Thread by @LiamKircher

Hiring A Virtual Assitant Saved My Life 🧵

Is this a dramatic statement?

NO...

Why?

Because I cherish my time and time is the most valuable asset we all have. I honestly believe without discovering Virtual Assistants I would still to this day be working myself to my grave.

1/ Let us start by defining "Virtual Assistant"

According to Google: "A virtual assistant is a self-employed worker who specializes in offering administrative services to clients from a remote location, usually a home office...

2/ Typical tasks a virtual assistant might perform include scheduling appointments, making phone calls, making travel arrangements, and managing email accounts."

3/ Before making any decisions we should always begin by diagnosing the problem.

Let's take a random week on your calendar and let's investigate a little.

Break down day by day, down to the hour. How did you spend every single hour of your time?

Is it...

4/ answering emails, phone calls, and meetings? What type of emails, phone calls, and meetings did you have? Were they high level where your attendance and attention were needed the entire time?

or...

5/ was it a scheduled or unscheduled/random event that you already knew the solutions for and could have had someone else communicate it easily?

I consider a low-level task to be exactly how Google defined it:

1. Scheduling Appointments
2. Making Phone Calls

6/

3. Travel Arrangements
4. Managing Email Accounts

Yes, every industry and business is different and something may change from that list of what can be defined as a low-level and high-level task.

But...

7/ I challenge you to really dig deep and break down everything you do hourly and I guarantee you will find some low-level tasks that with some simple training you can outsource to a VA.

So...

you have defined the scope of work for the VA by investigating your calendar and

8/breaking down your hour-by-hour tasks now...

Where do I find my Virtual Assistants? Well here are a couple of locations.

1. @OnlinejobsdotPH
2. @MicroSourcing
3. Shepherd.com

9/ NOW it's as simple as posting a job ad on their website/platform or if you'd need more help, speak with a sales rep at one of these companies to help you walk through the hiring process.

A couple of quick tips with this:

10/

1. Be straight to the point in your job ad and scope of work criteria. Don't sell them on the company and how ABC offers amazing products. Cut out that bullshit and be clear with what you want your VA to be doing and what you want your VA to be good at.

11/

2. Instant Zoom call, I would recommend jumping on a zoom call with any applicants that catch your eye. Ask them some questions such as:

How many years have you been a VA? Do you have any past company references that you could name?

12/

3. Control the process and do not be afraid to ask the VA questions. 9/10 times these VA's have worked at a larger company than yours before so don't hesitate to humble yourself and ask the applicant questions about the entire process.

13/

4. Pay negotiation. I recommend chatting with the platform and sales rep to understand the typical competitive market pay for every type of VA. It will depend upon the location of the VA as well as # of hours worked and the type of scope.

Example...

14/ Ex. I pay my VA $600/Month for full time and she manages all the low-level tasks I mentioned above for myself and my business. Pretty good deal right?

5. Paying the VA, I use Wise. It's the easiest lowest fees and nobody has complained yet.

15/ Congrats you created a scope, found and hired your first VA! NOW WHAT?

This is the most critical process, onboarding, and training. Help yourself by creating an account on Monday.com and make two lists: Onboarding, and Training.

16/ Onboardin:

Every business will have a different onboarding process dependent on your industry but you need to make sure you provide the VA the keys to success by setting up an onboarding task list to help micromanage this process.

Example of a list:

17/ Accounts Set-Up:

1. Emails
2. Phone #
3. Last Pass (Password manager any accounts you want to share.)
4. Google Drive

18/ Training, this is where you can easily excel your VA's success by simply adding 2 simple processes. This needs to be organized and templated so that no miscommunication is created.

1. Workflow Sheet
2. Loom Video Breakdown of Workflows

19/ You should create a Google Doc that is shared between you and the VA or whoever will be managing the VA. Create a numbered list of step by step of what you want to be completed in a certain workflow. Example: Scheduling a Zoom Meeting with a Client

Next...

20/ once you have created that step-by-step list for each workflow you are then going to create a Loom video for the VA and visually walk through the workflow.

You should link it on the same doc so the VA can easily...

21/ see read the step-by-step processes as well as visually see from the video you created.

Will the VA make mistakes? Yes.

Like any employee, they are going to make errors and you need to make sure to correct those and inform them, or else errors will continue.

22/Virtual Assistants literally changed my life because I started understanding how much my time is worth and you as a business owner need to do that also. If you value your time you will pay $600 a month to simply buy hours of your life back.

Let go and allow people to help you