In this episode, I want to share with you how to avoid getting it wrong when it comes to hiring a virtual assistant.
As business owners, we all get to the point when we realise we can’t do everything. This is when you will start thinking about hiring a VA. I have worked with a number of VAs over the years and I have had some great experience and some not so great. I’ll share with you what I have learned and my top tips to make sure this person adds tremendous value to you and your business.
Watch Here
Listen Here
Transcript
Hey lovely, how are you? It’s Yasmin from Tiny Time, Big Results and today I want to share with you a fantastic way to avoid making mistakes when you decide that it’s time for you to hire a virtual assistant in your business.
You may already have worked with VAs before or this may be a new thing for you, or you might just be on the cusp of starting to delegate. I’ve had a number of VA’s over the years and some have been fantastic and some of them haven’t been great experiences, but not because of anything that the VA necessarily did but it was because of the way that I was approaching the delegation task.
And that’s what I want to share with you today in this video because hiring staff or a team member, is a really powerful way to move you forward and help you to leverage your time but there’s always that fear that you’re going to make a mistake, you’re going to hire the wrong person or they’re not going to do things the way you want them to do it.
And there’s all this fear around outsourcing and delegating.
So today this video is all about how to make sure that you avoid getting it wrong.
Now, the number one tip that I have for my clients and my community just like you, is never, ever assume that one VA, is gonna do everything for you, okay?
There is a huge skill set required in having a business, whether that’s an online business or offline business, especially when you take into account the digital age that we’re in. Creating opt-in pages, web pages, looking after your CRM or running webinar technology, there are so many different moving parts to having an online business.
The reality is that you’re not gonna find one VA who does all of those things and does them all to a high standard, it’s just unrealistic to expect that from one person.
So here’s my biggest tip, my number one tip.
Actually, I’m gonna give you two tips, just as a bonus.
The first thing that I would always say to you is look for referrals rather than looking at people’s websites or just trying to find someone. And the reason why I say that is because referrals are a great way to help you bypass that ‘oh are they gonna work for me? Is it gonna be a good experience?’
When you get a referral, you know that someone has already experienced working with that person and that they have good things to say. So, going on referral is really powerful. You know word-of-mouth is incredible, it’s like the best marketing that you could ever do. So, if you’re a VA watching this, that’s what you need to be focusing in on is how you get more referrals and how you get people talking about you whether that’s recording video testimonials for you and your website. You want people to talk about you and how brilliant you are.
So always go on referrals.
However, here’s my big tip. Start with one thing at a time.
Don’t say to them I need you to manage my diary and do all of the travel arrangements. And I want you to do all my web pages and I want you to create landing pages, and I want you to create sales pages and I want you to do my webinar, all of that stuff.
Because you’re going to overwhelm that person, it’s going to feel like a 10 hundred tonne truck coming at them.
It’s just going to be too much. And this is the lesson that I learned from very bitter experience, it was a very unfortunate experience where I just asked too much of my VA.
So now, I take a very cautious approach to hiring team members. Remember, they’re not necessarily your employees, you’re outsourcing, you’re sending work to a contractor. I have a virtual assistant at the moment who helps me with uploading my blog. Every week I have a blog which is in the form of a video, an MP3, and a podcast.
So, all I do is I record the video and I upload it all up to Dropbox and then she looks after everything else. That’s the only thing that I get my VA to do for me at this moment in time. There are more things coming down the track and so what I like to do is add something else, then something else, then something else.
But you can only do that when someone has proven that they are trustworthy, that they are reliable and dependable and that it’s in their skill set.
I remember looking for someone to help me with getting my podcast up and running a couple of years ago now. I remember being specific about the support I needed (you have to be!)
Think of it as writing your own job description where you get to be really specific.
I said I need you to upload it to Libsyn which is the podcasting software I use, and I need you to know how to do this. And this person said well you show me what I need to do and I’ll pick it up.
That’s not what I’m looking for. I need someone who’s an expert. It’s not for me to train someone in Libsyn. And that was a very specific requirement for me because there are lots of things about Libsyn that I haven’t got a clue about. So, I need someone who is going to know how to do that. So I recommend hiring somebody for one task to begin with, to get started, and then be really specific about what you are looking for in terms of the duties that you’ll expect that person to fulfil and deliver.
But then also consider the attributes that you want that person to have. How do you wanna be communicated with? Email, calls, Facebook Messenger? What frequency do you want to be communicated with? There are lots of things that you need to be thinking about. You want someone who’s gonna be enthusiastic and dependable and reliable, and someone who has attention to detail. Someone who has your eye for detail.
One of the biggest fears that we have about delegating is that someone’s not going to do it the way we want to do it, or the way that we would do it. And that’s true, they’re not, because they’re not us, and that’s okay because we’re not perfect either. So, what you need to be really clear on is what’s the task that needs to be done and what are the steps involved in doing that.
I cover all of this in my book. If you haven’t got a copy make sure you do! Tiny Time Big Results.
This is covered in the Productivity Principle where I talk about how to make sure that you are hiring the right people and giving them the right kind of jobs to do. And being really specific about what you’re looking for will help you to find the right person.
So, to summarise, look for referrals and start off with one thing. I hope that helps. Let me know what you think in the comments below and I look forward to seeing you the next time. Take care.
Love and hugs,