The 4 Hour Work Week (chapter 8) - Summary.docx

CHAPTER 8 – OUTSOURCING LIFE Story Line – This chapter gives multiple examples of the huge variety of things that a Virtual Assistant can do for both your business and personal life—everything from standard tasks such as market research and business presentations to finding clients jobs, talking to parents, buying groceries, or sending flowers. The list is huge, and it’s clear that, if it’s done right, outsourcing could conceivably save a lot of time.

Key Statistics – Using a virtual assistant (VA) as a simple exercise with no downside, the basics of management are covered in a 2–4-week test costing between $100–400. This is an investment, not an expense, and the ROI is astounding. It will be repaid in a maximum of 10–14 days, after which it is pure timesaving profit. Indian and Chinese VAs, as well as most from other developing countries, will run $4–15 per hour depending on the complexity of the tasks. Equivalents of Harvard or Stanford M.B.A.s and Ph.D.s, Need a business plan to raise funding? Brickwork can provide it for between $2,500–5,000 instead of $15,000–20,000. In the U.S. or Canada, the per-hour range is often $25–100.

Worth Sharing – Golden Rule #1 – If it’s a waste of your own time, it’s a waste of your VA’s time. Golden Rule #2 - Eliminate before you delegate. Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined.

Insight – If I can do it better than an assistant, why should I pay them at all? Because the goal is to free your time to focus on bigger and better things.

Example stated in the Chapter – Personal outsourcing from reader David Cross. He got a personal chef at home for less than $5 per meal. He wanted to find someone to prepare food that he can love. He often didn’t have time to prepare the food that made him feel the healthiest so he wrote an ad and dropped it on Craigslist.

As it was very Ultra specific, he had just two applicants in two months. But the guy he OK’d was a Hare Krishna follower for many years, lived in India, and his sample menu proved he knew what he was doing so he started him. The food is absolutely awesome. The hourly rate was *extremely reasonable,* And he was just a five-minute detour to collect food. So it was a complete win–win situation.