Hey hey! Welcome to episode 135 of Life on Fire TV. On this episode we’re talking about one of the most important ways to leverage yourself in your business: how to hire a virtual assistant, and how best to work with them.
As entrepreneurs we love to do take it all on and do it ourselves! So often we think no one can do it as well as we can. But the truth is hiring someone else to help us is one of the best ways we can grow our businesses. And while we may be very, very good at something if that task isn’t profit-producing and income-generating it is a task someone else can do for us.
Early on in my business I hired Donna who you will hear from on this episode. Donna has been with me throughout my entire business journey. I hired her to help me with social media 5 years ago and since then she has grown into greater roles with greater responsibility. She’s been critical to my success and I’m happy she is a significant part of the Life on Fire team.
Today Donna talks about how she’s grown into her current role as the hub of our customer support team. She’s also hired and trained several virtual assistants (VAs) over the years and has figured out what to do and what not to do with VAs! She shares all of that on this episode.
In this episode you’ll hear:
The two tools to make your life easier when training a VA. (18:30)
How to be ready to let go and let your VA handle work for you. (31:50)
Are VAs employees or contractors and how does that impact your business? (35:00)
How to trust your VA with your social media tasks. (42:00)
Should you outsource your Facebook ads? (51:00)
And so much more!
The first step in hiring a VA is to make a list of tasks you would like to give your assistant. Even if you aren’t in a place where you can hire someone right now this is still an important step to take because when you are ready you’ll know what you need help with. When you know what you need done you’ll have a better idea of who you need to hire.
And when you’re ready to hire you have many options. To take the guesswork out of what company to use Donna and I share our experiences with several different companies we’ve used. In the past we’ve worked with Employee 123 and had good experiences.
We also have worked with Virtual Staff Finder, my friend Chris Ducker’s company. They blew us away with the level of detail and attention they provided. It literally took Donna two days to decide from the candidates they offered us because they gave us so much information on each person – which is a good thing! They made sure we had everything we could possibly need to make the best choice for us, and we did.
If you aren’t looking for a part-time or full-time VA but you have a project you need completed you can use a web site like oDesk. I’ve used this in the past and it’s worked out well. You sign up, post your project and how much you’ll pay to have it done and then people apply. You choose from the applicants and once you both agree to the terms they start working for you.
Whether you go with oDesk, Employee 123 or Virtual Staff Finder your next step will be to document how you want your tasks completed. You can use a tool like Jing or Snagit to do so. Jing is free and Snagit is inexpensive so they’re both great options for you.
Now your VA is ready to work so your only responsibility at this point is to track their progress and manage them. You can track the progress of tasks by using a tool called Asana. You assign, track and manage tasks within Asana so everyone is on the same page; it’s a much simpler and easier way to keep the workflow flowing.
And that’s how you hire a virtual assistant and manage them! It’s one of the best practices I’ve implemented in my business and it’s paid off handsomely.
On this episode we also answer some specific questions like how to pay an overseas virtual assistant, how to trust your VA with your social media and why scheduling is so critical to succeeding in business, and in life.
You can hear all of that on the 135th episode of Life on Fire TV! Thanks for being here and we’ll see you on the next episode.
EPISODE RESOURCES
IgniteEvent2015.com http://igniteevent2015.com/
Jing https://www.techsmith.com/jing.html
Snagit https://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html
Employee 123 http://123employee.com/
Virtual Staff Finder http://www.virtualstafffinder.com/
Odesk https://www.upwork.com/
Asana https://app.asana.com/
Email donna at [email protected]
Subscribe to Life on Fire TV Podcast http://www.lifeonfire.com/itunes
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