An Interview with James Martell, CEO of Net Guides

Many companies measure their growth by how many employees they need. James Martell, CEO of Net Guides Publishing, Inc., measures his growth in exactly the opposite way:  the fewer employees he had the more successful his business became.

Net Guides creates information-rich websites. Several years ago James had seven employees, mostly writers who created content and managed his growing stable of sites.

"When I needed new writers, I ran an ad in the local paper and struggled to find space in the office for them."  After speaking at a seminar with over 250 attendees – including executives from Yahoo! and eBay – James changed his staffing and hiring procedures completely.

"One of my listeners walked up to me afterwards," says James, "and asked, 'Why don't you just use Elance?'  He literally changed my life." James started small, awarding a few basic writing projects. His reliance on Elance providers quickly grew, and as his own writers gradually moved on to other opportunities, he didn't replace them.

Instead, James forged ongoing relationships with providers like writer Kellie Fowler (Elance username: WriteSolutions), voice talent Mark Lindsey (Elance username: PrimaryMark), and office automation specialist Rosalind Triggs (Elancer username: rmttracking). It's a good thing, since he maintains and updates over one hundred websites and often has more than twenty Elance projects active at any given time. "My background is general contracting," says James, "so with the tools Elance provides it's easy for me to manage multiple projects and providers."

James uses Elance providers for a broad range of needs from audio production for podcasts to creating brochures to adding sophisticated tools to his websites… and for the occasional emergency. "Awhile back I 'broke' my auto-responder," says James, "and I had no idea how to fix it. I posted the project, got a number of responses, and had it fixed that afternoon."

The virtual workplace also gave James the time to write a best-selling affiliate marketing guide and to lead seminars and online training courses for budding Internet marketers. "Elance is the perfect interface to find and manage specialists from around the world," James says. "Plus, I receive better quality work for about 25% of what it used to cost. I honestly can't imagine running my businesses any other way."