Kyle Mau, Author at HireUA

How to Manage Virtual Assistants

Successful business starts from the top. When you know how to manage virtual assistants effectively, you as the business owner take back your most precious resource — time. In this video, we’ll discuss 10 tips and tricks regarding how to manage virtual assistants so you can delegate effectively.

It is expensive to acquire good talent. It is hard to retain good talent. It is very expensive to lose good talent. If you don’t know how to give your team a good onboarding experience, how to manage virtual assistants and other remote positions with check-ins, accountability, and strong communications…

Then you’ll be churning.

Which isn’t what any business wants to do. Hope you get a ton of value on this video on how to manage virtual assistants — and see you in the next one.

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Owner Of VSL (Video Sales Letter) Agency Put $50,000 In His Pocket

Client Reviews

In this HireUA Client Case Study, Steven Trister, owner of Video Sales Expert and official VSL coach of Client Ascension, talks about his experience hiring a video editor from Ukraine has saved him $50,000 or so per year instead of hiring locally in his native UK.

It’s gone so well that Steven has actually come back and hired a second editor since then!

On a final note, HireUA used Steven for our video sales letter, which you can watch here. I can’t recommend working with him enough — he and his team are professional and a pleasure to do business with.

Why You Need To Work On Your Business, Not In Your Business

Time Management & Productivity

Way too many business owners have this simply wrong. They need to work on their business not in their business. They’re stuck in the day-to-day grind and operations instead of doing the things that move the needle forward in a big way. We all have finite amounts of time — and we all have the same 24 hours in a day.

You should only work on the things that matter.

It’s not selfish.

It’s important.

Your company and business provides jobs for others.

Their livelihood quite literally depends on the company — the company that YOU built and that YOU run. If you can’t perform because you’re too bogged down in nonsense…

Well, everyone ultimately will suffer.

You’re a hamster running on a treadmill that can never stop.

You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave.

Control Freak-ism

Deep down, a lot of people are control freaks. And it’s understandable that you build a business and you have a hard time letting go of it. Trusting someone else to execute things in it. Or even trusting someone else to run it. Trust somebody else to respond for you and speak for you.

All of these things take TRUST.

And what’s more:

Many business owners got started in business because they wanted to STOP working for other people.

And really, can I sit here and say I blame you?

If you’ve ever worked a corporate job you know the 80/20 rule.

Meaning…

80% of people are probably people you wouldn’t care to work with, if given the choice..

When it comes to hiring, you then assume it’s similar. 80% of the people you hire aren’t going to be nearly as capable as you are.

And guess what.

You’re not wrong.

Most of the candidates you speak to, the interviews you do, will be duds. But it only takes 1 strong hire to absolutely make a massive difference in terms of moving the needle forward for you.

work on your business not in your business

You Get To Choose

As I said above, many people built their business because they wanted to be done with the 9-5 corporate job. Maybe it’s what drove you to build the business, or the mere thought of ever having to sit in an office all day is something that drove you to entrepreneurship.

Here’s the thing:

When it’s your company…guess what — you make the rules.

So the 80% of people you wouldn’t want to work with, if given the choice, you as the owner of the company…guess what, you can just simply not work with those people.

Meaning don’t hire anyone you don’t want to work with.

Better yet, don’t hire anyone you don’t love working with.

Don’t hire anyone but A-players.

What is an A-player? That’s a different discussion for another day, but the key point is that when you put the right people in place who you are excited to work with, you don’t have to work in your business — you can work on the business while the people you trust execute the heavier day-to-day operations.

How To Truly Work On Your Business, Not In Your Business

It all starts with one of those infamous time audits. I know, I know, they’re absolutely no fun. I know, I know, you’re a business owner, you have better things to do than logging your time and jotting down notes all day…

I’m telling you though — it’s important.

Every day that you spend doing repetitive, time-consuming things, or worse, every day you spend doing stuff you hate doing is a day of lost energy and joy.

That’s not why you built a business, is it?

It doesn’t have to be anything super fancy. Pen and paper tends to work well because it becomes a bit more real. It’s easy to lose yourself in a myriad of Excel spreadsheets and time-tracking/productivity apps.

Keep it simple, do what works for you. If you have an executive assistant, ask them to hold you accountable for this.

Start taking a look at the tasks you write down.

Ask yourself…

What tasks am I doing that are repetitive? (write an R)
What tasks am I doing that are time consuming? (write a C)
What tasks do I love doing? (write an L)
What tasks do I hate doing? (write an H)

Of course, you can start getting more nitty-gritty and writing down what really makes money (more on that later), but for now, start here.

Tasks that have Rs, Cs, and Hs — start thinking about getting them off your plate so you can stop working on your business, not in your business.

Automate Or Delegate?

There’s tons of powerful software out there that can easily automate some repetitive processes to get them off your plate.

Sending out Slack invites to new clients
Parts of the onboarding process
Auto-responders

The list is endless. You shouldn’t just hire out a role because you think you need it, you should have a good, long, hard think about whether a simple snip of code can replace you (and this is even with the fact that I run a hiring agency in mind!)

If you can automate it — do it.

If it’s repetitive and time consuming and can’t be automated — then delegate it. Book a call with us to find out how you can!

Closing Thoughts

Business owners should focus on what they love. That’s what most companies are built on. They’re not built on spreadsheets, formulas, documents, and contracts. Stop bogging yourself down in the mundane and the day-to-day.

Stop working in your business.

Work on your business instead.

Hire right and this can be easy. Hire wrong and you’re going to find yourself on that endless hamster wheel.

The choice is yours.

If you’re ready to delegate some pesky items on your list, book a call with the HireUA sales team here.

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Hire A Virtual Assistant — 9 Tips You Must Know

Hiring

Hiring is hard. Hiring the wrong person is worse. Many business owners would like hire a virtual assistant, but don’t even know where to start.

Where do you post the job?

How do you filter applicants?

Who is in charge of scheduling everything?

What do you ask on an interview?

How do you onboard somebody properly to make them the most effective as possible?

If your head is spinning already, you’re not alone…

Let’s talk about how to hire a virtual assistant — the right way.

Here are 9 steps to take to hire the a great virtual assistant on the first try.

How To Hire A Virtual Assistant

1. Hire For Fit

You can teach someone skills. What you can’t teach is personality, drive, ambition, and overall chemistry and cultural fit with either yourself or your existing team.

Hire a virtual assistant first, and then teach them the skills necessary to succeed in the role.

Don’t hire skills and try to teach them to be people.

You can’t change people 🙂

It’s common at this point for business owners to put up a defense…

“I don’t have time to train somebody!”

Okay, fair — but have you done an audit of your time? How much time are you losing every month by continuing to do this task?

It might take you a couple hours, or even a couple days to get someone up to speed — but once they’re up to speed, you get all that time back in the future.

If it takes you 1 hour a day to do a task but you can spend 10 hours to train somebody (2 hours a day for 1 week), that means that at the end of their first month at full speed you’ll have saved 30 hours.

That’s a 3x ROI already.

Stop saying you don’t have the time. You can’t afford not to make the time.

2. Judge A Book By It’s Cover

People will say you shouldn’t judge people too harshly on a first impression…

I tend to disagree.

It is human nature that has been engrained within us for centuries to judge a book by it’s cover. Why should hiring be any different? Your first instinct and gut feeling is something to be trusted in business. Hiring is no exception to this.

For example…

If someone can’t be bothered to have good lighting and put on a decent shirt for a Zoom interview…

That says everything you need to know about them.

Even worse is when a potential applicant takes an interview from the street while on a walk, or while in a noisy restaurant with kids screaming in the background.

That is what they chose to let you have as the first impression.

Someone who could not even be bothered to sit down in a quiet place for a job interview.

I understand that the world has changed greatly in the last couple of years. Remote jobs became much more common. Offices became outdated. People got used to not even bothering to put on pants because their webcam only showed the top half of their body.

You need to know what your limits are.

Me, personally — I don’t like when candidates are walking around or don’t have a stable connection. It shows a lack of attention to detail that I refuse to have around my company — those are non-negotiable in my book. Your may be willing to let this slide (I’d personally be more lenient on this for “creative” types like a video editor than I would, say, an inbox manager).

Whatever your criteria is for a first impression, don’t budge on it.

3. Have A Specific Role When Hiring A Virtual Assistant

Jack of all trades and master of none is a famous phrase when it comes time to hire a virtual assistant.

People want to have somebody who can do everything.

And I’m not saying it can’t be done. You, as the business owner, likely wear multiple hats. Expecting some people on your team to do the same is not unrealistic, especially when starting out.

But you need to be a reasonable person about this.

For example, expecting a graphic designer to manage your email and calendar like an executive assistant is not a reasonable thing to ask for in a hire.

On the flip side of that, asking your Executive Assistant to whip together a few basic graphics in a pinch in a program like Canva is not an unrealistic ask.

Asking a video editor to start talking and managing clients is probably not a reasonable ask and well outside their scope of work.

Asking your Social Media Manager to do some basic video editing (like adding subtitles to shorts/reels) is not an unrealistic ask.

You understand what I’m saying?

It all depends on who you are asking.

Some positions have an element of “figure it out” to it. Others are very niche and specific.

4. Have Structured Interviews To Hire A Virtual Assistant

You should be A/B/C/D testing.

Your interviews should ask the same questions and follow the same general structure.

A little deviation is fine and expected, but you should aim to give the same “test” to each interview.

In addition to this…

You should be having back-to-back-to-back-to-back interviews whenever possible.

All of them on the same day in a nice, concise block of time. If you interview Candidate 1 on Monday, then Candidate 3 on Tuesday, then Candidates 3 and 4 on Friday — guess what, by the time Friday rolls around you’ll have forgotten most everything about 1 and 2.

If possible, try to have all your interviews together.

If it’s not possible, record them so you have the full interview to watch back later.

Final note about this:

If you have a large gap of time between interviews, you should 100% call the first interviews back for a round 2 if they were good and you’re considering them. In sales, it often helps to be the last call for a prospect. Maybe they’re shopping around and deciding who to go with. Always better to be the last one in this case. Hiring is no different. By the time you’re finished with interviews…you’ll be ready to be finished. You’ll be ready to just hire someone because they were last and they were good. Don’t do this.

Call back the originals and give them another shot.

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5. Thinking On Their Toes

Very straightforward.

Make them think on their toes in an interview, not just recite their skills and resume.

Ask questions that make them open up and give much more than just a 1-word answer (which does you no good whatsoever.

If they answer questions with simple “Yes” or “No” answers — red flag. It’s an interview, their chance to show off and impress you.

Nothing drives me crazier than asking a question that is designed to give somebody a chance to show off…

Example: “What social media platform are you best at?”

Answer: “Instagram.”

Ok.

WHY Instagram?

What have you done on the platform that would impress me as a business owner? How can you put more money in my pocket with your Instagram skills?

In addition, you can put candidates through what I like to call a…

“Fire Drill Scenario” — The Best Way To Test And Hire A Virtual Assistant

This is where you take them through a live situation of an experience they might encounter on the job.

For example, if you’re hiring an Executive Assistant, you could put ask them to find you flights for a certain destination and a certain date.

In this case, they would do this live — on the interview — with you watching (or you can say you won’t watch and you’ll go make a cup of coffee and just turn your camera/microphone off and watch them work).

If you’re hiring for a Client Success Manager, you could present them a couple of recent situations with problematic clients and ask them to craft responses on the spot.

If you’re hiring an Inbox Manager, ask them to come up with some responses on the spot.

The purpose for doing it live and on a call is so that they don’t get hours to think about something. You’ll be much more likely to tell if someone has “it” if you put them on the spot with a bit of pressure and see how they perform.

6. Don’t Be Cheap

Hiring the wrong person will cost you 30% of their annual salary.

That means if you hire a virtual assistant for $2,000/month, their annual salary is $24,000/year. This means if you get the wrong one, keep them for a few months, and then it’s just not working…

You’ve essentially cost your business $8,000.

Plus now you have the emotional and mental toil of having to start over with someone new and get them up to speed.

This is the point where some business owners give up and just say, “Forget it, I’ll just do it all myself…”, which usually means they go back to doing tasks that they could easily outsource for $10/hour.

In terms of hiring virtual assistants, it doesn’t take much to not be cheap. If the superior hire wants $900 a month and the “cheap” one is wanting $800 — you take the better one every time. Think about that. You are fretting over $100 in terms of investing in someone who is going to be a large part of your business and it’s growth.

I don’t like to get too cheesy with things…

But really, really think about that.

Do you think so little of yourself and your business that you’re going to skimp out on a measly $100?

Do you think that sends the right message to yourself in terms of your business mindset?

Probably not…

You can also add money on to your virtual assistant’s salary with incentive-based bonuses, which leads me to my next point…

7. Give Performance Bonuses

Give them a slice of the pie.

The team here at HireUA gets performance-based bonuses:

Lead Gen and Inbox Managers get a bonus for booked calls
Sales Reps get a commission on signed deals (obvious one)
Client Success Managers and Recruiters get a performance bonus based on finished placements

Aligns perfectly with the goal and direct revenue of the company.

Find something in your business that will directly impact your revenue if you had more of it. Calls, sales, retention, whatever it is. Find a way to tie it to the position you’re hiring for, and give someone an incentive to execute that.

This makes the virtual assistant you’ve hired more invested in their role, gives them a financial incentive, and also shows that there is potential for growth and opportunity in this position.

Which leads us to point #8 — you might need to sell the best on you…

8. Give Great Candidates A Great Offer

Make it nearly impossible for them to say no to it.

Got someone who is the right fit? You need to sell THEM on YOU.

You need to sell them on the job. The opportunity. The vision. Everything that makes you tick.

They shouldn’t be taking a job because they just need a job, they should be sold on what you’re doing and be genuinely enthusiastic about it.

Figure out what makes them tick.

Is it money? See point #7 above.
Is it the work? Give them the chance to shine.
Is it opportunity? How and when can they move up?

9. Remember: Hiring A Virtual Assistant Is Inexpensive

Which means that giving them a GREAT offer is still going to cost you a lot less than it would to hire somebody locally.

And remember…

More than likely, unless you are being very cheap, you are giving somebody a great opportunity. That $1,000 that doesn’t buy you a cup of coffee and a sandwich in your own country might cover 2 months of living expenses for somebody else. Maybe they live at home. Maybe they’re a stay-at-home mom that just needs something part-time to help make ends meet.

You won’t know people’s stories until you talk to them.

And as a final note…

You shouldn’t hesitate to ask those kind of personal questions on an interview.

Get to know your people and take a genuine interest in them — and there are no limits to the heights you can reach when building your team.

In Conclusion: Hiring A Virtual Assistant

In summary, to hire the right person, you should follow the below tips and tricks.

1. Hire for fit, because you can teach skills but you can’t teach chemistry and all the other stuff that matters.

2. Judge the cover, because someone who chooses to not represent themselves in the best way possible is showing you who they are. Despite the cultural changes of Zoom and online meetings, this does not mean people should have zero standards.

3. Be specific about the role you’re hiring.

4. Structure interviews in a way that allows you to compare candidates well. Don’t do them on different days if possible.

5. Test people to see how well they can think on their toes. Give a fire drill scenario when appropriate.

6. Don’t be cheap, you get what you pay for.

7. Pay for performance if possible — financial incentives are something that everybody likes. Nobody works for free — you don’t either, do you?

8. Make a good offer to good candidates.

9. Remember that you are giving somebody a good opportunity. Plain and simple.

That wraps up the 9 tips to hire a virtual assistant.

If you have any questions, leave a comment below.

Hope you enjoyed the article.

Kyle Mau
Founder | HireUA

PS: If you’re ready to book a call to hire a virtual assistant, just click here.

Working On The Weekends As A Business Owner

Founder Files

There’s a lot of “hustle and grind” culture out there today that basically says you’re loser if you aren’t working on your business constantly. Yes, that includes working on the weekends.

It’s nonsense.

You cannot sustain this over a long period of time, 16-18 hour days nonstop. You just can’t. You will burn out eventually. Business owners tend to start working on the weekend. What starts off as an innocent “quick email check” here, or a “few little admin tasks” there can quickly spiral out of control.

All of a sudden what was supposed to be a 10-15 minute ordeal on a Saturday morning has become a 2 hour ordeal. Then you do it all over again Sunday.

Maybe you give up a couple quality weekend hours with your kids.

Next thing you know, they’re asking to go outside and ride bikes on a 75 degree day and you say you’re busy.

Then you miss a soccer or baseball game.

Then that one game becomes two.

And then what?

Does working on the weekends just become the new normal?

Do You Want To Be Working On The Weekends? Probably Not.

Most business owners who succeed work hard.

There’s a whole group of other people that think they can become a business owner and it’s somehow less difficult and stressful than working a traditional 9-5, but successful business owners know better. Usually the ones who don’t get it are the ones talking constantly about, “How nice it must be to be able to set your own schedule”, ignoring the fact that sometimes you have to pick up the phone at all times of the day in order to solve a crisis.

That said, most business owners also didn’t start a company so that they could have a new job.

Think about that.

You didn’t start your company so you had to work set hours, did you?

You didn’t start your company so you had to do stuff you didn’t like doing, did you?

You didn’t start your company so you had to work on the weekends, did you?

Of course you didn’t. You built your business from the ground up so you can have the freedom to work when you want, enjoy more free time, and not have to answer to somebody else.

Having to work on the weekends defeats a large part of the point of having a business to begin with.

working on the weekends — Are you going to start missing soccer games to work on the weekend?

How To Avoid Working Every Weekend

Sometimes there will be things you just have to do. It’s part of having your name on the door.

However, setting clear, firm boundaries of what does or doesn’t constitute an emergency will help you greatly. Teach your team what these boundaries are. Enforce them. Ruthlessly.

Don’t engage in silly or time-consuming tasks that can automated or delegated easily.

When you keep things clear and take things off of your plate and plant them firmly on somebody else’s like a heapin’ pile of meatloaf — guess what.

That responsibility is now theirs.

You can put systems in place, so that you don’t have to be missing soccer games and other fun while you’re grinding away on the weekend.

For example, inbox management and social media management should both be outsourced ASAP.

Final Note On Weekend Work

When you are in the fires of building a business, you might have to do some long days and some long weekends in order to get things off the ground. It’s just part of it. But it should not and it can not be a “forever” thing.

Here’s the trick to remove that:

Block your day appropriately:

Deep work mornings.
Time for you.
Admin and small task time (delegate this as much as possible).

If you do things like this, you should be able to slowly but surely remove yourself from the equation of working weekends and get yourself into a position where your business works for you.

You want to be working ON your business — not IN your business.

That’s a key differentiator that many business owners do not get.

Anyways.

If you’re looking to remove yourself from the day-to-day and put an elite team of people around you, I have just the solution.

Book a call with the HireUA team here:

https://Hire-UA.com