How a startup should leverage a personal assistant | Hacker News Reader

How a startup should leverage a personal assistant

blog.asmartbear.com

78 pointsnathanh25 comments

Dear everyone ever (especially "a smart bear", who should know better): stop saying "leverage" when all you mean is "use".

"I leveraged my fingers to type this reply."

"I leveraged the wheels on my car to drive to work this morning."

Etc.

Please stop.

You're obviously not visualising the synergy here. Perhaps you should amalgamate social networks with someone a little more dynamic.

I think you mean: leverage synergies in the semantic cloud by monetizing innovative social media value configurations.

let's do coffee and discuss a roadmap to leverage mutually beneficial partnerships between our teams.

Generally "leverage" means to apply a little effort/cost to get a relatively large result.

That's exactly what Rob does with VA's -- applies a relatively small cost to save him a ton of time, much more so than alternatives like trying to automate it with code.

Generally the advantage of using a thing is that you get a proportionally larger benefit compared to the required cost/effort. Otherwise you wouldn't use it.

I didn't say that the use of the term was illegitimate, part of the reason why "leverage" is so pervasively abused is because it can be legitimately used (or leveraged) so abundantly.

Much like "really" the term "leverage" is almost never needed and abused far more often than used appropriately. Yes, you can really use "really" really very legitimately really often, but that doesn't mean you should, really. The same applies to "leverage" which has been leveraged far past the point of reasonableness into the realm of abuse.

Personally I think the term "leverage" is best reserved for situations where something is put to use in an unusual or especially advantageous way. Making use of an assistant to take care of mundane chores so that you can concentrate on more pressing matters is hardly novel (not within the last few millenia at least), though it is still quite sound advice.

Good lord, an interesting article about a subject I've never seen before and the most up-voted comment is a petty whine about using 'leverage' instead of 'use'?

And in fact, in this case, were I to eliminate jargon in this case I wouldn't replace 'leverage' with 'use' anyway. I'd say 'make use of' to suggest a thin layer of indirection not implied with the word 'use.'

I think his advice on outsourcing marketing, sales and support to an off-shore virtual personal assistant is profoundly dangerous.

When you've just launched, you have no idea what parts of your product are truly helpful to your customers and which have been a waste of time to build. Before my company launched I was completely off-base as to what we should be directing attention to, and it was only through talking with early customers that we identified where the focus of effort should be directed.

That direction wasn't obvious, either. It was only through speaking with many customers over many weeks that a vague idea of what just might be the best thing to focus upon emerged.

The author states that: "If you do not outsource these tasks, they will get in the way of work that's truly productive for your business.". However, without talking directly with customers, you are unlikely to know which activities are 'truly productive for your business'.

Outsource support at your peril.

You obviously didn't read the article.

He never said to outsource customer development. You made that up.

In one of the actual examples, he had the VA simply form a list of 100 potential people he could reach out to for market research. Then he did the research himself. This is exactly the opposite of what you think he said.

The other example was doing simple data-entry with a back-end ordering system because it was easier (at first) than automating it.

Yes, I did read the article. Then I re-read it before commenting since I found the advice in that section to be so surprisingly bad.

I did not make up my quoted comments. I pulled them right from the posted article and used them in context.

Right under "Point #2: After Your Product Launch", the author states:

"Customers make it necessary to put processes in place for marketing, sales, support, and back-end admin tasks. Any ongoing work that can be described in a written process can be outsourced to a VA and save incredible amounts of time for the founders.

"If you do not outsource these tasks, they will get in the way of work that's truly productive for your business."

The author is stating that a startup should outsource their support and I still think that outsourcing customer support for a new product is an extremely bad idea, no matter how easily that support process can be documented.

Feedback from customer support is one of the best ways for a business to identify where a product can be improved. Yes, you can easily describe support in a written process, but you cannot possibly anticipate what customers will tell you during those support calls.

The information shared during those early support calls is absolute gold.

Wouldn't it better go get an intern for this?

Even with a paid intern, for minimum wage, probably even get government tax credits for a new "hire", and still end up ahead.

government tax credits for hiring someone? tell me more.

I mean, yeah, I agree with you, for unskilled work, an intern is often the best option. I have my sister doing that work for me; I know that she's extremely responsible, and I trust her with my bank account, something I'd have a hard time doing with another random intern.

but actually, hiring people locally is a fairly large pain in the ass, unless you are willing to ignore the law when it comes to contractor/employee classification. (and really, that law is such that nearly all 'contractor' jobs I've had have been technically misclassified... illegal. But, if you want to work, you get used to working illegally. I'm doing my damnedest right now to not hire illegally, but it's real work.)

I've personally just gotten myself an office, so I've got to make my SysAdmin an actual employee now rather than a contractor, as he's actually working in my office rather than just working from home when he feels like it.

As far as I can tell, the government isn't giving me any breaks for this; far from it. I've gotta calculate and pay all kinds of taxes that I didn't have to worry about before. Granted, now my former contractor is going to have to pay fewer taxes, so it's not all bad. I mean, my accountant just deals with that sort of thing without spending my time on it, and I'm better equipped to maintain an accountant than my SysAdmin is, but still... especially if I didn't have an accountant, hiring a foreign contractor is much lower overhead than hiring a local.

Not being based in the US, I can't help but wonder how this sort of thing fits in with labor laws in Europe.

Look at it this way...in the US, lets say a good job in an office pays $50,000 per year, and a doctor in the US makes $100,000. Now imagine there is a wealthy nation in Europe with a few entrepreneurs who have more money than time, and they need people familiar with American business practices and fluent in American English to complete some basic tasks.

Of course they could find these workers locally, but let's say that because of a strong economy and high cost of living, the average salary is $250,000 per year in that country. The entrepreneurs go online and find a few Americans who would otherwise have been working the aforementioned "good jobs" that pay $50,000, except that the economy is so bad that those jobs are unavailable. The entrepreneurs hire the Americans at a rate of $100,000 to perform the job remotely.

The Americans get a better salary they would have otherwise gotten, and they get to work from home. The Europeans get a much cheaper worker ($100k vs $250k). Everybody's happy. I don't see what labor laws would be violated, and I don't see who would be hurt by such a scenario.

I don't see what labor laws would be violated

The easiest one to violate is accidentally turning your contractor into an employee, and if that happens, may God have mercy on your soul, because the local tax agency will not.

Keep in mind that the contractor/employee dilemma exists whether your worker is offshore or local. It may actually be better if the employee/contractor is offshore (from a US perspective), because you would not be liable for most of the taxes/deductions required of an American employee.

It's going to be awfully hard for any taxing authority (at least in the US) to characterize a contractor hired through a service (in the manner described in the article)as an employee:

1. The contractor presumably has other clients/customers 2. The contractor is not in your facility 3. The contractor is using his/her own tools and equipment

There are a number of other tests, but this is actually probably one of the "safer" ways to hire contractors.

I'm very skeptical of virtual admins. Every time I consider it, I realize most everything I want them to do requires them to be in the city I'm in. I've seen a number of friends and colleagues e ruin relationships and look like jerks after they got their VA. It appears to come from a latent blue collar desire for status, the same one that makes people put $3,000 rims on a $2,000 car, or buy a $3,000 television when they can't afford their mortgage payments.

When a close friend or colleague gets a VA and starts telling e to schedule social or business events through their VA instead of doing it themselves, I stop calling them. The only word for this is Douchebag, downmod me if you will.

What kind of person do you think you'll get for those peanuts? $6 per hour is below minimum wage here. A PA is a skilled worker, not a cleaner.

Where's 'here'? His $6 rate if for Filipinos, which I'm guessing is an ok rate (given a minimum wage of $2k / yr: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_countr...)

$6/hour is a very high rate for a virtual assistant in the Philippines. I pay $4/hour for skilled web/graphic designers and programmers, all with at least 4 year degrees, some with masters or higher. For virtual assistants/data entry/data mining, I pay around $2.50/hour. That works out to $400/month for virtual assistants, $640/month for designers/coders. Even better, my team is in Cebu, Philippines, which enjoys a much lower cost of living than Manila (think Atlanta vs New York City), so this money goes even farther for them.

For those of you outraged by those numbers, consider that a typical nurse in the Philippines will make $120/month, and a doctor will make $300-800 (http://bulatlat.com/news/4-37/4-37-sick.html or http://doktorko.com/_blog/index.php?mod=blog_article&a=1...). The president of the Philippines earns $1000/month (officially, that is).

Do you typically use the same firm/people? If so, would you mind passing along their contact info or posting it here? (my contact info is in my profile)

Hi I'd be interested in the firm that you use as well. My contact info is in my profile. Thanks.

For $6/hour I typically, though not always, get someone with a 4-year college degree.

While it can be hit and miss, just like hiring someone in your own country (in my case, the U.S.), if you screen them well you can find someone solid and reliable. One of my best VAs costs $3 per hour, but I had to go through 4 or 5 others before I found her.

So many downvotes? Did I touch a nerve perhaps?

Let me reiterate, in stronger terms: This kind of unregulated outsourcing is selfish, irresponsible and socially corrosive.

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