Swimming with Asian Sharks - Business Secrets from the Pacific Rim

Contractors Can Remain Friends

After I received the blessing from Mr. Mineral’s parents, I booked our tickets and drafted a brief contract together. Essentially, Mr. Mineral would be a contractor for me for the four months we’d be there and then we would discuss if there would be a renewal. The contract model is great for short jobs, and a great way to test the fit for people.

I was introduced to this style by Nurun.  I was a contractor while I worked on Sears mobile. Hiring contractors has many tax advantages; because they don’t count as your employees, you don’t have to deal with details such as withholding their taxes, paying them a pension, or employment insurance.  The most important part, though, is the mentality you set for the person helping you.

I require my contractors to bill me on a regular basis, sometimes weekly. I expect a professional invoice, indicating what they did that week, and the general time they used to do it.  This is a technique many sharks use.  In most cases, contractors work much harder than regular employees. I believe this is due to the fact that when we receive our pay checks, our actions during the time we got paid for does not directly correlate.  For example, as a coder, I’m not paid on the number of lines of code I write.  It’s more nebulous how I earned my wages.  Contractors are more like commissioned sales people, where the customer’s satisfaction is needed before you get paid.

Finally, having contracts can help keep business and personal relationships separate.  Often throughout my trip with Mr. Mineral, it was a lot easier to separate work and play.  For example, Mr. Mineral was able to take multiple solo trips into China while contracting for my company.  As long as he was able to deliver what was agreed upon, it was not an issue.  The contract was advantageous to me because it prevented Mr. Mineral from jumping to other projects. I could terminate the contract at any time without penalty. The flexibility was good because he could quit anytime and it would be OK with me because it was contracted as such. It worked out because we are still friends, and he’s still open to contracts in the future.  Mr. Princeton and I had the same agreement for his online marketing project, and when that ended, we were able to end it without affecting our friendship.