Markus, an entrepreneur in his early 40’s, runs a successful e-commerce store in Australia. Being passionate about sailing, he often took to sailing on his friends’ sailboats. His dreams of owning a sailboat finally came true in 2003 when he purchased his very own 22-foot Seafarer. Despite busy business schedules, he always made time for sailing by taking his boat on short trips. As business demands grew, he was torn between his work and passion. With no time to even think of doing long trips, he was certainly not happy about it.Markus also realized that managing a sailboat was not easy. It required meticulous planning before every trip; something he overlooked. His problems grew when he sometimes forgot to assess weather conditions beforehand, risking the boat and his life. He also often forgot to book docking-spots and ended up stranded in the harbour, on return. He desperately needed a helping hand before things spiralled out of control.
That’s when he contacted the global virtual assistance company, GetFriday. He had read about them in Tim Ferriss’ ‘4-Hour-Work-Week’. He signed up with GetFriday and was impressed with their methodical handling of task-requests and their reassuring way of assessing weather conditions for him before every trip. They also booked docking spots for his boat, from half way across the world! Gradually, they began taking up other business-related tasks such as managing his webpage, contacting vendors, emailing clients, paying bills, warehouse rent etc.
In due time, Markus found that he could pursue his passion for sailing unfettered, despite a booming e-commerce business. Markus says, “All it takes is a human, sometimes to make sure that nothing is missed.”
In another part of the world, Christophe, a GetFriday client of 8 years and a retired Investment Banker in France, had an interesting task to outsource. He required his Global-Personal-Assistant to break down the day-to-day life of the French diarist, Gilles de Gouberville, into simple tweets. The diary entries written almost 500 years ago were to be tweets posted on the exact same days they were written centuries ago. These tweets were meant for the benefit of a society he had revived online.
Although retired, Christophe was busier than ever volunteering for a non-profit. And his recent promotion as its head, gave him no time to spare. He wanted to keep the tweets going no matter what and signed up with GetFriday.
The Virtual-Assistant he was assigned, was unfamiliar with French, but used a host of web-tools to break down the diary entries into crisp, interesting everyday tweets. The outcome? The webpage got more views and soon enough, these tweets turned out better than Christophes’. Pleased with the results, he started outsourcing other secretarial tasks, like summarizing complicated worksheets into brief information for presentations. To this day, Christophe continues to use GetFriday in inventive ways.
If managing your 22-foot sailboat or breaking down ancient texts is not something one hears of everyday, how about wake-up calls every single work-day morning to ensure you certainly get out of bed? These may be unconventional, but are pretty normal in a workday at GetFriday. For every task is important – no matter how odd or complicated!
About GetFriday
GetFriday is a division of TTK Services Pvt. Ltd. First featured in a life outsourcing experiment by Esquire Editor AJ Jacobs (2005) it became globally popular after featuring in the NYTimes bestseller ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ by Timothy Ferriss.
For more details, contact:
US: 1-877-879-4339, 1-877-469-8275
UK: 44-808-222-8275, Australia: 61-871-401-005
