Until recently I was doing most of the work for my own company. On rare occasions I would outsource article writing via Elance but that was it. I was working 7 days a week and still not getting to many things I thought needed to be done.
To make matter worse, my mom fell and I ended up not working for the better part of three days while I took care of her. We were both lucky that she wasn’t badly hurt, just shaken and bruised.
I was invited to a webinar by someone I knew and whose work I respected. The subject was outsourcing to the Philippines. The webinar was excellent and dealt with all my concerns. This was important as I knew a few people who had tried outsourcing to India and had had a lot of problems.
For very little money I could outsource website setup and maintenance, backlinking, PPC (although I’m being very careful about PPC) and other ongoing tasks.
I’ve very pleased that ReplaceMyself.com has made the process of finding an employee, hiring them, communicating with them, paying them, etc. very easy and painless. The training they provide me as an employer is excellent. They training they provide for the employees is equally good. They even provide a project management tool for me and my employees. This makes tracking status of projects very easy.
In the webinar, John Jonas, the founder of ReplaceMyself.com pointed out that when you hire an employee in the Philippines you are not only changing their lives, but the lives of the extended families as well. The fact that I could make a big difference in other people’s lives while getting work done at a cost I can afford by people with college degrees, experience and enthusiasm was a big factor in my deciding to try it.
The biggest challenge I currently have is deciding what projects I want my employee to work on, creating a list of tasks and giving access to all the tools I have. This is actually a good thing to do as it forces me to create a process map for each major task that I have. Process maps are a good thing for any company to create.
To show you the dedication of my employee. He had a computer problem at the end of this past week. Instead of not working, he went to an internet cafe so he could keep working. He said he would have his computer back on Saturday and could work more then. When I got his email, I gave him the option of taking the day off (with pay) or if he wanted to keep working, I would pay for his internet cafe time. I also told him to enjoy his weekend. He didn’t want to “let me down”.
Why did I decide to go with a full-time employee instead of outsourcing tasks as I needed them? There are many advantages of having a full-time employee over task based outsourcing. The biggest one is continuity. Just because you find someone good to do a task now, doesn’t mean that person will be available in 3 months, 6 months, etc. Why did I hire someone overseas, instead of here at home? The simple fact is that I don’t yet have the level of income so that I can afford to hire someone in the U.S. The choice was between hiring someone outside the U.S. or not hiring anyone.
What did I look for in a potential employee? I looked for someone with excellent English skills who also had the background of website building, WordPress blog setups, backlinking, etc. One of the other things I looked for in an employee was finding a person who was interested in learning new skills. That way, as we move forward, I can training him to take on new responsibilities. I also made sure that the people I was looking at knew that I wanted a full-time, long-term employee. That is really important in the Philippines as many jobs there are either part-time or short-term.
I now have two employees working for me in the Philippines and I couldn’t be happier. It is such a relief that I can assign a project, let them know that I’m here to help them if they need it, and I know it will be done. I expect that, by the end of September, they will be more then paying for themselves.
If this has made you think that it might work for you, go to ReplaceMyself.com and check them out. I couldn’t have hired my employees without the resources and training that ReplaceMyself.com provides.
Betty
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