Some employers will offer COBRA coverage for a certain time period after you leave the company, but I’ve found that you may be able to find a better deal elsewhere. Before I quit my job, I compared the cost of the COBRA plan with self employed health insurance options I found on eHealthInsurance.com, and was really surprised by the different variety of plans available. With all the talk about low cost health insurance is going extinct, and the proposed COBRA cost of $300+ a month for just one subscriber, I was pleasantly surprised to see a selection of self employed health insurance plans under $100 a month.

eHealthInsurance.com is basically a comparison shopping engine for individual, family, and small business health insurance. They are the largest and most well-known service of this kind. You can get quotes from multiple health insurance providers and only submit your information once. It is completely free to use, and I thought it was a really valuable tool. Since I am relatively young and healthy, I opted for a lower cost plan with a higher deductible, but they have self employed health insurance plans with all levels of coverage.

Now that you’re self employed, you’re responsible for your own individual health insurance. And while the newly mandated penalties for not having coverage don’t kick in for a few years, there is no reason to risk your good health in the meantime, especially when many self employed health insurance plans are very affordable and still provide excellent coverage.

1. Rich Dad Poor Dad

I have a special place in my heart for Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad. It was one of the first non-fiction books I read that wasn’t for school.  I was 18 or 19 years old at the time, but was in the middle of my first true entrepreneurial experience, running a painting company as a branch manager for College Works Painting.  This is a book about financial intelligence, and how the school system and conventional wisdom don’t teach what it takes to get ahead.  Employees, Kiyosaki argues, are fighting a losing battle because they only trade time for money.  The relationship is linear; to earn more you have to work more. Business owners and investors on the other hand, leverage their time and money to reap exponential returns.  Rich Dad Poor Dad is easy to understand and rings so true.  I found myself saying “Yes!” and nodding along at nearly every page.

Key Takeaway:  How to accumulate assets to achieve the holy grail of financial freedom: multiple streams of passive income.

The Next Level:  Everything I’ve read in the Rich Dad series has been worthwhile.

2. The Art of The Start

Every great company starts with an idea, and Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start is written to help you turn that idea into a viable business.  Kawasaki cut his teeth in the Macintosh division in the early days of Apples, and now runs his own venture capital company in Silicon Valley.  Successful entrepreneurs, he argues, require humility and modesty mixed in with their revolutionary “curve-jumping, paradigm-shifting, patent-pending” ideas.  It’s a book about how young entrepreneurs can change the world once they learn a little more about the game they’re playing.

Key Takeaway:  To be great, you need to make meaning.

The Next Level:  You might like Kawasaki’s Rules for Revolutionaries.

3. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Author Robert Cialdini packs weeks of sales training into Influence, and it’s all backed up by his research as a professor of psychology.  This is probably the most concise and important book on how marketers and salespeople can influence customers.  It’s filled with great stories and and is packed with useful and sometimes surprising information.  Every entrepreneur can learn something from Dr. Cialdini.

Key Takeaway:  How to sell.

The Next Level:  Try Why We Buy and Getting to Yes.

4. The 4-Hour Workweek

Something we can all aspire to!  Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek has been a runaway bestseller because of the promises it makes on the cover: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.  The claims are certainly audacious and probably unrealistic for most, but Ferriss shows that with a little effort, a dramatic change in your lifestyle is possible.  The writing style is very direct and some of the suggestions won’t work for everyone.  But at the very least, you will learn some effective tips to free up a few extra hours every week, including limiting email access, outsourcing, and intentional ignorance, which should definitely improve your quality of life.  If nothing else, it will get your brain turning.

Key Takeaway:  Time is our most valuable non-renewable resource. Protect yours dearly.

The Next Level:  The Other 8 Hours is a good follow-up read on how to better spend your time.

5. The E-Myth Revisited

Do you run your business or does your business run you?  That is the key question in Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited.  Many entrepreneurs fall victim to the self-employment trap, where they fool themselves into thinking they’ve got it made just because they’re their own boss.  The problem is if you spend all your time working on the day-to-day grind of the business, you’re not an entrepreneur, just a glorified employee.  Instead of working in the traditional sense, your job as the boss is to build systems that allow employees to do the work for you.  Before hiring my virtual assistant, I was guilty of the same sins as many of the business owners featured in the book.  It’s not easy to remove yourself from the system, but the rewards make it very worthwhile.

Key Takeaway:  Take control by letting go.

The Next Level:  For quick ideas on managing your people and your business, you can’t beat Kenneth Blanchard’s The One Minute Manager and The One Minute Entrepreneur.

6. Capitalism at the Crossroads

On the average, earthlings are better off today than at any point in our history.  But on the extremes, more than a billion of us still live in dire poverty.  Stuart Hart’s Capitalism at the Crossroads is a book about how businesses can improve the lives of those people and make money at the same time.  The basic premise is that charities and non-profits on the whole have done a pretty crappy job at creating lasting change for the world’s poor, and that the often maligned “profit motive” can and must be used to serve the “bottom billion.”  It’s an interesting read and a reminder that businesses don’t have to exploit the environment and developing nations to make money.  Indeed, those that can solve some of our challenging ecological and humanitarian problems over the next 50 years stand to truly cash in.

Key Takeaway:  Between 1 and 4 billion potential customers are being ignored by most of today’s companies.

The Next Level:  If you want change the world, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid and The Go-Giver should probably be on your bookshelf.

Don’t have time to read these and all the other great business books out there?  Why not give Executive Book Summaries a try.  They give you the Cliffs Notes version of all the classics and latest books on productivity, sales, marketing, entrepreneurship, and more.

The three companies profiled here are some of the more well-known virtual assistant companies.

	TimeSvr	AskSunday	BPOVIA
Claim to Fame	"Save Time. Get Things Done."	"The Most Award Winning Personal Assistant Service in the World."	"The Better Way to Get Projects Done."
Physical Location of Assistants	Pakistan	India	China
24/7 "Micro-Task" Service	$69/mo for Unlimited basic tasks	$97 for 3-month "Silver" membership, which includes 45 basic tasks. $147 for 3-month "Gold" membership, which includes 90 basic tasks. Additional requests are $3 each.	Not available
20 Hours a Month Dedicated Service	$140 (Available on a $7/hr pay-as-you go basis.)	$249 ($12.45/hr)	$200 ($10/hr)
40 Hours a Month Dedicated Service	$280 (Available on a $7/hr pay-as-you go basis.)	$449 ($11.23/hr)	$400 ($10/hr)
80 Hours a Month Dedicated Service	$560 (Available on a $7/hr pay-as-you go basis.)	$849 ($10.61/hr)	Not available
Full Time Dedicated Assistant	$850 (8 hrs a day, 6 days a week. Under $5/hr)	Not available	$999 (8 hrs a day, 5 days a week. Approx. $6.20/hr)
Long-Term Contract?	No	No	No
Free Trial?	3-day free trial for the TimeSvr Unlimited plan.	1-week free trial is available for AskSunday 24/7 service.	No
Safety in Numbers	Unknown.	Unknown. Probably some number of clients between the other two.	They claim to serve over 10,000 customers including big-name clients like Microsoft, Accenture, and the United Nations.
Featured In	The Other 8 Hours	CNN, NBC, Time magazine
Special Offers		$10 off your first month of 24/7 service with coupon code SAVE10247. $25 off your first month of Dedicated service with coupon code SAVE25DA. Both offers expire 12/31/10.
	Learn more	Learn more	Learn more

There are many virtual assistant companies offering similar services.  If none of the above seem like a good choice, you might also consider:

• VirtualHires.com — Full-time workers in the Philippines
• TasksEveryday.com — Dedicated assistants from $7 / hr
• GetFriday.com — Featured in The 4-Hour Workweek

I think these virtual assistant companies are best for simple, ongoing, or repetitive tasks.  For one-off projects, you might want to try elance.com instead, and hire someone just for that project.

Outsourcing can be a simple and cost-effective way to expand your business and free up some of your valuable time.  Depending on the kind of work you need done, a virtual assistant can be excellent option.  If your daily workload consists of a lot of simple or repetitive tasks, why not let someone else handle those for $5 an hour or less?  Of course every company has different needs, and outsourcing isn’t the best choice for everyone.

I’ve been using a virtual employee from TimeSvr.com for six months, and have been very happy with the results.  In a lot of ways, the TimeSvr service has helped me get my life back.  I would work crazy hours just to keep up, and now that has been scaled back considerably.  Here are some of the highlights of the TimeSvr service.

Choice of Plans
TimeSvr offers two levels of service: TimeSvr Personal and TimeSvr Dedicated.

For just $69/month, the TimeSvr Personal plan allows to unload unlimited “basic” tasks.  Basic tasks are typically defined as one-off projects, usually lasting 15 minutes or less, such as managing appointments, making phone calls, online research, and travel reservations.  With this plan, you can send in your task requests, and the first available assistant will get to work on it and notify you when it is complete.  You can use their online interface to submit tasks or use Skype or another instant messaging service.

The advantage here is obviously the low cost.  If you can picture yourself saving even just a few hours a month with this service, wouldn’t it be worth it?  TimeSvr Personal even offers a free trial so you can test out their service risk-free.

With TimeSvr Dedicated, you can get a full-time employee (8 hours a day, 6 days a week) for $850 a month.  It works out to less than $5 an hour.  The advantage of the Dedicated plan is you aren’t limited by “basic” tasks.  You get to work one-on-one with your assistant and train them just as you would an in-house employee.  They can work for hours or days on one project without interruption.

My Outsourcing Experience with TimeSvr

I’ve been working with my TimeSvr Dedicated assistant, Wasio, for six months.  He helps me out with copywriting tasks and day-to-day site maintenance.  His English skills aren’t quite to the level of a native speaker, but they are still very good and haven’t caused any problems.  Also, the speed of his work is slower than I can do it, but improving.  And I should note I’ve been doing these tasks for almost 5 years so it would make sense that I’m faster.  For most of my projects, whether the task is done in 4 hours or 6 hours, it really doesn’t make a difference — and if that small gap means not having to do it myself, I’m all for it!

Wasio and his TimeSvr counterparts are competent, hard-working, college-educated professionals. It seems sad they’re working for so little money, but in their part of the world, it is a good wage.

For me, the hardest part was giving up control.  I’d always been a one-man show, and it was very difficult to admit I needed help and to finally get up the courage to do something about it.   I was concerned about giving someone else the login information to my accounts, as well as my business “secrets.”  But I was able to set up additional user accounts with limited access and haven’t had any issues with data security.

Additional Outsourcing Benefits

Aside from the low cost, the other benefits of outsourcing with TimeSvr.com include:

• Not having to worry about federal and local payroll requirements, fair hiring and firing practices, insurance, or employment taxes.
• Not having to provide a workplace, phone line, and computer equipment.
• Freeing up your time to focus on more strategic, big-picture projects.

Other Outsourcing Options

Of course TimeSvr.com is just one of many virtual assistant companies offering similar services, and I’m writing about them only because I’m familiar with and can recommend them.  Other well-known outsourcing companies are:

• GetFriday.com – India-based firm featured in The 4-Hour Workweek
• BPOVIA.com – China-based firm with many plan options and over 10,000 global clients.
• AskSunday.com – The “most award-winning personal assistant service in the world.” They’re based in New York, with agents working in India.

If you’re really brave, you can go outside of these companies and try to find your own virtual employee through elance.com or even by posting an ad on Craigslist.

It’s a big, scary, life-altering decision.  But it helps create a life of freedom and fun that is simply unattainable with a 9-5.

A couple years ago I quit my job, “retired,” at 25, and while it hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing since then, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Retired at 25 will chronicle the ups and downs, successes and failures, triumphs and tragedies of a generation of young entrepreneurs.  The brave souls that grace these pages have opted for freedom over security and struck out on their own.  They’re living the dream!