Top Clients

I’ll begin with the real stories of three clients. Each explains where they were before hiring online became a factor, and where they ended up afterward.

Try to see how their circumstances might mirror yours and what you can take away. Contractors should read these stories as well. It’s always important to see things from the other person’s side. This increases the level of understanding and therefore communication. When communication is increased, so is the personal connection. And connection, dear reader, is what it’s all about.

Ken Lancaster

Ken is the owner of Lancaster Advertising based in Lewisville, Texas (www.lancasteradvertising.com). Before he tapped into the virtual work world, he had a traditional company with full-time staff, two office buildings, and a steady flow of red ink from his balance sheet.

He discovered Elance through a single catalog project that had gone awry. The client had changed his mind about the background for the photography in the catalog just before it was due to go to press. Someone was going to have to quickly go in and make adjustments on thousands of parts.

BEST PRACTICES

Ken Lancaster emphasizes that as a client, you are competing for the best contractors. English may not be their first language, so make your project easy to understand, and remain friendly and professional at all times.

In Ken’s words, “I knew that any designer on my staff I assigned the project to would simply quit. And the project was already too far behind to afford the $8,000 to $10,000 of local freelance help it would take to get someone to do the work. Elance to the rescue. I hired a Photoshop-certified service provider in Romania. He was better at Photoshop than anyone on my staff. He did the work in two weeks and charged me $600. Needless to say, I was impressed.”

Ken gradually changed his business model to include more freelancers from Elance and fewer local hires. He found he had more talent to choose from, and was able to get his projects done quickly at a lower cost.

Ken has done over 400 projects with Elance, has spent about $170,000 on freelancers, and can work from home, his office, or the local coffee shop.

His best advice to a new Elance client is the following:

Ken has had several freelancers thank him for the difference he’s made in their lives. One even sent him a picture of the house he was able to buy because of the business he’d done with Ken. That’s win-win.

BEST PRACTICES

Many clients use outside software, such as Microsoft Excel, to help manage their Elance projects. This keeps the current projects separate yet within set parameters, but also provides a history of each project. You can use this to refine future jobs and to list the contractors that stood out.

Steffen Hedebrandt

Steffen lives in Denmark where the food and culture are wondrous, but the cost of labor will put a kink in the best of business plans. According to Steffen, he simply could not have grown his dream business of selling vintage, rare, and antique musical instruments without the help of hiring online through Elance. (Visit his website at www.vintageandrare.com.)

As COO of Vintage and Rare, when Steffen steps into his virtual office every morning (i.e., his Elance workrooms), he visits with his graphic designer and market researcher, both in India; his social media expert in Pakistan; an SEO specialist in Bulgaria; and a sales and marketing team from Florida. This is leveraging the Elance experience.

Steffen began with a disadvantage—the high cost of labor in his home country—but because of the global talent he discovered on Elance, he overcame this disadvantage and his business is thriving.

Steffen’s best practices for new clients are:

Steffen found that hiring in the virtual work world helped him realize his dream and passion. He’s tapped into a wealth of talent and a new community of like-minded entrepreneurs. He did this by tearing down the mental boundaries of where he lived, and instead reaching out across the entire world for those who could help.

Ramon Ray

Ramon provides a classic example of leveraging with Elance. He’s the owner of a media company called SmallBizTechnology. Ramon’s company produces events, provides content, and Ramon speaks at events across the United States. Very simply, Ramon says, “Elance is my talent agency.”

BEST PRACTICES

If you don’t get a good vibe from a contractor when you begin working with them, you are not stuck but can cancel the project. Sometimes this is a better option than continuing down a path that your intuition is screaming for you not to follow.

Because of the nature of his business, Ramon found that he needed to be in more than one place at once. He just couldn’t run his business and be everywhere he needed to be to get the growth he was looking for. But after he dove into the pool of online talent, this all began to change.

Ramon began by hiring a team of writers and then a managing writer to handle the team. His team of Elancers allowed him to significantly raise his content volume, and therefore he’s effectively leveraged his output.

When he puts on an event, he hires Elancers from that geographic region. This way he can have a PR person and an event manager in San Francisco, while he’s working a different event in Chicago. He can use Elance to leverage himself geographically.

He says that he likes Elance because he can hire people who are smart. In his words, “I can’t be there and I need to be able to trust who I hire. I want the hire to be more expensive because I need the quality. I need to be able to trust them.”

Ramon also says, “You never know what else you can do. I can now do an infographic just like the big boys if I want. Small movie? Why not? I can compete now that I know where to find the people to hire.”

His best practices for new clients are:

By leveraging his company through Elance, Ramon has been able to build his business while working from home. He’s achieved a lifestyle he never could have achieved with the traditional brick-and-mortar business model. (Visit Ramon’s website at www.smallbiztechnology.com.)