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Hourly Jobs vs. Fixed Price Jobs on oDesk – Advantages and Disadvantages

Virtual assistant girl working on an hourly projectOutsourcing your work as fixed price jobs or paying for hourly jobs on Odesk is highly dependent on the nature of your project.

There are advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing both types of work that you need to be aware of.

Advantages of outsourcing as an hourly job:

  1. Hourly paid jobs are well-regarded from your providers due to the secure payment system from oDesk.
  2. The hourly paid jobs are manageable for the employer since your provider logged hours by using the oDesk team room and you can review their work diaries on a regular basis.
  3. Many providers apply for hourly jobs online because they need a sustainable income they can count on. It takes time to hunt after numerous fixed price assignments – even if sometimes they can be more profitable.

Disadvantages an hourly wage jobs:

Advantages of fixed price jobsIt is sometimes difficult to estimate the hourly wages for jobs done online if you are only habituated to “normal” offline work.

In my personal experience, proposing wages between 1 and 4$/hour will result in finding an appropriate provider for your project.

It also depends on the skillset needed and your budget. Of course, you need to have the right tactics for your hiring process, too.

Advantages of a fixed price projects:

  • In fixed-price jobs you don’t really have to overview your provider regularly and you don’t need to really check on what they are doing.

They can surf internet of chat on Facebook as long as they want to, until and unless they deliver the required work by the deadline and after receiving the work you can review their work and then you can release the payment.

  • In general, fixed time jobs will cost you less money as an employer: If you ask “I want this result for $50” the provider may be spending much more time than you paid him hourly for the same job.

Disadvantages of outsourcing as a fixed price project:

If the work is not satisfactory you will need to discuss how this will work out beforehand. So some providers agree to work for free until your satisfaction, otherwise they can say that I will not work on this anymore and you can give me bad feedback and just pay me what we decided and I am finished with your project.

It is a weakness of Odesk’s system that it does not guarantee payments on fixed price jobs.

In my personal opinion I see that I was less successful in hiring people on fixed time jobs than if you post hourly jobs.

Bottom line?

Providers like hourly paid jobs much more. They are guaranteed to be paid.

Hourly made money is there in their pockets. However, if you make a big project over $100 and you cancel it for whatever reason – then the provider ends up with nothing! So that is why providers don’t prefer it.

Note that there are also exceptions. From time to time, you’ll find providers specialized on fixed-price jobs that are not all small and easy to do.

You’ll have to use your own judgment to find out if the provider is the right person for you.

You’ll have two power tools at your fingertips:

  1. The interview during the hiring process.
  2. The feedback information and portfolios from past jobs.





Your Opinion Matters!

Which Is Better: Fixed Price Jobs Or Hourly Jobs?

Please note that all fields followed by an asterisk must be filled in.

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Pick your best choice:*
Hourly JobsFixed Price Jobs

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Holidays In The Philippines – Paid Time Off For Your Virtual Assistant

Kadayawan is a feast to give thanks for the harvest
Kadayawan is a feast to give thanks for the harvest
Do you employ a Virtual Assistant from the Philippines, especially a full-time VAs? Then, you should consider giving your VA paid vacation for the official holidays in the Philippines. This is a great perk for them and is something any “real” work place there will provide to them by law.

I asked my Filipino VA Jomvie to put together a list of official holidays in the Philippines for your quick reference. If you choose not to give them paid time off, consider at least to let them pause their work during that time if you pay by the hour.

Just think about going to work on Christmas or on Sylvester – you wouldn’t like that very much, right? 🙂

Over to my VA…

“We may be different in size, color and shape, but there’s something we all love — Holidays!

In the Philippines, we have an average of ten regular holidays in a year. So, in a year, we are given a 10-day break away from work. And what’s so good about it? It’s (normally) paid.

We have two types of holidays in the Philippines

  1. Regular Holiday
  2. Special Non-Working Holiday

Often, other people from outside the Philippines do not understand that Regular and Special Holidays are two different types of holidays.

What is a Regular Holiday?

Regular Holidays are paid holidays that are celebrated nationwide. Actually, apart from these regular holidays, we have local holidays (that fall on special non-working holidays). One of them is celebrating the years of our city through colorful feasts that is locally known to us as “Fiesta”.

Regular Holidays are holidays where “no work, no pay” does not apply. In other words, if the employee does not work during this day, he/she is still paid 100 percent of his/her daily rate.

And, if that day the employee is asked to work, he/she will be paid 200 percent for the first eight hours.

List of Regular (paid) Holidays in the Philippines

               Holiday Name                                                 Date

  • New Year’s Day                                                     January 1
  • Araw ng Kagitingan (The day of Valor)             April 9
  • Maundy Thursday                                               April 17
  • Good Friday                                                          April 18
  • Labor Day                                                             May 1
  • Independence Day                                              June 12
  • National Heroes Day                                          August 25
  • Bonifacio Day                                                      November 30
  • Christmas Day                                                     December 25
  • Rizal Day                                                               December 30

These are the most celebrated holidays in the Philippines. Since we have a large amount of the population of our fellow Muslim brothers and sisters here in the Philippines, the observance of Eid’l Fitr (July 29) and Eidul Adha (October 4) is yet to be proclaimed.

Saturday and Sunday Exemptions

On regular holidays, there are exemptions if they fall on a weekend day.

  • If the holiday falls on Saturday, it is going to be moved and celebrated on Friday.
  • And if it falls on Sunday, it will be celebrated on Monday.

An example for this year (2014):

We celebrated our “National Heroes Day” and since it fell on Sunday, it was celebrated on Monday (August 26).

FrancisFrancis

How lucky! I wish we had this exemption rule here in Germany. I have never heard from such a rule.

For us, it’s a matter of luck with “good” or “bad” years, depending on how many holidays fall on a weekend.

On that day, ceremonial rites were given to all our heroes who fought for our freedom and bondage during the perilous times.

What is a Special Non-Working Holiday?

Special Non-Working Holidays are non-paid holidays that are celebrated locally or nationwide. 

They are holidays where if an employee will not work, he/she will not get his/her salary for that day.

But, let’s not tackle deeply into technical terms. This is just a brief explanation for you to know the difference between Regular and Special Holidays in the Philippines.”





Your Thoughts About Filipino Holidays!

Do you have something to add to this overview of Filipino holidays? Is there any special holiday you want to explain in more details?

Employers from all around the world are hiring more and more Filipino VAs. The more they know about your culture and the importance of the different holidays, the better they boss they can be for you!

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Hiring A Virtual Assistant Effectively

Person Holding Hire Me Sign in Crowd

I am going to show you how I normally go about hiring a virtual assistant on oDesk.

First of all, you need to be logged in. Then, go to the recruiting table (top left) and you’ll see several options:

  • Find a contractor
  • Post a job
  • Different job postings already opened by you.

 

Since you’ll not have posted any job until now, there will be no open job posting.

The best way to go about it, before you click to post a job and write the work descriptions, is to click on the dropdown menu and find a job that is similar to yours.

There might be other employers on Odesk which have explained exactly the same task in a job opening to another person – way better than you might able to do. Use this existing knowledge for your advantage. Just type in some keywords which relate to your job.

Example:

oDesk job search interface
  • Simply hiring a virtual assistant for regular transcription jobs.

These transcriptions could be used for blog writing. So, I’ll want a person who knows about transcription and possibly blog writing. This is what I will put into my search field and will search for it.

Then, choose 5-10 good job descriptions and study them closely. This will make the task of writing your job description much more easy. Also, you will get a feeling of how much money people are willing to pay for a certain service. You will be able to orient yourself with this information.

Hiring a Virtual Assistant with an Eye-Catching Job Description

This one, for example, looks very sharp at the first glimpse.

oDesk job posting for hiring a virtual assistant

It shows an interesting job description. It is clear to read and it has bullet points. There are clear responsibilities and everything is greatly described:

  • It’s an hourly job,
  • How long it will be required,
  • The feedback score which is expected
  • and everything clearly laid out in advance.

You can see how much money people want to be paid who apply for this sort of job and at which rate this employer is interviewing the candidates.

You can also see the old work history of the employer. If he has a lot of good feedback you’ll know he is a “good” boss from whose job descriptions you can learn something.

This other job description below also catches the eye, because of the SHOUTING with the capitals. Let’s examine both of them.

The 2nd job description is also pretty well suited to hire virtual assistants. It is very clear and has high expectations of the providers.

Write a little about you and your business

Ray Kroc's famous quotation

Also, it is good to talk a little bit about yourself, so people who want to work for you will have a clear vision of what you are about.

  • Are you a blogger or are you an owner of a big enterprise?
  • Are you a private person or a college student?
  • For which reason and tasks are you hiring a virtual assistant?

All this makes a huge difference on which is your perfect match as an ideal virtual helper.

A good work description has specific tasks numerated with explanations, one after the other.

If I was a virtual assistant, I would want to apply for this job after reading the job description.

But let’s ask my VA for his advice…

va thumbnail


From the point of view of my virtual assistant:

Perhaps I have a different perspective on this process of hiring a virtual assistant.

Providers do not like such long job descriptions. I think job opening descriptions should be

  • – short,
  • – specific
  • – and precise.

Of course you can ask all your concerns in detail at the time of the interview.

Showing Client activity on a job post

Because time is money I would not prefer to spend a lot of time on reading the job descriptions in detail.

Most of the providers also think similar to me and you can see that this job posting is 14 days old and only 11 providers have applied for it.

Thanks for your opinion!

What I also like is this person explains up front that he is happy to receive calls and emails but he cannot always respond immediately and that he is open to feedback and suggestions. Many providers are afraid to give feedback and directions.

But still this work description seems a little bit long for the amount of money people are applying for.

Therefore, I’ll look for other information which will make it possible to me to get a low-cost but optimal transcription expert on my team.

Your job is to first read different job postings. Then, you’ll be ready to post a job yourself.

Looking for the right people when hiring a virtual assistant

Choose the right category for your provider. If you need a writer, post a job to the writer’s category.

Many providers will only apply to the jobs in the right category. So check for the first category which you think is right and then in the sub-category if you can find the right stuff. (Be sure to look at the screenshot!)

Here, it is “Administrative Support” and then “Transcription” which is the right category for your job posting. Then you’ll see a preview just under the Subcategory about how many possible applicants you might have on Odesk.

odesk job posting categories

Do you see a big number? Don’t panic!

You will not interview hundred of thousand applicants.

Make a catchy job title and make a great job description. You can also read some good tips on the right side of your description right on the odesk page for best practices of hiring a virtual assistant.

You can also put a link to an explaining video or a website within the job description.

Do not promote any services there, as it might be against Odesk’s terms of services. You can however use a link to a screenshot recorded by a screen recording software which further explains what you are looking for.

Under the “Skills Required” box write whatever skills you want. As you write your desired skills you will get propositions of what might be the right choice. Choose from those suggestions. You can also enter more than one desired skill.

Choose if you want to have an hourly or a fixed price job.

  • A fixed price job is well suited for an assignement of transcribing one hour of audio for a given price.
  • An hourly work might be more suitable for transcription if you want to hire a virtual assistant that is reliable and works regularly for you.

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How Reliable Google Analytics YouTube Tracking For Online Business?

Traffic Analysis ChartGoogle Analytics YouTube Tracking is part-18 of an interview with Eric, a fellow entrepreneur interested in outsourcing his work to virtual assistants all over the world.

Follow along to learn from our experience of working with VAs!

Click here to read part 17 of this interview – how to outsource with YouTube marketing strategy effectively

Summary:

  • Learn the importance of Google Analytics YouTube tracking for outsourcing business.
  • Learn how to setup conversion funnels easily with the help of screenshots and virtual assistants.
  • Learn the comparison of traffic conversion and surf traffic with the help of Google Analytic

Start of the Interview:

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

I’m trying to look at my analytics real quick to see how much of my actual referring comes from YouTube. It’s not super great.

Francis
Francis

But also look at the Google Analytics and see how much conversion comes from YouTube in comparison to your surf traffic.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

How do you do that?

Francis
Francis

How do you set up the conversion funnels?

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

Yeah.

Francis
Francis

Okay, I think that’s something I would have to record perhaps on video or ask my virtual assistant to explain real quickly with screenshots. That’s what we can do. In principle, you go on Google Analytics. On the left side, you have goals and you can set up goals. For example, an Aweber sign up.

If you want to track your mail out manager sign ups in SiteBuildIt!, that’s a little bit more complicated but it’s possible.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

See, I was trying to do that for email sign ups and it just never work.

Francis
Francis

Which email sign-ups for Aweber or?

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

Yes. Aweber.

Francis
Francis

You go to the right and then go to User settings. And then you click on the Admin panel at the top.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

Okay.

Francis
Francis

You see there on the right, that’s view and then there’s the page and then you say goals. It’s like a flag.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

Is this in your main analytics or is this under admin?

Francis
Francis

Ah, let me share the screen again.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

Okay.

Francis
Francis

I think it’s fastest.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

Okay, yeah, that’s where I’m at right now.

Francis
Francis

Okay. Oh, that’s good. Then you go here on goals.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

Oh, okay. I see.

Francis
Francis

And then you can set up; I think the limit is 10 goals or something. You set up a new goal here and destination like a landing page or an event.

There are some options. And then you can verify the goal. For some, you have to put some code, some HTML code, on the landing page.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

I thought that I did all of that. And for some reason it’s still just never… It must just be something technical that I’m just not…

Francis
Francis

Yeah. Perhaps just try out the goal again and by subscribing yourself. If it doesn’t work, do something else. Try until it works. But it’s very useful because then you just see how much of your traffic from where converts into which goals.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

Do you do a lot of tracking like that?

Francis
Francis

Not lots. I would like to do more but it’s technical and I think Google Analytics is extremely powerful. And I think that’s also something a very analytical virtual assistant can give you lots of advantage in.

Which of your traffic strategies works out best for your conversions to your most wanted responses? Then you can drop everything that doesn’t work and save money. And increase the efforts, for example, you want to split up between podcast traffic and YouTube traffic and your efforts.

And you know that you are paying 2 full-time assistants, just one $300 and one $500. So you know about how much money you put in. And then you track with Google Analytics how much money comes back.

And then you can make a business decision on what strategies to either refine because you do not master the topic yet or which strategy is obviously more powerful than the other.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

Right. I think that where I am right now is I’m doing a lot of split testing with Aweber forms and trying to really increase my conversion there. But I think I’m really lacking with converting the specific traffic from certain sources like that, like you’re saying.

And I think I need to figure out how to do that a little bit better because there was something that I listened to awhile back that talk about how to really increase your opt-ins and the number of people that subscribe to your list and everything like that.

And that’s also what I’m working on, trying to get the optimal number of people to subscribe and really increase the conversion rate that I have with that as far as my email list, you know what I’m saying?

Francis
Francis

Yeah, that’s something I do a little bit; also a little bit with my assistant, but if I could pick your brain about that topic another time, perhaps you can bounce a little bit back and forth about the topic how to increase the conversions on whatever topic with the help of a virtual assistant.

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Check With Glassdoor If You Have Found Your Dream Job

Found a job opportunity? No matter if you found it yourself or if you outsourced the job search, be sure to double check your future employer on the Glassdoor website!

Use Glassdoor to...
  1. Check Employee's feedback
  2. Get an unbiased inside look
  3. Check if you are in for a horror trip or a dream job
Start with the widget on the right!
[contentblock id=9 img=form.png]

What you need to do to get unlimited access

When you start using the site, you’ll soon find out that you need to make a free account to get all the information. Go ahead and do this, it’s worth the five seconds.

Sign up with…

  • your email
  • or Facebook

I chose to use an email, but that’s because I have issues with Facebook’s privacy policy.

Then, you will have access to all the insider info about the companies for 30 days. To extend that to unlimited access, you need to provide your own review.

(Exception: if you are a student, you can sign up with your student email and get 12 month access to everything!)

Personally, I chose to share the experience I made in one of my job interviews. This took me less than 5 minutes.

Use Glassdoor for your Job Search

girl-pointing-out-textYou can use this service for research of job openings – or let your virtual assistant take care of that. This is actually a great example of time consuming, tedious daily research that could be well outsourced.

Wouldn’t getting a pre-screened, cleaned up daily report including background research from the companies offering relevant job openings be useful…?

Ways this service can help you with your job hunt:

Regular notifications about job openings

Chances for Networking and referrals through friends if you use this site via Facebook. (Similar to LinkedIn and Xing!) Use the power of your “inside connections” to get you in touch with the people that actually have the power to provide you with your dream job!

Exchange honest and anonymous insider info

Since the info you submit is anonymous, you don’t have to be afraid about your employer finding out about bad feedback and firing you, for example.

In the same way, the provided reviews reflect the honest opinions of the users.

Of course, you need to interpret the reviews carefully. If you find mainly great reviews about a global company, but a few bad ones in between, this does not mean that the company is “evil” as a whole.

Also, people from different career levels and even different countries are posting. This is especially important for big, global enterprises.

That’s why you should use these reviews as a way to orient yourself.

Take them with a grain of salt.

Compare salary levels between the companies

Salary is important.

Nevertheless, many people don’t like to talk honestly about their salary.

The good news:

Glassdoor also allows you to research salary levels from the different companies.

Be sure to compare thoroughly before you start negotiating your salary.

It’s always wise to know what you can ask for.

Feel free to do a test search for your last salary in the widget on the right!

[contentblock id=9 img=form.png]

Sidenote:

In China, this is different, or so I heard on a seminar about intercultural communication.

Apparently, it’s very common there to ask about family, income and other personal details very early in the conversation.

Learn about challenges in the job interview process

Are you preparing yourself for a job interview?
Great! Use the information about the interview process of the company you are invited to to prepare yourself as good as possible.

Useful Information so far? Then click the “Like” Button! 🙂

What part can you outsource to your Virtual Assistant?

This site is about smartly outsourcing tedious work to a Virtual Assistant, so that you can focus on what is important to you. Here’s what you can safely outsource without risking anything or getting into trouble:

  1. Setting up an account and getting you unlimited access (your VA can share his work experience if he has had a “real job” before)
  2. The job research and hunt for open positions (don’t outsource writing applications!)
  3. Researching salary levels
  4. Pre-Screening job offers by quality levels of the enterprise – or informing you ahead of time and warning you from “bad bosses” ahead of time

Ready to learn how to get a VA?

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Just Getting Started With A Virtual Assistant For Your Online Business?

Kick-Start with a newly hired VA
Kick-Start with a newly hired VA

Getting started with a virtual assistant is part-6 of an interview with Eric, a fellow entrepreneur interested in outsourcing his work to virtual assistants all over the world.

Follow along to learn from our experience on working with VAs!

Click here to read part 5 of this interview – How effective is video screen recording in communicating with your virtual assistant?

Summary:

  • Getting started with a virtual assistant by knowing his/her weaknesses and strength.
  • Turn your virtual assistants’ strength into profit and reinforce training to beat his/her weaknesses.

Start of the Interview:

Francis
Francis

At the beginning, of course you can make an inventory of saying what skills the assistant already has. If they tell you that he has a WordPress site then you know, of course, that he has quite the skills already.

He has internet marketing basics. He knows probably basic HTML, basic CMS usage and so on. But, if he tells you, yeah, he’s a newbie virtual assistant. Then it’s best to just assume he knows Google Search.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

Right.

Francis
Francis

And from this knowledge, even if it’s underestimated, it’s best to show him how you do the search on one example, on a full example. And that’s why I prefer using SnagIt now rather than Jing because the 5-minutes videos were never long enough for me.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

Yes, I noticed the same thing that the Jing videos were definitely not long enough.

Francis
Francis

Yeah, but it’s free. So, it’s very good for starting out and also for overcoming any of fear of, “Oh it’s weird to record videos to my computer”

But, when you go over that then you change. Instead of recording 10 Jing videos, you just free talk 1 hour. Time flies when I record videos but then you cover everything.

So, I like to record instruction videos as I’m working so I really load my pages in real time. I don’t pause for that.

I don’t edit out this stuff. Because I think if I take half an hour to clean up my recording somehow and my virtual assistant takes one hour longer to fight himself through watching this recording two times then I’m willing to pay for his time more than I’m willing to use my time.

So, for example this research, I would just open a screen recording or a set of screen recording videos and then I would go. And as I do the work and open the link of a new competitor and it’s loading in my internet, I’m just talking about the background of why I’m doing it to give the assistant a bigger picture.

So, there will be waiting times as we work online and that like you just continue talking either about different ideas, different topics and different tasks or about the background of why I’m doing this.

So, this will help the assistant when he’s doing his own research to support his work. For example, he has to use the backlink checker and then you saying sort of on the sidelines, “Yeah but I don’t mind which backlink checker you use. If you find a better one, just use that one.” But your virtual assistant does not know this without you saying that.

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Eric

Right, yeah.

Francis
Francis

So, don’t say it, he assumes you have to use this back up check link. And then the next day you have an email reading, “Sorry my country is blocked from that service. What should I do?”

Then you say, “Obviously search for an alternative.” But he doesn’t know. He assumes that you want it especially, in this format, because of some reason he doesn’t know.

If you specify you don’t care which backlink checker you just want the result and actually say, “Please go look for better backlink checker and then use the best one.” This gives him the amount of freedom he needs to skip the  next obvious question.

And if you tell him, “Okay, do that.” And then he says “Sorry, I didn’t know how to do that. I’m waiting for your response.” And you are angry because he didn’t just give you the result.

If in a passage, you just say, “Okay, please do that. And if this video is not good enough, you are allowed up to 2 hours of free research using YouTube search and whatever to inform yourself about using the software before coming back to me with questions.”

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

That’s something that I never thought about was to just give them a couple of free hours to kind of search for a solution. And I think that probably would have helped me to kind of, first of all, give my virtual assistant a little bit more freedom to where they felt that they could do things on their own, as well as the fact that they could possibly have already found a solution before having to come back to me and ask for the solution for me.

Francis
Francis

Yeah. And ideally if you do this in the beginning, later on they will find a healthy solution. So unhealthy would be to go into losing your time for ten hours and researching heavily for technical solution when you can explain that to them in 10 minutes.

That’s ineffective. But if they know that, in general, one each topic they are allowed on 20% of research time to make the project as smooth as possible and that you’re happy with that because it takes you time explaining.

After 2 or 3 different projects, they will know. And you don’t need to tell them anytime. We don’t even need to specify the time.

So, for example for such spreadsheet research, the spreadsheets my assistant or, in general, assistants do are awesome. I don’t know why. But, many assistants from India and these countries, they are masters of Excel.

And that spreadsheet looked really… I have found myself several times wondering if they can teach me how to do that. I wanted a lesson on how to make a spreadsheet like my virtual assistant, honestly.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

Yeah. They do great. Mine did too. They do an amazing job at spreadsheet.

Francis
Francis

Yeah. But, at the beginning perhaps, they don’t know they are allowed to do that. So perhaps, when you show them you are working spreadsheet as you do it, then you send them the spreadsheet and say, “Okay, fill it.”

And you would sort of be expecting a great spreadsheet with filtering function, colors and layout and formatting. Perhaps, they will not dare to use the time to do that because you did not specify that to them.

So if you tell them, use the spreadsheet form you’re most comfortable with. In some countries, you will be surprised how much more they over deliver.

So, I like to really specify that when they do the research where they are free to have freedom and where they are not free.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

I definitely agree. I definitely agree with that.

Francis
Francis

Yeah, yeah. I want to avoid talking at you instead of talking with you so please stop me when I’m just talking and talking.

anonymous-user-thumb
Eric

No, that’s fine. I’m gaining a lot from what you’re saying, really, because those are some things that I’ve never even really considered myself. So I’m learning a lot just by listening to you talking–definitely.

Francis
Francis

That’s great.

 

Continue reading part 7 – How to measure productivity with virtual assistant communications?