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My recent outsourcing experience (11)

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I've been getting into outsourcing and hiring employees since December of last year. Hired my first person as a programmer a week before Xmas. I was participating in stackman's thread and got some good info from him and John Jonas.

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...urced-employee!

Since, then I've added a couple more people - a writer, SEO person.

It's been an interesting learning experience, with some upsides and some unforeseen downsides which will take me in a new direction of outsourcing work.

This week my programmer didn't show up to work. After two months, the guys just went MIA. Tried to call his phone, and waited for some contact, but no answer. Last time he had some technical difficulty, he went to an Internet cafe and Skyped me from there. So I was expecting the same. But after 3 days, there has been no contact.

I think he either got another job, or some other emergency happened. Right now, I'm at 60% new job, and 40% personal emergency.

So this kinda sucks for me, but on the positive I'm thinking of moving in a new direction of just hiring people off Odesk on a per project basis. The plan with a full time employee was that he could do other things in his down time, when there are no programming work to be done. My plan was for him to build campaigns, manage servers, and some SEO related work.

The 2 months I had him, there probably wasn't enough programming work to justify him, and I wanted to get him up to speed on building campaigns, managing servers and SEO work. Unfortunately, that's not that simple and takes time to get someone up to speed on something they don't have much exposure to. He could manage servers well enough, but to get him to build campaigns and SEO work would probably take him a few months to get up to speed.

Which brings me to the point of - what's the point in training a full time employee if he bails? I might as well pick and choose freelance contractors to work on a per project basis. That way I can leverage more people of talent, than try to get it through 1 person.

Having my programmer disappear also highlights my single point of failure in my business. I'm now going to look for freelance contractors and make sure there is always someone else that can do their job if they decide to drop the ball.

From my time managing 3 people, it was quite a stretch. Usually, I can only work with 2, and the other one doesn't get as much attention as they should. I've had situations where I have assigned tasks to the programmer, and he comes back with work that wasn't what I was looking for. Had to send it back to get it redone. Skype sessions clarifying the tasks all lead to taking time away from what I want to do.

I was telling myself that I was investing in this guy, so I was happy to spend the extra time to work with him and get him up to speed.

So right now with my 2 people - writer and seo. They won't be as challenging to manage, because they are repetitive tasks, and don't need as much of a close eye as a programmer. A programmer may end up building some crap, leaving you wondering WTF was he thinking? ... believe me..it has happened.. lol

I'm looking at backups for my current employees as well, so things won't grind to a halt if they decide to go MIA on me.

On the bright side. Outsourcing and delegating has definitely been a tremendous boost. I even paid a copywriter to write an ad to rent out a room, place got rented in under a 5 days.

I just wanted to share my experience, and would be happy to answer any questions.

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Always interesting to hear how others are getting on with the task of delegating - thanks for posting.

It's not just training the employee, it's training yourself. Every piece of knowledge/direction you pass down should be recorded in a manual or guidebook that you can use again if you need to hire somebody else.

You want to try and create a system that is less personal direction, and more "Here's a detailed guide of what I want done and how I like it done, read it and hit me with your questions."

When they come back with questions, answer them and add those answers to your future briefs.

I think it's important to differentiate between hiring a professional, and training a subservient business partner.

Professionals can be handed systems and left to get on with them. Business partners require TLC.

It sounds like you were leaning towards installing this guy as a Number Two. I think your change in direction of hiring for individual projects is much better.

An alternative is to hire a project manager who can act as a layer between you and production, conveying your needs and making sure the work ticks the right boxes before it gets to you. No easy task in affiliate marketing, admittedly...

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Take it from a guy who owns a well established outsourcing company; not everyone bails only the unprofessional ones.

We have had the same clients for many years, and never once bailed on any of them - the benefit of working with my company is that I am always available to them via skype, whatsapp, phone, sms, email, whatever, guess they like that

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I would list that as a learning experience. You don't learn this stuff at school , you have to try out.

In your case might have just been a bad employee. I've been working with the same guys for nearly 3 years now and all has been perfect.

Rinse and repeat till you find a good one. Also make sure you write down all the training process so you won't go again through it in the future.

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First and foremost

Congratulations! Isn't it amazing what you can achieve with outsourcing?

It is good that you're focusing on what you can manage. You're on the right track here. Start with a few people and figure out what management style best works for you and your team. And don't be afraid to challenge them to do something more. I'm sure your writer and SEO would appreciate learning new skills to help break the monotony.

I think freelancers and independent contractors are great. They're essential to outsourcing. I DO hire contractors on certain projects I know my team can't do or don't have the time for.

But the problem I had with contractors is that when the project is done, they stop working. They stop, get their pay, and move on. If I want to keep them I have to keep thinking of things for them to do and after a while becomes exhausting.

Another problem I have with contractors is you can't motivate them to do more than what you expect from them. Let's say you hire a graphic designer to design an infographic for you. You get your infographic, you're happy with it...and then what. You still have to do most of the work promoting it.

When I ask my full-time designer/VA to make a infographic for me, he makes the infographic, emails the other VAs in my team about his infographic to create a campaign to promote the infographic, he gets recommendations from his fellow VAs on other visual resources he can make to support the infographic (memes/posters/etc), and makes designs, infographics and memes for his fellow VAs to help them with their own projects (my affiliate sites, my press releases, some personal projects, etc), and brainstorms with his fellow VAs for other projects which they eventually pitch to me for approval.

I know I'm lucky to have a great team. But building that team took a lot of time and a lot of work. I had to go through a few bad eggs to find really great people. I've had some rough spots, even with the best people in my team. And with every person I hire, it takes months of training and supervision before they're comfortable enough to work on their own and make decisions.

All I'm saying is don't give up on hiring full-time employees just yet. Full-time workers are a business investment and once you find a good one it can do wonders for your business. We've all hired bad workers so don't be discouraged by bad experiences. You seem to have a great writer and SEO on your team. Why not give them training to see if they do more? They just might surprise you if you give them a chance.

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I'm fully in favor of hiring full time employees and train them on all sort of things. Agree, it's an investment and in the long term the returns can be amazing. But questions that always worry me is - why would a smartass work for me for a long time once he learns all tricks of the trade? It will obviously come to the smartass's mind to work on his own and reap all the benefit on his own then depend upon you for whatever salary that you pay.

Secondly, I'm bit concerned about showing/sharing all parts of my business with a smartass employee - for example, how the business comes, how much we get paid for leads/conversions, how much we spend on traffic etc., etc., If one has exposure to the entire system then it doesn't take much for some smartass to do a quick calculation and see for himself the cost/revenue/profit of the business.

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I think many aren't a flight risk because they aren't willing to lose their own money. Most people want a steady income. Theres a HUGE difference between losing/testing your employers money and your own.

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That is definitely true.

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Agreed about risk part but there would be many campaigns consistently running and generating $xx,xxx month after month. Once one has exposure to those campaigns & what traffic/parameters drive those leads, wouldn't it be wiser for the smartass to go his own way and set that up rather than hooking up with you for a fixed salary?

Alternatively, how do share the risk/reward (% commission) with smart employees?

While calculating the profit, do you exclude only traffic cost from the revenue or also take into account various other costs such as server/hosting/other app subscriptions/designer's cost etc., etc.,

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There will always be someone who will work for you because not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. Not everyone has the drive, the patience, and the motivation to be one. And not everybody who goes into businesses will be successful. So there will always be somebody who you can hire, that's not going to be a problem.

Eventually, they key would be treating your employees well enough that they would want to stay rather than build their own business. If you treat you workers well and they love what they do, they will want to work for you. Motivated workers don't see themselves as employees; they see themselves as business partners. They will stay because they have a stake in your business succeeding.

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Wow...let me tell you why you hire full-time employees rather than contract workers.

The two posts I made above...I DIDN'T MAKE THEM. One of my full-time VA's did.

Would you ever know that? No.

I trained her.
I spent time with her.
She's super smart. Super capable.

Today, she promotes my business (and ME) without me having to do anything.

You'll NEVER get that from a contract worker.

I have 14 full-time workers in the Philippines. Over the past 8 years I've had 3 disappear. In the Philippines, when they disappear, it's ALWAYS because somethings wrong (ok...fine...not 100% of the time "always", but like 99.5%).
Wrong like
- they don't know how to do what you've asked them to do
- they don't know what they're supposed to do
- they don't trust you to not yell at them and not tell them they're stupid
- they don't understand your instructions
- they don't want to do what you asked them to do because they hate doing it

There's almost always a way around the disappearing problem in the Philippines, you just have to work through it.
@quantum27, I'm willing to bet that if you email your programmer and say "hey, I know somethings wrong. What's wrong? What's going on? I want to help you through the problem. I want to help explain things to you" you'll get a response from him.

I manage 14 people's work in about 1.5 hours/day. Yes, it takes time to get to that point. Yes, it takes training the workers and building their trust so that they trust me (this is way more important than building your trust in them). Yes, it takes creating systems.
I didn't get to 14 people and 1.5 hours overnight. It takes time.

But man is it worth it!

About contract workers...don't get me wrong, I use them. There's a time and a place. I guess it just depends on what your goals are for your business and lifestyle. For me, my lifestyle is more important than making more money. Managing contract workers takes way more time than managing full-time workers. It's 100% turnover. If I can't get a full-time worker to do it over and over again, I don't want to bother with the process because it will take too much of my involvement (usually...not always).

John (the real John Jonas, not the VA John Jonas)

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