5 Step Guide To Hiring a Rockstar VA To Handle Your Business

[eliquid]

I have a friend I have known for over a decade that lives in Brazil that I have a good relationship with.

We've made a lot of money together, sharing info and business ideas in those 10+ years.

He hit a rough patch and I thought I could help by hiring him as a VA into another business I run to test the VA waters again myself. I specifically brought him on to help teach him PPC, while he earns a paycheck to help out. So I look at it as a way to teach him a skill while also contributing financially to him and also re-testing VA stuff for myself.

I've historically handled all my PPC agency clients 100% by myself. My "agency" is small in the number of total clients I have at 1 time ( less than 10 at any 1 time ), but my clients themselves are not small. I've self-managed the PPC for:

• Alibaba
• Virgin
• TeamViewer
• University of Cincinnati
• more...

So while the number of clients is small, it ends up being more than full-time because of the brands and size of company I deal with. I also had to deal with the fact these companies wanted to deal with me personally, not a VA or someone else in their account. They wanted Jason Brown, not some random other person.

I worked around a lot of my fears and issues this way:

• For password issues, I simply had another login and password created if I could. For my Google Ads MCC account, I just added another additional email that looked like me.. like jasonbrown@protonemail.orgthat only the VA used.
  • This also let me follow and track changes made in the PPC account so I could monitor what was going on
  • A lot of services will let you have "add on" emails and team members. I just had these look like me so clients wouldn't ask questions or get nosy.

• For things I could not create a new email and password around, I set up a VPS server with windows and opened a browser with several tabs of URLs and services that I could not add a additional email and logged into them myself while on the VPS at the same time. I then gave use of the VPS to the VA. They didn't know the logins for these accounts. The browser stayed open forever and never closed down.
  • True they could reset logins at this point, but like others have said above you need some level of trust.
  • The VPS also served as a way to not store logins and passwords in other systems like Slack/Trello/Google Docs, etc that could get hacked
  • The VPS also made it look like the logins were from the USA and not Brazil or some other IP.

• I paid my friend weekly. This helped build trust I feel and also made a difference to him personally. While we already trusted each other from before, you know how "money and friends" goes in the long run. I didn't at any one time want money to be an issue ever, so I made sure to pay weekly and I even covered the PayPal cost too.
  
  
  
• I gave him all the jobs I hated to do myself first. Things like reporting in Google Docs every week for each client, forecasting budget until the end of the month every day to make sure we are on even spend. Making sure all accounts were running daily ( in case credit card was messed up or other random errors ), setting up new campaigns or ads in different cities, etc. These tasks were needed to be done daily across all PPC platforms per client.
  • This alone freed up a lot of head-space and mental anguish. Have you ever tried to go on vacation, have a nice weekend, or just "sign off" from work and have this nagging shit in your head all day? It ruins the time off you get. This alone was a blessing.

• Then I gave him all the jobs I thought he needed to build a skill set in PPC ( this was me trying to help him personally ). In my specific example, I showed him things like:
  • Negative keywords
  • Ad split testing ( the way I do it )
  • Bidding of keywords ( script based, logic , etc )
  • more...
  • Don't get me wrong, teaching him this also helped me free up those tasks that while I didn't hate, needed to be done weekly or on some routine of some kind. This ended up saving me more time.

• Everything I showed him, I did 3 things:
  • I outlined it in Slack for him since we talked in Slack almost daily
  • I did a video or 3 in Jing to show him it visually and where things are and why/how
  • I had HIM create a document to outline it, checkmark it, and organize it and report on it.

• I monitored his progress and results meticulously for 90 days to see when and how he did everything I asked. This wasn't to micro-manage him, but for me to learn where I needed to improve my communication with him and to also resolve any misunderstandings quickly. Once it was all good, I basically stopped checking up on the tasks and let him work.
  
  
  
• As he got better and into a groove ( which freed up some of his time ) I gave him more work in other business I do outside of PPC. I always waited until he got better and into a groove before giving him new work so he had prior work done excellently and down pat. Then I put new work on his plate.
  
  
  
• I was able to go from 100% handling everything in this specific business myself, to just handling phone calls, emails, and invoices for months at a time per client. I did do some things myself at random times, but it was so far and few in-between that I can't measure it. Plus, I was able to help him and his new family ( he had a baby while I hired him ) and it felt good to help out too. ALSO, he learned a new skill that he can one day use on his own to get hired or start another new business in the future.

 

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[Mac]

3 Questions To Ask Your Team Each Week That Will Keep Them Accountable.

For a long time, I had an issue with keeping my direct reports accountable on their weekly/monthly/quarterly goals.

A friend who had experience in managing a sales team in a venture-backed startup shared this simple framework with me.

It's eliminated 90% of bottlenecks and helped us to grow bigger, faster.
1) What's your commitment?
2) What are the bottlenecks?
3) How can I help?

You set up a weekly meeting rhythm with your direct reports, follow up on the "commitments" they made from the previous week and ask them these 3 questions.

Then, if they don't achieve them the next week, you start asking questions.

Why didn't you achieve this goal? If they start giving excuses, then you need to identify whether it's a problem with your system (aka Standard Operating Procedures) or with the person.

"Do they have a reliability problem? Is this task not fitting within their strength? Is their focus divided?"
- This "diagnosis" I learned from the book "Principles" by Ray Dalio.

Then you can decide whether to help them, warn them or fire them. Instead of keeping people on board that were not the right fit for weeks/months, we can eliminate them off our roster and find the right person a lot faster.

 

[Champion]

Thanks a lot for this guide, im currently at a point where I want to hire a VA

 

[becks22]

Does anyone have any tips for paying a VA in a way that doesn't have a ton of fees associated with the payment for processing? Paypal charges me $5 per every $50 paid.

 

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[Envision]

Does anyone have any tips for paying a VA in a way that doesn't have a ton of fees associated with the payment for processing? Paypal charges me $5 per every $50 paid.

Use Transferwise and set them up on monthly retainers

 

[Not Most People]

I'm looking to hire someone to handle some of the technical work soon for my chatbot agency. I'm nowhere near overwhelmed yet but I want to start handing that off before that time comes so I want pre-emptively hire a VA - most likely from onlinejobs.ph

The problem I'm running into is that chatbot/manychat skills are still so new to the market that it's hard to find anyone with experience in them.

So my main question is - do I narrow down my candidates to the few who have some chatbot experience, or do I hire the right person and train them myself? (which I should be able to do)

 

[becks22]

My VA the last month has been great. I wanted her to start reviewing the newsletters I'm subscribed to and then pick out any pertinent details and summarize them. I'm having trouble figuring out how to get her to see the emails. I don't want to forward them to her as that is just more work on my part.

I have already set up a folder and have had them all routed to a sub folder in Outlook and I'm thinking of creating a forwarding rule? Does anyone else do this with their VA and have some ideas or tips to keep this uncomplicated and the process tidy? My intent is for her to review the newsletters weekly. I also bought her a course on Udemy about writing a newsletter so she'll be eventually reviewing my newsletters (which include competitor newsletters) and then writing one for me on a quarterly basis or something. My industry ins't exciting enough to warrant a weekly or bi-weekly newsletter.

 

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[mikecarlooch]

@Envision Thanks for this great thread! I saw this a while ago, but a question just popped in my mind that I needed to ask.

I believe it was @fastlane_dad that said recently, with the right systems, training, and leadership even the most low-level workers can become rockstars.

This got me coked up on the fact that this can also be done with talent in other countries ("Virtual Assistants").

The question I've got is that if you're a pretty new company and you don't have a crap ton of money to invest into talent for fulfilling a product..

Could you use inspiration, influence, and long-term benefits to get that third-world talent to see the vision you have in mind as a CEO (kind of like what @Ravens_Shadow was talking about in his thread about getting programmers to work for little pay)?

Kind of like... letting them know if they stay the course at the beginning, they will reap the benefits in the future?

Also letting people know right off the bat that any suggestions they make to the company that is implemented successfully will allow them to get a cut of the benefits that come from that, kind of like what Charles Koch preaches about not running a company like a dictatorship.

Another thing is - what if you used skills from other parts of your life, in my case it would be health & fitness, to help that talent on their own self-improvement journeys and keep them motivated in that way?

All in all, what I'm asking is do you think that these things matter and could work to start a relatively large team without having to put up a lot of money at the start if you explain the vision correctly to them?