How to Hire a Virtual Assistant as a Marketer: Start for About $200 a Month

Kind: captions Language: en What's happening friends? Welcome back to another powerful episode of Marketing by Design. If this is your first time here, if you're a high performing marketer and you want to learn from other people accomplishing incredible things, you are in the right place. Right off the rip, I'm going to tell you guys this might be the most valuable podcast you have ever listened to. If you're a CMO and independent marketer and looking to build out your own lean team, a couple months back, I did a workshop for the 10X solo community founded by my friend Garrett Justice about how I built my remote team using a lean hiring method. I go super deep with this small group and talk about all the nuance. I introduce my team members, how I met each of them, the payment structure, how I got started, pricing, and also give you some really good use cases on tasks that you can delegate to team members to help them get started. I go into even more specifics like the tools I use, messaging platforms, payments, and even some potentially boring but very helpful tax information that you're going to want to know right at the end. So, if you've ever considered hiring a VA or even delegating some of the stuff that you don't want to do in your day, this is a perfect episode for you to listen to. I spent so many hours putting together the research, looking back at the numbers, and putting together the deck for this episode to share with the community. And I think you're going to get a ton of value out of it. If you want my full slide deck to this presentation, which gives you a step-by-step guide for all of the resources that I talked about and how you can get started for as little as $200 a month hiring your own team members, that'll be in the first link below. Huge shout out to the 10X Solo community. If you are a solo in your business and you're looking to surround yourself with other people who are high performing, 10X Solo is one of my favorite communities. I highly recommend that you connect with Garrett on LinkedIn. Subscribe to his 10X Solo newsletter and check out the community as well. That link will be below. Huge thank you to Garrett for the thumbs up on uploading this. So without further ado, let's get straight into the podcast. How to hire and run a small remote team and getting started for less than $200 a month. Let's go. So for those of you that don't know Andy, he'll do a brief intro, but he runs MMG Studio and web flow, web design and SEO for healthcare companies mostly. And so um we talked through a couple of different topics that he wanted to present on. This is one that the community kind of voted on when we sent this out, I don't know, maybe a month or two ago um around a VA. So, we're excited to have him here just kind of talk through his process of as he's hired a couple of VAS or virtual assistants in the Philippines, what that process looks like, what it costs, how he's gone about it. So, something I think many of us when you get to that point have at least thought about um if not have done already. So, I think it'll be a good really good learning session. So, feel free to chime in if you have questions for Andy as we go through, but we'll turn over to you, Andy. For sure, man. Yeah, I'm really excited about this, guys. Um, this is I'm going to keep it pretty conversational and laidback because I think we have like 10 or 11 people here. It'll be good. Uh, it's a good size to like really get to know like each of your guys' situations in terms of whether working with a VA or hiring a contractor or something that you've done before. Um, I do have a slide deck prepared, but it's pretty lightweight. It's mostly just for uh it was honestly cool to go back and see like the phases of um the early days of working with the team members and sharing some of my lessons along the way. Um so I think it's going to be a lot of fun for you. Um so this is what I had put together. Um and I'll just kind of go through it. And by the way, I operate I'm a podcaster. So I operate on the um interruptions are not rude framework because I can't really see you guys right now. Interruptions are a sign of interest. So, I encourage you to like like literally blurt out um any questions or anything that comes up as I kind of go through some of this. Um I'll try to make it practical as possible, too. So, I'll show you guys like some of the projects that I have them doing um like even some of our chat threads and really give you guys some ideas and um because I know there's a lot of anxiety that can come around delegating work or approaching team members and things like that. Um so, yeah, I'm just going to kind of share my experiences and you know, hope be as helpful as possible. So my goal today is not to try and convince you guys to do so. Um I know different depending on you guys' wants and needs and your vision for the business. I've always kind of known from the beginning that I wanted to scale. I wanted to share the journey with other people and get help. Um and I had a lot of hesitations around doing it uh in the first place, right? Like there's some there is definitely a learning curve that came with it. Um, I've, you know, there's potential horror stories of like, oh, you know, I had to say how to do things multiple times and, you know, it still didn't get done. And I've had experiences like that, too. But I want to maybe show you guys some experiences and stories that may kind of like slot you to where you're at in the journey and convince you uh whether or not it's a good fit for you. So, what I want to do today is talk about like a framework. So just like best practices for delegating um a little bit of my personal story into having done it before uh you know whether or not it's right for you. So if it's something that you want to experiment with, you guys will have a lot of um a lot of context in order to know whether it's right for you. Mistakes that you can avoid. So some potentially funny stories in terms of things that I did wrong that I don't want you guys to do if it is something you decide to do. Um and some like S tier or killer use cases. um things that have been like really high value that I've delegated and times where it's like re really reaffirmed to me that it was the uh the right choice. Um so yeah uh so a little bit about me. So like you're probably thinking a web and SEO guy, why are you talking about VAS? And Garrett kind of talked about this in the beginning was my goal is to be as big of a utility to you guys as I can uh and associate I want you guys to associate value with me, my personal brand and what I do. um and continue to build a relationship. But the cool part about this is that I have nothing to sell. So um I'm I'm not feeling a whole lot of pressure to um overd deliver on this topic. I just want to share my experiences. Um so that's a little about who I am. I'm a um personally I live here in Columbus, Ohio. I've been running my um web and healthcare stu web and SEO studio for healthcare for a little over two years starting in February 1st of 2024. started as a freelancer and um slowly uh started hiring about a year ago and have hired I've been on up I've hired upwards of 20 contractors in total for smaller tasks but I work with a lean team of three for everything uh in the business um currently so I have a small team of three three people um these are the my closest team members now Roa is my executive assistant um she'll be a lot of the use case for what I'm talking about today uh in terms of best um like best advice for tasks that you guys can use and ideas for how to work with assistance. So she'll be kind of the main topic of this. Uh these are more of my technical team members that help out with a lot of our client facing work. So Ali is my first hire that I've been working with for a little over a year and Clark is web flow developer. So he does all of our project based and web flow maintenance work. Um and both of them combine to help with some of our our SEO work as well. So, these are people that I work with, all of them from the Philippines. I'll go a little bit into each of them because I think it's it's a good idea to kind of personalize um my my team a little bit and I'm really proud of them. So, Roa is she's an executive assistant. She's uh worked very closely with her. She's honestly a friend. She's been working for 10 plus years as a VA. She's 34. She's a mom of two. She's in charge of everything of inboxing and calendar scheduling. and she helps a lot with outreach, which I I'll show you about because I know that's kind of packaged in the value prop this presentation. Um, and she also does a ton with content. So, that was kind of like one of her past roles uh was she was a social and content manager uh at a small agency. That's a big part of what she's done as a VA as well. Ali is the technical arm of the team. He is a full stack developer. Um, I made a post about this on LinkedIn a while back, but he actually pitched me on working together. um he saw, you know, he had been following me on LinkedIn for a while, saw the the content I was making and honestly made like proactive uh like technical technical suggestions for the website of things for some of our client sites. Um, so it was really I was honestly friends with him before we started working together and that's why I said like I'm I'm open to being sold to when it comes to LinkedIn because usually it's done completely wrong and the outreach is terrible as you guys know. Um, but he I was actually helpful and proactive. He we've been working together for over a year. So he's the first person I actually ever delegated work to and now he's working 20 plus hours a week um for our our client work. But he's he's the only client facing member of our team. He's well spoken. He has great English. Um he's a dad of three late 30s and um yeah a big reason why I show up every day. Uh last main team member is Clark. He is a web flow developer from the Philippines. He is very much a technical creative. So he's quiet. He's not he's what some might call socially awkward. He's like seriously seriously intelligent. I don't I'm not sure what the Filipino equivalent of like a master's degree, but he's been through a ton of school um web flow professional certified, which is pretty rare for uh anyone overseas and is just incredible, incredibly technically talented as well. Um quick story, not particularly relevant to this, but about three and a half years ago, the thought of even delegating work or paying other people to work for me was crazy. Um, I worked at an internship when I was in college and I was making $10 an hour. Um, working for a golf fitness company, doing a lot of their social and just like general marketing tasks. I worked in their warehouse a little bit as well. Um, so it's kind of cool like putting this presentation together and seeing like um the phases of the journey and it's really cool to be on the other side of it now. Um, so this is more on the tangible like actual value side. So, I view that there's like cuz I know the the biggest fear part of this is actually getting started. Uh, and so I want to like reduce that fear for you guys as much as possible. I view that there's like two ideal paths into doing something like this. There's the agency route which I know there's been a couple chats in the thread about uh working with a VA placement agency and they'll take a lot of the technical side of it off your plate. They'll give you a presentation. and they'll match you with someone um and they'll make it like a concier's experience. Um there's potential and every agency is different um in terms of their how their working structure if whether or not they have minimums. Not all of them do. Sometimes they have a markup. Um they're they're good for your first time doing it if you wanted to like I said a concier on board onboarding and they they do work very quickly. Um, and then there's the other option of I won't ask this question because I know not a lot of us have done either yet, but hiring direct. And this is what I did. And for both Clark and Clark and Roa, I went to a platform called online jobs.ph, which I actually I talked to the founder of. He's a really cool guy. His name's John. And their model is that they vet all the people that come onto their platform. And you can use it's like a job board. You can use it for free to browse profiles. You can see education level, you can see experience, you can see a lot of them post videos on like introducing themselves. Um, and they are all background checked. So, they have a pretty rigorous certification progress process where they will they have to have a background check before they even create a profile on there. And over there, it's kind of viewed as like the industry gold standard of getting a profile on there. um rather than like other platforms like Upwork or Freelancer.com where basically anyone out of the blue can make a profile if you have a brain and a keyboard and a Wi-Fi connection basically. Um they also have built-in time tracking um and they keep 100% pay. The job platform doesn't take any cut. That's why they have a paid plan to use it. And I I'm not like I don't I'm not affiliate for online job. they just really like their product because it's a good business model and they make money by directly charging a monthly rate to then go in and um actually be able to contact people natively. So you don't have to pay to job browse the job board, but you do have to pay a monthly fee in order to directly hire and contact people on there. A bit of a workaround with this as I did with Clark is you can find their profile on online jobs and then just find them on LinkedIn or somewhere else. And a lot of times the best performing people will be on LinkedIn. They'll be on other platforms trying to get work as well. Um, so that was how I found Clark was I saw a lot of his web flow work on online jobs. He looked like I could tell he's really technically skilled. I can take a look at a website that a freelancer builds and I can tell it's built well. Um, and uh, you can cross reference that with their LinkedIn profile. I just reached out to him and said, "Hey, would love to work together." Gave him a trial task. Um, so you don't actually have to pay online jobs anything. You just have to pay in order to to reach out to them. And part of their part of what you get within their fee is free time tracking. So they have a time tracking software called Time Proof, which is kind of bum bundled with their paid plan. You don't have to use that, but it is it is an easy solution. We don't use it because it takes screenshots and it records um their sessions, which I view as potentially invasive. um depends on where you stand at as from an ethical standpoint, but they do have that built in for free and they also handle payments fully compliantly there as well. So, you don't have to pay them, but this is kind of the path too. And like I said, there's no judgment. You guys can do either. Um but the principles that I'll talk about too will still apply either way moving forwards. Um this is a little bit more context on the agency side. So again, no judgment. I don't really care either way. It's a great business model. um they're taking advantage of the not taking advantage but they're you know they're capitalizing on the location arbitrage in terms of the payment. A lot of times they will charge $10 to $15 an hour. Um and they'll keep a significant portion of it. Um so that's I mean a lot of times like they will and I I have a slide that goes over the the exact conversion rates so you can kind of see like what it's like. But sometimes they'll have setup fees, sometimes they'll have hour minimums. like somewhere.com is a popular one that's more that's more enterprise but they have two options either part-time or full-time and then you pay a flat retainer rate um and especially if you want to start small like I mentioned even starting as low as 200 bucks a month if you want to start small um a lot of the freelancers on online jobs or someone that you find internally they will be open to starting at a lower hourly rate versus if you work with an agency it's not as profitable as them for them if they're only working a smaller number of hours. So, if you want to start small, it'll be harder to do with an agency, but um that's just kind of context into both options. Like the second option, the one that I did is definitely more time inensive, but you also build a relationship with the people uh that you meet and you kind of learn what a good candidate looks like. Um so, again, definitely two options and you could pursue a resume. I kind of already went Hey, Andy, I just chime in real quick. I dropped a link in the chat in case anyone's interested too. This is another agency that I'm familiar with called Coconut VA. It's the exact same like exactly what Andy was saying. So like I think you get two options part-time or full-time like 20 hours a week or 40 hours a week. Um but like really in the same range there. So I know some people who've had a good experience working with them but it's limited in scope and just like Andy said. So yeah. And it's like and it's honestly tough to say because it's like if I'm in the financial situation that I am now, I probably wouldn't be as apt to go through all the interviews and really kind of do it my own way. But I just the way I want to build a business, it's I want to build more of the personal relationship. I will also say too if you do work with an agency, I would always recommend starting a conversation once you build a relationship with the person that you're working with to say, "Hey, do you want to take this off pl off off platform and just work together?" And a lot of times if you offer them eight eight to10 dollars an hour, they will be thrilled because they're probably making like4 to5 working through an agency and them taking the middle cut, they will be and this it's part of the culture too. Like I even have it right here. Deeply deeply loyal culture. And this I know this is more specific to the Philippines because that's the only experience that I have working with others. Um, but it's very once you invest in them, they are they are very deeply loyal to you and I that's why I am so bought into doing this and I' that's why I'm deeply passionate about it even though it's it's not something that I sell. So, um, yeah, again, just sharing experience. I kind of already went into the story of my first story with Clark. Um, yeah, if you that's why I'm I'm bullish on online jobs because every interview that I've gone on, it's been a person in a room. They may not have microphones or like have a perfect recording setting. Um, but people that can like speak English. And if you have ever tried getting on a call with someone from like Upwork or Freelancer, it's definitely not always the case. Um, but I was just I was blown away because I came from working with freelancers from online or from um Upwork and freelance from Upwork and Fiverr, places like that and that was just not the case. like people who didn't speak well, who didn't articulate their words well, who wouldn't turn a camera on and things like that. Um, yeah, that's again either agency or online jobs are two options that uh I would pursue. Hey, Andy Josh asked what was the other agency that you mentioned was the name of it. Um, the the ones that I've somewhere.com somewhere. Yeah, perfect. Thank you. Yeah, I think they they do Philippines. They also do like Ladam, Central America. So, they have a couple different regions. Um, but actually me and I quad maxed last night. I went in and calculated this. So, we pay I pay Roa. Roa's $8 an hour. Um, Clark is 10 and Ali is 15 because he's a senior hireer. Um, and all these people are, you know, they're all in their 30s, so they're older than I am. But I went into the calculations. So, this is completely updated. But Manila minimum wage, which is Manila, the capital of Philippines, is 695p. And they have, but that's per day. So, they have a day rate as they don't have like a an official hourly rate, but they have a minimum day rate. Uh, and that works out 695p is about 11.40 an hour. Uh, which works 11.40 per day. Geez, sorry. Which works out in our terms to about an hour a$140 per hour for a full hour workday. Excuse me. If you pay 8 to 15, that's like far more an accident. So to put that in context, at this rate at $10 at $8 at $10 an hour, at this rate, the VA earns a full day of local minimum wage in about 90 minutes. Um, so paying a Filipino VA VA $10 an hour is seven times their local minimum wage. So for an American worker, that would be $52 an hour or roughly $18,000 a year. And I wouldn't be I don't hear anyone coming um with coming with pitchforks of people who are making $18,000 a year thinking like, "Oh, they're so underpaid." So um they're paid quite well. And like I said, Ali is making 50% more than that at 15 an hour. So it it works to be very very profitable for them. So they're they're very well paid on their ends. And that's why I think it's like it's pretty much a home run for everyone provided that you're treating them well, you're paying them predictably, you're communicating well, you're making it a good working experience for them. And the good part about that is that this is what you get to curate. You get to build, you know, a lot of us are solos, but you still get to kind of have the benefits of building a company and having a team culture without having a lot of the stress and overhead of like health care and you know, who you choose and things like that. So, um, there's a little bit of technical tax stuff I'll get into at the end in terms of having a 1099. Um, but it's very low lift compared to full-time employee. So, just that context, too. This is, um, this is this part is incorrect. Um, but this is the team currently. Ro is about 400 a month. Uh, she works uh, she works two hours a day at $8 an hour. So, that works out to about 400 a month, 200 bi-weekly. Clark, he he works hourly. So, a lot of this is very flexible, too based on client work. So, Clark and Ali both work hourly. Um, and they clock in and out based on our project management system in ClickUp. So, I just pay them bi-weekly based on how many hours that they log per client in ClickUp. Um, and it usually uh attributes to about 1K a month total, but again, a lot of times you can work for just an executive assistant who would be your first hire. Uh, in most of our business cases, you can start for as little as 200 a month. uh someone who's willing to work one to two hours a day uh or not even every day. You could do uh one hour or you could do two hours a day for three days a week. Um yeah, it's it's a very, you know, appealing entry cost if you want to start on the lower end, but this is just what it's in now. Um that's where the the team is at currently. Question on that, Andy. Sorry, you said to interrupt. So, um going back to that going back to that slide about the pricing. Um, I did talk to Garrett. You suggested uh Coconut and I've talked to them a couple times. Um, the Oh, no, no, no. The pricing for each person with the the pricing plans that that Coconut has, uh, it's like if you want kind of what you're describing and it's like minimum like 1,500 and I know obviously there's overhead and you're kind of what you're saying suggesting is going through the back door kind of through some of this. Um, does that seem does that seem is that right? Am I like reading that right? It's like an agency is going to be just way more in general. Yeah, that was Yeah, they're probably going to charge a lot more. That's that said too, 1500, you're probably getting more hours. Um, but what I found especially with these, especially like going off, that's why I'm such a big advocate of going off platform. And it's not, like I said, it's not for everybody. Um, but especially for me in the beginning, money was a factor. And I was willing to if you're paying them $8 an hour directly, the amount of loyalty that I was able to build with, you know, Ali, Roda, and Clark from paying them more than they would get through an agency, they they will do very good work very efficiently. Um, but the 1500 from an from an agency, that depends like you kind of have to what they'll do what they'll offer to a lot of times is they will offer to switch like without any fees. So if you don't like the person, they'll make the switching cost really low. um which is kind of again at the the contrast of going deep with someone earning trust if you're kind of treating them transactionally like that. But I imagine they're anchoring that price on more more hours. But again, you'd want to use your better judgment in terms of the output that you get for those hours too. Um so things like social media content scheduling depending on the type of task. Um I would ask them like how many hours you would be getting and then the recommended working cadence for that. Um, but yeah, that's the Coconut Josh. Um, like at least in the past, it's been a couple months since I worked with someone who hired them, but they only had like their minimum was 20 hours a week or 40. So, it was like, so you might not need someone to work 20 hours a week when with your first hire. And I think that's really the benefit that Andy's talking about is like the the 900, the 1500 that's on their website is like 20 hours a week minimum, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. And how many hours a week are each of these VAS doing? Andy, so I have I have ROA at 20 hours a week, four hours a day. But I did not start her there. I started her two hours a day. Um Oh, okay. Can you go back to the other slide that has them individually in the price? Yes. I think it was the one after. Yeah, that one. That's it. Okay. Um Yeah. So, that's what they're at currently. And it does flex between these two, but she's more of a set rate. Um, so I mean, yeah, that's it's I will say too, it'll be hard for you to go from zero to 20 hours a week in terms of getting enough tasks ready for them to fill that time, especially if they're That makes sense. Yeah. So, this is it's kind of an on-ramp, but like I said, it comes with it trade-offs. So, it's like they will the agency will do a good job of saying like, "Hey, this is your business. This is the stuff that you can currently delegate, giving you ideas." I have some S tier use cases that I I'll go into practical examples now of what how they spend their time to give you guys some ideas. Um, but the agency will do a good job of saying like, hey, here's some ideas of what you what they can do, what they're good at. Um, but then you kind of have to go in and create SOPs, which is another thing we'll talk about that make that on-ramp a little bit easier. Um, but yeah, like I said, positive and negative to both. Um this is the um the lead genen and outreach system that ROA manages currently. Um and a lot of times with when I say lead genen and outreach, it's not other people sending messages on your behalf. It's basically doing just awareness of like the sales funnel. So, a big part of working with someone else is that allows you to focus on the parts of the business that actually move the business forward and not do like the spreadsheet stuff and like the 1% refinements that aren't the best use of your time. And I'm like patient zero for this because I have a design background. I want to control everything. Um, but what Roa does is we were we're kind of iterating on the system now. But she is responsible for like pipeline oversight. So this is our um our um I'll share with you guys the the Google sheet that Roa will work from. Um and we kind of work in this every day together, but this is like the outreach master. So I'm responsible for filling this as much as I can. Uh I use the the LinkedIn MCP or I'll go in and use Quad to help me add to this manually. Uh I'll use LinkedIn sales nab as well to um basically keep adding to this list but she is responsible for zero to one and then I take conversations onward from there. Um and she is logged into my LinkedIn prof profile and I'll talk about more about the unconditional trust of logging in and a lot more stuff to cover but at a glance basically with what she does is she is responsible for sending the first outreach message which is just very broad. So like hey my name's Andy good to connect with you. She's responsible for sending the connection request and sending the first message and she updates the pipeline the statuses based on these. After the conversation has reached a point where they've responded to the first outreach message, what I will do is I will then add them to my CRM because they have responded to just the blanket, hey, my name's Andy, great to be connected, uh, templatized message. Um, and then that's a signal for me to go in and check this over time. She like, hey, would you have reached the dark green status? Um, and she goes and she checks in this every day. Uh, goes through the LinkedIn inbox. She uses Condo, which I pay for both of us. And, um, she can update the status of these based on who's responded. And it's a little bit more of a manual process, but to me, I would rather not have someone have like full conversations on my behalf or even use an AI tool to do that. And it's also like the the human um the human context of like personalizing the message with their names a little bit um has been really helpful. So she spends about an hour on this every day updating the status and my signal to then either continue the conversation manually is seeing this dark green to where I then go in and either add them to folk as my CRM or go in and continue the conversation manually. Um so that's one use case um that she's responsible for. Another one is a newsletter. So, she runs end to end a uh a marketing jobs newsletter which I've used as kind of like a uh lead magnet slash top offunnel asset. Um it's basically a newsletter I send out every Sunday. It's grown to over 200 subscribers. I started about three months ago. Um where it's just a curated a list of job postings that are active in the Columbus area and we try to send as many as possible per week. but she'll go in, she'll scrape LinkedIn, she'll find job postings and she will update the status of these and if they are closed and she'll take them off. Um, but she'll she'll then go into Beehive and she'll format the entire newsletter with all the active job postings so I don't have to go in I don't have to go in and do that. And I knew from the beginning that this was going to be that I had ROA and that's kind of like why I started this initiative of okay, I have the team capacity to do that. But this is like I would always run things through the filter of like okay can I use AI for them and if I can't um can I have an assistant who's also using AI help with them as well because that just kind of like multiplies your effectiveness with the stuff. Um but this is like I I couldn't have AI do all this like I tried to have cloud go in and like check the status of the the job posting to see if it's available. Um, but even even with that on the formatting, it just the token cost would have been huge to go in on all these links because there's like a couple hundred in here that we're adding every week. Um, but she'll categorize them. She'll update the status. She'll have the link in there. If it's new, she'll categorize it as that. Um, it just takes like hours off my plate. And again, I wouldn't have started it if I didn't have her to begin with. But something like this is possible if you have someone who has like intuition and can go in and do a lot of this stuff. So, that's another use case that's been super helpful. uh podcast production. So, uh we have 165 episodes of a podcast, been doing it weekly. Uh at at Cadence, we did we for a couple months, we even did it bi-weekly, but she's she's grown into editing and with a lot of a lot of delegation and outsourcing. There will be times, and I have a slide for this, but there will be times where you didn't explain how to do something properly. And it's such a good exercise in being precise with your language because I'm telling you, if you don't give all the context, then you won't get the result that you want. But a really good feedback piece is to the I think Dan Martell calls it the the 1080 10. So do a task 10% of the way clearly explain how to do like the middle 80% and then the last 10% like across the finish line is what you can go in, give feedback on, refine and finish. Uh, but like that big chunk in the middle is a lot of what the rope manual work is what you want to outsource and get help with. But like the podcast I straight up could not I did over 100 episodes just me editing. This is before Riverside too. So I would record on Streamyard. I would download it to a local drive. I would edit Premiere Pro and it was like my entire weekend. Um, I don't have a wife or kids. That's like not obvious already, but that was like my entire weekend. and Riverside and Roa have made it like all I do is basically record now create like packaging for the episode. I'll use quad to put in the transcript and ideulate on packaging like titles and things like that. But she does the edits in Riverside. Um she has a little bit of an editing background. So it's really helpful there. She'll create two to three clips from the Riverside recommended clips. She does everything logistically. So she has the the podcast schedule calendar. She'll create the recording in Riverside, send the guest the link, everything like that. and she has a she'll email them afterwards all the the all the assets and she'll she has like a sense of humor. That's like the the the best signal for a good person when they because they can understand nuance if they have a sense of humor whether or not it's similar to yours ideally similar to yours. But like that's the such a good signal if someone has a sense of humor because then you can tell they deeply understand the language. they're good with people and then you can feel at ease having them manage your inbox and things like that. Um so yeah, that's just some of the other examples stuff that she's helped with. Another one is we're working on this currently. We have a hundred um she went in, this is our main lead magnet. She took screenshots of a hundred private equity backed healthcare companies and put them into a Figma file um and named them and put their link in there. and I'm going to use AI to help do like an analysis of like how long are all these pages, what are the links, what are the commonalities and do like an assessment of it, but I never would have been able to take screenshots of 100 websites and organize them and do a Figma file based on layers. I I would have tried to use I had to do that, but I would not have been able to do it. Um, but yeah, she did all that in two days. Um, so like four hours she spent doing that. It was uh really cool and I wouldn't be able to do that myself. So, just some practical examples and use cases. Um, mistakes. This is the u the fun part. I've already alluded to some of these. Um, so being blunt when I should have been precise. There will be a few times when you get something. A really good signal too is if they can fix it on the first draft and it's perfect, then that's that's fine. But there'll be a lot of times where you send you'll send them a task, you have an idea for them to do something, it doesn't turn out the way that you envisioned, you're going to be like you're going to be a little bit frustrated. You're going to be like, "Oh, screw this. This is stupid." Just take it out on something else. Don't take it out on them. I I have snapped at them a few times and that's a shortcoming on my end. Um, but they've they're very loyal and they've stuck around and I've apologized, but there will be a time when something doesn't get done the way that you want it, especially it's a more complex like multi-acceted task and it all like the the it always falls back on you because they will do it right if you explain it right. So don't ever snap or reach out to them. I wish I hadn't done that. Um, so leaving room for interpretation, not clearly articulating tasks. Um, that was a lot of the the mistakes that I made. fixes, obviously, zero ambiguity, zero doubt. Um, cut the fluff, state the outcome, and just be very clear. Also, like references and examples, the things done, right? Like we had a reference from a lead magnet for the Figma file. Uh, calibration videos, like I would I love this podcast. Try and edit in this direction. Um, tone of voice emails, things like that. Uh, like an email template that she sent to all the guests. Gave her an example of that as well. Um, so yeah, that's uh some things I messed up. And there's, you know, 100 because I made a lot of mistakes. Um, another one early big one, trusting them sooner. So, obviously, don't go zero to 100. I was skeptical to hand over login, passwords, things like that because I'm like, oh, I still don't give them. The only thing I don't give ROA now is direct financial information. Um, everything else is everything else she has. She has all loginins. Uh, she's she fully manages my email. Um, I mean, yeah, that I wish the only thing that's going to make this work to the best possible extent that you can get the most out of it is like unconditional trust. Um, so I wish I had leaned into that earlier because it would have it would have accelerated the process of making this effective sooner. Um, expect the two-factor authentication dance. This will happen this will happen a lot if you do work with an assistant. And don't get frustrated. It's it will happen. Uh, always invite questions too. Um, don't get frustrated. Again, I know I've said don't get frustrated a lot, but it's like they'll have times you'll have times where you have an inclination of like this is this isn't worth it. This is, you know, I'm answering too many questions. But if you overcome that, I promise you, like it it'll start to run on autopilot a lot more. Um, so always invite questions, joke with them, have be laidback, but also be stern when you need to if something is done incorrectly. I've never really had to scold or do anything like that because these are I mean these are already this isn't like I'm working with a college intern. These people are older than I am. Um so invite questions and create that open environment where they're comfortable coming to you with stuff. Even if it's bad news, even if it's, you know, hey, I made a mistake. Rod's made a mistake before. Um, she's never done anything detrimental, but she's like with LinkedIn post formatting, she'll uh like not indent the proper way. Um, a good thing to show here too is our content planner in Notion. So, this is what Rotoates 100% of the time. Um, I basically lay out everything here um in notion and she'll just this is where she'll um just basically upload everything. So, I'll put in the postcopy the platforms that I want it to go from, go to the platform I want to go on the Google Drive link to the asset, and she'll go in and without me having to pay for a scheduling tool, she'll just go in and schedule on all the platforms. This takes her about an hour and a half each week. Um, and like I said, there'll be small times where she'll like not format the LinkedIn post properly or, you know, not post it at exactly 7 a.m. or something small like that. Um, and don't I just don't get frustrated at her with with stuff like that. Just take it in stride. Use it as an opportunity and uh a conversation point. Um, she'll know the platform that it's on. Uh, I'll send her the link to the full Google Drive video that has all the assets within it. Um, for podcast specifically, um, we have like a whole full workflow. So, the the editor will go in and read the editor's brief. Um, she has all the assets in here, the transcript, the upload information. So, she'll upload it to Web Flow as an article, the YouTube description, all the the guest links and everything. And she'll go and format it almost perfectly every time. Um, so really good for content, great use case for a VA. I'm going try and go through a little quicker here. Um, a few tips for vetting. Um, one is show up on camera. Obviously, non-negotiable. They understand nuance. So, like I said, sense of humor, small jokes, um sense of humor. Another one, start with one small task. So, what I did when I hired Dan, our editor, is um I would send like a if you're testing multiple people, send them a very routineized task with with developers, I would always send them like rebuild this web page in Web Flow. Clearly, articulate a task, attach video to it, and then you can compare what each of them does. just judge the work, judge the communication, judge the time, judge everything, and obviously pay them for pay them each for the work. Um, really lean on Zoom and or Loom and Tella. I have over 500 TEA videos, and I send them every day. Um, very good that like both of them, Bloom or Tel, whichever one you use, they have really good scrubbing features, so they uh they can also, it also creates a transcript, which is very good for them to go back in and reference, especially with some more detailed tasks. Um, and you'll be able to tell very, very fast who the high performers are if you're interviewing multiple people. Um, if you get matched with a person, you'll be able to tell pretty quickly whether or not it's someone that you're going to want to move forward with just based on you'll know within a few days. So, yeah, some some ball knowledge there. Let them use AI and pay for their AI. So, this is I I had fun making this, but it's kind of funny, but it's true. Is Roa, she uses quad a lot. And a lot of people I think views as like oh you know this is like a manual task like you know I don't want to have to worry about like I don't have to worry about using AI because the assistant can go in and do stuff manually. If an assistant can go and use AI you've like compounded and multiplied your efficiency by an exponential basis rather than you can just give them um something that's like brute and manual. So encourage them to use it where they can. Um and incentivize it, but also they're human for a reason and you're working with them for a reason, too. So remember that. But um yeah, don't like don't feel like you they shouldn't use AI or they don't know how to use it. They're they're smart people and they'll be able to use it. Uh and pay for it. So I mean you pay 20 bucks a month for an extra cloud subscription. It'll be exponentially worth it. Uh depending on the task that they do. um some really cool kind of edge use cases that you can use LinkedIn recommendations. So I have a Google doc where I'll go in and write uh LinkedIn recommendations um for either clients or referral partners. And the reason that they take so long because it's like multiple buried clicks to go in and do it. You have to go to their profile. You have to click work with them in a different capacity. Um who are you? Like things like that. I will just say uh name and I'll leave I'll write personally a recommendation. and I won't use AI. But then she'll go in and she'll actually make multiple clicks and link leave LinkedIn recommendations. Really good for um you know kind of building relationships and just staying in touch with people and it makes them feel really good when you do that. Um power. So I will have I bought Roda a Google voice line and she will email, call and text my family members which is kind of a flex which is really cool. Um, I try not to do that too often, but like like, "Hey, you know, my assistant, I'll tell my mom." She texted me one time. I was like, "Oh, I'll have my assistant get back to you." Um, and she thought I was joking, but it's actually really cool. But not that's just kind of like an edge use case. You don't have to do that if you're not, you know, a narcissist like me. But a Google voice line is like very inexpensive. I think it's under $10 a month. You can use buy them a Google voice line and they can use it for some of these other use cases such as this one right here. But travel planning is a really good one. So if you can send like based information. So I told her like hey go to Putin Bay up north get I this is kind of my budget browse hotel rooms in the area. This is the the dates that I'm staying. Um and she found a hotel room that was like 15 minutes away. was like 70 bucks a night a night. Um she didn't go in and buy it. I went in and bought it myself. But she went in and searched compared prices, things like that. Um and I just went in and paid for everything. She outlined like this is the time you need to leave. She created like a cloud artifact that had like so she created a whole cloud artifact given uh like the emails that they had sent in preparation of like um the guest list, the times, everything. So okay, this is who you need to connect with on LinkedIn. I already connected with them. Here's some hotels uh at different ranges. Here's a gym um that's like 10 minutes away from the hotel. She put it on all like this called artifact that I had on my phone that I just used and it was pretty good. But again, I went and paid for everything. Phone numbers. So any support emails, any if I accidentally have like a subscription that I've paid for, I'll just forward her the support email and she will wait on phone calls. Um if it's insurance, she'll wait on support for them. she won't like share any of my information, but if it's like a long phone call, she will call using the Google voice the Google voice line and wait on the line. Um, and if there's anything that I need technical support with, like if it's a support email that I don't know, have a question with, uh, I'll just forward her the line and she'll get back to me with, okay, this is what you need to do from here. She's really good at knowing when to stop and when I need to take it from there, but she'll go like as far as she can on that line. And an inbox labeling system. So, she set up everything. I don't know if I want to screen share my uh inbox, but she basically has three tabs and every morning when she checks in, she'll go in and drag things to different inboxes. And the only thing I need to pay attention to, I often deviate from it, but I um I only have to check the one that says uh delegated or it's called Andy's inbox, the main one. But I only have to go in and read the ones that actually require my response. So things like newsletters, um like auto notifications, things like that, they all go to a different one that she manages and I don't have to even see. And anything that's client facing or update wise, she'll either send me a um a Google uh Google chat, which is where we communicate um and notify me of things I need to see. So I often like deviate from that and just look at all of them, but I don't need to if I don't want to. Um so yeah, that's it. I know I went through that last part really fast, but yeah, you could uh you can start it as little as 200 bucks a month. You don't have to go to the agency route, but I hope this has just been helpful in seeing like my honest experiences with this stuff. And again, I don't have any type of pitch or anything like that. It's just kind of like telling stories. So, um yeah, I know I went through that last part really fast, but you guys have like any questions or any um thing that might make it easier to determine whether this might be something that you want to do? I'll just say I appreciate you sharing. I just got my invoice for a contractor I use regularly and I pay him anywhere from he's $35 an hour, 50 hours a month. So, I'm paying $,750 some months for um you know, it sounds like some things that a VA could probably help with. Um, one question I have and I think where I've been maybe getting stuck after I land on these um agency sites is what does your collaboration look like with them? Is it all happening async and Slack, email? are you actually meeting with it? It looked like you had screenshots of calls. Like what's your typical like timing and I don't know does it just fit naturally into your normal workflow or did you have to kind of like accommodate once you brought the VAS on board? Yeah. So it's uh it's kind of a crawl run. I do have a on Monday at 10 we have like an all hands. So there is a all of them slightly different schedules but they are they've adapted it to be US-based time. So Roa works from um she currently works from 7:00 to 9:00 in the morning and she'll be online a couple hours in the afternoon as well. Um but they're all we all meet once a week for a call and everything else is async. Um I encourage them I have a I have a a Slack channel where they'll send like daily updates. So this is everything I got done. Um in terms of invoicing and payment, it's Thursday, so tomorrow bi-weekly on Thursday. Um, and I'll send them a Slack notification that they've been paid and everything like that. Um, but 90% async a lot of Loom videos, tele videos. Um, but I always encourage them to overcommunicate. But in terms of actual calls, they all know each other as well. Um, so the Slack channel that they have all visibility into the daily updates. Um, but it's it's mostly asynchronous communication with just one call a week that I'm very diligent on not missing. Um, so yeah, it's and that's the thing too is that like there's you can choose like how often that you know you want to meet. I with Roa we used to meet weekly for a couple weeks as she got started but then I was just like it seems pretty repetitive in terms of uh just checking in u and there's always a trust earning period that you kind of crawl rock into. I will say too like you're the boss. So, if you want to go fully asynchronous, depending on how much you trust them, it's like they will they'll be open to either, but um like I said, meeting on camera and just getting a sense of them and how they communicate work is going to be important a little bit, but once they've already proven that to you, it's um it's something that you can determine the cadence and everything like that moving forward. For sure. Cool. Thanks. Y, do you have a hard stop at the top of the hour? Can we go a couple minutes over? I do not. No, I'm the reason that we started late in the first place so I can stay. All good. Let's stick around if anyone wants to. I know David has a question. Go for it, David. Guess I was just curious about um you know, you have three different VAS you're working or not VA, well, folks you're working with now. Um, can you talk a little bit about kind of the the stages of like did you kind of jump into this, you know, right into the deep end, hiring multiple at the same time, or was it like, you know, you hired one at a really low rate and kind of figured out, you know, kind of where all the flaws were? um and and kind of improve things and then kind of stacked on over time because I guess I'm I'm trying to figure out where to I guess walk in from the shallow end um to get going with it but to not uh got get in over my head. Yeah, for sure. I know I skipped over a lot of like the the first hire um and kind of like how I scaled into it. Um so Ali I hired he Ali was my first hire. I've been working with him for over a year. He's not the VA. I just needed technical support with uh web flow work and um he he started on a clock in clockout basis that and I set a strict cap on how many hours he could do and a lot of times if you like I said if you're not working with the agency if you are off platform they'll be open to a strict cap. Um, so I started him at like 10 hours a week and even like I was monitoring that exactly. That's like $150 a week. And um, just like really judging like how well he communicated. I was very mandatory on like okay let's get on a call before you work like describing a task to him over a call and um doing that onetoone. And I will also say too like I I was comparing him against a lot of other technical developers. Uh so I did the thing where I would have one trial task pay each of them. It was just rebuilding a web page uh in web flow. But for a VA, which is the more applicable use case for a lot of the audience here, uh it would be something that doesn't require a login. Um so maybe it's some draft of copy, something that you would do for a client that that's within your typical workflow that you would say, okay, here's two to three uh when you make a job post on online jobs, you'll get a lot of applicants and you'll be able to see their see their profiles. you'll be able to see like their video of them explaining themselves, things like that. You can also put in the in the job posting, it's required for you to send me a Loom video of, you know, who you are, introduce yourself, things like that. Um, so that's what I would do like um going in and starting from the beginning. Like online jobs, they'll also let you set a amount of hours per week the job is going to be. So setting that very low and seeing what kind of applicants you get. And as you start to work with someone officially and build a relationship, they will be a lot of times they'll be open to expanding hours and um yeah, like I said, zero to one would be finding some small part of what you do for clients that you think would you would need a VA for and giving that task to multiple people and paying them for it on like a small scope of ours and then expanding into a bigger scope. Um having them explain what they do too. So, recording a Loom video going over it. Um, but the first step would be just putting a job posting out there or getting a few leads for um for people that you think could be fit based on their profiles or their intro videos and things like that. That's what I would do if I were over again. Sweet. Thanks. For sure. Yeah. Nico, you had a question. Do you want to jump in and ask about uh how how you get paid? Go for it. Yeah. Yeah. I was wondering um first of all great presentation super helpful uh nobody usually talks about all these detailed use cases so thank you so much Andy um I'm just curious how are you going about the payment um with less friction I mean I know there's wise crypto and some other things what have you found best yeah great question um so a lot of them and they're all Philippines based why is this user the one they prefer because it has the lowest transfer uh fees Uh, so I primarily use Wise. I also use have used Remly R E M I T L Y, Payaneer, P A Y O N E R, and PayPal. I try to avoid PayPal because it's high transaction fees, but Payaneer um for the sense that if they sometimes if they are more experienced, they're going to have a little bit more like moxy like, oh, I'm I like I want to be able to invoice you, which I'm open to provided that it's accurate. Um, so if you work with someone who has a um a lot of experience, they've been doing this for a while, they view what they do as a business, so they'll want to work on a platform where they're sending you invoices, which I I don't care. Roa does that. She's been doing this for a long time. Um, so one of those I use, Wise, Payaneer, Remittly, and um, PayPal worst case scenario are the ones that I use and recommend. I like remittly too. Um, I have had two instances where a payment gets stuck um, kind of in the international gateway. Um, so I prefer Wise as it's been the most reliable for me, but um, those are the ones that I can can vouch for. Amazing. And you mentioned the taxes earlier. Um, so you issued 1099 for them. Yes. So I it's kind of a modifi I don't remember what the I should have had this more ready. Um, I have a CPA that took care of a lot of it, but it was basically just a tech technical document that I sent to them that they all e-signed and he factored that into um the withholdings cuz we're we're an escorp. Um, so there's there wasn't any like deductions or anything like that, but there is a document and I will send it in the Slack channel like a copy of it or the technical naming behind it that you would then send to them. And there is also an hour limit to where if it's under that, it doesn't doesn't matter at all. It's just a just a business expense. So if it's I think it's once you cross like a certain number of hours per month like 40 hours per month or maybe it's on a year basis. Um so I should have had that ready but um to be more helpful but if it's under if it's like a certain number of hours a week then it's not something that you have to do but having them sign simple document um then you're like fully compliant. You have all your boxes checked. I think that applies to if you're a single owner LLC as well. Thank you so much. It was very helpful.