Interview with Fabrice Grinda – Co-CEO, OLX, Inc.

We thought we’d share with you a great video of an interview of Fabrice Grinda, Co-CEO of OLX, Inc. – a free classifieds site with revenues of $10million – and a keen investor who has backed 33 other companies to date, including PeoplePerHour.com.

Hear about the challenging 10-year journey of entrepreneurship from a man who risked everything for his business only to fail completely, but who then got back on his two feet to become an utterly successful business man.

Fabrice admits to “stealing” the brilliant ideas of other start-ups, beginning from that of eBay, all the way to craigslist, which holds the concept of his current business, OLX. Amidst a humouristic and cheerful atmosphere, Fabrice explains his business philosophy and reveals his 9 demanding criteria for investing in a business.

So, if you’re interested in someday becoming a successful entrepreneur, or even if you’re merely someone that appreciates a man who persistently “picks himself up again” until he achieves his goal, then you’ll love this video.

View video >>

We’d love to hear your comments and your thoughts.

Expert Blogger: Tips on Bookkeeping & Accounting for small businesses

Anita Benge, is one of our highest rated providers in Accountancy, awarded 32 projects on PeoplePerHour.com. In her blog, she shares her experience in Accountancy and tells you what you need to consider if you are starting out a small business. So read on if you want to hear from an Accounting expert.

“I have been in the accountancy industry for the last 12 years. Last year I decided to go it alone and start my own accountancy business. Throughout the years I have on numerous occasions been told by prospective clients “All my profit goes towards paying my accountants bill and I still have a huge tax bill to pay”.

My philosophy is: – if I can save you money on your tax bills my bill will be covered by your savings and you get to keep your profit.

When a new business starts out it can be very daunting. Questions running around in your head what accounting system should I use? Do I need an accountant? Where can I go for advice?

As a start up business is it is not nessacary to splash out and buy the best software out. You can use anything from a simple Excel Spreadsheet to the recommended software by accountants Sage Accounts. If you would like the headache of your bookkeeping taken away from you a bookkeeper would be the way forward. A bookkeeper would have their own software so this would reduce the initial out lay of software. A good bookkeeper can cost from £8 to £15 per hour depending on your area.

You should choose your accountant by the time you trade. Your accountant should be there all year round and not just once a year. Your accountant should be in contact with you twice a year. You should also check if there is any additional cost for phone calls and email correspondence as these costs can add up and there will be not unexpected accountants bills. Accountant’s fees are very varied but, do shop around for the best deal. Always check who will be caring out the work as there will be a different fee structure to the level of qualification.

There is help out there for business. The Business Link is a great website with loads of information. The Inland Revenue hold free workshops to assist with form filling, how to use their online system and much more. If in doubt your accountant is there to help.”

Transforming Sales/Marketing/PR

Sales/Marketing/Pr is PeoplePerHour.com’s number 1 category, comprising a whopping 32% of total posted projects. It is thus our duty to constantly ensure that both our freelance service Buyers and Providers are left satisfied. We have thus introduced certain project information requirements in order to maximize our providers’ knowledge of the job and hence eliminate the gap between what the Buyer wants and what the provider can give.

At a time where time and patience is scarce to say the least, efficiency is everything. We understand that many of our Providers are distressed by the fact that they bid on commission projects with no clear indication of what their earnings will be or how many hours of work they will have to put in. On the same note, we also recognize that our Buyers are people who want their job done right and quickly, and it can indeed be very frustrating to have to re-appoint a project due to a misunderstanding between the two sides. We have introduced the below as a way of ensuring that no one is bidding for the “wrong” project.

• OTE – On Target Earnings
Our buyers are now obliged to enter a fixed amount (per day, week or month) which the provider can expect to earn if he/she meets the set targets. In this way providers will no longer lose interest in the job after being accepted due to pay being lower than their expectations. Likewise, if the pay is high, this is obviously an incentive for the more capable bidders.

• Target
Our aim is that our providers understand what is expected of them in their “own language”, i.e. the number of leads, sales, calls etc that they will be expected to achieve.

• Desired Time Commitment
We know that a lot of our providers work for extra cash in the evenings and that their time is limited. So by requiring that the buyers indicate how many hours of work they are expecting within a specific time-frame, we have made sure that no one is bidding on projects they cannot take on. This is obviously beneficial for our buyers as well since they will then only have to review those providers who are indeed suitable for the job.

We welcome any more suggestions. Our aim is to constantly improve our recipe for success and we need your help to make sure we have got it right.

Small Business Survey

Please take our anonymous Small Business survey by visiting the following link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=quu2poy202Iomc6e5JRFbQ_3d_3d

You will receive a FREE listing in return for no more than 3 minutes of your time.

Upon completion of the survey, you will have the chance to put in your e-mail address and your account will then be credited with an additional free listing. If you are a provider, you can still receive a free listing by converting to a dual account. You will not need to re-register. All you have to do is activate your dual account when you next log in.

Whether you are a buyer or a provider, we can certainly benefit from your answers. Our goal is to understand more about our users so that we can work towards suiting their needs. This is part of our process of constantly improving PeoplePerHour.com.

If you have any additional comments to our survey, or if you would simply like to express your views, please feel free to do so.

Take a glance at the year 2020 through ‘Freelancing: The Future of Work’

Would you be interested in looking ahead to the year 2020 and finding out what the business world would look like? If you are, then visit the webcast ‘Freelancing: The Future of Work’ on Monday the 23rd of November. It is hosted by the PCG (the representative body for freelancers, contractors and consultants in the UK) to mark National Freelancers Day, and is free of charge.

Guest speakers include a select group of experts who will put together their views and explain why they believe that we are about to witness one of the biggest societal and working shifts since the industrial revolution. Just visit http://www.nationalfreelancersday.org.uk and register for the event. Moreover, if you decide to watch the webcast, you will also see a video of the CEO of PeoplePerHour.com, Xenios Thrasyvoulou, who is also participating.

So forget about desperately trying to foresee and analyze the future trends in business because they are now fact. So just start implementing them. The future is already here, staring at you in the face through your laptop and through the comfort of your living room armchair.

With an estimated 4.5 million freelancers currently in the UK, the concept of freelancing shouldn’t really be one needing any explaining. And as to why freelancing has evolved so rapidly, well I would say it doesn’t really take a genius to figure it out. At a time and place where everyone is sacrificing their life for their job, it came as a sudden burst of light at the end of that endless tunnel we refer to as ‘career’, that lo and behold, there is another route. Why work long continuous hours in a cold office, just sheepishly watching the minute hand tick by for no obvious reason when you can just be managing your time and work from the comfort of your own home?

And as for the business side, it only took yet another painful and quite embarrassing fall for businesses to realize that ‘yes, things can go wrong’. But we burn and we learn. We learn that we can never be too efficient in our business. We learn that cutting back on unnecessary costs is not just good practice. It’s also necessary. Why hire unnecessary full-time staff instead of only paying for what your business needs? Why not move to a smaller office and save so much energy and cost? Or better yet, why not work entirely from home and just buy the freelance services you need when you need and from your own living room?

And who ever said we couldn’t change the world? Thanks to the technology we now have access to, everything is possible. We can now move towards a greener, more efficient and more sociable world. It’s not just about business. It’s about society.

So if you are keen on being part of this change, visit ‘Freelancing: The Future of Work’, and learn all about it from the experts. Futurologists, technology leaders and analysts will all be there to share their thought about the freelance work model and what its results will be. So don’t miss it.