Project Document Template

I wanted to share some value with you guys today...

I have leveraged remote teams for years and used contract talent from Upwork for years.

To be honest, written communication was a real challenge for me for many years.

Running a brick and mortar business for the last 15 years really had me accustomed to doing belly to belly - in the room communication (wearing out my staff and driving them crazy).

Over the years I have gotten much better and at this point it may actually be a strength of mine.

Fast forward to today and I have some great working relationships with some vendors that I've never spoken a word to on a live call - everything has been done via email, slack or other.

For instance, my video editor has worked with me for a few years and we have never spoken a word to each other!

I share this with you because I now have a new automation engineer that I've been working with and things are going super great!

I wanted to share with you some of the things we have been doing to help us work together and communicate effectively.

I will share the document with you at the end but first I want to share some principles that I've found to be true...

// The more you do something, the better you get (profound... I know) //

// Most people suck at communication - be better than them //

// When you spend lots of time thinking things out BEFORE the message or call - people notice! //

// Most people half ass everything - be different //

// A clearly spelled out task or email may take me 20-35 minutes to write //

// It is unlikely that you are being too redundant or clear in your message - spell it out for them! //

// Go the extra mile - nobody else does //

*** ADHD moment ***

I recently needed to source some talent for a project - I sourced someone from Upwork.

Here's what I did...

I created a project document (much like the one I will share with you today) and I clearly spelled out what I wanted out of the project. Pro tip - Chat GPT is great for helping you craft a job description for Upwork!

Then I hired FIVE different people all for the SAME project.

Here's what happens when you hire 5 people for the same thing: