing on management techniques.

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I’ve been working on a number of projects, but one of my main focuses has been on building systems and outsourcing a lot of my tasks. Try and streamline everything that is going on with my income businesses.

I have been training my Virtual Assistants using a variety of tools. I have created a little training area using wordpress, uploaded videos and training documents etc, but they were still having trouble grasping certain tasks, it was at this point that I started looking for an easier way to map out the processes needed.

I remember in university having to do process diagrams and thinking how silly they were, never again, these things are awesome, and an amazing tool for training virtual assistants (any staff really).

The best tool I found do to this is Cacoo.

It also allows for collaboration so multiple people can work on documents at the same time and you can see who is editing what and the history of changes to the diagram.

Process documents are the easiest way to document a process (duh..) and Cacoo is the easiest way I have found to make, store, share and collaborate process diagrams.

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What about a discussion where right off the bat it gets straight into a heated debate, where one person is certain that the other is wrong and instead of tying to discover the truth, they are trying to force their opinion?

Have you noticed that the same people initiate the same type of conversation over and over?

I’m not saying this is a hard and fast rule. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from meeting thousands of people all around the world it’s that:

You can never be 100% when dealing with humans.

That being said, there are patterns that form from interacting with enough people and this is one of those patters.

Which type of person do you prefer to interact with?

Which type of person are you?

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Travel is amazing for so many reasons. It boosts confidence like nothing else, constantly facing the unknown makes you more comfortable in every situation. It makes you more social with people of all walks of life. It expands your knowledge in so many areas including culture, geography, history and language just to name a few. It makes you more interesting and gives you a holistic perspective of the world just to name a few.

This has been my travel for the last year and a half:

• Sydney, Australia – Dec 2009
• Bangkok, Thailand – Jan 2010
• Vientiane, Laos - Jan 2010
• Bangkok, Thailand – Feb 2010
• Vancouver, Canada – Feb 2010
• Manhattan, USA – Mar 2010
• Vancouver, Canada – Mar 2010
• Amsterdam, Netherlands – April 2010
• London, UK – April 2010
• Leeds, UK – April 2010
• Edinburgh, UK – April 2010
• Whitby, UK April 2010
• Budapest, Hungary, April 2010
• Dublin, Ireland – May 2010
• Budapest, Hungary – May 2010
• Lake Balaton, Hungary – June 2010
• Budapest, Hungary, June 2010
• Berlin, Germany – July 2010
• Dublin, Ireland – July 2010
• Barcelona, Spain – August 2010
• Ibiza, Spain – August 2010
• Barcelona, Spain – August 2010
• Vancouver, Canada – September 2010
• Las Vegas, USA – October 2010
• Vancouver, Canada – October 2010
• Las Vegas, USA – Jan 2011
• Vancouver, Canada – Jan 2011
• Tempe, USA – Feb 2011
• Las Vegas, USA – Mar 2011
• Tempe, USA – Mar 2011
• Lake Havasu, USA – Mar 2011
• Tempe, USA – Mar 2011
• Pittsburgh, USA – Mar 2011
• Fort Lauderdale, USA – Mar 2011
• Miami, USA – Mar 2011
• Tempe, USA – Mar 2011
• Los Angeles, USA – April 2011
• Current Location – Australia, April 2011

Here is my trip on a Google Map plot:
 

View 2009-2011 Travels in a larger map
 

I lost my passport, licence and all 3 of my credit cards, so it was time to head back to Australia and get all that sorted.

I leave again in July to go back to the US for the Epic Playboy Mansion party! I then plan to set up base somewhere in the Caribbean. Margarita Island is pretty high on the list.

But I always take my plans with a grain of salt for 3 main reasons:

1. I suck at planning – or should I say ‘I suck at sticking to plans’
2. I hate planning – why spend your time planning when you can be doing? Don’t worry, it’ll work out
3. I like to be flexible in case something better comes up – read points 1 & 2

One thing for certain though is that I want to focus on learning some new skills. I’ve always wanted to be able to do a back flip so I want take up parkour or Brazilian Jujitsu. I’m thinking I will also get certified as a diver and probably some other type of water sport. Will see whats good when I get there.

I also need to write more about some of the individual places I have been to… I’ll get there eventually.

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Here is a cool tip on how to clean up your inbox once and for all. I have only provided instructions for gmail but I know there are similar feature sets in all the major web mail platforms such as Yahoo and Hotmail.

First thing you need to do is create a “filter“, you can do this by clicking the small link to the right of your search bar in Gmail. In other mail platforms it may be called a “rule” or something similar.

(click to enlarge)

Next, add the text “unsubscribe” into the “Has the words” field. Since it is required by the CAN Spam laws to allow users to unsubscribe from newsletters, 80-90% of newsletters will contain this text. This is the easiest way to capture the majority of newsletters in one hit.

(click to enlarge)

On the final step, there are 3 options you need to modify. First, select the “Skip the Inbox (Archive it)” option, then select “Apply the Label” and select Newsletter (or something similar). If you have not yet created a newsletter label, select “Add New” and create it. And finally select the “Also apply filter to X number of conversations below”.

(click to enlarge)

And you’re done. Now you should have a folder on the left with the majority of your newsletter emails. Just click it to view those whenever you feel like it.

The great thing about this rule, is that it will capture the majority of new newsletters too. But remember, if you sign up for a website of some sort and are waiting for a “confirmation” or “activation” email to come through, it might be in your newsletter folder. Same with lost password email etc.. Basically any email that comes from a website of any sort.

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Maybe recently, but it was probably a fluke. Broadcast advertising is basically the same as spam – untargeted advertising to the masses.

Not that spam doesn’t work, it does. But it is not the most effective method of advertising.

Examples of broadcast advertising include:

• TV
• Radio
• Newspaper
• Billboards
• Cold Calling
• Junk mail
• Etc…

These methods, while targeted to a small level (like you know that mostly females watch The Bachelor so you advertise female oriented products during the airing of that show), in modern age of today, you can do so much better.

With the technology and data that exists today, it is much easier to find, track and target your audience down to an almost exact science.

Here are some targeted advertising options to consider:

Search Advertising

I’m sure most of you know what search advertising, most people in the world have probably clicked on a Google search advertisement at some point in their lives. But you know why you clicked on it? Because you were searching for it, it works.

Facebook Advertising

Most people tell Facebook what their likes and interest are. So target people who are interested in what you have to offer…

Sponsored Emails

There are email newsletters in EVERY single market in the world. Instead of broadcasting to your general demographic, why not purchase an advertisement on an email list from people who have already indicated they are interested in what you have to offer?

Retargeting

Retargeting or behavioural retargeting is genius. You may have seen this happen to you already, but basically if you visit a site of a certain type (say a stock trading website) you can then follow that same customer across different sites showing them the same advertisement until eventually they buy.

Needless to say, there are many other methods of targeted advertising that all work very well. And a good combination of broadcast and targeted advertising can work wonders too (think broadcast advertising to determine your target market, then retargeting that customer until they buy). But if you find yourself stuck in the old school mentality of broadcast advertising only, you need to get with the times…

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There are a whole bunch of quotes I could pull to this argument and I have talked about the importance of decision making in the past.  Men (and women) should make decisions and that decision should be yes – most of the time anyway. And once you say yes, you need to DO IT, and DO IT GOOD!

Take my last 2 years for example.

I made the decision to quit my job and travel. I then made a decision to make money while I travel. I travelled all over the world (South East Asia, Europe and North America) while making money and having all sorts of crazy experiences which I loved. While I was in Canada, I made a decision to enter the Shoemoney Contest which I won controversially and lead me to Vegas. In Vegas I met Adolfo Salazar who I now work for. I met Shoemoney and DK who are great guys. I moved to Tempe, Arizona to work with Adolfo for a couple of months, I then plan to spend Summer in Costa Rica.

This is life in Tempe:

In March I am going to Vegas for Lead Con, Austin for SXSW, Lake Havasu for Spring Break and Miami for Ultra Music Festival.

While I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t decide to say yes, I also wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have support and help of others. Such as my uncle in Vancouver, Adolfo and Jeremy Schoemaker. Humans are social creatures and we progress much faster when we work together (something many internet marketers don’t embrace). Relationships are everything. Relationships are created through commonalities and shared experiences and are maintained through loyalty and trust. And because I promised to get a Shoemoney tattoo if I won the contest AND the black jack hand here it is….

Now that’s Abstract Living…

And thanks again Jeremy, my life has changed directions (once more) thanks to you.

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DK is one of the best known internet marketers marketers out there and is a regular at all the industry events. I met him at ASW and have been working with him since.

Check out the post I did by clicking here.

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Click Here to Check it Out

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Here is the story in case you missed it:

• Shoemoney’s Crazy Affiliate Summit West Contest
• My Entry
• Finalists Announced
• The Controversy
• Winner Announced!
• A day at ASW
• ASW – Recap, Photos and Video

Video of the $2k Blackjack Hand

Awesome time, thanks Shoemoney!

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• The Death of Broadcast Advertising…