davehyndman.com

How does he do it?

I met my cousin Rob last Thursday for one of our attempting-to-be-regular breakfast get-togethers and recommend to him a book I’m reading: Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek. Only four days later, there is an article in the Globe and Mail titled, The $2,000 executive assistant. It’s an article about outsourcing admin work, as espoused in the Ferriss book. And Rob is cited as an example, including a big picture of Rob sitting at his desk (in the act of outsourcing some work?).

“It’s a great way to delegate to other people parts of your job that you really don’t enjoy doing,” says Rob Hyndman, a one-man Toronto law firm. “I can simply parcel out individual tasks to individual providers. It makes me faster. It makes me more nimble.”

Last year, Mr. Hyndman paid nearly $2,000 for a “virtual administrative assistant” to schedule his meetings, organize his contacts and do all the other office work that once kept him behind his desk until late. As the personal offshoring business evolves, he’s finding more and more tasks he can farm out to India.