There are certain items on an ambitious To Do list that can trigger pure dread for even the most cheerful of CEOs. In the case of Dan Moshe, founder of Minneapolis tech support company Tech Guru, he skipped getting overwhelmed and went straight to getting things done.
No Time to Be Chained to a Desk
It was a small but important task that caused Dan to check things out at Odesk, the online freelancer site that allows contractors to compete by bidding on posted jobs. Dan needed to tame a beastly contacts list in order to import a lean, mean, and clean list into his email marketing program. Some of the clients on the list were up to 7 years old – as old as Nintendo’s Wii! – and not Tech Guru’s target market anymore.
Dan knew that this was a job that would take seemingly forever – or in reality, a full workday he didn’t have to spare. He had been curious about hiring a freelancer on Odesk for a while, and decided this was the perfect job to post for bids.
How Odesk Does It
There’s no shortage of work to be found on Odesk. Employers post long- and short-term projects involving web development, database administration, writing, translations, personal assistance, customer service, sales and marketing, and more. Contractor results can be filtered by hourly rates, feedback scores, hours billed, and location.
Dan posted the job description at a rate of $5-10 per hour. Within an hour he had 50 responses. He filtered out those who were unqualified, leaving 5 people. He wanted someone who lived in the U.S., leaving 3 candidates. Of those, he chose the one who was available immediately. The gig went to a stay-at-home mom in the state of Washington. She was qualified to work as a payroll assistant, administrative assistant, and doing data entry. She had already worked 1000 hours on other Odesk projects.
Oresults
8 hours and $86 later, Dan was able to check this big, ugly job off his list. Best of all, using Odesk might soon pay for itself. Two of the old contacts who made it into the new list contacted Dan about their tech support needs after receiving his newsletter.
Where does this leave Dan Moshe and Odesk? He may hire the same employee to do more time-consuming tasks again, and he will definitely use Odesk for future contractor work. Dan’s new contacts list is sure to get him more requests for a free consultation than ever.
Dan Moshe helps business owners in the Minneapolis area with all things tech, and is the CEO of the Caring IT company Tech Guru. He cares about your business as much as you do!