The Gig Mindset: My #HitRefresh Moment

My story starts about three years ago. I was a Chief of Staff at Microsoft, where my wife also works full-time. We just had our second daughter and were managing stressful jobs at a time when the company was going through a large-scale transformation. Something had to give.

Enter The Gig Economy

The gig economy, also known as the “freelance economy” or “on-demand economy” is one in which individuals and organizations hire freelancers for short-term projects and services. According to a recent study, the gig economy is going to double by 2020 with more than 40% of the workforce engaged in alternative work arrangements.

My friend Adam Benzion, founder and CEO of Hackster.io, suggested that I hire a virtual assistant. At the time, he was busy building and running the world’s fastest growing developer community for learning, programming, and building hardware. In order to balance everything on his plate and relieve some of the pressure, he enlisted the help of a virtual assistant.

My wife and I were two working parents in high-stress corporate jobs, raising two small children. I had a never-ending list of projects that took up most of my waking hours, and we both needed some relief. So I figured, why not? I’ll try anything.

It was a Saturday and like many weekends, I was stuck working on a presentation while dreaming about spending solid quality time with my family. This is the moment I took the leap. I hired Fancy Hands to help me plan a day with my family. I submitted my request to locate ten kid-friendly ideas within 15 miles of my house.

The service responded within an hour and recommended a nearby festival we had never been to. The following day we went to the festival and had an amazing time. I was blown away by the idea of having this tool suddenly available to me. Think of all I could do with the time a virtual assistant would save me!

Hitting a Refresh Moment

What started as a decision to hire a virtual assistant now consists of me piecing together a number of different personal services from companies like Uber, TaskRabbit, and Care.com, as well as those that focus on business such as Upwork, Fancy Hands, and Ask Wonder. This has had such a huge impact on my life and has inspired me to teach others about this mindset that has the potential to change everything! 

My virtual assistant helped me balance my life. I wanted to be productive, and I wanted to spend time with my family. Outsourcing work to freelancers was a great way to scale myself so that I could do both. When I began using a virtual assistant, I hit a refresh moment.

“It’s about how people, organizations, and societies can and must transform—hit refresh—in their persistent quest for new energy, new ideas, relevance, and renewal.” Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh

My experience with that virtual assistant was like the first time I ordered a movie from Netflix, launched the web browser on my iPhone, listened to a playlist on Spotify, called for my first Uber, or asked Alexa to set a timer to let me know when my eggs were done. You have those experiences and begin to believe that the future will look very different than the present.

Then, I went back to work on Monday morning, swiped my badge, and got to work. I felt like something was wrong with the way I was working. The whole system seemed broken. The lines between my job and my family were blurring. If I had been tweeting my thoughts, I would have added the hashtag #TheresABetterWay.

This moment three years ago, when I first used a virtual assistant, was a #HitRefresh moment. I leaned into the experience, and the more I leaned in, the more excited I became. There were lessons to be learned, and I was on the verge of learning them.

Why So Much Passion?

My energy and excitement surrounding the gig economy sometimes confuses those who have yet embrace the concept. They ask me, “What gives? Why does the gig economy inspire you?”

Scaling myself by leveraging various platforms in the gig economy changed me. It changed how I work, how I live, how I think, how I balance my life, and how I feel about what is possible. I realized that the field was wide open in terms of what I could do in my work, in my life, simply by reaching out to people from all around the world. The gig economy is transformative. It allows me to get things done in a way that was not possible before.

My passion is three-fold:

• I’m excited about Microsoft’s mission: Empower people and organizations around the world to achieve more. I see how the gig economy is a key component of this mission and believe we are building the tools and technology that will help millions of people around the world embrace this new way of working.
• I am constantly re-skilling and learning new concepts that help me stay relevant in my field. I can rapidly experiment with ideas and get inspired with new ones in the process. It is not expensive to fail!
• Most importantly, the gig economy is critical in my responsibilities as a father as I look to advise my daughters on their own paths, and find time to be engaged and present in their lives. 

Where to Find Freelancers

Although I stumbled onto the gig economy trying to solve a personal problem and hired one virtual assistant, I’ve come to rely on many different freelancers. For me, it is a matter of piecing together various services based on the project or task I need to accomplish.

Here are some of the services I’m currently using:  

• Fiverr – Freelance services marketplace. I find this to be a great place to find help with basic virtual assistance, web research, design, transcription, social marketing, and even some basic web development help.
• Fancy Hands – Affordable US virtual assistant service. This simple tasking platform has qualified assistants that can do a wide variety of projects immediately. Common requests include finding activities, calling a company to cancel a service, sourcing local products, and more.
• Clarity.fm – A community of experts to help answer your questions. This is a place I head to when looking to get advice on a wide variety of topics from experts around the world. Categories include business, sales and marketing, funding, product and design, technology, skills and management, industries, and more. Think of it as your personal Phone-a-Friend.
• Ask Wonder – An on-demand research assistant. They provide in-depth, topic-based research with supporting articles. I have been amazed at the quality of the information they provide.
• Upwork – Global freelancing platform where businesses and freelancers connect and collaborate remotely. I’ve found this to be a great place to get a wide variety of projects accomplished. I have hired for all kinds of tasks, and businesses can get internal work done on the platform with the Enterprise offering.
• Instacart – Groceries delivered from local stores. Do your shopping online and have it waiting for you when you get home from vacation.
• Task Rabbit – The convenient and fast way to get things done around the house. Whether you need a general handyman, help packing, furniture assembly, or yard work, Task Rabbit can provide you with someone to get the job done.
• Care.com – Connects families with needed caregivers. Whether you are looking for a babysitter, nanny, senior care, special needs, tutoring, or pet care, Care.com has caregivers that can help.
• Thumbtack – Matches clients with local professionals. This is a useful place to find professionals that can get the jobs around your house done, as well as help you with wellness, events, and even lessons.

These gig economy platforms, and others like Lyft and Postmates are ones I’ve found useful in my own life. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The landscape is vast: 99designs, Freelancer, Toptal, Gigster, ParkingPanda, Dolly, HelloTech, Havenly, and new services are coming on the scene all the time. I recommend looking both locally and nationally to find the services that offer the most benefit to you and your particular needs.

My point is not to tell you which platform to use, but to show you that scaling yourself by hiring freelancers is beneficial. Imagine what you could do with the time you save by hiring out tasks that currently overwhelm you. I’ve learned that once you begin to rethink how you get stuff done, the gig economy can set you free. This might be your #HitRefresh moment too.

Tips for Getting Started

A great way to start is by breaking things down into simple processes. Instead of thinking about end results (“I have a presentation on Friday”), shift your mindset to think in terms of the tasks that will achieve the end result (“I need a researcher to compile data, a writer to summarize the information, and a designer to make it compelling”). Learning how to “taskify” your work/life is a skill and takes some practice. (I’m still learning too!)

Here are three simple steps to get started:

1. Understand what’s possible – Browse the Fiverr and Clarity marketplaces or check out the common requests from Fancy Hands. This should give you inspiration for what’s possible. Be sure to consider all areas of your life from personal, to work, to family, to home needs. The more you open yourself up to the possibilities, the more you’ll find the gig economy useful in your life.
2. Start small – Find something as simple as “what events are in my area this weekend” or search for a gift for a family member. This will help you understand the process. You’ll learn about the quality of the various platforms and start honing your skills as a professional delegator. It takes practice!
3. Change your default – Once you’re familiar with a few of the services, start defaulting to using a freelancer to get basic tasks completed. I often advise people to sign up for a few months of Fancy Hands, as it will help you build your freelance delegation skills, as well as start building a habit for tasking. I find it easiest to delegate those jobs that I dislike doing, that take up too much time for their value, or that never seem to get done.

It isn’t always easy to figure out how to use freelancers to scale yourself. In the coming months I’ll be writing more articles designed to help you learn how to roll up your sleeves and engage with the gig economy. Until then, these services and tips should help get you started scaling yourself. Pick one item on your to-do list this week and find a way to use the gig economy to make it happen. Start creating your own #HitRefresh moment. Good luck!

Paul Estes is a passionate advocate for the gig economy, also known as the “Freelance/Sharing/On-demand economy.” In this new way of working, individuals and organizations contract with independent workers for short-term projects and services. Some estimates predict that by 2020, over 40% of the workforce will be engaged in alternative work arrangements, and the implications for our future are profound. Paul is on a mission to show how individuals and companies can take advantage of gig workers to grow themselves and increase their productivity. He leads a cross-disciplinary team at Microsoft that is enabling gig work company-wide, he shares his story as a speaker and panelist at conferences.