Last week while on a vacation I got a chance to read “The 4 Hour Work Week.” I’d been hearing so much about this book that when I saw it in Bancroft, Ontario (of all places) I picked it up.
I got back to the cottage and dove right into it. I immediately became a big fan. It seemed to be a mirror image of my career minus all the crazy and far more exciting & eccentric things Timothy Ferriss is doing. The parts about Tim’s family or friends asking, “what do you do for a living?” or “where do you work?” really echoed to me.
Tim always had trouble explaining how and why he made an income online. He struggled to truly explain to people who while they were working 9-5 (plus overtime), he was working only 4 hours per week. I have this problem too. Day in and day out, I’m asked this question. Usually, I just say I do some marketing for people online. Most of the time this does leave them confused and curious.
I know my grandparents used to say “as long as Noah isn’t doing anything illegal!” So I immediately felt where Tim was coming from. Usually when he explained he earned his income online, they immediately just assumed things like “pornography.” Tim became eventually just too frustrated with answering this question he now answers, “I’m a drug dealer.”
In a way, there is a level or mystery with earning your entire income online. I mean, people see you’re not struggling and they are. People see you going on vacation and they aren’t. I can understand it too. If I had a friend who was me, I’d be intrigued. In a way, I believe people essentially want a piece of the pie! That’s fine too. But don’t beat around the bush!
Anyways…back to the topic on hand. Another part of Tim’s book I enjoyed was on how he outsourced so much of his work to Brickwork and GetFriday (He said “Your Man In India” in the book ~ he meant their outsourcing company getfriday.com) I was intrigued because much of my success has been largely due to outsourcing tasks I couldn’t normally do. I usually just use rentacoder.com. The problem here is you get sometimes hundreds of “bids” for your posted job. The bidders can be from anywhere in the world, some are brand new, poor English, or they didn’t even read your request, they are just replying to ever single posted job! In a way, this becomes very tiresome to go through.
So after reading The 4 Hour Work Week I thought I’d try Brickwork and/or GetFriday. I submitted my quote requests and am now waiting. I just received a message from Brickwork. Because of the book’s popularity, they are now SWAMPED! I did get a message from Vivek Kulkari the CEO of Brickwork. The email explained it would be a week before they get back to me. The email read…
“We apologize for this delay, but due to an unexpected increase in business, all our resources have been working overtime to meet our client demands. We are currently focusing on ramping up our team size, to minimize such delays and inconveniences caused to our prospective clients.”
I guess they didn’t know they were going to be the main focus of a New York Times Best Seller!!!
Imagine this company in India, overwhelmed to the point they will need to outsource to someone else. Maybe America….
As for GetFriday.com, I haven’t received a response yet but I did manage to find their company blog. The blog explained how due to the book, they are now taking up to 28 days to respond, work out details and begin performing tasks!!!! This same task took just 24-48 hours a few weeks ago.
We’ll see where I get. I’m going to investigate a few other companies. I think people may be focusing on these two companies primarily because Tim Ferriss mentions them as the companies he uses. Thus, people believe these are trusted and the only companies out there.
Over the next 6 weeks, I’ll be focusing on outsourcing and posting my experiences here.
We’ll also see if we can get some interesting tasks handled by them….
