b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Monday, April 14, 2008
How To Experience Abject Failure
I know when I'm beat. I know how to cut my losses and get out. There's a lot to be said for perseverance, but even more for not throwing good money after bad. What am I talking about? My outsourcing attempts with GetFriday.com. My God, what a disaster.After 2 1/2 months I had exactly one - that's 1 - single success with GetFriday. Every other task I assigned was a miserable failure. Even after getting a replacement PA who was, supposedly, experienced in web search and basic web skills I could not get even marginally relevant results when I asked for search data on specific topics.
Worse, when it became clear to me that this wasn't going to work out it took nearly an act of Congress to get them to cancel my account. The entire affair was a disaster.
What I learned is simple - if this is the best the east Asian nations can offer then we are in no danger of being overrun by
a low-wage workforce. They demonstrated a lack of understanding, competence, response, and adaptability that was scary.
I went so far as to start running my task descriptions by two of my colleagues to try and ensure I was being both clear and reasonable in my requests. The results I got were still stunningly inept.
In fairness, most of my colleagues asked the very basic question, "Well, what did you expect?" I don't know, maybe something a little above abject incompetence? How about someone with enough self awareness to recognize when they did not understand a task and ask for clarification until they did?
If you read my experience with BellSouth tech support from 2006 you'll see my GetFriday experience is neither my first encounter with such incompetence, nor is it any real surprise. I suspect the cultural and language barriers between a third-world workforce and US-based expectations are just too great to overcome. Or maybe it is something else. I do not know.
What I do know is that from now on I will stick with North American (and possibly European) sources for anything I want done. Given my experiences I do not think there is any non-repetitive task requiring foresight, intuition, or judgment that can be effectively outsourced to a third-world workforce. It may well be that if you can 100% script an activity, and spend enough time to get the workforce to actually read the script, and have enough patience for them to practice and fail repeatedly until they get it right, that you might eventually have some success.
But as a small business my tasks are not repetitive. At least not now. And they do require thinking - which entails all those things mentioned above. The third-world is simply not the place to get these things done.
Terry Frazier at 2:15 PM
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Friday, March 14, 2008
That Queasy Feeling
You know that feeling you get when you know you're about to get bad news, like going to the doctor when you think the diagnosis will be bad? I have that feeling and it will stay with me for the next six to eight weeks.I spent two hours with the new accountant today. We made some real progress and I feel good about how the project is going. But it's not over. We (the accountant, my office assistant, and me) will spend another 3-4 hours together on Thursday making sure that all the stuff we've done in between is right and proper. Then my assistant will go about getting the rest of the data entered.
So what's the queasy feeling? Taxes. I get it every year at this time - when I'm forced face-to-face with the unbelievable burdens our beloved government places on the self-employed. Every person in America ought to run their own business and have to pay their own taxes for a couple of years. It ought to be mandatory - like serving in the army or something.
There's no way in hell our tax system would be as abusive toward small business owners if everyone had to do it instead of having their employer pay taxes for them. It makes me ill to see the morons on TV commercials grinning stupidly when they say, "I'm getting money back!" as if the freakin' government has given them some sort of bonus.
But it's not just the Federal income tax. It's the state income tax, the Federal unemployment tax, the state unemployment tax, the MediCaie tax, the Social Security tax, the self-employment tax. Not only do I have to pay these, but my company has to match many of them. Yes, correct. I'm the only employee but I have to pay them twice. But that's just the personal tax. Don't forget the corporate tax, because my little one-man operation is an S-Corp.
And what does my money go for? Well, according to the Congressional Budget Office (pdf) 53% - that's five-three - of the 2007 Federal Budget went to welfare and other entitlement programs (foodstamps, MedicAid, etc), 20% went to the Department of Defense, 18% goes to everything else - like education, roads, the FAA, etc. What's worse, the Federal government employs 2.5 million people, most of whom are worse than useless as they do stuff that is completely unproductive and just gets in the way of the very few people left who actually do useful things. The Federal payroll is about $13 billion (billion, with a B) per month.
Being forced to face this every year turns me into a real grouch from about February thru April. And makes me completely intolerant toward my idiot acquaintances who think taxation is some sort of tool for punishing the rich. Being a Presidential election year doesn't help, with candidates spouting the stupidest economic fantasies one can imagine and throngs of near-retards buying into it.
The only reason these dimwits can think this way is because the government has cleverly isolated them from paying their own taxes by making the employers do it. Oh, and they are all functionally illiterate in basic economics.
So I am not happy. I am a grouch. And unless you want to really ruin a conversation don't mention politics or taxes to me until sometime around July. And if you work in some government-funded job, don't speak to me at all unless it's to say "Thank You."
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Outsourcing The Big Tasks
It's been a while since I updated my outsourcing efforts. I've been head-down in trying to get my major task - bookkeeping and accounting - under control. I have been trying to find the right solution for this for over five (5) years.I am, apparently, unique in my requirements. I just fired my second accountant for failure to help me do what I need. But I can't imagine that I am alone in what I want. I have a small service business. I am a consultant. I travel extensively. I am a sole operator. I have no employees. I need, and have needed, someone to help me setup a bookkeeping and record keeping system that I can understand, that meets all the requirements of the government for taxes, and for which I can outsource the day-to-day tasks of data entry, filing, etc. [More...]
Terry Frazier at 2:52 PM
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Thursday, February 7, 2008
No More Slogging
I was discussing the 4–hour Workweek principle of Efficiency vs Effectiveness with a colleague today. Efficiency is doing as many things as possible within a given time – more often called being productive. It’s what we’re trained to do since grade school. It’s what all the time management programs are designed around. It’s what we all think of when we start looking at the pile of things on our desks and wonder how we’ll get them all done.
Efficiency creates slogging — slogging through all the crap we do on a daily basis without really assessing whether what we’re doing is the very best use of time and energy. I am a slogger. So is my colleague. Nose to the grindstone. Dedicated. Hard worker. All these phrases are associated with sloggers. We’re taught from an early age that getting everything done is important. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Yada yada yada. This is just not true. Here are two truisms from Tim Ferris:
- Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
- Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.
Slogging also leads to wasting time. Are you checking e-mail 50–100 times a day? Why? Probably because you feel like you need to respond to things immediately. Do you answer every phone call? Why? Probably because you feel compelled to respond to every inquiry. But every time I check e-mail, or answer the phone, or do anything that distracts me from doing the one important thing I lose 30–45 minutes of time just getting my head back into the important thing. By that time some new interruption has probably occurred and the cycle starts over. At the end of the day lots of unimportant things have been completed, but the one important thing is still sitting there, waiting. And waiting. And so I slog through the night to get it done.
Corporate people are great sloggers. They spend their entire day going to pointless meetings, answering e-mails, and returning phone calls. Then they either come in early, stay late, or come in on weekends to do the important things that only they can do. And the more “productivity” goes up, the more they slog.
Effectiveness is doing the right thing, the one important thing, and only that thing. It requires taking a hard look at everything you do and asking yourself one question — “If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I feel like it was a good day?” If the answer is no, don’t do it. Just move on to something else. Find the one thing that will make it a good day. If there is time left when you’re finished find something else and ask the same question again.
Truly effective people never have more than two or three things on their To-Do list, and each of those things is significant. Everything else gets ignored or delegated. Virgin brand billionaire Richard Branson has reportedly said that everything he needs to do to run his empire can be accomplished in 30 minutes a day. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I do know that people like Branson have a fundamentally different view of the world than most folks, and they don’t slog their way through life.
Slogging creates stress. Effectiveness creates freedom. Slogging is like Brownian motion – random movement that doesn’t get you anywhere. Effectiveness is what creates meaningful output. And meaningful output — e.g. accomplishment — is what creates success.
Here’s my new motto — No More Slogging.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Getting the Office in Order
As I mentioned in last week's outsourcing update, my Virtual Assistant made an appointment for me with a local staffing service. Thursday afternoon Kristie from Elite Staffing came to my office and we talked about the task I have at hand. We agreed to a trial period at a very reasonable hourly rate and she'll be back on Monday to pick up the boxes of papers and files I'm now raking off my desk.The plan is to have Kristie sort and file the backlog of mail, papers, and miscellany I have accumulated over the past two years. Once that's done I'll have her start scanning the papers that I actually need to keep and shred the ones I don't.
I also went to see a nearby Padgett Business Services office this week. I've used them to do my taxes before, but I've never had anyone actually do my bookkeeping. This definitely needs to be outsourced, as I never keep this up to date. The plan is for Padgett to setup QuickBooks Online so I can access it from anywhere and can grant access to whoever I need in order to get my data entered.
I started out trying to work with Brickwork India on the QuickBooks setup, but it just didn't feel right. Bookkeeping just seems like something I needed to keep close to home, at least until I get the process worked out. I may have Brickwork, or some other supplier, do the backlog of data entry if Padgett doesn't have a reasonable enough fee for that type of work, but for now I'll look for other opportunities to use Brickwork.
Terry Frazier at 11:36 PM
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Friday, January 25, 2008
Low Information Diet Update
As part of my plan to simplify and eliminate the clutter in my life I decided to go on an info diet a few weeks ago. I dropped dozens of feeds from my reader, dropped almost all internet group memberships, and cancelled almost all internet newsletter subscriptions. By themselves these things made very little change in my day-to-day activities except for vastly reducing my e-mail load, which confirmed that I just didn’t need most of them in the first place.
The second part of the diet is I completely disengaged from the news. I mean completely. I previously just sort of ignored the news but would have the TV on in the background or would read the newspapers delivered to my door each day at the hotel. For some reason I thought I needed to do this to stay current. Well, I don’t. Now I studiously avoid newspapers, talk radio, and the TV with the exception of glancing at frontpage headlines as I walk by news stands (I don’t stop.) Turns out people I know and talk to on a daily basis also read and watch this stuff. And something interesting has happened to our conversations.
Now when they ask, “Did you see so-and-so in the paper/news/airport?” my response is “No, I didn’t. What happened?” They tell me and I get to listen. I actually listen. I’m not busy trying to express my own opinion because I don’t have one. Another nice thing - I can now have small talk, which has always been a problem for me. But now it’s really simple. I can sit down with someone I barely know and ask, “So what’s happening with the elections/industry/stock market/whatever?” And they actually enjoy telling me. Again, I get to listen.
People love it when you listen to them. It’s not like I didn’t know this, but giving myself the opportunity to practice it via my info diet has been really interesting. My ego no longer sits in the shadows going “Speak up! Speak up! You know that!” – competing with my desire to listen. And I don’t feel the least bit stupid because I have no idea where Britney Spears was last night. In fact, I feel better because I don’t know.
Update on Outsourcing
I've been in a string of cheap hotels and crowded, delayed airplanes since Sunday night with little time or energy for working on the computer. I'm still recovering from some Zombie Death version of the flu that kept me home all last week and really screwed up my schedule. But things are on the upswing now.My new Virtual Assistant is Tina with Get Friday. Last week I assigned Tina her first task - find me a temporary office worker who can come to my office and clean, sort, and file nearly two years worth of back mail including all my bank and credit card statements. This isn't as bad as it sounds, as I'm an independent operator with an individual's load of mail. It's not as if there is a container-load of mail for some corporation. Still, it's significant. I'm terrible at organizing my own back office stuff. I'm great at organizing what I get paid to do, just not the stuff that I don't want to do. So it piles up and interferes with my ability to do tax returns and such. That's bad.
I've been trying to solve this problem with various accounting and office support things for over five years, including stints with two separate small business bookkeeping services. It's one of the two greatest burdens in my life and weighs on me constantly that I can't stay on top of my papers and finances and taxes and such. There have been times when I got caught up, but I never solved the problem and a year or two later I'm in the same situation again. It's the proverbial recurring nightmare.
So the first task I assigned Tina was to contact temporary agencies and see if they could provide someone to come in and clean up the backlog and prepare the statements for scanning. As a secondary requirement I wanted someone who could do the scanning if I provided the tools. I gave Tina a list of three local services and all pertinent details about the work. I instructed her to start with the three locals and spread out into greater Atlanta if needed.
Over the course of two days Tina contacted a dozen different agencies in the greater Atlanta area and gave me a spreadsheet with all the data about who, when, what, where. In almost every case she got voicemail or some other sort of delay/barrier/put-off - mostly voice mail. That alone would have stopped me cold. Three voicemail responses in a row from businesses that are supposed to be in the support business would have pissed me off to the point I would have dropped the whole exercise. I don't have two days to deal with fucking voice mail for something like this when all I'm doing is a basic inquiry to determine if my request is even feasible. But this took Tina a total of about two hours over two days.
Wed-Thu of this week some of the agencies began to return Tina's calls and contacts and she forwarded them to me to ask how to proceed. So I had her give the agencies the details again, and tell them that they could contact me directly if they were prepared to directly answer my three basic questions:
- Can you offer someone to meet the stated requirements?
- Can you meet the timeframe?
- What are typical rates for such work?
That's all I wanted to know.
So yesterday afternoon I got a call from a nice young lady with an office service just a few miles from my home. She asked me a couple of pertinent questions about the work and my situation, offered a couple of alternative service scenarios, and told the the costs/advantages of each. She was very helpful and very informative. I think she can solve my problem - at least this part of it. And I would never have known about her if Tina hadn't gone through the exercise of contacting all the agencies. We have an appointment to meet next Thursday when I am home to interview and see if I want to hire them.
It's too early to judge the overall success of Tina and Get Friday, but this first task result shows great promise. For $25 I avoided all the hassle of dealing with phone tag and I found a new (potential) source of office help. Fantastic.
Terry Frazier at 8:45 AM
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Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Joining a Diet Club
My friend Matt has been following my low information diet plans. Today he announced that he reduced his RSS feeds to the point he could read them all in 20 minutes.Congratulations, Matt. I have gotten mine to the point they can be read in 5-10 minutes, no more than 20 even if I wait a week. I continue to prune the e-mails by watching for new, low-activity lists as time passes. I don't feel like I'm missing a thing.
I do find myself looking for some sort of fidget activity to take the place of checking e-mail or RSS. I have to stop myself. I also have to make sure that I'm not arbitrarily wasting time on making blog posts, substituting one fidget for another. But I want to chronicle my progress in case it is of value to me or others later on. I will limit this to no more than 1 post per day and no more than 3 per week. That should be plenty.
Terry Frazier at 3:34 PM
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