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what tasks or activities do you do again and again, day in and day out, that you wish you didn't have to manually fiddle with?"

Dan_Cardone

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I constantly hire Virtual Assistants to help with various things which sorta sounds like what you are offering.

My question: How are you better than VAs than I can get from the Philippines for $2.50/hr?

What sets you apart?
Why should I hire you instead of them?
 

StrikingViper69

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I constantly hire Virtual Assistants to help with various things which sorta sounds like what you are offering.

My question: How are you better than VAs than I can get from the Philippines for $2.50/hr?

What sets you apart?
Why should I hire you instead of them?

You can get a competent VA for $2.50/hr?!
 

LittleWolfie

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I constantly hire Virtual Assistants to help with various things which sorta sounds like what you are offering.

I will contact some VAs then, to see if they have my answers gold thank you.

My question: How are you better than VAs than I can get from the Philippines for $2.50/hr?

Sounds like this is for them rather than for you. That way they can bill you and other clients $2.50/ph while paying me $5 a year to have the task automated.

I have been looking at India, will add Phillipines to my list,thanks.

What sets you apart?

Ability to automate and deploy in parallel quickly,allowing them to serve more customers or reduce hours whilst keeping their income level.

Why should I hire you instead of them?

If you have outsourced all the drudgery to VAs, you are outside my target market.

Your suppliers might be inside my target market, so I'm looking to find typical tasks you might have outsourced, as well as anybody who is yet to outsource it all. Some good info on outsourcing to Phillipines keywords, thanks!
 
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ChrisV

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what tasks or activities do you do again and again, day in and day out, that you wish you didn't have to manually fiddle with?

You gotta figure out what you're good at. Figure out the things that you do best. People with Autism make good programmers. IBM specifically goes out of their way to hire people on the spectrum because they're amazing at working alone and are highly analytical:

Check this thread out:

 
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John D.

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This is going to sound weird, but I think it's a decent idea.

I'm always manually shutting down distractions like Skype, email, etc. each time I sit down to do some deep work like writing or strategizing. Sometimes when my willpower is low, I cave into the distractions because of all the steps I need to do to actually start working. Super frustrating for me.

I don't know if it's being done before, but sort of an app with a timer that does all this at the click of a button would be great solution to this.

You could market it as a productivity booster, and an "excuse killer" for the forever distracted person (yes, some people label themselves this way).

So far I've used K9 Web Protection (sluggish, unreliable and not-so-simple to set up) and ColdTurkey (the free version) to do this before, but wasn't satisfied.
 

LittleWolfie

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You gotta figure out what you're good at. Figure out the things that you do best. People with Autism make good programmers. IBM specifically goes out of their way to hire people on the spectrum because they're amazing at working alone and are highly analytical:

Check this thread out:


Read the Ikgagi thread before, will check the others out. Right now, I just need something I am good at that people will pay me money to do. As long as the money is enough, I can do the rest in my own time for charity.

I applied to IBM and Remploy and some of the other Autism/ND friendly ones. In fact I set up a system to keep bugging them, never heard anything back.

@D.Navi

That is a perfect example, been done through. Have you tried Rescue time Pro? $9 a month, so how many hours does it have to save you a month to be worthwhile?
 
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John D.

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That is a perfect example, been done through. Have you tried Rescue time Pro? $9 a month, so how many hours does it have to save you a month to be worthwhile?
Nope I haven’t tried it, and thank you. I’ll check it out and let you know if I catch some ‘value skews’ that can be made. :)
 

Dan_Cardone

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Read the Ikgagi thread before, will check the others out. Right now, I just need something I am good at that people will pay me money to do. As long as the money is enough, I can do the rest in my own time for charity.

I applied to IBM and Remploy and some of the other Autism/ND friendly ones. In fact I set up a system to keep bugging them, never heard anything back.

@D.Navi

That is a perfect example, been done through. Have you tried Rescue time Pro? $9 a month, so how many hours does it have to save you a month to be worthwhile?

Figure out what you are good at. Make a list of everything you are good at.

Go through the list and mark out any of those things that you wouldn't want to do, even for money.

Which ones arent unique enough to be worth marketing and/or has to much competition? Mark those out next.

Take the ones that are left and get very specific. Really drill down an elevator pitch for each one that is very niched down and specific. Now figure out who would pay you for that. Then figure out how to add even more value and be unique from your competition. Then figure out where your potiental customers are and craft a compelling message targeting them.
 
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LittleWolfie

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Figure out what you are good at. Make a list of everything you are good at.

1) Complaining, making excuses and having limiting beliefs apparently
2) Reading dry technical literature
3) Continually Asking questions
4) writing poor quality posts on forums (Or so I'm told)
5) Writing a stock trading algorithm that finds a unique edge and outperforms most professional traders in (theoretical)back-tests with $100,000 virtual portfolio on systems
6) Designing hacky single tenant-single instance Software demo via deploying customized ISOs with guacamole on them (Hardware is cheap, developers are expensive)
7) program scripts to save some time for common process

Go through the list and mark out any of those things that you wouldn't want to do, even for money.

I'd do any of them for good-enough money.

Which ones arent unique enough to be worth marketing and/or has to much competition?

If I knew what was worth marketing, this thread would be redundant. I think perhaps they all have too much competition? Maybe that could be the problem?

Mark those out next.
Now figure out who would pay you for that.

I 'm clueless here. You would think companies would like to automate and save time/money but they would apparently prefer to outsource to VAs. Will those VAs want the service?

Then figure out how to add even more value and be unique from your competition. Then figure out where your potiental customers are and craft a compelling message targeting them.

Well it seems that no one actually wants more money/profit so I'm confused as to how to add any value, let alone more. The simplest solution suggests to be talking to them, which brings me back to well how can I? Where can I find people or companies with a need and the ability/willingness to pay?
 

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- research zapier
- brainstorm / r&d ways it can save time in the office environment, MSOffice / Windows etc.
- then write up a full zapier training manual in pdf for me with screenshots and some examples of doing zaps for common office things (and not ask 22k questions while doing it)
- dm me a price and way to pay you once done
 

LittleWolfie

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- research zapier
- brainstorm / r&d ways it can save time in the office environment, MSOffice / Windows etc.
- then write up a full zapier training manual in pdf for me with screenshots and some examples of doing zaps for common office things (and not ask 22k questions while doing it)
- dm me a price and way to pay you once done

Oh I love zaiper, way better than IFTTH. I have a couple of ZAPs set up. Yet to try Tray.IO though.

- brainstorm / r&d ways it can save time in the office environment, MSOffice / Windows etc.

This is where I have to use guesswork a bit, I'm trying to find examples of common office tasks that companies would like to automate(I have nobody who has done office work to ask)

So far I have;

Have outlook send email reminder just before meeting.
Send outlook followups based on facebook lead ads.

Have outlook continually chase people until document approval process has been approved by all parties (requires multi-step)

- then write up a full zapier training manual in pdf for me with screenshots and some examples of doing zaps for common office things (and not ask 22k questions while doing it)

I will, once I have figured out a) what some common office things are and b) what the problem is with the help pages(how I learnt) available in PDF too!

See avoided asking a question, I will keep brainstorming on here, so people can input if they wish. By the way zaiper requires Ofice365.
 
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Tourmaline

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lol at least you have a sense of humor. Or so at least I think that's humor...
 

Bertram

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This is going to sound weird, but I think it's a decent idea.

I'm always manually shutting down distractions like Skype, email, etc. each time I sit down to do some deep work like writing or strategizing. Sometimes when my willpower is low, I cave into the distractions because of all the steps I need to do to actually start working. Super frustrating for me.

I don't know if it's being done before, but sort of an app with a timer that does all this at the click of a button would be great solution to this.

You could market it as a productivity booster, and an "excuse killer" for the forever distracted person (yes, some people label themselves this way).

So far I've used K9 Web Protection (sluggish, unreliable and not-so-simple to set up) and ColdTurkey (the free version) to do this before, but wasn't satisfied.
Break tasks into the smallest time increments possible. Forget rewards - irrelevant.
For more information read Nir Eyall's "Indistractible."
You can develop indistractibility.
 

Primeperiwinkle

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Break tasks into the smallest time increments possible. Forget rewards - irrelevant.
For more information read Nir Eyall's "Indistractible."
You can develop indistractibility.

I swear I’m starting to think you’re the PR chick for that author, how many times have you recommended it now? Lol.. but the book is pretty good so far!
 
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Bertram

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I swear I’m starting to think you’re the PR chick for that author, how many times have you recommended it now? Lol.. but the book is pretty good so far!
I swear I am not, but this is a knowledge area that I've worked in for a very long time and can attest that this approach is absolutely groundbreaking. Changes can be implemented instantly. Behavioral changes can be lasting, even for ADD/ADHD.
 

ApparentHorizon

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Don't let the VA saturation scare you. There's an ocean of people who won't touch them with a 10 foot pole. Both business owners and middle managers.

I'd wager a middle manager who's concerned with their quarterly review. Increasing their productivity by 3.1% is a better candidate for simple office automation tasks.
 

LittleWolfie

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I swear I am not, but this is a knowledge area that I've worked in for a very long time and can attest that this approach is absolutely groundbreaking. Changes can be implemented instantly. Behavioral changes can be lasting, even for ADD/ADHD.

Sounds like either cognitive behavioural therapy or gestalt therapy from your description.

Don't let the VA saturation scare you. There's an ocean of people who won't touch them with a 10 foot pole. Both business owners and middle managers.

I'd wager a middle manager who's concerned with their quarterly review. Increasing their productivity by 3.1% is a better candidate for simple office automation tasks.

Gold, my next keyword search is what do middle managers spend most of their time doing and where would I find middle managers concerned with their quarterly reviews.
 
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ChrisV

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Sounds like either cognitive behavioural therapy or gestalt therapy from your description.

Gold, my next keyword search is what do middle managers spend most of their time doing and where would I find middle managers concerned with their quarterly reviews.
Lol, this guy is awesome.
 

ZCP

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- research zapier
- brainstorm / r&d ways it can save time in the office environment, MSOffice / Windows etc.
- then write up a full zapier training manual in pdf for me with screenshots and some examples of doing zaps for common office things (and not ask 22k questions while doing it)
- dm me a price and way to pay you once done
@LittleWolfie progress??
 

LittleWolfie

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Still brainstorming;

Create new trello cards from rows on excel spreadsheet
Add new survey monkey results to excel spreadsheet
Parse new emails and add them to an excel spreadsheet
Log customer support tickers on an excel spreadsheet
Automatically back some emails up o an excel spreedsheet
Automatically send emails form excel spreadsheet.

Also re-reading through the help pages and trying to figure out what the way is to make mine better than their pdf with screenshots.
 

ZCP

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create the base process first. do one thing and show it. then you can show more stuff.
can you have me something by monday?
 
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ChrisV

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Still brainstorming;

Create new trello cards from rows on excel spreadsheet
Add new survey monkey results to excel spreadsheet
Parse new emails and add them to an excel spreadsheet
Log customer support tickers on an excel spreadsheet
Automatically back some emails up o an excel spreedsheet
Automatically send emails form excel spreadsheet.

Also re-reading through the help pages and trying to figure out what the way is to make mine better than their pdf with screenshots.
create the base process first. do one thing and show it. then you can show more stuff.
can you have me something by monday?
Zapier is a great tool for automating things. It may be helpful if you listed which software you use on a day-to-day basis because the zaps are different based on which software you want them to work with.
 

ZCP

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that's the thing ...... i'm asking for a 'general' how to ...... then we use the knowledge to create our specific ones .......
 

LittleWolfie

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I'm afraid I was unable to get online to do the process this weekend, have done a basic intro. Will add a process, but will have to be googlesheets or similar as I lack office365.

I have tried to do it in a for dummies vein with a bit of humor.

Part zero
 
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LittleWolfie

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Great start

Libre Office is a good alternative to Office. I don't like Google docs b/c of their file and folder organization.

Check this out as well: Hemingway Editor It will help you write faster/clearer.

Thanks. I am using Google docs for this beacuse unlike libreoffice they have zaiper connections. I do use libreoffice a fair bit on the *nix machines,mainly due to slow internet though.

So how many people do you think have libreoffice and a budget for integrating with zaiper? What is the office Zap you would most like to see?
 

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