Five Things to Consider When Hiring a VA

Posted on 23 August 2011 by

Hiring a VA is an important decision for you and your business.  If you hire the right VA they can become a true business partner and help you grow your business.  A simply Google search is not enough to find that perfect fit.  How do you know what you to look for?  Here are my five items to consider before hiring a VA:

1.)    What skills do you need?  Do you need someone to help you with your website, social media, web analytics?  Or perhaps you need an expert with shopping cart knowledge and strong writing skills?  Maybe you are looking for a bookkeeper?  Knowing in advance of the skills you need will ensure you find a VA who can best help you.

2.)    Work Ethic/Professionalism:  What type of training does your VA have?  How long have they been in the VA business?  What software programs do they know?  Make sure to qualify your VA candidates and having a conversation to ensure they have the same business philosophy you do is also helpful.

3.)    Recommendations: Ask people in a similar business or industry as you who you know work with a VA for recommendations.  Often you will find that your colleagues have great VA’s working behind the scenes and you didn’t even realize it!  This is exactly the type of VA you want!

4.)    Availability & Management: What hours is your VA available?  Do they have a back-up?  What happens if your VA becomes ill? How about problems, is there someone you can speak with if you are not satisfied with the work your VA is doing?  You don’t want to spend time managing a VA or worrying about what to do if they aren’t available, so sourcing a company who has back-up plans in place is a great idea to ensure your business runs smoothly.

5.)    Budget:  I put this last for a reason, yes you do need to have a budget to hire a VA, BUT…if you hire someone matching the four items above, budget should be the final consideration.  The goal of hiring a VA is to take items off your plate so your focus can be solely on revenue generating tasks.  Think about budget, keeping in mind the savings you obtain by not hiring a direct employee (vacation time, benefits, taxes) and also think how much more your business can grow by having a right-hand person to do all the administrative work for you.

What are your golden rules for a VA?  Let us know below what you did to ensure your VA was the right for you and let’s build this list together.

Monday Mindset: If you want the staff to give great service to customers, the leaders have to give great service to the staff

Posted on 22 August 2011 by

This is Zingerman’s Natural Law of Business No. 5, which originally comes from Robert Greenleaf’s book, Servant Leadership.

Here’s the concept in a nutshell: The service that the staff gives to customers is never going to be better than the service that we as leaders provide to the staff.

Interestingly, your first priority when running your business should be to treat your staff well, THEN treat your customers well as a second priority. Not the way round you’d think eh? That’s because your team invariably will be the first point of contact your clients have with your business, and if they’re not full of excitement for the vision of your business, and don’t communicate that in everything they do, your customers aren’t going to stick around for long!

With that in mind….here are 5 Golden Rules For Working With Your First Virtual Assistant

1.)    Communicate, Communicate, Communicate! This could be all five rules.  The importance of regular and consistent communication with your VA can not be stressed enough.  Have weekly meetings where you can see one another (use Skype!), talk through the priorities of the week, and clarify project plans.  Take the time to build a relationship with your VA.  It’s more pleasant working with people than just faceless names on a computer screen, and you will be more likely to get better work from employees who see you as a person rather than just a task allocator.

2.)    Provide specific guidelines and timelines: Use a project management system, to do list manager or even a simple spreadsheet to list out tasks and deadlines.  This will ensure both of you can easily see the status of your projects and avoid any confusion over assignments or deadlines.  When communicating tasks be clear in your direction and available to your VA if they have any questions – see above – a weekly meeting makes this easier.

3.)    Don’t be afraid to delegate: You’ve hired a VA so it’s time to let go a little.  A great way to think about what to delegate is to look at all areas of your business.  What items do you simply not enjoy doing?  Where would an extra hand be the most help?  Are there things you do every day that takes away from directly increasing your revenue?  These are the tasks to delegate to your VA.  Think about this; if you are now free to concentrate fully on revenue generating tasks, how much more could your business grow?

4.)    Share Your Vision: To get the most out of your VA, take time to communicate the vision of your business, this will strengthen your relationship and provide your VA with clear direction and insight into you and your business goals.  When your VA understands how their task fit into the big picture, they can become a true business partner and offer more and more value.

5.)    Evaluate: Provide regular feedback to your VA on their performance and be open to their feedback too.  Let your VA know what they do for you that is excellent and what you would like them to do better.  A mix of positive and constructive feedback will help your VA improve and lead to better results for you.  Be open to ideas and feedback from your VA too.  If you are communicating well (see #1 & 5 above) then your VA will know your business goals and can offer ideas to improve your processes, make suggestions for new projects and more.

What are your golden rules for virtual team success?  Share below so we can all learn from one another.

Monday Mindset: People Do Their Best Work When They’re Part Of A Really Great Organization

Posted on 11 July 2011 by

This is the Zingerman’s Natural Laws Of Business No 4.

Some of you I know have teams, or perhaps you have just one other person to help you out, and I know many more of you have a team of people to support you as part of your longer term vision. This week I’m asking you to stop and ponder about how your team thinks about working for you.

This is a very old and oft-told story, but I think provides a beautiful example of the vision I have here for our team at JigsawBox – with my answers your typical Virtual Assistant might give in brackets added!

“On a foggy autumn day nearly 800 years ago a traveller happened upon a large group of workers adjacent to the River Avon. Despite being tardy for an important rendezvous curiosity convinced the traveller that he should inquire about their work. With a slight detour he moved toward the first of the three tradesmen and said “my dear fellow what is it that you are doing?” The man continued his work and grumbled, “I am cutting stones.” ( I am setting up WordPress). Realising that the mason did not wish to engage in a conversation the traveller moved toward the second of the three and repeated the question. To the traveller’s delight this time the man stopped his work, ever so briefly, and stated that he was a stonecutter. He then added “I came to Salisbury from the north to work but as soon as I earn ten quid I will return home.” (I work for this person, but as soon as someone offers me more money or one of my other clients decides to run a tele-summit, you won’t see me for dust!) The traveller thanked the second mason, wished him a safe journey home and began to head to the third of the trio.

When he reached the third worker he once again asked the original question. This time the worker paused, glanced at the traveller until they made eye contact and then looked skyward drawing the traveller’s eyes upward. The third mason replied, “I am a mason and I am building a cathedral.” (I’m helping create a community of coaches to help more clients and have more free time).”

So how does your Virtual Assistant or Team feel about working to support what you do? What would their answers be? Dare you forward them this post and ask them to comment?!?

Do you give them a series of tasks to be done, or do you include them in your vision, and hold them accountable as you all work towards it together. Getting the third answer isn’t something that just happens – it takes time, focus and persistence to develop – important to realise when it’s so easy to get up while posting tweets/blog posts/writing sales pages…

When I visited Zingerman’s with my mentor Yanik Silver, he commented that he could see how creating a great feeling amongst your team would be possible when you all work in the same physical location, with weekly ‘team huddles’, motivational poster and an on-site training centre. The challenge most of us have is trying to create this sense of loyalty and buy-in to the bigger picture on a virtual basis.

It’s certainly part of our vision and we’re a global virtual team, I’d love to hear how YOU’RE doing it?

Monday Mindset: Become an outsourcing queen (or king)

Posted on 10 January 2011 by

Well as many of you know that have watched my recent short video, I’m cutting my working hours right back in 2011 to spend more time with my kids, while still having huge plans to grow my business.

How on earth are you doing it? I’m being asked, so here’s the answer.

1. Create income streams which mean you can sell more than your 1:1 time (find out more about that on my brand new 2-part webinar series starting tomorrow).

2. Outsource and delegate like crazy. Bookeeping was the first thing to go last year, and one of the best decisions I ever made.

I now have two virtual assistants as part of the team and I’ve taken on a new coach to roll out JigsawBox to the Swedish Market. I’ve hired an event planner to source the 5 star venue for my newest VIP program launching shortly, and manage the whole run-up to the first of the three live three-day retreats. And on top of all that I’ve recruited the services of my very own Operations Manager so that I can take me out of my business and let me focus truly on what I do best in the two hours a day I have available.

I shall be doing nothing but coaching my clients and coming up with new ways to generate revenue streams – my favourite ways to spend my working time.

And then I hear you ask – how on earth do you afford it all? The answer here is simple – decide how much you want to earn this year. Then spend around 20-25% of that on support to get you there if you’re going for a quantum leap in your business.

It’s about planning from where you’re going NOT where you’re coming from that’s the difference that makes the difference in the way you view outsourcing.

Again, as with all Monday Mindset blog posts, write it out, stick it above your desk and live just as if it were true for one week and see the difference this makes to your business.

Hope to see you on the call tomorrow when I’ll be spending one of my precious hours telling you all about the Five Keys To Your First $50K.