I recorded this video next to the Venice Canals in California. Enjoy!
Transcript:
Hey there. It’s Kevin and I’m here in Venice, California right next to the famous Venice Canals and this is just an amazing part of the world here. I happen to be lucky enough to live right down the street so I wanted to kind of show this off in the background but yeah, this is a really, really pretty spot.
These canals were actually built … The history with the canals is they were actually built by a guy named Abbot Kinney and he came over here in 1910 and he wanted Venice to be a city of fun. That’s what he called it, the city of fun. It still kind of is that way although it’s quite a bit more expensive now than it was back then.
He designed these canals to kind of replicate Venice, Italy and he built a lot of them. Actually, a lot of the city was canals early on.
Then, during the Great Depression, the government actually came in and they filled in most of the canals, so the canals that were here in 1910 are mostly gone. These are the only few ones left. The reason the government filled in the canals was because they wanted to make jobs.
They thought that if they filled the canals, if they had this project of just filling canals, they could create jobs. It’s just typical government thinking of how to make work, but today, I want to talk about how to hire the right freelancer for your business. I have four tips for that.
The first one is the sources. I have hired many freelancers and most of the time, I go to upwork.com and that’s been a great resource.
How they screen the employee is a little bit better. Their contractors are a little bit better than most of the other services that I’ve used and that can really help you out because you don’t want to be making a lot of hirings and doing a lot of firings.
You want to have consistent people working on your team, so I found Upwork to be really helpful. Now, you will pay a little extra with Upwork for that purpose of you’re getting a higher quality, typically a higher quality contractor. I highly recommend starting with Upwork but I have a few other options.
Onlinejobs.ph, depending on what you’re looking for, if you’re looking for highly technical people, I probably wouldn’t go to Online Jobs but if you’re looking for a virtual assistant, an admin, something like that, Online Jobs is pretty good. There’s a lot of people on there so you have to do a little more work.
They’re not as screened as they are on Upwork but you can see a lot about their background and everything, so it’s a nice site. It’s $49 a month to access to be able to send emails to people and things like that.
You kind of have to decide if that’s worth it or not to you. Now, for me, I’ve tried it before.
Right now, it’s not something I’m using but I’ve had some success hiring there. I wouldn’t cross it completely off the list but just be aware that there’s a lot more work involved with scouring through emails and resumes and things like that.
99designs is a great site if you have a little more budget. You have to put up the money upfront and then you get bids from all across the board and you can kind of pick and choose the ones you like or don’t like.
Fiverr.com is another one that I use. That’s if you’re really on a low budget or you just need something really quickly done, you don’t want to spend a lot of money.
There’s a lot of good people on Fiverr. Just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean it’s bad but you do have to make sure that that person has great reviews and you have to do a little bit of research there.
Those are some of the resources that I use or the sources that I use for finding VAs. Now, when you get into the next stage of conducting interviews, a lot of times, I will just hire without doing an interview and that’s kind of risky but if it’s off Upwork, I feel pretty confident about that.
If I’ve done the research on that person or people I’m looking at and we’ve had a little back-and-forth on email, I can kind of tell their English is good and things like that, I tend to find that just hiring them and not worrying about doing an interview, which can drag out the process on for another week or so.
When it gets into more like a little bit more technical things, like I hire WordPress developers now, and that’s something where I do conduct interviews but only on Skype chat.
I don’t try to set up a phone call because that that can take time and sometimes, people don’t have video cameras. I hire a lot of people over in the Philippines and sometimes, their video access isn’t that great. I would set up a Skype chat for those people.
Normally, I just hire them and then I go on to a trial basis. I don’t hire them like full time right away but I say, “Let’s do a week paid trial, see how things go.” I give them a couple assignments that I should be able to do just kind of to see how they do it and the back and forth in the communication and things like that.
I’m kind of going fast because there’s a leaf blower coming up, I think. Then, the negotiation of salary. A lot of places like Upwork will have … They’ll have an hourly salary and what I like to do is start with that. Just give them what their hourly salary is, whatever they’re asking for.
Just give that to them straight up and then, if they are working out to be a great contractor like they’re an awesome VA, then negotiate a monthly salary.
If let’s say they’re doing 10 hours a week for you, then just kind of add up those hours, 40 hours a month or whatever it is and then offer them a salary that’s something below what the hourly would be because they’re getting … If they’re getting consistent work from you, then they’re going to likely be excited about working for you on more of a part-time basis rather than just an hourly basis.
Perhaps it’s something you want to do full where you want to bring them in full-time and then it’s in negotiation. See what they are looking for and then go from there.
Anyway, that’s all I got today coming to you from lovely Venice, California with the pink boat in the background. If you are looking for help with your business, go to workhero.com and if you want to sign up for our podcast and listen to more, go to freedomlovin.com. We’d love to have you there and I hope you have a great week and will talk to you soon.
