publichouse.sg

"Need money? Call ********* today, totally legal and fuss free!"

Is this something you see frequently on the road, pillars and in your mailbox? If yes, beware! These could be fraudulent financial advisers or their accomplices attempting to defraud you.

How do they do it? They get you to authorise the adviser to invest your CPF savings on your behalf. This money is usually invested in insurance or investment products which command a 2 to 3% commission. The fraudulent adviser is happy to share half of the commission with you. This amount could be about $150 per $10,000. They pay this out with sweet terms like “cash rebate” and cash freebies”. Does this sound attractive yet?

What happens next? The adviser will “churn” your money by selling the investments and re-investing into another set of instruments. This will pay out another round of commissions which is shared with you again. This happens again and again until your investments are depleted.

How much would you pay for a part time staff to do data entry these days?

Probably between $6 – 10 per hour, and in the range of $1600 – 2000 for a full time clerk.

Every time I sit down to do coaching with new business owners, and tell them I pay only $1.20 per hour for data entry, the usual response would be, “What? How is that possible?!”

Recently, I referred an online web designer to a friend who is charging less than $500 for a website which would save him about 30% – 40% cost.

One of the key things a business owner needs to learn is how to leverage.  If we are not leveraging, we are working too hard, and spending too much. One common excuse I always hear is, “We do not know where or how to find.”  I then ask them what they have tried, and the usual response is that they haven’t tried.

Weeks later when I do a check back and ask if any search was done, the usual response from the business owners would be ‘no’ because they are too busy to explore changes.  The cycle goes on. Business owners continue to work very hard. They might rehire themselves back as an employee of their own businesses, and never quite get out of the cycle. If they do not step out and make some changes to leverage and systematize while they still can, it is a matter of time before they get burnt-out, de-motivated and some may even consider calling it quits.

So how can we leverage virtually?

Cost savings on staff hire

Instead of hiring a part-time or full-time admin support staff, you can leverage on a virtual personal assistant or data entry staff and pay in the range of US$1 to US$5 per hour, depending on your requirement. The beauty is the flexibility of paying by the hour or on a project basis. I could choose to pay as and when there is work needed to be done on an hourly basis. I could also pay by a lump sum giving the staff a time frame to complete the project.  This is extremely helpful to young start-ups or the self-employed. They need not invest in office space, furniture, extra computers and pay electrical bills. They need not be around to either supervise their staff or worry about high monthly salary costs and CPF.

There are some reliable service providers such as www.odesk.com which I have personally been using for a long time.

It allows you to hire staff internationally and keep them on board as ‘your team members’. You can also track the productivity of your staff easily as there is a build-in infrastructure to enable that.  You can pay bonuses if you are very happy with the work.

What I like is that it saves me the time to plan for career progression, omit the need to deal with daily staff matters such as urgent leaves and personal issues.

Cost savings on marketing work

Paying a local designer to design your marketing brochure, poster and mailers can easily cost between $1,000 to $2,000. Engaging a virtual designer can do the same job, with cost savings of anything between the range of 30% – 50%. Once again, it depends on your requirement and the complexity of the job.  The process of reviewing the artwork is quite similar if we do it locally, because 99% of the time, artwork is reviewed via emails, and seldom is there a need to meet the designer face to face unless the work is complex.

I pay below $1,000 for a website created by an online service provider, rather than paying a local vendor which could easily cost double the price. Other types of projects that can be outsourced to a virtual provider include copy writing, preparing your accounts, creating electronic direct mailers, creating flyers and telemarketing (sales and customer service).

Reliability of anything virtual

Since it is virtual, the world is suddenly opened up to us where we can communicate and hire anyone globally from the US, Europe and Asia. I have a wonderful small team from Pakistan, India and the Philippines. The quality of work in my opinion has been by far satisfactory!

One of the key challenges would be communication since we do not meet face to face and language across the world can be an issue. Hence the interview process is key. As most communication is done via email, you could consider conducting part of your interviews this way. If a service provider can understand and carry out instructions clearly, and is able to follow minute details, then it is definitely a plus point.  You can also communicate via skype calls that allow video conferencing.

The clearer you are in your instructions and expectations, the more seamless the process and a happier team you can expect.

Shopping has never been this cheap - from air fares, branded luxury goods, spas, clothes to food - all thanks to the wonderful invention of coupons and mega deals online, and now, with the latest introduction of bidding at $0.01.

However, it may or may not be the best experience for many businesses who advertise with these service providers.

Recently I received some interesting feedback from some young and seasoned entrepreneurs.

An entrepreneur in his early 20s turned pale and froze during a business networking session.  He was completely overwhelmed that everyone present was a business owner, and that they were all serious about talking business.