rick carabba
home of brainbank đź§
home of brainbank đź§
Got awesome feedback on last week's memo and added 6 more champions to our ranks. I'm bursting with excitement to deliver this week's. Without further ado... here we go.
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The process of outsourcing tasks to freelancers in other countries and leveraging currency differences to create more opportunity.
Common outsourcing areas include website building, digital marketing, software development, and virtual assistant jobs. Offshore talent costs ~20-60% of what the same job costs in the USA.
If you're based in the US and have a direct line to US clients, there's a lot of opportunity to create value by brokering work internationally and acting as a Quality Assurance Manager.
Basic websites in The States cost $1000-$2000USD to build whereas if you contract an offshore freelancer to build it'll cost $200-$750USD, depending on what capabilities and functionality are required.
Turnover time for a site build is roughly 1-2 weeks. Get 1 new US based client/week and you'll net $1000/week.
This model is transferable (and often more profitable) with other services like software development and digital marketing as well.
A friend of mine, Mike Black, built his software development agency, Told Media, with this strategy. They now do more than $10 million/year in revenue.
In the past I've used freelancers to build websites, create logos, run ads, and do research on stuff I didn't have time to explore (top restaurants/cafes/libraries in Argentina).
I just got a quote from an offshore agency for $600 to rebuild my current Wordpress site, www.rickcarabba.com, on a better platform, Webflow.
It would take me 80-100 hours to do this myself and a US based agency charges ~$2000.
The whole premise is "If I'm getting paid $25/hour at my job, are there tasks I'm responsible for that could be outsourced for $4-$10/hour?"'
~or~
"Is there a service that costs more in the US than it would cost in another country? And can I bridge that gap?"
Hiring and communicating is a skill that you'll need to develop in order to get exactly what you're looking for. Filter freelancers for English fluency and give a task before hiring full time.
I recommend starting with Freelancer (hire individual freelancer) or Virtual Latinos (team of freelancers).
After sifting through multiple books touching on the psychology of lying (Never Split The Difference & Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, for example) and stress testing the concepts with my own experiences in negotiating and bluffing at the poker table; I've compiled a list of 3 "tendencies" of liars that have held true 90+% of the time.
They are as follows:
If coffee is squidward, Yerba Mate is Squilliam Fancyson. If you're an avid caffeine enthusiast and wouldn't mind philandering with other stimulants; I urge you to try Yerba Mate (Pronounced "Sherba MA-tay").
Yerba Mate is a tea from South America that, since my trip, I've made a part of my daily routine. Argentinians swear by it and walk around everyday with their Mate in hand. They allege it has a different type of caffeine that makes you more focused without the jitteriness that comes with coffee. I agree.
According to a study in The Journal of Food Science, Yerba Mate contains 20 vitamins and minerals, 15 amino acids, and ~90% more antioxidants than green tea. It's a nutritional powerhouse.
If you want to try it with the least "barrier to entry" you can try the tea packets (not as fun), however I implore you to try it the traditional Argentinian way (there's a bit of a learning curve involved). You'll need a Mate Cup (hand-carved out of a pumpkin gourd), a bombilla (metal filtering straw that comes with Mate cup) and dry yerba mate leaves.
If you're interested in trying Yerba the Argentine way, reply back and I'll hop on a facetime with you to show you how ; )