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Francis:

The big question was we are afraid that the assistants use too much time while learning new skills.

Stefan:

And lose focus while doing the task and not completing the task.

Francis:

Yes.

Stefan:

That would be the problem.

Francis:

So against people losing the motivation, there’s not one big cure. Although, we have discussed on our site different topics on how to be more productive and efficient; it’s still different from each person when they lose the motivation. 

The best way to keep your assistant motivated and loyal to you is constant and well meaning communication. This doesn’t mean that you are now all errors, it only means that you communicate openly about everything.

This means that the daily updates to which you should reply at least two times a week. This means you reviewing their work and telling exactly what is good and what is not so good. This also includes you not frightening your assistant. 

So let’s, for example, say your assistant gets out of his way and does his research on his own and the results were very bad. Please don’t record a video while you shout at your assistant. He will be scared, he will leave immediately.

So always, if you have to get angry, don’t record it and send it to your assistant. Get angry with your wall or with you’re with your friends in a forum. And then calm down.

Think about how it would be for the assistant to receive the communication and then calmly say to them “Okay, this was not usable at all and I don’t want you to do this like that again. 

It was good that you tried it but you tried it in the wrong way. Now you know how not to do it, please do it like that in the future. And, although, you didn’t do it right; you don’t let this stop you from having your own initiative again.”

You appreciate that he tried it. Give him the feedback without being angry that he didn’t do it right. You give him a little bit of pointers or sources where he can learn to do it right. Then, you encourage him to do it at another time again. 

The strategy to immediately communicate if something is wrong minimizes the time and money lost. There will at least one working day of time and money lost because the assistant works one day; you review the screen shots; you receive his daily communication; and, only then you can react.

There’s a possible time lost of about 8 paid working hours if for 8 hours he does nothing right. But if you manage your assistant at the beginning of the work relationship so closely, this will not happen very closely. 

Stefan:

Yes because hopefully it already paid out itself. I mean, I don’t know, it might be over expecting but I would say 1 working hour should at least pay out double or 150%. And for every hour he works, 1 hour can be lost theoretically and used to even. You know what I mean?

Francis:

Yes, I know. So if you talk about money revenue, I think this is not realistic. But if you’re thinking about time revenue, this is very realistic. So my assistant when he works, I pay him his rate for one hour and I’m not thinking about the money that I don’t receive back immediately.

I think about the work he does within 1 hour and think he’s so productive; I know I couldn’t do it in 1 hour myself. I wouldn’t be as disciplined and I still just don’t have the time to do the work. So the work he does in 1 hour equals, at least, 1 hour in my work even more.

Stefan:

Let’s say if he works 40 hours a week or 20 hours a week, if he produces 10 of my hours; that would be good. 

Francis:

I think that’s expectable, at least. That’s about it.

Stefan:

Yes. Because I would cost way more from two points of view – from the financial point of view and from the motivational point of view. Because as you say I am not always motivated to work and my assistant provides that motivation because he is maybe more motivated to work than me.

Francis:

I think your assistant should be clearly motivated to work because if you work on your own, you don’t receive money compensation immediately.

So you have to draw your motivation from your dreams – your planning, your business plans. Your assistant gets paid immediately after he works so he should draw his motivation from the payment and the possibility to learn new skills and the possibility to build out his portfolio for future works. So, it’s clear that your assistant is more motivated than you by nature. 

Assuming all the topics we’ve talked about in this interview and all the challenges and fears you had regarding ‘is outsourcing worth it?’

Don’t I lose too much time? Assuming you would be able to implement all these tips, are you less afraid or less anxious to give outsourcing another chance? 

Stefan:

In the next time, I won’t give outsourcing a big chance in terms of single small projects. I think that it would take too much time and I rather do it on my own. 

Francis:

Yes.

Stefan:

That is more efficient and more cost and productive. The other thing is the semi long term, let’s say, the next 4-5 months would be definitely the ideal to find a solution to hire a part time assistant in one way or another. That’s a long time goal of mine.

That’s a long goal of mine to do that. But I haven’t had any success in that yet maybe because I didn’t invest enough time. It takes way longer than 1 month or 2 months.

And I’m still not very sure if I could achieve that yet so it will take time to figure that out but eventually it’s the only reasonable thing to do. You need someone to do the work for you. 

You can’t do it on your own. 

Francis:

I think so too especially if you have big ambitions like you and I. So the main goal of this website where this interview is standing on is for people like you who are motivated and interested in outsourcing to shorten their learning period.