Leveraging a Virtual Assistant to get 10X results in your business
Virtual assistants come in many different forms. At the core of it a Virtual Assistant is just another title for remote workers. How much time are you spending on personal or business administrative tasks, email management, social media posting, screening calls, planning events or travel, or confirming and setting appointments? This list could go on and take up this entire article but I won’t bore you with that.
Most business books, podcasts, and YouTube channels encourage entrepreneurs to elevate and delegate. This is an action that typically happens in conjunction with documented systems and processes. The question is, who are you going to delegate these processes to?
There are a myriad of types of Virtual Assistants. You can recruit, hire, train, and employ a virtual assistant just like any other employee. They can be stay at home moms, professionals looking for remote work, or overseas labor from around the world.
Note: Our company hires virtual assistants through HireTrainVA. This company delivers members who are baseline trained and ready to integrate directly into our business. This saves our company time and puts our members in a position to start generating revenue much faster. Year to date virtual assistants have generated $300,000 for our business. I’ve used other companies but this is the current company that has brought us the most value. There are a ton of other companies out there. Do your due diligence and find the best fit for you!
A limiting belief for many entrepreneurs is they can’t afford a Virtual Assistant. The reality is they can’t afford not to have a Virtual Assistant. If you’re spending time calling prospects, filling in spreadsheets, paying bills, processing orders, or any task that doesn’t require you to be in person you’re losing money. As an entrepreneur you MUST determine what your time is worth. Focus on the tasks that are the highest and best use of your time. Should you be doing $4 an hour tasks, $50 an hour tasks, $100 an hour tasks, or even $1000 an hour tasks? I think we know which one you shouldn’t be doing.
Ok, now that we agree you’re probably doing tasks you need to delegate let’s dive into how you can integrate a Virtual Assistant into your business.
Deciding on U.S. based VS overseas VAs
First you have to decide if you want to hire a person in the United States for $12 to $22 an hour or an overseas Virtual Assistant at $4 – $8 an hour. I like the overseas option because it allows you to hire globally sourced labor, finding the most talented people, at the best price.
Many people worry about people overseas being able to speak english. Well, most other countries study and speak english. We are the only arrogant country that doesn’t require a second language.
Where to find an overseas Virtual Assistant
You can outsource this (HireTrainVA) or find VAs at the following locations:
- Onlinejobs.ph
- Outbounders.com
- Craigslist
- Upwork.com
- Referrals from other virtual assistants
How much do you pay overseas virtual assistant
- Philippines $3hr – $8hr Average $4 an hour
- South America $5hr – $9hr
- Egypt $4 – $8
Technology needed for VA
- Communications: Slack, Signal, WhatsApp, Voxer
- Timesheet/accountability: Hubstaff
- Phone system: CallRail, SmrtPhone, Aircall, Skype
- Meetings: Zoom, Google meet
- Paying a VA: Wise, Remitly, Payoneer, Paypall
- Loom video recording
- Company specific technology
Training and support is where most people fail. No person knows what you want or how you want them to execute on a task unless you spend time teaching them. Start documenting via a checklist for tasks you’d have them complete. Link every task to a recorded loom video. Spend time walking your Virtual Assistant through each task. Provide feedback. If you don’t spend time upfront, you’re destined to fail.
Taking action
OK, now it’s time to take action. Put a dollar amount on all of your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. Then rate them as:
- good at/like doing
- good at/hate doing
- bad at/like doing
- bad at/hate doing
Now document the tasks, build a job description based on the tasks, advertise, interview, hire, train, integrate and create time to focus on what matters most!
If you found this useful, leave a comment and I’ll dive deeper into how we use VAs in our business. I may even do a part two that focuses on U.S. based Virtual Assistants.
If you share this article to your social media and tag @officialadamwhitney (IG) I’ll send you my hiring ad and pay & bonus structure for our VAs.
