Experiments With The 4-Hour Workweek
I have hired my first full time employee outside Denmark. It’s a guy from the Philippines who is going to do various tasks for me. He starts the first of July.
My biggest conern is that I have enough work for him, so he doesn’t sit idle and do nothing.
While I have brainstormed a lot of different tasks that he should do, I didn’t qualify them until today. So I just spent thirty minutes describing his first task that he should commence when he starts Wednesday. As soon as I get some more experiences with this venture I will blog about it.
The original idea to find someone in the Philippines really came from John Jonas and his Replace Myself program. Though I cancelled my subscription after the first month since I really only needed the address to the website where he himself finds his people.
You can hear the first part of an audio on Replace Myself and then you basically need to buy into his program to get the rest. Besides the rest of the audio, you also get a lot of other content. It is basically a program for finding, hiring and training people in the Philippines.
Related posts:
Hi, my name is Rasmus and I live in Denmark. In January 2008 I read the book
I am in the IT business and saw that some of the stuff Tim mentioned in his book, was clearly possible. And while I will never be as hardcore as Tim is, there were certainly ideas in the book that I could see myself using.
This blog is all about my experiments with Living The Four Hour Work Week - although my weeks are currently longer :)
Tony
June 29th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I am interested to hear how your experience went with your guy. I also bought into ReplaceMyself.com and even went as far as emailing about 10 people for WordPress theme design in which I got about 5 responses. However, I decided to hold off until I solidify my business plan as I am currently spending $100 / month on a personal business coach and another $100 / month for online internet business classes and cannot afford the $300 – $500 / month for a full time VA.
VMG BPO also looks interesting. I am currently subscribed with GetFriday which costs $15 / hour … maybe I should switch.
My business concept right now involves creating a social website marketed to beer connoisseurs which allows them to rate and purchase specialty beer from all over the world. Still in the getting started phase. Perhaps you can help me with the shopping cart aspect.
Ralph
June 29th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
I just recently let my Philippine VA go. My VAs in India seem to have a leg up when it comes to the English language.
Rasmus
June 29th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
@Tony
For general VA stuff I will keep using VMG BPO. They have really positively surprised me. As Ralph writes the people in India has the upper hand when it comes to English.
I’m currently in the process of translating the Get A Shop to English so I can sell to a broader market. The price for a full professional Magento shop with a custom design is going to be aprox. $2500 (probably including hosting and payment gateway the first year).
@Ralph
Sorry to hear that. John Jonas’ advice is that you hire someone with good English skills and teach him the rest. It is easier to provide some training in e.g. setting up WordPress blogs than it is to to learn English.
An outsources guide to paying your people | My 4 Hours
July 15th, 2009 at 6:37 am
[...] mentioned previously I hired my first guy in the Philippines a couple of weeks [...]
Kei San Pablo
July 17th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Hi Rasmus, my name is Kei and I am a VA from the Philippines. I am eager to find out what happens next in this experiment of yours, I am currently doing a lot of reading with VA experiences. Lots of luck!
Karl Perera
October 6th, 2009 at 5:28 am
I am about to try this also and am really interested to see how it goes. What is a VA exactly?