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Myths and Truths About Hiring Virtual Assistants · The One Small Change Podcast

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Welcome to the One Small Change podcast. I am so thrilled that
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you decided to spend some time with us today as we embark on this journey
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of exploration and transformation. I'm your host Yvonne McCoy,
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and I bring almost thirty years of entrepreneurial experience
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and a passion for discovering growth through the power of
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seemingly small change. So I wanna make sure that,
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you know, you get great value for spending time with us that's
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gonna help you in that journey of exploration and inspiration. And this
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week, we are talking to the amazing Diane Ralston,
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and she is gonna share with us some smaller unexpected,
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decision or change that sparked a transformation and
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growth in her personal or professional life. Diane,
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thank you for spending time with me today. Thanks for having
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me. Such a joy to be here. Oh, that's great. I can't wait for
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you to tell my audience what you do and
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how that that small change steered you in that direction or
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helped you to do it better. Well, I I look
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forward to sharing more. Yes. So go for it. Tell us tell
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us about yourself. Okay. Well, I, I
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started my coaching practice over fourteen years ago, you know, leaving
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corporate, coming into my own. And I came
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from a company where I had a lot of support. I was using a lot
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of my skills, which was amazing. But then going on my
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own, becoming a coach, a professional speaker, author, and
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running a women's community, I started to realize,
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wow, I had a lot of support before.
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And I was thinking like going on my own
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is amazing and doing my own thing is great, But
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I couldn't keep up with everything that had to be done. And
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so maybe you know what it's like, you know, to have to do everything on
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your own in the beginning. And I was experiencing
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that. Maybe your listeners have felt that too. And I
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also became a mother of two. So I had two children under
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three at the same time, and I was building a business.
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Yeah. So I was really overwhelmed, right, with all
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I had to do and also being a mother. And I
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wasn't making the type of money that I wanted to be making, even though I
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was doing great work, because I just couldn't keep up with the cash flow activities,
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you know, getting more leads, following up with people that I
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had met Mhmm. Finishing off programs to actually
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be able to launch them properly. And so I thought,
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okay. I'm going to
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work, work, work, work, work, work. And then I started to have the finances,
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but then I didn't have the freedom. Right. But, like, how can I
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have both? So I'm helping my life coaching clients and my
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business clients to try to have that freedom, but why did, why couldn't I have
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it? So I ended up hiring a local assistant,
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like a admin assistant sort of thing.
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And as a lot of entrepreneurs find in the beginning,
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you're putting the money into that and then you need to have the return.
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And I couldn't have enough hours with her because
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the finances needed to be even higher to maintain both of us
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in a career. Right. And then we started struggling with
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tech. Because as you know, Yvonne, like, tech just keeps changing
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all the time. You and I are using tech right now to have this amazing
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conversation. And so I thought,
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ugh, I need I need some more help. And so I
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ended up hiring and this is, like, the big the big shift for
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me. I ended up hiring someone from The Philippines. I
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first hired a coach to teach me how to do that, And then I got
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myself a virtual assistant or as people say, a VA. I
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actually hired two in the end and I had them start
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developing my systems, my processes.
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And then that's when I went, ah, I now have a big girl business
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because things, the foundation of my business were starting to
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be in place. And then that's go oh, you ask. Go
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ahead. No. I was just gonna say your story is
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so amazing, and yet it's not unique, the the
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bones of it. I think as we go through that entrepreneurial
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journey, if we're coming out of business, we discover
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that we have lots of support and suddenly now we have to wear all the
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hats. Yeah. And then you always have
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that time money thing that you're going after. It's like, you
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know, if if I have the time, I don't have the money. And if I
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have the money, I don't have the time. And, you know, in some place in
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there, your family has to fit, you know, that kind of thing. And
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so the thing that you're talking about is absolutely
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what my audience needs to hear about.
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Yeah. And, you know, as you're mentioning that, it reminded me of a couple of
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pivotal moments where I just feel like I'd,
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I'd hit a a bottom when
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one of my, so I was running a women's community called Dynamic Women, had
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eight locations, running events every month. And
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one of those members said to my daughter who was about six at the time,
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so do you wanna be an entrepreneur or business owner when you grow up? And
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I was like, I was just gonna say yes. You know what she said?
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Very strong and quick, no. And they were like,
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why not? And she's like, my mom works all the time. That's what my kids
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said. And I was like, ah,
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like, heartbroken because
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she doesn't see the flexibility that being my own boss does allow
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me, the fact that I'm able to work and live in my passions.
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She didn't see all of that. Right. Which which was really sad.
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But in hiring the two Filipino VAs,
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I was able to hit just a new level of
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almost, it was almost like jet fuel for my business,
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you know? Because then if you've read the e myth,
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if your listeners have, the idea of we come into business and we're the
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technician, but we also have to be now the
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CEO and the manager. And so that's a lot of
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roles And all we really want to do is our core
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competencies or our zone of genius, which for me was coaching
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and speaking and leading these women's events and writing books and programs.
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But there I was, you know, in Disney in the bath bathroom, on
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my computer, finishing off some stuff that I really should have
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been passing off. And so finally I had
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two people who had the tech knowledge, the
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speed, and the ability to get
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those things done. And so that's when I really took off. And that's when I
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started to have the financial freedom and then
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the time freedom. So I started to feel really
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supported, really grew my business. And
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definitely like one of the most important things I think people think about is I
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increase my profits. Right? So
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that was important. I have a lot of questions. I have a lot of
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questions. One of the things that I think
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is really important is I think women in particular
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say, I want somebody like me, which to me is the
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biggest mistake that you could make because then what you've got
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is a lot of the same stuff and you've got big
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holes of the same stuff. Right? And so
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how does having a VA smooth that out? Also
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from an economic perspective, I jokingly say if I
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when I'm doing this, I'm actually paying an MBA to do what I should be
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paying, you know, a file clerk to do or something like that. I mean, I'm
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paying major bucks to do a job that is not a
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major bucks job. Yeah. Well, that's what I found
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with hiring local was that I was paying a higher fee
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than I would if I if I went to a country like The Philippines.
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And, before anyone comes for me, I pay them very well.
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They're very happy. That's not an issue. But it's
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just the way the way the different economies work. Right? And
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so I knew that if I because I needed more hours, but I also
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needed more knowledge and more tech experience.
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And if I was gonna do that, I would need to be going up to
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75 to a hundred dollars an hour where I was like, I I
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just can't sustain that at forty hours a week.
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Right? And so it's that knowledge of
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what are the tasks that I have to do? Those high income, high
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quality,
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and so high income producing activities and then the high quality
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tasks. And then on the flip side knowing what are those
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lower and lower income producing tasks,
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but what also can someone else do for you that helps
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you move the financial needle of your business? And it could be
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clearing things off your plate so that you can do those cash flow activities,
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but it might also be that they're doing things that move things
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forward. So the fact that I can now have an idea for
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a program, create an outline for it, pass that off in just a
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Word doc to my VA or in a voice memo, and
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they create the landing page and set
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up the payment system and then sync
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that to my CRM with the welcome emails and then
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set up all the meetings on Zoom
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and then send all the reminder emails. Mhmm. And then
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I give them that the actual course outline, and then they create all my
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PowerPoints, and then I record them, and now they're editing and then putting
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up on the system. Like, the speed to which I can work
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is phenomenal. And I think that's what gets a lot of business
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owners is it can feel like it takes so long to get
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anything done. So I'm gonna I'm gonna
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ask you a couple of things. So
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this is gonna be easy for you. I'm sure. What
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so when do you know that you're VA ready? That you're ready to have
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a VA? And the reason I say that is it reminds me
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so much of when, you know, you hire somebody, you know, when your
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mother would hire somebody to clean and spend two days cleaning before
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they got there. You know, I don't have two days to clean
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so I can have somebody to clean. And, also, you know, that
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myth of kind of,
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they're not gonna be able to do it the way I do it. So let
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me just tell you a little bit about my idea about it. And I believe
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in delegation kind of in the reverse order because what you we're usually
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taught is delegate, you know, automate, and eliminate. I believe in doing
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it in reverse order, and I, you know, my sis I do
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models. I like acronyms. So it's called, productivity
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ahead. So the first thing is is awareness. What
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situation am I in? What am I doing? What's going on in my life? What
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you know, whatever. So it's like if you're in a burning fire, this is not
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a time to learn how to, you know, make a campfire kind of thing. Right?
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Then it's what can I put on hold? And those are usually ideas. What
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then what can I eliminate? Then what can I automate? And sometimes automation
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is not technical. It's just, you know, you have a system for something. And then
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what you're left with is the important things in your business that
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you need to delegate. And I think a delegation is training. You're
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actually helping to train somebody to take stuff that is money
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producing off your plate. Yeah. So the
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my quest so having said that, my question is,
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when should people start thinking about a VA? What do they need to do to
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get ready for that? Yes. So
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I have had people come to me with just a business idea.
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And if they haven't had a business already, I
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suggest that they work with a coach first to get the basics of
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business in place. What's your vision mission? What colors are you
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wanting? To show up to a VA and be like, I need a
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website, but I don't know what what I'm gonna say on it. And I don't
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know my colors and I don't have a logo on it. It's just, we're kind
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of jumping the gun a little bit. But if you've been in business before, you
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understand all of those things. And so you can jump in with a VA because
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you're gonna be like, I need to research on the colors. I need a logo.
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Maybe you're you're gonna already know. But I really suggest you work with a
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coach. So sometimes people come to me looking for a VA and they end up
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getting a VA and a coach in me in order to be
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able to make the strides they need to make
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without wasting time and still being able to maximize their VA's
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time. Also, a lot of people come to me and they'll say, Diane,
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so I'm gonna get a VA soon. I just need to get all
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my systems and processes in place. And I say, hold up. No, you
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don't. Or they'll come to me and they'll say, I just need to figure out
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what to delegate and then I'll hire one of your VAs. And just to
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kind of put put the little piece in there where I haven't said yet, I
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did end up starting a virtual assistant agency programs called VA Made
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Easy because too many people kept coming to me and saying, how did you hire
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from The Philippines? What do you delegate? How do you delegate? How do you do
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systems and processes? How do you train? How do you give feedback? How do you
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communicate? How do you track the product? All these things. And I said, don't
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worry about it. I'll help you. So a few things to
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be thinking about is if you
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have too much work, meaning too
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many things to do that are outside
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of your knowledge, you need a virtual assistant to take care of it
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for you. If you are lucky enough to have a
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lot of work coming in, but you feel like leads are slipping through your
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fingers or you're kind of dropping the ball, you need a
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virtual assistant. And so what I do is I take people
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through a lot of different activities, really simple ones
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that have really powerful results in showing them
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exactly what they can delegate. A lot of times people come to me with
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like the shiny object syndrome and they're like, it'd be really cool if I could
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have this and this and this and this, and maybe they could do this for
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me. And I say, hold up. What are
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your main goals for this year? Oh, well, I wanna
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write a book and I and I wanna update my website,
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and I wanna bring in 10 new clients. And I'm like, great. So
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let's have your VA support you in making those goals happen. Mhmm.
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And sometimes it's taking stuff off their plate that they haven't had time to do.
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Sometimes it's the back end setting everything up. But that's really the key
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piece because if
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if you think you have to wait until you can figure out all your systems
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and processes, which, by the way, I teach my VAs how to make
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your systems and processes for you, if you wait to figure out all the
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things you can delegate, like, don't reinvent the wheel. I have lists
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of tasks. I have training videos. I have checklists
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and instructions. You can just copy all of mine. Right?
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And being that I have in my own business
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coaching, public speaking, workshops, leading communities,
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events, podcast publishing, YouTube
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publishing, blogs, books. I don't say
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all of this to brag. I say all of this, like, tap into my
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IP, my intellectual property. I share it with people.
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Right? That's that's the easiest way to get ahead.
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And I think I think the other the other thing that holds us back
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is if I hire somebody, I'm now
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responsible for them. You know? This is how much money I
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have, but is that really enough? You know? Is, like, five hours a
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week enough, you know, that I can I know I can sustain that?
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How do you how do you balance that? So
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I had a a client come. She was working in a job, and she wanted
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to start her own kind of side business and move into that. And she said
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to me a few months in, when I asked her the question, what would you
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say to someone who's kind of on the fence and not sure if they're ready
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to to start with their VA? And she said, start when you're
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not ready because because the best thing
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that this did for me was it lit a fire under my butt.
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I knew I was responsible for someone. And so in those moments when
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I'm like, I'll just watch Netflix. Oh, I'll just
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scroll Facebook. She was like, I knew I couldn't. I had to do things.
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And so she was able to have better business success because it
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motivated her to have someone. Plus that
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person there was able she'd say, I'm not sure about this. And she the
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VA said, I'll research that for you. Right? So there was a lot of
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time where she was able to move forward faster and then she
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got even more inspired because she was like, woah, look at the results. Well, look
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at my website. Look at this, look at that. That she, it was
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so beneficial for her to be able to kind of start when
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she did. And you can start smaller, right? You can start
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smaller, but there's key. How small is small?
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Well, you know, with my, with my clients, we start at ten hours a week.
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Reason being VAs need steady
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work. Right. Right? And so kind of of the idea of
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generally our VAs have four clients at ten hours a week.
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This gives them steady income. So they're focused on just the
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four people. They're not looking for other work, and they're not inundated
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with twelve, twenty clients trying to get their attention.
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This way, they're also using the same project management tools, the
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same communication tools, the same way of doing things. So
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it helps them to do a better job with their clients. If you're gonna hire
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a VA for a couple hours a week, you are also
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competing for the attention of the VA with all of their other clients.
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My feeling is when you work that ten hours a week with your client with
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your VA, they get to know you. Trust me. Even if you
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only think you got three hours of work every week, there are so many other
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things. It's so it's so fun to be like, oh, maybe my VA could do
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this. Hey, can we do something like that that these people are doing over here?
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Yeah. And you're moving forward together. You get to know each
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other better. You get to grow with each other. Your
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income will increase as long as you
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are going and doing income generating activities. This does not allow you to
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go sit on your butt now, twiddle your thumbs, right? Don't organize your
18:29
closet, go get some clients. And then you can keep them and
18:32
maintain them. So a lot of my clients have said like, wow,
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I've gotten more done in the past six weeks than I have in the past
18:39
six months. Or wow, just because this
18:43
one thing was cleaned up and and started to run, I got three new
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clients this week. So those are kind of the type of results
18:50
people can get. But I think ten hours a week. Because you
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also want to maintain and retain your VA.
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Because training someone new, people
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ghost you, it's not the type of experience you want. So some people have said
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to me, oh, Diana, I've had a terrible experience. But
19:08
it it was maybe because you were only throwing them a couple hours of work,
19:12
and then they got another client that was bigger. Right? And so
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there's a chance you can lose a VA. So we like to start with 10,
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and then as your business grows, if you jump to twenty, thirty, whatever it
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may be, but ten's a great place to start. My two VAs are at
19:28
twenty hours each for my business. So the other
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thing I mean, you know, one of the questions that I think about a
19:35
lot when I'm looking at, you know, services, it
19:39
is I like to know that there are other
19:42
people. You know? So, like, when when when my kids were in day care,
19:46
I had a wonderful lady, you know, who was not, like, at a day care
19:50
center. Mhmm. But, you know, I would show up and she goes, I'm
19:54
sick today. Sorry. I'm like, what?
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I still have to go to work. I still have this kid. This doesn't work
20:01
for me. And so one of the things that I like that you're saying
20:05
is, you know, you've got you know, when you've got ten
20:08
hours, right, you've got a fair amount, you you know, some flexibility.
20:12
But also because you're the conduit,
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I can you know, as a client, I can come to you and say, I'm
20:19
not sure this is working for me. Help me. Is it me? Is it the
20:23
VA? Is it not a good match? But, you know, if that
20:26
VA were to get sick or something should happen, I'm not
20:30
gonna be left high and dry with somebody that doesn't know the kind of systems
20:33
and stuff that I have. So talk about that a little bit if you would.
20:36
Yeah. You've you've raised two really good points.
20:40
You know, the the one side about someone your VA getting
20:44
sick or something happening. You know, we had someone had to one of our VAs
20:47
had to go in for emergency surgery, and she didn't see it coming.
20:51
And all of a sudden she's not able to work for three months three weeks.
20:55
And so what we are able to do because I have a team of virtual
20:58
assistants Mhmm. And I know the client and I
21:02
have we have tracked what the VA has been working on and
21:06
where they're at in all their projects because they update everything. We
21:09
were easily able to say, based on the goals you have right
21:13
now, client a, here's another fit
21:17
for you to pass the time, you know, while she's recovering.
21:21
So you have that ability to tap into our our group of
21:25
of VAs if, yeah, if your VA is sick or whatever it may
21:29
be. The other thing is maybe something happens and
21:33
you need a specialist. So we hire general virtual assistants
21:36
because we find entrepreneurs need a wide variety of tasks.
21:40
Social media content creation, video audio editing, graphic
21:44
design, PowerPoint creation, and it the list goes
21:48
like on and on and on. But the sometimes a
21:52
specialist item comes up and one of our V's maybe has that
21:55
experience. So one of our, one of our clients, she's
21:59
like, I'm supposed to be on a on a summit today and I have
22:03
a lead magnet, But for some reason,
22:06
my my sign up page is is not working. It's broken.
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And she's like, I go on live in two hours, and I don't think my
22:14
VA knows how to do this. So I went into my group of VAs,
22:18
and I said what was happening in the platform, and someone said, sounds
22:22
like there's some back end coding that needs to be done. I think I can
22:25
do it. Went in about fifteen minutes later. It's all fixed. It's
22:29
up and running. And so that's also the joy of
22:33
it, is the ability to tap in to have someone else do
22:36
something that's very specific and necessary. Or even,
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we're starting on this platform. Do you have anyone that knows that
22:43
platform? Oh, yeah. We do. Or, we had someone
22:47
wanting to publish a book, so I I had their VA sit with
22:51
my VA. We first created a few, like, training videos for them,
22:54
but they sat together so my VA could walk her
22:58
through to make sure that everything was happening properly
23:02
before she hit pay, publish up on Amazon.
23:05
Right? So tapping into that is amazing. The other thing
23:09
that, that you said that I think sounds wonderful
23:12
is that if I were to get a VA and
23:16
my business grows, and then I need another VA,
23:20
they could be simpatico. They would be familiar with the
23:23
same kinds of systems and formats and stuff. And so it would be
23:27
a seamless way to grow as opposed to taking somebody who
23:31
has this school of thought and works this way and trying to put somebody
23:35
that's got this and works a different way. Yeah. So
23:39
with a lot of our clients, when they come on board, we talk about
23:42
where their business is going, what their needs are, because even
23:46
something as simple as social media content creation,
23:50
scheduling, and management is a whole system, which
23:54
could be your ten hours. Right? So they'll talk through things with me, and I'll
23:57
say, yeah. Sounds like ten hours is good good place for you. Or sounds like
24:01
in a couple months, you're gonna need twenty. And so what we make sure first
24:04
is, does that VA we're matching you with have availability to grow
24:08
with you? Or are you maybe thinking about
24:11
having two different VA? So we have a few that have a two different, we
24:15
have some that have twenty or thirty hours with with one specific
24:18
VA. You'd also brought up a point
24:22
around kind of like I'm there, almost like a
24:25
mediator between. And it's funny because when we started this, I
24:29
thought, oh, I'm gonna have to really help the virtual
24:33
assistant. Right? I'm gonna make sure that they're they're doing their
24:37
job right and that they have the training they need. But actually,
24:40
it was really funny because I was noticing the clients needed a lot of
24:44
support. So why why isn't my VA doing
24:48
this task right? And I said, do I have permission to go and look at
24:51
your instructions? Oh, yes. Go ahead. And I'd go in and I'd go,
24:55
I'm a native English speaker. I don't understand what you're asking.
24:58
Or you're so high level, there's there's no
25:02
detail in there. So being able for me to support
25:06
the the client. And then sometimes there's miscommunication.
25:11
So maybe the VA was supposed to be on on the call at a certain
25:14
time, but the invite didn't go through and, you know,
25:18
something happened. And then the the client's like, where's my VA? And the
25:22
VA is like, I never got I never got an invite. And then I can
25:25
be there to kind of support both sides. Because really at the end of the
25:29
day, as an entrepreneur, you want to have a
25:32
good employee or a good VA that works with you and be able
25:36
to have a nice relationship that lasts a
25:40
long time. Because it saves you a ton of money when you can just work
25:41
with one person, have them grow with you. I have to tell you
25:45
that delegation I I jokingly did a post that
25:49
said, using chat GPT made me a better
25:52
delegator because I put things in the
25:56
chat GPT and it spits stuff out. And I'm like, why is it
26:00
saying this? I thought I was really clear. Do you know? And I've had
26:03
the same experience with clients where we're working on delegation.
26:07
I know what it is that they're trying to do. They tell me and I'm
26:11
like, I didn't get it. I mean, I know what you're telling me and I
26:14
didn't get it. So this no wonder you're not getting the results from your
26:18
team that that you think you should be getting. So Yeah. Yeah.
26:22
Before we run out of time Yeah. I have two things that I wanna make
26:25
sure that we cover. Is there anything else that you wanna tell us that
26:29
I didn't ask you about or or didn't come out? Because I wanna make sure
26:32
we get the best of you. Yeah. Well, I'd love to
26:36
go through some myths that people are
26:40
believing. Absolutely. That, and
26:43
then I obviously, I wanna share a gift with your
26:47
with your people. Yes. So, yeah, those are a couple
26:51
things that that Let's do it then. Okay. So
26:54
here are the myths that I've been seeing. There's there's just three of
26:58
them. There are more, but here are the kind of the three main ones.
27:02
So we, we touched on a little bit, but it's expensive to
27:05
have a VA. So the truth is around
27:09
this, that when you have a VA from The Philippines, you're looking at,
27:13
you know, half of what you would pay for someone in Canada, The US or
27:16
another country. Also, when you can delegate,
27:21
you don't have to hire an expensive employee. You don't have to rent an
27:24
office. You don't have to provide computers and all these
27:28
sort of things. Really the future of business is leveraging
27:32
the skills of virtual assistants. And then
27:36
you don't even have to overpay by hiring someone local. So
27:40
$30.50 an hour, maybe. And the thing is,
27:43
well, people say, why The Philippines? And I've picked one country. I'm like, there's
27:47
lots of countries with great people that work. But The
27:51
Philippines is great because they're just as competent as
27:54
someone local. They're probably more excited, more passionate,
27:58
maybe more thankful for the money is what I found.
28:02
And it can be, you can get more
28:06
hours for the same amount of money. Right? So
28:09
you can, rather than a couple hours here, you could get your, your
28:13
ten hours. So that's the first one. It's
28:17
expensive. And, and I ask people too
28:20
sometimes, how expensive is it for you to not have the
28:24
time to follow-up with your leads? What is the
28:28
revenue that you're letting slip through your fingers because you just don't
28:32
have the time? And I get it. Totally get it. The second
28:35
is they'll say, I don't have enough time. I don't have enough to
28:39
delegate. The truth is you actually have lots. And I'm gonna give I'm
28:43
gonna give your people a few activities to do. I've mentioned a few things already,
28:46
but if you take maybe ten minutes, put a timer on a clock,
28:50
write all the things down that you haven't
28:54
gotten to. Do a brain dump. Okay? So that's the first activity. You're
28:58
gonna see opportunity for things that maybe you're not getting to because you don't know
29:01
how to do it, you don't wanna do it, or it just takes a lot
29:05
of time. Right? So you're gonna pass those those off.
29:09
Also, another activity over the week, so maybe over the next week,
29:13
write down everything that you're doing.
29:18
Write down everything that you're doing. And then you can look at it and say,
29:22
I can delegate that. I wanna delegate that. I have to do a few more
29:25
things to be able to delegate that. And then the last thing is I do
29:29
have a list of 229 tasks, and this is
29:33
not exhaustive because I put it together about a year ago. But
29:36
I don't wanna go higher because I think it freaks people out. But
29:40
this is how you're gonna be able to get those ten hours a week back.
29:44
Right? There's full systems that you can delegate. Social
29:47
media management, content, social media content
29:51
creation, content repurposing. Right?
29:54
So taking a video, putting it up on YouTube, pulling
29:58
the audio, putting it on your podcast, pulling the words in a
30:02
transcript, making a blog, then promoting that on your
30:06
social, then putting that into your newsletter. I've got that
30:09
as a full system. You don't even have to write that up
30:13
yourself. So there's so many things that you can do, and that task
30:17
of 229, that list of
30:20
229 tasks, I'm actually gonna share with with
30:24
your audience, just to kind of get the balls rolling
30:28
about what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. And the the
30:31
last thing is people will say I'm just too busy to train a
30:35
VA. And it you're probably busy. Yes. But you don't
30:38
have to go through a full training. So the kind of idea of corporate, you
30:41
go in for a couple of weeks, then you get trained, and then you're working.
30:44
No. We're gonna train very simply by it's a one,
30:48
two, three method that I teach all my VAs and my clients. So first,
30:52
you're gonna have you're gonna talk through on video, just Zoom
30:56
screen record, Loom screen record, talk through the steps
30:59
that you do and the reasons behind it. Then share that with
31:03
your VA and have them document the process. So all
31:07
my VAs have been trained in how to properly document processes
31:11
to create your SOPs, your standard operating procedures for you.
31:16
And then they do the task. Right? So they've
31:20
trained themselves. They've created your SOP, and now they're doing the task. And what did
31:23
you do? Recorded a five minute video. Yeah. That's
31:27
really the way to go. Or you can just use my systems and
31:30
processes. Super simple. But you
31:34
have time because you're not doing a full training. And it's always
31:38
kind of the three to one. If you can train this one thing, they should
31:41
be able to go and do three times the amount of work on that. Yeah.
31:46
Yeah. That's what I call the rule of three. When you put something in
31:50
it, how can you use it three times? Right?
31:53
So so alright. So we could keep talking about this because this
31:57
is this is a fantastic thing. It's something that that if
32:01
you're growing your business, that you need to consider.
32:05
And so, you're gonna give us a gift that
32:09
practical steps that we can go through to to see,
32:13
that we may be VA ready before we think and that it's an affordable
32:17
option. And those are very practical steps, not only not
32:21
only in that process, but also probably to make us
32:24
realize some of the tasks that we have that we don't even realize we're
32:28
doing, which is, you know, like, is is a big one. So that is a
32:32
huge, huge gift.
32:35
The other thing is because we are running out of time,
32:40
I would love, you know, I would love us to keep at this and dig
32:43
deeper. I have my my question, my my surprise question,
32:47
and that was when was the last time you did something new for the first
32:50
time? Oh, the last time I did something oh, in
32:54
New Zealand a few weeks ago, I did zorbing.
32:58
So you get in I know. Google it, z
33:02
o b z o r b, zorb, zorbing in New Zealand
33:06
in Rotorua, and you get in a really big plastic
33:09
ball, and they put water in it, and then
33:13
they push you down a hill. With water in it?
33:17
So the water in it stops you from flipping head over heels
33:21
in the ball. Okay. Kinda friction wise just
33:25
to kinda sit in the water and, and chill as you're well, you
33:29
don't really chill. It's pretty wild. But, yeah, sorbing
33:33
was was the last thing I did that was brand new to me
33:36
or sand dune boarding. There there are
33:40
two things where I think this would have been better in my twenties than my
33:43
forties, but but I did them and they were exciting. And I don't
33:47
know if I'll ever do them again, though. Oh, well, I've seen people in the
33:50
balls, but the idea that you would say upright because there's water in
33:54
it is a lot more appealing to me. But that is fascinating. I'm always
33:57
surprised with what people say because, you know, amazing things
34:01
come out. Alright. Well, we have to we have to bring this to a close.
34:04
So I have to do the commercial part, and then I'm gonna get some words
34:08
of wisdom from you. And and people are gonna wanna
34:11
download your gift. I can't believe how fantastic it is.
34:15
So of course I need you to subscribe and share and engage with the
34:19
podcast on social media. One of the reasons that I do this
34:23
is because I want to give back to the community and we can't be
34:26
everywhere at once and find everything. And this is a way for me to
34:30
share information and share other experts with you. So this becomes
34:33
a vibrant community and it helps to fuel your crest quest
34:37
for growth and impact. So I hope you will continue to join me on the
34:41
One Small Change so that we can, you you know, really
34:46
make monumental shifts with just the smallest,
34:49
change in what we're doing. And if you haven't listened to the first episode, you
34:53
should do that. And I've got a couple on another episode up that that I'm
34:57
gonna be doing with just me in it because I like to talk, that
35:01
that's up there on and I'm calling it the quarterly clarity
35:05
check. And so you might wanna see that. So Diane, what are
35:09
your last words of wisdom? Last words of wisdom. You've talked
35:12
about my one gift. There's another gift, the five critical problems to avoid
35:16
when delegating. Make sure you grab that as
35:20
well. But the final thing is just, like, you have
35:24
permission to ask for help. And I'm I'm speaking even
35:27
stronger to my my women out there. You have permission
35:31
to ask for help. We are not meant to be silos. We are not meant
35:34
to be lone wolves. Everyone has the
35:37
ability to get help to hire, get
35:41
help to get your work done, get help to scale your business, get help to
35:45
have the financial success you want and
35:50
the freedom that you want in your business. So get some
35:53
help to make really the business that you want come
35:57
true. And life. It makes you stronger, not weaker.
36:01
Exactly. It's smart. Absolutely. I agree
36:04
with you. Okay, guys, We need to bring this to a close.
36:08
And like I always say, change may
36:12
be simple, but it's not always easy. And it requires courage and
36:16
resilience. And most of all, it requires the willingness
36:19
to step outside your comfort zone and do something different. So hopefully
36:23
you'll continue to join me for the one small change.
36:27
And until next time, stay curious. Thank you so much,
36:30
Diane. Thanks, Yvonne.