Tim Ferris struck gold with The 4-Hour Work Week (”4HWW”) and if you haven’t read it you should. While I don’t agree with everything in the book, if you want to make a big change in your life or reclaim large chunks of personal or professional time, this book will get you motivated and it also provides some very serious tools. A great deal of the book (and the most “googled” topic) is about outsourcing your life. Tim advocates the use of virtual professionals, often in foreign countries like India and the Philippines, to manage administrative tasks like appointment setting, email management, contact management and online research.
The trend has certainly caught on! In fact, one of the companies Ferris’ personally uses nearly collapsed under the explosion of post 4HWW business they received and many of the new customers were not happy (the press has been so bad I’m not reiterating it here in case you decide to try it-but it is in the article and video and I don’t recommend going that route). CBS New ran a great story on outsourcing and noted that it is not just the wealthy who using outsourcing to enhance their businesses and their lives.
If you are interested in following a couple attempting to live Tim’s Four Hour Work Week lifestyle (along with the pitfalls and confusion), you will enjoy The Newly Rich blog! Part of this couple’s experience with outsourcing to foreign companies wasn’t so great so they started their own domestic US outsourcing company.
At UpwardAction, we are big proponents of outsourcing one-time or coding projects and using qualified virtual professionals for on-going projects. If you want to see a measurable increase in your productivity, I invite you to evaluate the daily projects you perform to keep your business running smoothly, and then consider outsourcing appropriate projects.
If you decide to give outsourcing a trial run, I’d love to hear how it goes. I would also love to hear about your experiences if you are currently outsourcing one time projects or working with a virtual assistant for on-going projects… Feel free to leave a comment below!
Expect the best!
Coach T.C. Coleman
PS - I work with two FABULOUS US based VAs for a variety of tasks with great success! These wonderful ladies execute projects that range from helping me package programs to updating my website to customer service projects!
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