Episode 92: A Small Business Owner’s Guide to Hiring and Working with A Virtual Assistant - The Important Factors To Consider
Do you think you need to outsource some of your work to make better use of your time? Why not consider hiring a virtual assistant or an online business manager? In this coaching episode, Fiona talks about the essentials in hiring and working with a virtual assistant - the why, what, where, who and when - and how. Listen now to learn more about Fiona’s experience working with her team of VAs and her recommendations on where to find one for your business.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
What is a virtual assistant
What can they do
What tasks do you outsource
Why do you need a virtual assistant
What will a VA do?
When is the work going to be done?
Where will the work happen?
Who are you looking for for your VA?
Where to find a VA?
How much is your budget?
Working with a VA
Conclusion
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Platforms to find a Virtual Assistant
Episode transcript:
You want to have a look at your business and your systems and structure and kind of areas of the business and think, is there something already that I could potentially delegate to somebody else? Is there something that I could automate and actually I don't need a virtual assistant actually need automation set up or is this stuff that I can just eliminate, like, are we spending all this time on say a social media platform that doesn't convert that doesn't really have any impact on our business?
Hello and welcome to episode 92 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. As you can probably hear in my voice, I'm quite excited. This podcast is being recorded before it comes out quite a few weeks before it comes out. But I'm really excited because we have now surpassed the a hundred thousand downloads, which is amazing. We kind of surpass that around nine months since we started this podcast. And for somebody who really, I was aiming for about 150 downloads per episode, because somebody had mentioned that that was a good thing. I'm just, yeah, I'm completely blown away, so excited, but also it's a massive reminder to just start and really think about the type of medium that most suits your audience. So when I work with my clients or when I teach, I often talk about content in terms of when you're putting out something, think about the content or the message first, like what's the value, what's the education, what's the message.
What is it that you're putting out? Then you want to think about the medium for that. And then the distribution channels, otherwise known as social media, email newsletter. And you might also then in the content be thinking core content. So you might think, what is it that I want to say, then what's the best medium. So is it best for my audience to watch videos? Is it best for my audience to listen to audio is the best for them to be reading something and then think about the core content piece and then distribution channels. Anyway, today's session is not on content. I will get into that in deeper dives later on, but I wanted to kind of point that out because yeah, it's just become super apparent. That podcasting is totally great for my audience. I knew that before. That's why it started sort of progressing into starting a podcast years ago, but I wish I'd kind of got my myself into gear earlier on because I'm just astounded with the reach and just the general connection that's happening through this podcast with small business owners across the globe.
So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this. Thank you for sharing it. And yeah, if you are keen to start a podcast, get on it. And also I have a course How To Start A Podcast. So if you're super keen, just DM me over at @mydailybusinesscoach on Instagram, or you can find a course at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast. Anyway, that was a really long-winded intro.
Today's session is a coaching session. And I know I've just done a bit of coaching on content there, but today we're going to deep dive into something that is super important and it's becoming just more and more, just a general part of business for small business owners, particularly solo operators and those who choose to work remotely. So let's get stuck into today's coaching.
All right. So today we were talking about how to find and work with a virtual assistant and we'll get into, you know, what is a virtual assistant in a second, but a virtual assistant can also be an OBM, which is an online business manager. They can have all sorts of titles, but basically today I want to walk through how you could potentially bring on somebody into your business to really help you run it. And I know this can be a really scary thing for a lot of small business owners, particularly if you are thinking, well, I can't afford that yet, or I've never hired somebody, or I never even imagined my business having anybody else, but me, or you might think, well, I'm in the services business and people buy me. So, you know, really what is this person going to do really? I'm going to get stuck into how to find them, because I think that's a big thing that people are like, well, I kind of have heard of virtual assistants, but I don't really know where I'd start and also how you actually work with them so that, you know, they feel good.
You feel good, and this can be difficult. And just like anything else, sometimes you have to do trial and error and find people that fit. But yeah, let's get stuck into it because it's such an important thing and it can really transform your business. And even at the start of this episode, when I was saying, you know, we've hit a hundred thousand downloads or we started the podcast. I do say we, because I do have a team that helps me have an editor. I have Nezi, my amazing VA and I, you know, have had other people in, in turn help. And so it's a joint effort. It is, yes. I record these episodes and I come up with the content, but it is a team effort and I couldn't live without my team. So anyway, firstly, let's get stuck into the big question, which is what is a VA.
And often I'll use this term and I'll just forget that people don't know, which is completely normal. A lot of people don't know. So the VA also known as an OBM. So that stands for online business manager is really a virtual assistant. So it's an assistant that can help you with anything and everything. And this commonly includes things like admin tasks scheduling. So, you know, if you ask somebody in the service-based business that schedules a lot, or if you have to schedule things like people to be on your podcast, they can take care of that client management. So that could be almost, you know, looking after the clients, onboarding, looking after, you know, making sure they've paid their invoices, all that sort of stuff, inbox management. So this is predominantly a big part of, one of my, I have two virtual assistants and one of them looks after inbox management.
So really dealing with all the emails that come into hello at and dealing with anything that comes from our website and our contact form. It all goes through a virtual assistant first social media. So depending on your business, you may hate social media. Some people love doing it. I do my own social media, however, social media, in terms of virtual assistant, they can help you with everything from the complete management through to just creating graphics, creating content, finding quotes, and analysis. They can do reports on social media, advice, strategy, advertising, handling all of that. Now of course, this is dependent on what they're skilled at, but say with our social media, I write all of our social media. I never, I would never outsource that because there's just a natural skill that I have to write and I like doing it, but yeah, one of my virtual assistants, she will find the quotes.
So I give her a rough idea of, you know, I like quotes from hip hop music, books, poetry, world leaders, etc, other things that kind of fall into that. And so the way that we work is that she will find these quotes and sometimes I'll find them. Sometimes I'm reading something and it just sticks out, but we have a list, an excel list. And then I sign off on those quotes. Cause sometimes, you know, she might find one and I think, Oh no, I really don't like that. Or it's, you know, sort of very into the hustle territory, which I hate. So after they're approved, she will then create the graphic for that and then upload it into plantarly, which is a platform that we use for social media. So yeah, social media can be something that virtual assistant helps with. They can also, and again, depending on their skillset and how you hire them, they can help with your schedule.
They can do personal assistant duties. So I have talked to agencies in the past where they've got virtual assistants who can do everything, like do your shopping order, organize your kids' dental appointments, like all of that. It could be community management. So you might have a Facebook group or a membership, and you might have virtual assistants to go in and be, you know, looking after the community, answering questions, making sure that they're linking to, you know, relevant documents or templates could be content creation. That again, it could be something you just don't like doing or your interest. It's not your zone of genius. And so that's outsourced and that could be content creation in terms of blog, writing newsletters, content for social media, it could be putting together proposal documents, videos, anything really, they could also look after website updates or e-commerce store updates. Again, depending on skillset, your email marketing, you know, setting up your sequences, sending up.
You know, I know that one of my past VA's Jess did a lot in terms of setting up email sequences in convert kit for us and just loads more. So I hope that you're listening to this and maybe it's opening your eyes up to gosh, this whole section of my business. I don't like doing, I find it tedious or, you know, I find it stressful and potentially that's something that you could outsource to a virtual assistant. And I guess, you know, by the name virtual majority of the time you're working with somebody who's not right next to you. However, I do know friends of mine who do have virtual assistants that sit in the same office and I guess they're just assistants, but yeah, the virtual assistant tag or name or online business manager is another one that really OBMs kind of sprung up from the onslaught of online businesses that exist now.
So people in the kind of education, coaching membership sort of space, but of course they work with anyone as well. And that's the other thing you might think, well, I have a team in place.“ Why would I have a virtual person? I like my team and that's fine.”, but it might be say, you might really like that you have somebody in the U S who can work when you're in Australia, two different time zones so that when you get up in the morning, all this work has been done and you're like, awesome. So it really depends on what you're wanting out of this, but before you outsource, there's some work that you need to do. And I think this is the big thing that people miss. They kind of get excited by, “Oh my gosh, this person's going to do my social media.” And they don't do the kind of work behind the scenes first.
So before you outsource, you want to think about what can I delegate? What can I automate and what could I eliminate? And I'm not sure who said that first. I think it might've been Michael Hyatt in one of his books, like in the 90s or early 2000s or something. I'm not sure a while ago. I feel like it was maybe I don't even know if Michael Hyatt had books that early, but I feel like this whole concept of delegate automate eliminate has been around forever.
The point is you want to have a look at your business and your systems and structure and kind of areas of the business and think, is there something already that I could potentially delegate to somebody else? Is there something that I could automate? And actually I don't need a virtual assistant actually need automation set up or is this stuff that I can just eliminate?
Like, are we spending all this time on say a social media platform that doesn't convert that doesn't really have any impact on our business? Or it could be, Oh, we've been writing blogs because we were taught that that will help SEO. And yet, after a year of this or two years of this, we just get nothing from those blogs. And it could be, of course you need to tweak the content or put calls to action within the blogs. But the point here is to sit down before you hire and really think about what can I delegate? What could I just automate? And then what are we spending time on that we just need to eliminate another way to look at this is to use the start, stop, keep planner. I have a freebie over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/freestuff. And the start stop keep planner is something that my good friend, Natasha Ace first told me about.
And it's really about looking at everything in your business and kind of writing a list of tasks or actions or things that you deliver. And then thinking, what can we start doing? We were not doing this at all, but we need to start. So for instance, you might think we really need email sequences set up, but we don't have that. So you might put, start next email sequences. You might have, like I said, the blog and you're like, put stop because it's just, it's not working. And then you might have keep, so you might have an email newsletter and you're like, it's amazing. It's gold. We're going to keep that. So the point really is to take a minute and pause before you get excited and hire somebody and think about what you're actually going to give them, which is really the delegate piece.
So for me, sitting around all day, looking for quotes, to put on Instagram or to use in my newsletter, isn't necessarily the best use of my time. And so it's good for me to outsource that. It's good for me to delegate that. So that's the first thing. The other thing is to think of the five W's. Now my background is in journalism. That's where I started. And so in journalism, you, you learn the five W's and they're constant. So it's really the why, what, when, where, who now, when it comes to hiring, you want to think why, like, why is this important in my life right now, or my business, and really think about the longterm cost. So people will say, Oh, I can't afford to hire somebody right now. I just can't. And yet you might think, what would it look like? Long-term if I had five hours back in my day or five hours back in my week or two hours back in my week, you don't have to hire somebody full time.
And so what's the longterm cost if you don't do this. So if I was still spending, you know, two hours a week looking for quotes, and then, you know, the rest of the time, going down a rabbit hole of like, Oh, that looks like a really good book. I should totally buy that. Now I'm over here buying a book instead of, Oh, I was supposed to find one quote for Instagram tile. It's a longterm cost. I'm spending my time doing things that are not necessarily massively helping the business. So why, why is this important? And then how will my life and my business be better off if this happens. Now, I've talked about this a bit. But when I outsource, when I started this podcast, I outsourced immediately the editing and I outsourced the, my beautiful VA does graphic design. She puts the audio through a transcriber and makes a blog.
She creates all the graphics, like the video or Instagram stories. She liaises with the people that come on for interviews. She, you know, books, all that stuff in, so, and creates it all in the backend of Squarespace. And so when I I'm doing my podcast, like the long-term benefits for my life is, and I'm not spending 10 hours per podcast episode. Literally, I'm recording this now between clients on a Thursday. So, you know, I've got about 40 minutes between clients and I thought, I'll just jump on and do this. So my life is better because other people are taking care of this podcast for me, which is amazing. So that's the why.
The next is the, what, this is super important. What will they be doing? And is it going to be tasks and tasks like drip fed where every week you're sort of saying, Oh, today, could you work on this or this week?
Could you work on this? Or is it total project management? So is it we're doing a podcast? This is the whole section that you're going to be in charge of and just you do it. And I don't need to like micromanage, is it ongoing or as needed? So you might have say, you might want to do courses and you want to be putting them into Kajabi or teachable or member space or any of the kind of course platforms. And so you might bring somebody on for that project to help you set up the course, to do it all, to set up your funnels and your email sequences, and to set up your payment details and using Stripe or PayPal, all of that might just be a one-off. So you're like, this is a one-off or maybe twice a year. I need somebody to help me with that.
So that's just as needed or it could be ongoing. It could be actually need somebody every week to be doing 10 hours a week of inbox management, for example. So that's the why and the what, and then you've got when, so when will they need to start? When will the work get done? So what are your expectations? What are the kind of key KPIs or key performance indicators? And then when will I track if it's working? So this can be a big one. And I have, I've hired quite a few VAs in my business in the last six years. And some have been amazing. Some have been, I mean, they've all been great in their own way. And you know, sometimes it's just been, I haven't been set up properly in the backend, which is why I'm teaching you this. So you don't have to make the same mistakes that I have, but really you want to think about when are they going to start?
Because sometimes you will need to do a bit of work beforehand and I've had it definitely, I've done this myself in the past. I've hired somebody and I've just had a really busy couple of weeks. And so I haven't been there for them. I haven't been able to answer every question that they had. I haven't been able to kind of set them up with documents that they need. And so I've learned, and I've had to say to, you know, some people can, can we start in two months because I know that I'm slammed at the moment and I'm not going to be there for you the way that I should be. So that's kind of, when will they need to start? And then the work getting done, and that can be a big one. And I do have VA's who most VA's will do this anyway, off their own back, but they do use time-tracking tools.
So harvest toggle, there's a bunch of them that basically most virtual assistants or OBMs will already be using them for clients, because they want to look at how often they're working on this client or that client, how long that, that thing took. And so with my virtual assistants, they've got a time tracker and they just submit that with their invoice. And most, a lot of the time I don't look at it, I trust them, but sometimes I'll look at it and it has actually brought up a few things where we're like, Oh, you know, for me to do that task would take about an hour. So I'm not really sure why it's in here as four hours and we've had discussions then. And it might be that they just didn't know that this tool exists, that can help them a lot, or they didn't know that actually they could have just automated that part.
So when is the work going to get done? That's a big question to think about what are your expectations in terms of hiring people? I always ask my clients when we're working through this to think about it in the same way that a corporate would most corporates will have a big HR company, HR team, and the HR team will have a very clear contract that says in the first 30 days, 60 days and 90 days, this is what's expected of you. And the reason that they do that is to protect themselves in terms of probation and letting go of people and unfair dismissal. So as a small business owner, even if you're a solo operator, and this is your first hire, think about what do I want this person to do? And by when, and by the first 30 days, what would I have imagined that they would have got done the first 60 days?
So two months into the role, what would I have imagined that I can let go of now? And then the first 90 days, which is usually in Australia, where I am, that's when the probation would finish. So three months probation, sometimes six months, if you're more senior and sometimes it can be longer, but think of that in terms of your own business as well. And it's really, it's going to help the other person, the person you're hiring feel safe as well, because they're like, okay, I can really see what's expected of me then where, where will they work from and where will we engage and manage the workflow? So is it going to be, we're just on email, is it in person? You know, maybe they are virtual, but you have a Skype date twice a week. Is it that you manage the workflow in something like Asana or Trello project management tools?
You know, where is that going to happen? And you need to get that up front, because I have learned in the past where things will be really messy and it will be emails and email trails. And you're trying to remember what the word was that they use. So you can find it. We use Asana now with our virtual assistants. And so everything's sort of in Asana with my main virtual assistant. We do message on Instagram. We do send emails, but we also use Asana. And, and that's just, you know, obviously that's a little messier than it could be. However, we've just sort of got into a rhythm. And I really like that. And also I really, you know, I follow her on Instagram. I see what she's doing and it's nice. It's kind of a friendship as well. And then who, so are there any character traits I'm looking for?
So you might think, I really want to manage this person and I'm happy to, or you might think I want someone who doesn't need to ask questions. Who's just totally autonomous. And maybe I hear from them the end of every week, also with the who, who else already does this in the business. So particularly if you've already got a team, you want to be really clear on kind of the outlines of that person's job versus the person you're bringing in and making sure that you're not doubling up on stuff, but also you're not sort of ruining staff morale because he brought somebody else in and someone existing in your business. It's like, well, I already do that. Anytime I've brought on a second, VA, I've made it really clear. I already have a VA, that's doing these things and I would be wanting you to do these parts.
And so it's just transparent. I'm not sort of, I don't know, putting them up against each other or anything. The other thing in the who is about you, you know, do you know your own flaws as a leader in your business, and particularly if you've never managed anyone really, you know, you might do 16 personalities.com or another personality test, but really have a think about, you know, what are you, you know, are you someone who's naturally a bit defensive? Are you someone who, you know, wants to control things like being really honest with yourself? Because those traits I assure you are going to show up. Once you hire somebody it's similar to, you know, being in a romantic relationship, all your things are going to come up. So if you hire somebody really take a look at yourself and know what your potential areas of improvement are so that you can kind of catch yourself.
So, you know, like I know that say for instance, like I was taught years ago to never respond to an email when you're emotional, always take time out. And I think Viktor Frankl talks about it in his book. Man's search for meaning about the space between stimulus and reaction. And so I know that's a part of me, you know, so, and it can be equally on the other side. It's not always negative. I can be like, Oh my God, I'm so excited for you. And just like instantly going to things. And sometimes I've had to sort of have that space between stimulus and reaction. And I've had to learn that as well with people I've hired. I've had to, you know, if I'm annoyed that, Oh my gosh, why has this taken so long? I have to say to myself, stop it. Maybe you didn't give them the stuff.
Like, look back through the process that you've given people. Maybe this is not clear and it's actually on new Fiona, not on the other person, or maybe you're expecting too much. Maybe it didn't make it clear when you needed this thing. So the, who is really do I know my own flaws as a leader. Now. I know, obviously if you're listening to this in the car, on the gym, on the gym, on a walk in the gym and you want to go through this again, please go to my daily business, coach.com forward slash podcast forward slash 92, because we'll have a full transcript of everything. But yeah, those are the five W's. And along with the, what can I automate delegate eliminate, you've really got to get clear on that.
So then the second thing I guess, is the, or the second part to this is, is finding somebody.
So when it comes to outsourcing, there are usually kind of two camps. People who wish to outsource internationally and maybe make use of cheaper labor costs, and then people who want to outsource in their own country to ensure, you know, similar work hours. And in some cases, an understanding of kind of local customs and brands example, like if you get a bookkeeper, say for instance, you get a bookkeeper, who's Australian and you're in Australia. You might want them to be living in Australia because they have an understanding of local tax laws and possibly, you know, brand names of your clients or brand names of things you've spent money on because then they understand, Oh yes, David Jones is a department store or office works is stationary and printer and office equipment. Whereas if you were in the US it might be that you have, you know, Home Depot or you have other things that say, somebody may not know what that is.
Also. You might have somebody who looks internationally, not because of the cheap labor costs necessarily, but because of the time difference. So I have Scott, who is the editor of this podcast and he is Australian, but he lives in Canada. And I love that the time difference means if I potentially am rushing an episode, which happens occasionally I can send that to him an overnight it's sort of worked on and then I can come in the next day and it's done. Whereas if we were in the same types of like time zone, I might have to be a bit more organized. And so it could also be that, yeah, you have like international clients. And so you want to hire somebody in the US because a lot of your clients are in the U S or, you know, you've got a membership group and a lot of people are on a particular time zone.
And so you need people in that time zone to be your virtual assistant and help with community management. So there's a couple of sites that can help you advertise your positions and sort through eligible candidates. Most of these sites actually have ratings and reviews along with the person's hourly charge and their areas of expertise. So some big ones are Upwork. So that is actually where I've hired people from before. It's just upwork.com and you can find people all over the world from Australia to Argentina, to Austria, that can do all sorts of work. There's also onlinejobs.ph, which is in the Philippines. I've never used that. However, I've had, you know, lots of people that I know have used it. And they found everyone from podcast editors to virtual assistants. One of my virtual assistants is based in the Philippines, but we actually met on Instagram, not through online jobs, but the Philippines is really well regarded for virtual assistants because it is just such a, it's just taken off in a way that other countries haven't necessarily followed up with potentially, maybe America is maybe like second to the Philippines in terms of how many people are getting trained to become virtual assistants, how many people are training up on technology, new platforms, all of that stuff. That's, it's pretty amazing. I haven't ever used onlinejobs.ph but other people have, there are other places like Fiverr. I found my first podcast editor who kind of did the intro track for me years ago, like 2017 on five up. And he was Canadian as well, actually. And yeah, he was really, really great, but yeah, I just did the intro track. And then I kind of spent years thinking about. 99designs is sort of place for graphic designers to go and, you know, anywhere in the 600 million plus Facebook groups that are out there. So I have a Facebook group, Good Business Group, there are a thousand plus small business owners. Many of those are virtual assistants or graphic designers or website developers. So, you know, feel free to come in.
And if you need to post an ad post like a, you know, a job ad, but yeah, there's so many, there's find a finder's fee, which is another one if you're looking potentially in Australia, although I think it is global now to find graphic designers, virtual assistants. I think there's also, if you're listening to this in Australia and you're looking for an Australian based virtual assistant, there is virtually yours. I think it's virtually yours.com today you in the us. I mean, there's just so many, the U S is huge for this. And I think the U S has probably the first to kind of get into this sort of thing. I know that there was rockstar VAs, it's an agency. This there's just so many, and we'll try and put them into the show notes, but there's so many places, but yet, like I said, we have used Upwork and Instagram to find virtual assistants.
And often the rates will be in US dollars just because, you know, these people are working across the globe. So the rates really can vary. It can be as little as $5 an hour, you know, and sometimes I've seen things come up that I think really like in, in business groups where people are really getting paid, like nothing, and that is entirely up to you right up to kind of 300 us dollars per hour plus. And that's for very, very highly skilled kind of technology experts that, you know, potentially can read bam, your entire e-commerce business and, and set up every single thing that you've ever needed. So, yeah, the average though is a lot less than that. It's nowhere near $300 an hour, but yeah, there's, there's really, it really depends. I think in Australia, it's about $30 maybe more, I'm not sure. 35.
I mean, I don't know, I don't have a virtual assistant in Australia, but thinking about this more money doesn't necessarily equal better performance. I have worked with people all over the globe and I can say that, you know, the people that potentially have charged the most, we're not the best. So yeah. You've got to figure out what is good for you. And also what do you feel comfortable with? So it really depends on what you need and what you're willing to pay and on the whole, what should I pay? Definitely go back and listen to episode 88. That is where I talked about five questions to ask yourself before you outsource. And one of those is what can you afford? And so definitely go into that because obviously every single person's financial situation is different. So yeah, definitely go and listen to that afterwards. And we'll link to that in the podcast show notes as well.
But I guess with anything that you're hiring, whether it's a virtual assistant, whether it's a business coach, whether it is, you know, anything really always do your research, you know, look for what they've done before, look at their own. Say if you want them to be a social media manager, look at their own social media, ask for client work that they've worked with, who have they worked with before ask really specific questions. So one question that I've asked that I think is really interesting that everyone I've asked her said, Oh, I've never been asked that before, is why do you want to be a virtual assistant? I actually did look in Australia first when I started my business and I wanted to have a virtual assistant. And I thought it would be great to have one in the same country that I'm in. And actually the two women that I interviewed when I asked them that both of them gave the impression or one of them just said it, that they were only doing this as a stepping stone to becoming a business coach or they were, you know, it seemed like I don't really want to do this, but I'm just going to do it.
And so to me, I didn't want someone like that. I want someone who's, who's happy to do this work. Who's not thinking, Oh, I'll just do this in the interim until I do something else, that's totally fine if you want to do that. But I want to work with people who love being a virtual assistant and that's just in their blood and they just love it. They love organization. They love, they love what they do. So ask specific questions. And in the U S I had one in the U S for awhile. And she, when I asked her that question, she was like, Oh my God, I've been doing this for like nine years. And no one's ever asked. And she said, I love it. I have three young children. I love that. I work from home, I'm obsessed with organization. And I just love it.
Like, I love sorting out problems for my clients. And so I loved that answer. I was like, yeah, she's been doing this for nine years. She's not going anywhere. And then you might want to use like a trial start. So I often do this with people I will pay for a full month and then we'll see how it goes. And quite often you'll see like, Oh, okay, they're not getting back to me emails. Or, you know, I thought we could catch up every week, but they're not coming to the meetings or I'm looking in a Santa and the tasks that I outlined haven't been touched. So it's sort of like, Whoa, what's going on here. People can sell you the world and sell you the dream in a conversation. And even in the interviews. And even if you've got really great interview questions, you know, you just don't know until you start working with somebody.
And unfortunately, I've had that experience a couple of times where I've worked with people and what they sold me was slightly different to the skillset that they brought into my business. So don't be afraid to say, could we do a trial of a month? And let's see how it goes. And most people will be happy with that. Just be clear on that. And also be really clear yeah. As to when you would need to tell them that you're not going going forward, because some people might need two weeks notice. So only halfway into that month, you'll kind of have to make a decision. So working well together is a big thing. So you want to set them up for success. So it might be that you've got a contract in place. A lot of virtual assistants have their own contracts, including kind of the pay cycles.
So, I mean, I have two virtual assistants, one gets paid monthly. She likes it that way. And then the other one gets paid, usually fortnightly. But you know, sometimes she'll say, Oh, I totally forgot to invoice you. Sorry, can I do a month at once? And that's fine. Ways of communicating ironed out, you know, is it email? Is it DM? Is it Facebook messenger? Is it zoom? Is it phone calls? Is it just everything's in Asana or Trello, you know, sought that out. How are we going to communicate ideally brand documents? So I have a Google drive folder just of brand documents. And that has kind of, you know, here's information about me. Here's articles, I've written in small business, so he can get an idea, just all that kind of stuff. It's got like a brand colors, our logo, the graphic stuff, a whole bunch of things in there.
And that's shared with virtual assistants, calendar events, or at least kind of key goals, like what are you trying to do? And even just calendar of things, like, you know, at the moment with one of my virtual assistants, I've sort of said to her, Oh, school holidays is coming up. So speaking of which, my son has just been banging his basketball against the office. Not sure you can hear that, but yeah, you want to make sure that they're aware of what is coming up for you and the key goals you might have in your business. As I said before, clear KPIs. So that's key performance indicators. It's a very corporate term, but really it's about thinking, what would you like them to have done in 30, 60, and 90 days? The other thing is to give them time, to know your business, you know, give them time to get used to your website, your social media, your tone of voice.
If you've got tone of voice documents, that's even better give them a bit of time. They're not going to come in from day one and be able to transform everything. And even, you know, over time, you might still have say an email that gets sent out and you think I would never have worded it like that. And these are all things they're just opportunities for you both to learn and for you to go, okay, maybe I need to put kind of phrases or terms people can use, or, you know, say we don't use that. And again, this can sometimes be, you know, come up when you have people from two different countries. So even, you know, my virtual assistants in the U S we speak English, they speak English, but there was just sometimes phrases that they wouldn't know what that meant from an Australian client, or that they would say that I thought, Oh, no, like, that doesn't mean the same thing here.
So please don't say it or where it could come across as a bit stiff to somebody. Yeah. So you just got to be aware of those things, and you can only know most of the time when they actually come up. The other thing is to document your processes. So we have, and I've talked about this before, but we have all our processes mapped out in an Asana process board, but some of those also have like QuickTime videos. So on a Mac QuickTime is a free tool. That is part of your applications on a Mac. I'm sure there are other tools on PCs, or you can use tools online, like loom or screen custom [inaudible] or Camtasia where you could use zoom and share your screen and do a tutorial like that. But I use QuickTime quite often to show, ah, okay, this is what I want you to work on.
I'll just screen, record myself, doing the work, like, okay, then I would open this document and I'd put the information here. And then in the backend of Squarespace, this is what you do. And I just keep them in the Asana boards, but document your processes, if you haven't already, because that's going to be really far easier a for you to see if the process even works. And if it's like clear to somebody else, which is great for scaling your business and also B that you can see potentially where there's gaps, where you're assuming things, or, you know, you can say to somebody check the process, you know, please don't ask me questions unless you've gone through the process because everything's in the process document that regular check-ins. So we, one of my VAs and I used to do this a bit more, and then we kind of got a bit lax.
And so I've actually started, we will have check-ins every Monday now, and then speak up when things don't work, you know, your virtual assistant or your OBM, they don't know what they don't know. And if you just keep letting things happen and then getting annoyed or resentful about it without actually telling them, I really don't like when you do this, or, Hey, I noticed you, weren't doing that. They're just not going to learn and you're going to just be annoyed. So it's better for everyone. If you just speak up and also give them that power as well, please, you know, say to them, if I'm not making it clear, or if I'm expecting too much, please speak up. And I've had to say that a few times, like, you know, I would imagine that this task takes this long. It's taking you double that what's happening.
And they might say, Oh, well, I actually didn't realize that you wanted this and this done, or can you show me how you do it? Because maybe I'm missing something and just have that real transparent conversation. It's a relationship like anything else. And like you would have if somebody was in the office. So if you think you are ready, if you're like, yes, and listening to this, I'm really kind of in it. Or I've been thinking about getting a virtual assistant for awhile, then listen, if you are, you should have clear answers for the following questions. And just a reminder, you can get a full transcript of this episode over at my daily business, coach.com forward slash podcast forward slash 92. But you want to be able to answer these questions. Why is your business set up to take on staff? Is it set up for people?
You know, just basic things. Like if they've got an email address, why is this going to help you and your business like, get really clear on what it's bringing in? Do you have brand guidelines set up? So do they know a bit about the brand so that they're not constantly asking questions or potentially sending something out into the world that is just off brand? Do you have processes documented using a tool like Asana or Trello or a whole lot of videos using a tool like QuickTime? Do you have time to manage somebody? So again, this is a big one. And I talked about whether you bring someone on in two months when you've got the time or looking at your calendar and making sure that you're not bringing somebody on, in the middle of a launch or in the middle of something else, that's going to take up a lot of your time.
And initially, do you have someone to give tasks it's to, or someone to completely manage one element? So like I said, is it something that every day you're going to say, here's the stuff I want you to do? Or is it, I want you to project manage this whole area such as Facebook advertising or, you know, reporting or things like that. Do you know your budget? So again, you might want to listen to episode 88 that talks you in detail about how to figure out how much you can afford, but, you know, do you know what you can afford? Because sometimes you can get caught up. I've done this before, where, especially with one agency in the U S when they'd said, Oh, yep. They can do your dental appointments. They can do this, this, this, and then they said they would need a minimum of this much per week.
And I, I did really think about, Oh my gosh, maybe I do need that person because wouldn't it be lovely to have a personal assistant. And I had to hang back and be like, you know what, right now, that's not in my budget for this person. Do you know the frequency that you'll need their help? You know, is it ongoing? Is it one-off? And if it is ongoing, how many hours per week, you know, you might say, Oh my gosh, I can't afford somebody four days a week. And it might be like, you don't need them for hours. You just need them for two hours a day, which is 10 hours a week. What role they play externally in your business? So are they going to be client facing or are they just behind the scenes? One of my virtual assistants is client facing. The other one is behind the scenes.
So, you know, if they're client facing, is there extra stuff that you need to get prepared? What sort of induction do they need? And then how are you going to manage confidential information, such as financial statements, client, customer, data, and passwords. So those are some questions to answer, but, you know, outsourcing part of your marketing or your reporting or your, you know, social media or other parts of your business can free up your time to focus on the activities that you're best at, but do not go into it naive or, you know, without expecting it to take some work, to set up and without expecting it to be trial and error. And sometimes you might hire somebody and after three months, you're like, that's not the right person. And you can feel like, Oh, what am I doing wrong? So it's not always going to be a perfect fit and you're going to have to just work through that.
So that is some information about how to hire and find and work with a virtual assistant. If this is something that you're really keen to do, you can, like I said, go and get the transcript for this and kind of work through those points. If you would like someone to help you with them, of course you can book in for an ad hoc one-off laser session with me. And you can just find that over at my deli business, coach.com. But yeah, the big thing is to remember, you are hiring a human who has a family and has, you know, stressors and everything else in their life. It's not a robot that you're hiring that is going to do everything perfectly, and you need to be super clear on what you need them for and what you expect, and then how can you set them up for success?
So that is it for today's coaching episode. If you found this useful, I would love it so much. If you could take two seconds to leave a review, it just really helps us get found by other small business owners. And of course, I would love it if you might share it on social media and tag at @mydailybusinesscoach. So I don't miss it. And then even, yeah, you might want to pop into the DMS and let me know what you most took away from this. And of course, if you're a virtual assistant or an OBM listening to this, and you think there's a big thing that you forgot to say, please get in touch over at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com or on Instagram cause I'd love to know from your take as well. Thanks so much for listening. See you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
