Transcripts
1. Welcome to This Class: Hey, my name's Scott and I outsource tasks for the first time in April 2020 to support to the creation of my top 10 rated podcasts. Now if you'd asked me this over a year ago, I was such a crazy because the thoughts of managing someone on the other side of the world terrified me. However, since then, 15 months have passed and allow spent less than an hour week gazing and working with my virtual assistants. Which means I've got time to do other things, such as creating this very course, as well as being able to spend more time we found in France. For me, this is a real priority and therefore, this whole process has been game changing. So welcome to this class, and there are a few things you can expect to get from it. Number one, I'm going to help you outsource to a virtual systems less than $5 an hour. I know, particularly for someone based in the Western world, that seems crazy, but it isn't totally possible and I'll be showing you how to do this. I'm also going to show you how you can set up systems and tools. The only after spend less than one hour a week communicating with your virtual assistant for me personally are now spending probably between 1520 minutes a week. So you can really reduce the amount of time you're spending working with your virtual assistants and let them do their own thing, which will save you so much time in the long run. I'm also going to show you how to hire your very first virtual systems. So some of the questions you should be asking during the interviews, I'll to actually post your job on an online jobs board so that you can whittle down the applications and all sorts of neat lot tricks to save you time. I know how time-consuming this process can be. So I'm gonna be showing you lots of tips and tricks so that you can avoid making the same mistakes that I made in the process. And ultimately I'm going to help you save ten plus hours a week by outsourcing tasks that you no longer want to do. So it's a pleasure to have you here. And if you're ready to outsource to your very first virtual assistants and let me help you, like I've helped over a 150 students to dates. Let's do this.
2. Class Project: Okay, So the cost project is very simple. I want you to demonstrate how you've outsourced to a virtual assistant and show evidence of this. So you could do it in the following form. You could have a video of you explaining what your virtual assistant is done for you. So just a one-on-one video like this. Or you could actually showcase some of the work that your virtual system has done for you. Whether it's content they've written or audio, they've edited, whatever the task might be. Finally, you could even record a video of U2 talking IE, you talk into your virtual assistants. Maybe it's on a Zoom call or something like that. So three options drop one of them in the class project, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what those costs projects are.
3. Outsourcing FAQs: There are a few really common questions I get asked all the time. And to begin with, the first one is, what is a virtual assistants? So it's not clear already, virtual system is someone who works for you remotely. It can be anywhere in the world, real human being. And that's worth stressing because I know a few of my friends thought maybe it's some sort of AI or some sort of computer or virtual system is a real human being just like you and me. And they work for you and do tasks for you remotely, Seattle, it could be based anywhere in the world. Typically, they are people who are freelancers themselves. So actually they have their own sort of virtual assistant business and they work with many different clients. In my case, my virtual assistant. She has another part-time job, so she's actually a teacher and she does virtual system work on the side. So yeah, the kind of lifestyle choices of the VA can be very wide ranging, but ultimately they are someone who is doing tasks for you. What can I outsource? How long is a piece of string is basically anything you want. It doesn't have to be kind of simple tasks that can be more complicated tasks. For example, if you are a professional who is not very good at accountancy or finance, there will be someone who can also do that for you as well. In this course, we are going to be covering more things that you can already do because for warm is my experience. But also I think it's useful to outsource task that you know how to do. That is because if your VA comes to you with a question about something and you don't know what it is, then you're not really going to be able to help them. And I think goes well. For example, if someone, I hired someone to create like a website for me using JavaScripts, I turn now to use JavaScript so I don't know what it looks like on, there is a risk, not to say this would ever happen, but there is a risk that your VA might take advantage of that situation. And they might our bill more times it didn't actually worked. That might trick you somehow. So in this course, yeah, we're gonna be covering things on tasks that you already know how to do, that you've already documented just giving those tasks to someone else to free up your own time. Can you work with an agency instead? Yes, you absolutely can. The thing is working with an agency. And what I mean by agency is a company that will do all of this for you. So they will look up the your outsource tasks. They will do them for you. Essentially. Problem with this is it costs a lot of money. So I know a very close friend of mine. He went down this route of working with an agency for his own podcast. And he was spending around 30 pounds an hour for the task that you want to do in creating social media posts, editing is audio, all of that sort of stuff. And when I told him he could do all of this for $3 an hour instead of 30 pounds an hour. He was flabbergasted because 10 times it was costing and 10 times more. So you can work with an agency insects. And actually I've heard lots of positive things for me personally. I just can't afford that. And I suspect many of you call as well. So this course is focusing more on doing it all yourself, kind of DIY methods. But still you're not gonna be spending lots of time doing this. She cutting out the best of both worlds. Less than $5 an hour. Really, Scott? I know. I know it sounds insane, but I am paying my VA $3, 13 hour. It was actually originally $3 an hour, but I decided to give her a way to increase. And because she was doing such great work for me. And this actually raises a question I get asked a lot as well, which is this, is this ethical? I think it is. And the reason for that is this is coming down to economics on geographic arbitrage. So essentially because the cost of living in Southeast Asia so inexpensive compatible, they are in Western world. It means the actually $3 30 and our is still a good wage, is still competitive wage and it's on a par with many of the jobs in an opportunities that would get in their own countries in Southeast Asia. So in that sense, it is ethical and of course, you can pay more than this. But ultimately, if you are writing a job description, you're posting a job that's saying this is a salary on being really up front and people are still applying for that, then that suggests that actually they're happy with that and there's no issues. So I don't think it should be an issue for you as well. And then finally, do I need any previous experience? Absolutely not. I have never managed anyone or at least not until I had my virtual assistants in any sort of capacity before, whether it be at work or at school university. And you don't either because you can learn these skills as you go along. It's not rocket science, it's just treating someone as you would treat anyone else with the addition of actually given them work and paying them. That is the only difference. I now we're in a position with my virtual assistant. Well, I feel like she's a friend and actually we have conversations not just about work and family life and think she's got going on. And you can get stuck place as well, just being a nice human being. So do you need any previous experience? I didn't have any previous experience and I believe it hasn't ended me in any way. So I believe you don't either.
4. Identifying Tasks to Outsource: Now there are a few questions you should ask yourself when looking to identify tasks to all source. The first one is, which tasks don't you like doing? These are the wants and knock on the head steroids away because ultimately, you shouldn't have to spend time doing things you hate. You can get someone else to do instead. So in my case, it was editing audio. I hate it. I'm really bad at it. It's a real pain meals. And I was like, well, if I can hire someone to do that for me, I'll be very happy indeed and also be a lot of time. So I was the first thing I outsourced other think about what tasks do you like doing? These are the ones to outsource first. Which tasks are repetitive? So again, for me, editing audio, tick, tick this box. It's something I have to do a lot of or I used to have to do a lot of for my podcast and is very repetitive. You doing the same thing over and over and over and over again. And I was like, surely there must be a way that I don't have to do this anymore. And of course, outsourcing to virtual system is that very well. So have a think about what tasks are repetitive for you. Which tasks do you find yourself doing? Day in, day out, week in week. And you'll be able to outsource these as well. And the third question to ask yourself, which tasks a low value. Which tasks are pushing the needle on your business, your creative project, whatever it might be. In my case, editing audio, again, 6 dot box because although of course I want my podcasts or some goods and I believe it does now. It isn't something which was a huge priority for me. For me, the value that I could bring to my podcast was actually having these conversations and bringing these guests on the show and actually diving into their thought process and ask them the questions that people might ask them. So that was how I was bringing value to my podcast, or at least I feel I'm bringing value to my podcast and audio editing, although it's important component of that is not the most valuable. So have a think about which tasks for you. Valuable or low volume, and maybe those are the ones you can, all souls as well. So now that you've started to outsource these tasks is worth thinking about. Okay, how much time would outsourcing these tasks saved me each week and each month. Would it be maybe a couple of hours a week if you're only kind of dipping your toe into outsourcing, Would it be in my case, like templates hours a week? Would it be if you're hiring someone with a full time basis, maybe 30 to 40 hours a week. And the questions we'll ask on the bucket, This is how would your life change by not having to do these tasks? The reason I think this is a really important question is because having this, this knowledge of where this will lead you, what the goal will be or what the outcome will be if outsourcing the tasks, it can be a really good motivator. So for example, in my case, I wanted to outsource these tasks could because physical I did up in a thousand that day. But also it means now I've got a bit more free time to spend time seeing family and friends. And that's a really important thing for me. So it's giving me the extra kick if you'd like to actually go forth and hire virtual assistants.
5. Documenting Tasks in a Virtual Assistant Handbook: Hi, So welcome back. So one of the biggest pieces of the jigsaw when it comes to outsourcing is actually having a documented list of systems for your VA to follow. How are we gonna do this as follows? So I'll give you two options. The first option, which is the way I went about it is actually writing out all of these tasks in a Google documents. You can then detail every single step for your virtual system in order to detail the tusks. And this has a number of benefits. Benefit number 1, they will be able to just crack on with your tasks without you having to train them. And actually this means in the future, if you're willing to hire future VAs, you can just simply give them this Google Doc or this handbook as I call it, for them to go through in their own time. The second benefit is if English is not their first language, then they can go through the handbook, translates it in their own language, and go through it in their own time. So it does offer a couple of benefits. The alternative, which I will also show you is to use a tool like Screencast-O-Matic to screen record the videos just like I'm doing right now for this very class so that you can show your VA ought to do in order to complete a task. So for example, in the humble quick, I'm going to show you there are a number of tasks related to podcasting. Somewhat show my VA how to edit a podcast episode by screen casting the task, Recording it for them, and then linking to that task or that video in the Assistant handbook. If this isn't quite clear at this stage, no worries, Because I'm now going to show you my virtual assistant, Hamburg, and how you can do this for yourself. It's also worth noting that my Humbug will be linked to in the resources of this class. In case you want to copy it directly. To do that you simply go to File and then make a copy of that Google doc. All right, so as you can see, we're now in my Google Drive and I'm just going to take you to this virtual assistant, a handbook, which is something like this. So as you can see, it is quite a detailed document over 20 pages and each of these tasks which is linked to, so if I click on Poker Stars, for example, me to a heading that details all of the podcasts tasks that my system does for me. So things like posting and scheduling episodes and wealth. We have posting, guest upset on Soundcloud, those sorts of things. And as you can see, every single task is detailed very methodically as to how to do this. So it is taking a spoon feeding approach. So essentially to post a guest upsert on some column, for example, my VA has to login to entrepreneurs can party SoundCloud account. And there's a web address there for SoundCloud on the top bar menu, click Upload, et cetera, et cetera. Each of these tasks is detailed here. So this was quite an arduous process in the sense that I hopped to go in a coffee shop. I think over the space of two to three weeks, writing down each of these steps, it was a very tedious process and by far the most tedious part of this entire outsourcing journey. However, it means now that's if I'm wanting to hire a future virtual assistant, I can simply give them this handbook and they can go through these tasks and learn how to do them in their own time. So even though it's not fraud investment on my part and actually writing down all these tasks, it means that for future assistance, they don't have to rely on me for training. They can simply turn to this Humbug. And actually this is why I did my very first assistant. She went through this Humbug, as you can see, the some of the details as well around general daily tasks. And she now knows how to do all of these tasks without me having to give her any steps. So that is essentially the purpose of the Humbug. Just to take you to another of these headings, just to show you how it works. If I click on this warm around creating audio grams. Again, it will take me to a similar heading here, and it will have all the steps detailed. So this is one way you can create your virtual assistant Humbug, give away, which you could use is to have a very similar setup. I love Google Docs, I think they are super easy to use and formats. Instead of a linking to text, what you could do is have a similar contents page here, and each of these headings could link to a video. She could have a video link here that is uploaded in Dropbox. And you could take those screencasts, like I mentioned earlier in this video, using a tool like screencasts, a Matric. So if you've never used green customer trick before, it's the tool that I'm using right now to record this class. So essentially it gives you the opportunity to share your screen with students, but also to show your face here in the bottom right corner, as you can see me, I right. It is that easy to use. It gives you a snapshot here of actually how it works. So this is the screen up pops up when you open it up. See, I have the option of just recording webcam, which is what I've done for the intro of this video. The option to just use the screen, which I haven't used for this class yet. And I don't think I will be or the option to use both, which is where you've got the screen, but also you've got you in the bottom right corner and some various other settings here, including the microphone that you're using and whether you want computer audio. So it's dead easy to use in terms of pricing. It comes to around 40 pounds a year, I believe. And there are similar tools out there. So you could use something like loom as well, which is very similar to be honest, I think the only difference is that I know are in terms of the pricing. So the loom pricing does give you free options and such. Or if I just take you to that, there is an optional looms or how free. And in order to use free, up to five minutes video. However, if you are creating videos for your virtual assistant over five minutes, then yeah, you'd want to use something like screen customer thick unless you pay for the premium version of loom. So hope that makes sense. It is a really can't stress this enough. You do want to have some sort of documented list of systems before you hire your virtual assistants. I say this from experience because one of my close friends, he to hire a virtual assistant, their relationship turn very sour very quickly. Reason for that he didn't have a list of documents. It systems say who's trying to train his virtual assistant in all of the tasks as he hired her. Problem with that was that he found himself managing her way too much and he felt like he was actually doing a lot of work rather than actually has a system saving him time. So yeah, their relationship didn't last too long, I think was a few months. That's not to say that could work for you. But still, I think it's worth having the systems in place in a Google document like this for you. Your virtual assistant. Hope you found this video useful. I'll see you in the next one.
6. VA Rulebook & Setting Expectations: Hi, So welcome back. So in this video I wanted to talk to you about having a virtual system rule book. So similar sort of document in the sense that this too is a Google doc, just like the virtual system handbook, but it specifies some rules and expectations you have for your virtual assistants. Now, I know this can seem a little bit of a morbid subject, but let me pose a situation to you. Let's say you find that your virtual system is doing work for someone else in your time. What you're gonna do about it? Are you going to find them straight away and you give them a second chance? What are the systems, what are the processes for the sorts of incidence? Well, it is something that a lot of people just do not consider at all. And it can mean that you are on your virtual assistant ends the relationship very suddenly. And if you've still got tasks that need doing, this can put you in a real image. So I don't want that to happen for you, which is why I recommend creating a virtual assistant rulebook. It's worth stressing that I haven't got to turn to this at all really, because my virtual system has done an amazing job from day one. So I'm very blessed for that. But that's not to say that some things could happen. You might hire someone and actually find out they're not quite the right fit for whatever reason. So how are you going to let them go gently? Well, that's exactly what this robot is going to cover. So without further ado, I'm now going to jump into my Google Drive and show you what your own virtual system rulebook might look like. And of course, similar to the virtual assistant Humbug, a link to the virtual assistant rulebook will be in the resources of this class. All right, so as you can see, we're now in this virtual assistant rules document, which is in my Google Drive. And I'm going to go through this document very quickly for you to give you a sense of what you might want to include in a document like this for yourself, it's a very short documents are compared to the Humbug, which was over 20 pages. This one is just a couple of pages and I'm going to go through it very quickly to show you this, all things to include. So to begin with, it says during the first month of work, make sure you follow all of these rules. And I'm going to stress right now this was a document I linked to in the first email that I sent to my virtual assistant when she started working for me. So she had access to this. She could read through it in her own time. Most of these rules should be common sense, but I want to make sure you follow them. There was a table below. If you break a rule, it is one strike. If you've got five strikes in a month, I will need to let you go, so please comply with all rules. I'm going to show you very quickly what this table looks like. So it is the following. And as you can see, each of these tasks has a strike next to it. So for example, she doesn't complete or he doesn't complete his or her daily tasks, then they will get a strike similar story. If they don't send me an email to let me know they've completed the tasks, they'll get a strike. And the only one that has more than one strike is charging incorrect time. So that's something I'm not standing for if my virtual system wants to charge me incorrect time, although I find they're working for someone else in my time, then that would be an instant dismissal sort of thing. So it is a little brutal. But as I mentioned earlier in this video, the purpose of this rulebook is to protect yourself. You want to lay these expectations to begin with. So there are no nasty surprises when you find that you need to let go of your virtual systems. Both have an expectation of what's going to happen next. Okay, so continue with this. My goal is to work for you with you for as long as you would like and make you happy. Take your time and read rules and review to make sure you comply. So when my virtual system did read through this document, she let me know in email that she had read it and that she was happy with all of the rules that I had laid down. Below are some notes on working with me. Make sure you read on Sunday notes. If you have any issues understanding any of the rules, all the notes, please contact me. Please contact me and I'll be able to help. So rules, things like completing tasks of the day and detailed on Asana. So actually completing these tasks, mocking them as complete, which is really helpful for me. Sending me the daily e-mail with a report to this address and answering the following questions. So what did you do today? Issues you run into and how can I help you? I'm big on this last one in particular. There's anything I can be doing to help my virtual assistant wherever it's given her access to new tools or given her additional training, I'm more than happy to do that. So the way this works now is my virtual system will send me a daily e-mail on days that she's working for me, which typically these days is Monday till Friday. And in this email she will essentially answer these three questions or she did for me today in Shou Xi may have run into things like internet outages in a country and how can I help her? And she sends me this email every single morning, essentially, because of the time zone difference, it means that our wake up to this daily e-mail and I'm effectively working in my sleep, which is a pretty cool feeling. Finish tasks. So if I ask you to do a task, it must be marked as complete and Asana, as I mentioned earlier, and completed within 24 hours responding to emails. So just in terms of communication, I like my virtual assistant to respond to e-mails within 24 hours during working days. So as the emails from me and yeah, that's kind of a minimum expectation. And then a few other bits and pieces around our meetings and timekeeping. So as you can see, a very short documents, but there is one which I think is really important and a lot of people hiring virtual since overlook. Hope you found this video useful. I will see you in the next one.
7. First Day Email, Orientation Doc & Weekly Tasks: Hi, welcome back. So in this particular video, I wanted to go through the VA orientation documents and the first email that you'll send to your virtual systems when they start working with you. Now appreciate we're kinda getting ahead of ourselves here because we haven't hired a virtual system yet. And it seems a little, yeah, getting ahead of ourselves to be thinking about these systems. However, I think this is the better way to go about it because it means that you'll have all the systems in place before you hire virtual systems. And it'll save you money because you're not having to spend time training your virtual assistants in your own time. So I think it is useful for those reasons. We've already covered the virtual assistant Humbug. We've covered the virtual system rule book and these next two documents are almost the final pieces of the jigsaw in terms of systems. There's one more video around systems, around some useful tools that you may want to consider using. But in terms of creating documents, these are the final two hurdles. So with that being said, I'm not going to show you why. I think these two documents are really useful, how to create them. And of course, there will be links to my own documents in the resources of this class. Okay, So as you can see, we're once again in my Google Drive, and this is the first day email that I sent to my virtual assistants. Now of course, you'll notice that I didn't actually include her name at this point because I hadn't hired her and I created all of the systems before I went about hiring someone. So I wanted to quickly run through this e-mail. I'll then show you the first day orientation document which is linked to in this email. And yeah, I basically sent this email to my virtual assistants. One side hired her and confirmed that we were going to be working together. So this was the first thing you should look at when she started working for me on Monday. So yeah, just a bit of background on the process, which we'll cover later in this class as well. But I went through the interview process, how it's my virtual system. We confirmed it before the weekend, so I believe was on a Friday. And then over the weekend I suggested if you want it to look through these documents, you can do, but you don't have to. She did. She went through all the documents which I'll show you in the orientation document. Got it all set up, meaning that on a Monday when we had our first meeting, we were ready to start working together. So this is the first day email license, and you can see there's a link that to the first day orientation document which I'll show you shortly, and just a few notes and liver pieces. So as you can see throughout this whole process, your job is to tell me anything that doesn't make sense. Lots of it should already be organized, but if anything is unclear, let me know so I can amend as necessary. Hopefully, you can get some of this done before the first day so we can hit the ground running. But if you don't, this is okay. So that's exactly what I was saying before. Please keep track of your time or your setting everything up. I will be paying you for this time in the future, we'll be using hope stuff to track your time. So I'm not actually gonna be covering hope stuff in this class because it is a tool that you don't need. It is just a nice to have essentially hope stuff. Let you truck the time of your virtual assistant. And the way it does this is when you give access to the account to your virtual assistants, they will login to hope stuff and as soon as they start working on the day's tasks, they will click Record on hope stuff. This will then record all the activities taking place on their laptop. Meaning that if you wanted to, you could check the screenshots of your VAs laptop. So little bit big brava ask, and for that reason, me and my virtual assistant no longer use it. How we now or rather how my system tracks her time. She does it manually in an Excel spreadsheet and then she sends me not report at the end of the month. I then use this to pay her. We'll be covering this later in the class, but I wanted to give you a heads up in case you were thinking about using a tool, I hope stuff. Hope stuff. I believe it's around 10 pounds a month or 15 pounds a month. And it's all seated. Append a decide whether the eyes or use a good use of time. My opinion is, I think it is useful in the beginning, say the first couple of months of working with a virtual systems just to check they are doing all they say they are doing after that. Once you've had that trust build soap, I would then suggest using a more manual process launches an Excel document. Okay, so this is the first day email then, like I said, I'm not gonna take you to this orientation document which is linked to, and this is more of an important document. So this document is for your system to run through on day one, like it suggests. And of course, both of these documents will be linked to in the resources of this class, like I mentioned earlier in this video. Okay, so ask sculpt for is access password to his Dropbox account and install Dropbox on your desktop slash laptop. So a couple of things to note on this. So in terms of the access password to Dropbox, the only password I've explicitly shared with my virtual assistant. All of my over access password and login passwords are saved on Last Pass, which I'll talk about very shortly. And then the second thing, you don't necessarily need to use Dropbox if you wanted to, you could just get by with the free Google Drive account that you'll hopefully have setup at this point. And at the time of this recording, I believe you get 15 gigabytes of free storage, which is really, really good. So if you want to use Google Drive instead of Dropbox, by all means, go for it. The only reason I wanted to use Dropbox or a couple of reasons. One of those reasons is it makes it really easy to sync files directly to the Cloud through your laptop on Dropbox. Feature that they have built-in, which I believe Google Drive doesn't have at the time of this recording. And also I just like to have my personal files on my podcasting file separate on two separate called systems. It's a little bit Muji, say don't necessarily need that, but that was my thinking behind Dropbox. Okay, So step to download last boss Chrome extension and our Scott for access to be a member of his account. So how Last Pass works is the following. Essentially as it says, your assistant will download the Chrome extension and then whenever you have or whenever they need the password for a particular accounts, whether it's email account or something like that, the fields will automatically populate in the logins. So for example, the email address and the password will automatically populate, providing they've downloaded the Chrome extension. So really fantastic tool costs around 40 pounds a year, I believe, but well worth the money just because it makes us safer, secure way of sharing your passwords with your virtual assistant. Okay, So step number 3, check out the virtual assistant handbook, which we made in one of the previous videos. One of your jobs will be updating this periodically and it should help you with your tasks. So something to quickly note about Humbug now that it's set. So my assistant basically has autonomy on this so she can add to it as you see fit. And the idea of this is for me by having my assistant date handbook with new tasks that I might give her and things like that. It means that a couple of benefits. We don't have to do it for one, which is fantastic. But also means that when it comes to training a future virtual assistants, they will be able to refer to this Humbug. And because of virtual assistant has been adding to it, it'll hopefully make it easier for them to follow it because it's not based on what I know is based on more than a system has also been working through, if that makes sense. So that is something to note about Humbug. But you can see here it is a document I've already created at this point in the class and my system here can get access to it. Step 4, install a dusty and a few of the tools. These are specific to podcasting. So Good point head to ask you virtual system to install tools that they will need when working for you. Number 5, install hope stuff and Haskell for access. We've already talked about hope stuff and why it might be useful. Step 6, install slack and a scope for access. Slack is a very popular messaging up and I use it instead of say, what's up or messenger. Again, for me, it's just a case of keeping my businessy saw tasks on personal life separate, subsidiary reason or you slack, but what's up or messenger would work equally well here. And then finally, I believe this is the final step, step 7, openness on it to see the task dashboard and see what your task for tomorrow will be. There's also a separate weekly task sheet which he tells your weekly tasks and date on which the work is due by midnight BST. So before I take you to the weekly tasks, Google sheets, I'm just going to take you to the nose and policy section. And these are bullet points that were taken from the rulebook that we created in one of the previous videos. So you can see here this document, the robot is linked to in this document as well. And as I say, the Rossum repeats down below, but it's important for you to know my expectations for you. So just in case they haven't looked through the rulebook in thorough detail. Here, they're reminded of that. And it's yeah, I've already talked about final couple of things to note before I take you to that Google Sheets is Yeah, How to get paid. So again, I'm going to be covering this later in this class, my virtual system. They just give us some notes here. So now I'm going to take you quickly to this weekly task, Google Sheets. And this is a really useful document because it lays out the schedule for my virtual system moving forward. So here you can see that the color and the yellow colors, these are essentially tasks that need doing for this day, not necessarily on the state because some of these tasks can be done in advance because the deadlines, they do need to be done for this day, if that makes sense. So it's very simple. Just Monday through till Sunday has changed since because now we don't tend to do work on the weekends and we both don't really refer to that document anymore. But in the beginning and it's useful to have something like this line dope. And essentially just lays out some tasks that I want my system during each day of the week. And I'd recommend you do something similar. Now you can't use a dashboard like Asana or Trello or monday.com and they are useful. I use the sonorous. Well, the only reason I think to begin with, you don't necessarily need to use them. It's just an extra layer of work. Keep it really simple. Have a task spreadsheet like this which you can get your VA to refer to. And then if you want to use the sun for over features such as being able to mock tasks as complete. And also be able to give or assign tasks more directly to your virtual assistant than it is useful to begin with. Yeah, if it's just you and one virtual assistant, weekly task spreadsheet like this will do the job. Again, like the other two documents in this video, this spreadsheet will be linked to in the resources of this class in case you want to check it out and make a copy. Just to quickly show you that if you're not sure how to make a copy on Google Drive, just simply go to File and then make a copy and save it to your Google Drive. Hope you found this video useful. I will see you in mental.
8. Using LastPass to Share Passwords: Okay, then, so you can see here we're in the backend of my last puff.com account. And I'm just going to show you a few of the really important features. So here you can see these are some of the websites that I have my password saved for. The likes of Asana, Amazon, freelancers, etc. I'm not going to click on these because then you'll see my passwords in terms of some of these key features. Then what we can do is we can manage the family. And this allows you to give access to your VA to use these passwords. Before we do that though, it's important to actually get some passwords into the vaults, into this Last Pass accounts. How do you do that? Well, you download the free Chrome extension, which last past tells you kind of the steps of how to do this. And then when I open the last past Chrome extension, something like this. So we have volts which will take you to this page. And then you've got various things like an add an item. So other passwords and things that I tend to use it for passwords, but you can see that you cannot secure notes and addresses as well. And then once you have the Chrome extension installed, anytime you go on to a new website, it will give you the option to save a password once you've typed it in once. And if you then returns that same website at a later date and it will automatically populate the login and password details. In other words, this means you never have to share directly with your VA, your passwords. Of course, once they've done load the Chrome extension themselves, they'll be able to use your passwords to get into the various accounts you want them to get into. But in terms of HTML2, tell them, Okay, my password for this website is so and so you never have to do that. It's all done securely. So just to give you an example, I'll show you an example of how this might work then. So I'm gonna take you to 10, which is a very neat little email marketing tool that I have used and do use occasionally. And I have an account here, so I'm just going to log in. And you can see that it's automatically populated. My sign in details, so my my email address and then the passwords based on fights. I've been on this website before and I've already saved the password. When you're saving a password, there is an option which will pop up around here. Let's hop right of your screen after you've signed on for the first time. And it gives you an option to save this password and username or e-mail into the last pass volts, just simply click Save. And when you do download the Chrome extension and go on a website like this, again, we've been on before, it will automatically populate that. And you can see here this is the Chrome extension in use. And you can see that last pass is found the password for €1 and it's automatically filled in. So if I click that go, that will then take me to my 10 accounts, which we don't need to see right now. So that is kind of the main thing I wanted to show you the facts. You can't share your passwords with another family member. You can manage the family here. It's just simply a matter of copying a email threads like an email link, emailing, that's your VA. And there'll be able to click on that link. It'll take him to the last passage. Create an account like you have done day, don't have to pay for it. So once you've paid for its access is for you on someone else, on across multiple devices, not just on your desktop or on your phone, etc. That's pretty much it.
9. Sample Project: Hi, So welcome back. So in this video, I wanted to go through the sample projects that I gave to applicants when they applied for my role. Now, again, this is something called a task that you can do at a later stage. But I wanted to include it now because we've kind of gone through a lot. The system's already and I figured, you know what? Just go through one more video around systems so that you can have all the things that you need in place before you go on to hire someone. So how it works is the following. My sample projects, which I'm going to go through very shortly, has four tasks. And these tasks are around things that I would like my virtual system to do for me anyway. So one of the tasks, for example, was to create a minute piece of audio around their favorite hobby. So this test is not just the ability to edit audio, which is why I wouldn't want to do on a consistent basis, but also test their English skills. Can they speak fluently in English for a minute about something they are passionate about. If so, these are two big ticks. So that is the purpose of the sample projects. And it's an awful way to try to whittle down applications when people start applying for your role. And it also gives you a sense of who is serious, is someone willing to go through the process of doing these tasks, even though the role is not guaranteed for them, they're not guaranteed to get the role. That photo put some work in before they even get chance to be interviewed. So it's a really useful check. This being said, I'm not gonna go through my sample project. And of course, like all previous documents in this class, this will be linked to in the resources of this class. Okay, then, so you can see once again, we're in my Google Drive. So I'm just going to open this VA sample projects. And this is the exact sample project that I sent to all candidates once they'd applied for the role. So I will show you step-by-step what things I've included in this and why. Importantly, I've included these steps as well in this project. Okay, So here we go. I'm very excited to see your results on a small project. Hopefully will not take too long if you need help along the way, please let me know. Again, very simple, short sentences that hopefully anyone can understand, even if English isn't their first language. The instructions below will help guide you through the assignments. Most information we covered from the internet. So step 1 was to e-mail me. That's my e-mail address. This is kind of my alternative e-mail address which is already checked off them with the subject line. I am ready to start working. And in, in this e-mail, I wanted them to include a screenshot of the test results from this test. And I'll show you this test right now. It is essentially just to check their internet speed. So it's not really that important because actually what I drew important a shot with them in the interview, I'll be able to gauge how good their hands that is because of its dropping in and out. Or if the video is not clear, then it's probably a sign. It's not so great. However, it's quite good proxy. So it tells you the upload and download speeds. Upload speed, you're kinda looking for its queen five and 10 ideally, and then download speeds, usually a little bit higher. So we're looking for property something above ten at least. And you can see here, well, actually why don't I speed it was kind of sugar in them, but it's yeah, it's a book 10 quite comfortably, so mine's pretty good in terms of upload speed. Let's see how we do here. So again, start off quite well, is probably going to drop our suspects. Very shortly. We're going to start to drop. But hopefully it was still above five. If it doesn't, then my incident light speed models are great, but we can see that constantly up of five. So all good on that front for me at least. And that's kinda what we're looking for. For the speed here is all for the VA. It's like say also want them to take a screenshot of how much free space to have on the hard drive. We will be sharing a Dropbox or more free and more free room the better. But if you don't have very much as okay as there are workarounds, yeah. This is kind of not super important for me personally by wanted to include it anyway because, you know, hard drive speed, if our goal much disk space it can actually solve a lot, hops down all that work to voices down computers, whatever. So I was having a lot of free disk space is important over like a kind of touch on a lot of the work and I'll do my VAs on Dropbox. So if she doesn't have much disk speed, disk space, rather, it's not a huge issue, but nevertheless, it's good to include that in the e-mail as well. So this is kind of the second task. That's kinda second main task really. And as I kind of make it clear, one of your main tasks when working with me will be to produce podcasts episodes. So here's the task. Download Audacity. So this is the software that I use and edit audio and my VA uses now to edit audio. And the good thing about this task is actually sets up some of the tools that they need extra money. It's not working for me. So by downloading or Udacity, I don't actually have to get them to do that when they're working for me. So it saves a little time, money, which is worth bearing in mind. And I want them very simply to record themselves speaking about one of their favorite hobbies for minutes, using their laptop computer Mike. So in other words, they don't need to buy any fancy equipment. You know, don't need any fancy microphones. Just simply have to record themselves speaking in a microphone. The reason I wanted them to do this as much as kinda testing how they can, how well they produced podcast episodes is to see how well they come across speaking English. Can they speak to her way fluently for minutes about something they're really passionate about. The column. That's a great sign. Sign that they can speak English. Well, they're strong with this, that it might just kind of raise a flag to me that maybe the English isn't quite what I'm looking for. So they can then download one preview truck free from this website here, Audio Jungle. This is a website I use all the time for PPACA sounds so they can pick preferred music truck. And yeah, it makes sense when you've got the website, I'm not going to show you because it's not particularly relevant bullets. That's what include as well. So use 10 seconds of this preview music as an intro. And then half the one-minute clip in-between. Blend the two trucks together on what Udacity pretty straightforward. Use a different ten seconds of this music as an altro. So I'm kinda getting them to say, okay, can they produce an episode? Because this is essentially all producing an absolute is, is pointing over different trucks, laying them together to make sure they kinda sound right in the levels of rights. And then attach the final edits a WAF file to the e-mail. Pretty straightforward. Task number three was two, a link to my website. And please send back the following in the email. One online. So you think would be a good addition to my online tools for entrepreneurs page. Okay, Tubman, before the final task, put the link to your online jobs profile in the e-mail. Very simple. So hopefully, if they follow these tasks are just received one e-mail from each candidate with task number 1, which is the screenshots of the various tests. That second task, which is to produce a podcast episodes based on one of their favorite hobbies. Such number three was to kind of give answers to that question about what toll you'd pull my website and then not tasking them before. Very simple. It just included a link to an online jobs profile. And here we go. So again, we're just making it clear why that should work for me. Opportunities for bonus and races as well. And I give them very specific deadline. So this deadline was a week after the job was initially posted. So I'll post the job on the 14th of April and then a week later, 21st of April is when I would expect to receive a sample projects. If I don't get sample project before, then I make it clear that I will interview them. And most people did this fairly without any issues. So there's anything that needs to be clarified, please let me know. It's my job to offer hope I can.
10. Posting a Job on onlinejobs.ph: Hi, So welcome back. So now we're getting into the business end of this class because in this particular video, we're going to go through the process of posting your job on online job stop pH. This is a job board that is used primarily in Southeast Asia. So countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. And then there's a job portal I used for a number of reasons which I'll talk through in this particular video. Now, it is worth stressing. There are, of course, many of a job boards out there. A popular, too many, many people, the likes of Fiverr, Freelancer.com, upwork. These are all really good job boards as well. So if you have a preference for any of those, then by all means go for it. And I think actually a lot of the principles and the tricks and tactics that I use in this particular video when talking through the process of posting, job will be applicable to these other platforms as well as well. However, online jobs is my personal preference and this is the one that I've used and got experience with. Hence, that's why I'm going to be talking it through in this particular video. So without further ado, I'm now going to jump into my online jobs dashboard to show you how to set up a council and then the actual process of posting a job. Online shops. Hope you find it helpful. Okay Then so we're now on online job stop ph. And I wanted to show you quickly the pricing of this platform because suddenly it isn't free to use or well, there is a free version but it's not what I would recommend. The thing to note with this is even though it is the money upfront, you can cancel this after a month. You don't need it any longer than that, so you'll be paying. The recommendation I would make is this pro version is Pro plan paying $69 for one month only. This allows you to post your job, to then communicate with workers, to hire the worker there, and then not having to go through online jobs. You can't do the free version books. I wouldn't recommend it because you can't communicate with the workers. So you can't really gauge if they're going to be any goods going into the interview. And you then actually have to use online jobs in their process to hire someone, reach out to them directly and say, can I hire you or can I work with you? Kinda go through a middleman which makes it a little bit more time-consuming and can take a lot longer to go through that process. So that is the version I would recommend the pro version, $69 cancel after a month. And then once you've created an account, which is that easy to do, just point of view details. You will then be taken to your page and it will look something like this. So this is my accounts as it stands, you can see here this was the job I posted for my VA back in back in April actually, so 23rd the fourth or a self-hosted the job probably, yeah, 19 for the forefoot got my first messages. And you can see those a lot. So this is just one page. There was another page worth of masters as well. So lots of people applied for this job. This I've actually deleted if you are here as well because they didn't meet certain criteria, which I will explore in this video. I just wanted to kinda show you this is back-end. Of course at the moment, I haven't actually got a paid accounts. This is just the free version. So you can see actually it has already Campbell, I'm told the person's name. So that's what I mean by the front. You can't communicate with these people. We can't message them. It's only because I had the Pro plan and then downgraded on so I hide my VA to the free palm. I can't see and communicate with these people. I hope that makes sense. So not much more. I can really show you in this. One thing I do want to show you is my job description that I posted way back in May of 2020 because this will be the kind of crux of what this video is all about. So this is the job description I posted way back then. You can see my title here, part-time audio editor with excellent English. Very clear about what I'm looking for. So if you are looking for someone to help you, maybe social media, you could put part-time social media manager with excellent English or full-time social media manager, excellent English, whatever you want them to be doing for you in the actual category. But here it gives you the option to choose, do you want part-time, someone on a full-time basis, etc. You can tell them how would you gonna pay per month. So the salary on these things here, so you can see job was actually posted April 17th, 2020. And the ID proof, this is kind of the default option which I just kept. And this means that work is applying for your role has to meet certain criteria. So they have to have verified their profile or sending in hospital details and things like that. So it just means not. You're not gonna get some random person who turns out to be small. You don't want to hire essentially. So it's kind of the online jobs pH that, that check for you. Anyway. So moving down into the job overview, this is the important bits. So I'm going to kind of read through this and pick out the key things that I think you would want to consider when hosting your job description. First thing to know is the English and the writing that I'm using is very simple. So I try not to use fancy words. Keep very short sentences. Even a little thing like I am looking for a part-time rather than I am to actually shortening I'm try and keep it long form, which makes it easier for you to understand that if English isn't their first language. So I am looking for a part-time audio editor. Will stop. Doing a variety of tasks, almost all of which I will explain how to do step-by-step. And that's exactly what I've done right up the job description, the VA handbook, which kind of goes through step-by-step. Okay. This is how you do this task. This is how you do this task, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, as I touched on in that video, you can, if you want to show that in video form, record lots of YouTube videos, screenshots of how to do a task. Bot works just as well as well. I prefer to write it in the written form, which is why detailed and documented outweigh. Choose whichever works for you. Next paragraph. So excellent written and verbal include English communication skills are essential, and audio editing experience isn't required but is a plus. I don't know why it's blanks help with these particular words. Yeah, I don't know, but that's all it says. So excellent written verbal English communication skills are essential. Audio editing experience isn't required participants. So essentially saying, I want you to be able to speak English only to be learner. But you don't have to have audio editing experience. And that might be the same for you. You might be looking for someone that you can train up. You might be looking for someone who's already got experience and actually you just need to nudge them towards the tasks you want to do. Really, it depends what you're looking for. So that's just something else to bear in mind. Hey, this is to be decided. This will depend on your level of skill and over people apply for the job. So yeah, even though I've put that kind of benchmarks salary there, that is just this sentence here is just making it clear that this is negotiable. It could be more, it could be less, depends on your experience. So me and my VA initially, we set how when I hired her the salary that we decided on which he was happy where it was $3 an hour. I've since increased start with bonuses. So it's now $3.13. Our suspects come 2021. That will increase again because she is doing an excellent job and I really can't stress how grateful I am for her and she's done so to kind of show that gratitude is something I will kind of look up again, then kind of give an idea of what the tasks will be. So you'll be editing audio for podcast episodes, producing podcast episode scheduling podcast episodes, creating photos and audio grounds for social media, for things. My VA now there's a bunch more over things like she sends emails, she reaches out the guests, she does a bunch of other tasks as well. Let's begin with. These are kinda the initial task slide gave her. This will of course vary from you might have a completely so different tasks that you want you're here to do. And that's fine. Think I would stress to just keep it really simple, really short sentences. Make it very clear bullet points and how you structure the job description, make it easy to read. That's something worth bearing in mind. We've gone through this section. I think this is really important, the perks. Why does someone or wash some work for you? This is a two-way relationship, right? On. Of course, you're giving someone an excellent opportunity, but they could they could apply to other jobs. They're on this platform or over? Over jobs not on this platform. Why should they come and work for you? So you've gotta make him really enticing. So for me, the facts that might be a can work whenever they want. They don't have to wake up at a given time. We only have a meeting once a week. Not quite clear. Flexible vacation. So the VA needs time off. They can just let me know and we can organize that this absolutely fine. And here options is learn new skills, get bonuses. So if you do a good job, I'll give you a raise and a bonus. And that's exactly what I've done on this, has worked very well. She's very happy. I'm very happy. So yeah, make it really obvious why should someone work for you? It is a two-way relationship. They could work for anyone else. So why should they confused specifically about me section. So I'm a podcast host of a toxin reached up and podcasts and 11 words, we're virtual assistants before my mental health. So here in three different companies, which I list here and has been working with virtual over four years. All of his videos of him happy to work with him. So this is kind of like the credibility check, if you like. What is it about you? What? Well, for one thing, why are you looking for a VA? But also making it very clear, at least I have that. Now of course, some credibility how courts often rated podcasts. I've worked with a mentor who's worked with the aids before. So I know how this process works. Making it very clear that I am a professional, the ion, someone who's going to take the role very seriously on work in this working relationship very seriously. The fact that my mentor has been working with the VA for four years or multiple VAs Forever for years. And they've all been very happy. Just gives an influence of the person or the people applying for this role. That's okay. Scott knows what he's doing. He he has some skin in the game, so to speak. So I think that's really important. Of course, you might not have any experience and that's fine as well. You know, I make it clear that I've never worked with a virtual assistant before. However, try and put it across that you are learning how to work with people. You know, maybe you've taken a course in how to manage some more on Udemy or on LinkedIn. Or you've watched YouTube videos about how other people have works of VAs or the facts you've taken this course about how to work up a VA or kind of giving signals that you know what you're doing. And, you know, ultimately when someone comes to work for you. It's not going to be a stressful experience. They're going to get paid on time. They're going to fall in this role because all these perks or look forward to making it as advertising as possible. Moving on to the plight of the job section. And I've said all of the sections are really important. I want to reiterate this for this particular section because I think this is the most important section of the job description. So to apply for this job, here are the steps. Change the subject lines who I want to work for you, host old, and then insert the name of my podcast, which can be found on my website, which I list, and then that's blocked out there. Why do I do this? This is a really quick check to kind of get through as many of these applications as possible. Because if I go back to this page, you can see there are lots of them. The ones I could immediately discount, which you can't see here, are those people who hadn't change the subject line here. So people who hadn't port, I want to work, you host entrepreneurs can party, I could immediately discount because they clearly haven't read the instructions carefully and not just shows that moving forward, if they're not paying attention to detail to this job description, the probably not the right candidate for me. So that is a really quick check for me personally, for this job description, it gave me the opportunity to discover over half of applicants in one swoop. That is huge and it saves a lot of time. So I would say, if any, if you only get one thing out of this particular video making it. That's how this subject line or some sort of check where people have to show that they have read the job description carefully. The second step is what is the name of my hometown? I list this on my website very clearly. I think it's on the homepage even so people know what my website because it's included which has been blanked out, but they can go to my website and you know what, I'm going to show you actually what. So my website's got stuck, the other code UK. And you should find that on the homepage. If we go down. There may have changed since. Now we've got born and raised in Horrigan of Yorkshire. So there you go. People can find out very easily where I was born. So there's no excuse for people to miss. That's right. It's the second one. Step number 3, at the top of your message, right? Two to three sentences on why would light this position and why you're a good fit to not write more than that or else your application will be deleted. I know that sounds brutal, but again, this is a novel way to discount those people who didn't follow your instructions carefully. All I'm looking for here is two to three sentences. I don't want two to three paragraphs that I want you to read pages, very short couple of sentences. Why would like to work for me? And to be honest, I didn't really care what people wrote here. It could be that maybe they just want to learn more about audio. They could be. They want to work with someone who's based in the UK. I don't care. I didn't really care what the, what they actually wrote the answer. The important thing here for me was I wanted them to write an answer that was two to three sentences long. That was more than that. So that was the reason for step three. Step four include a sample piece of audio you've already edited. So even though I've kind of said at the beginning of this description, you know, you don't have to have experience. Audio experience isn't required participate loss. This is kind of giving the VA all the candidate the opportunity to show. Okay, Why should I choose them? It's an invitation if you'd like to kinda show me their best work on, I actually, yeah, received in many fantastic samples from people. So much Lee said they hadn't actually produced anything as well. And there's a dot in the answer, and that's who is fine. Again, it was just kind of another way. Hardly read through the instructions carefully. And if they have got some experience, it'd be great to see that. If they haven't. So be it, it's not too bad because as we'll go into in a future video in this module, there is a sample project which I give to all candidates to complete before the interview. So if they can then kind of show off their audio editing experience. So if they haven't got any experience so far, that's fine. It's not particularly hard to actually learn how to edit audio. So they could, they could learn that very easily for the project. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. So the final couple of paragraphs here, make sure you follow all the steps above. This is a great opportunity with the ability to get bonuses and raises. So earning, look at applicants that really want the job. If I decide to interview you, there'll be a short Zoom call between us on video will be required. So this paragraph here is just kinda surprising why they should work for me, what they can expect in the next steps. Once they've submitted this application. Shown why they want to work for me, there is going to be an upcoming interview and they all have to have some video connection. I don't like you mentioned, there is a separate between this where they have to submit sample projects. So you might want to include that as well. They've got some oversight on my part. Both of the minimum just saying Okay, what they can expect in the next process. And then finally, do not write more than what I've asked you or both. So if they haven't got that message already on Medicare explicit here, I don't want you to write more than I've kind of outlined in this to apply for the job section. Right, more than what was asked for above, I will ignore your job posts variable, so, but ultimately, you're going to get bombarded with lots of applications if you follow the steps. So you want to make it as easy for yourself to kind of widths all these applicants down because if you've got 30 to 40 and they all look pretty decent, that muscle a lot of interviewing you've got to do. Whereas if you can eliminate over half of those and you don't have to interview as many people save you more time. And you can kind of come to that decision of who to hire a lot more quickly. Thank you, Scott Stockdale. And then these final things that are kind of labels you can include. So I want these people to have some sort office and admin, ideally be a virtual assistant or admin assistants. And to be able to write in English as well. And that's pretty much the job description. So too, if you want to copy this, I will include this in. I'll provide a link to the description in the section in this video as well so you can kinda see it and maybe copy parts of it will copy all of it. I don't care. If you're looking for someone to hire at audio as well, then it makes sense to just copy this if you like, kind of use and adopts this is as you see, fit and I hope particularly not apply for US section, apply for the job section your hope you find are particularly useful because those four tips will make your job a lot easier when it comes to hiring someone.
11. Messaging Candidates With the Sample Project: Okay then so back in my Google Drive, so I'm just going to show you what this message would look like. So this message will allow a candidate 2 to complete the sample projects and to actually pick a time for their interview, which I'll kind of talk about more in the next video. But here is before I go through that, I just wanted to kinda show you what this looks like in practice. So if I go at some online jobs, message board here, so this is my portal. And see here these are all the people apply for the role. I'll just click on this top one here. So kind of show us what this would look like. So, okay, pitch of the scene. This particular candidate has applied for the role. This is what they sent to me and then message to me. So hi Scott. A few lines about why they want to work for me, what they are like podcasts on fuel for details there. So yeah. Okay. They've met all the criteria, they complete those tasks. You change the subject line 2, I want to work with you host entrepreneurs can party or grades. So I then want to sent him the following message. So I bought high candidates, whatever their name is, you'd look like it might be a perfect fit for my job and I like to interview you. If so, could you please go here and pick time for an interview? So this is a separate Google document. I'll show you very quickly. Again, creating Google Docs. And here on the day of the interviews to the 23rd, I wanted people to put in their name that online jobs per file link email to say whether they've completed the sample projects or not and pick an appropriate time. So make it clear all times are in Greenwich Mean Time, which is my time zone on foot for the interview on Thursday. So pretty self-explanatory, right. So pick a time. The other thing is just more information about what how I wanted them to pick a time. One of the times work for them and they can let me know we can solve something else else. Bloody, bloody blah. Before interview you, I'd like you to create a complete sample assignments, which you can find here. So this is the document we created in the last video. So just to kind of remind you of what this looked like, it was these four tasks here. One about creating a project and audacity or is appropriate for yourself of a tusks him including screenshots. So essentially getting them to complete the sample project ahead of their interview. They will, of course, book and interview slot as well. So I don't have to worry about That's They can all do that themselves. And just to kind of finish this e-mail message, sorry. So this isn't an e-mail. This is the message I would send in their jobs portal. This assignment is due at midnight, G and T The night before interview. So given them a week to complete this. If you're not, if I do not receive that sample assignments, I will not enough for you. You on Zoom, you will not serious candidate for this position. Thank you, Scott. So that is the message I sent to them. Many of the people then some of them actually didn't didn't get back to the US absolutely fine. Made my job a lot easier not to interview as many people. Those are then created the sample project picked an interview time. These were people I could then go on to interview, which is one of the most exciting parts of this process, which we will cover very shortly. Boats, that is the end of this video. In the next video, we will show the steps before you actually go into that interview, which is really exciting. The other thing I wanted to say is if you want to get access to this very e-mail message, rather than there'll be a link to it as always, in the description notes. Hope you found this video useful. I will see you all.
12. Interviewing Virtual Assistants: Hi, So welcome buck. So congratulations for getting this far in the class because we've already made huge strides. So just to recap the cluster far, we've created the systems that you need so that when you hire your virtual assistant, it's all very sort of sailing. We've also created the sample project so that when it comes to people applying for your role, it can then give them a sample project and they can complete on their own time. And now we're kind of getting to the stage where people are completing the sample projects. It's starting to look through them and actually you've identified some people you want to interview. What are the next steps? Well, in this particular video, we're going to be covering exactly that. Let's also think you might expect in an interview, how to actually conduct an interview and a few of a bits and pieces as well. So we're going to be starting with an interview spreadsheet just to check out the reload, cautious in the timetable. And then I'm also going to show you some of the questions you might want to ask when hiring a virtual assistant and interfering your virtual assistants for actually showing you a sample of what an interview might look like. Now suddenly I did actually record my interviews, but luckily one of my mentors traverse Mozi Yani. He did, and he's posted them on YouTube. So I've taken a clip from when he interviewed one of his virtual assistants who is now working for him. Just to show you how in formal this process can be. Just to stress this point again, as I've stressed already in this class, even though it can seem intimidating, the process of hiring a virtual assistant really doesn't have to be. It can be very informal, and actually it is open to anyone. Now that you've got the skills from this class, U2 will be able to go on and your first virtual assistant. So pep talk over, let's jump into that spreadsheets before showing you some of the questions you might want to ask, and then a sample of what an interview might look like. Okay, then, so this is the interview booking time sheets which you will seen in the previous video. So let's say that following candidates of all completed the sample projects. And you can see they've poke the time. So Hiroko, Patrick Panther, different, Rigo cooper, Stuart tell is Pablo Hernandez and Calvin Phillips. Incidentally, these people are real. They happen to playfully delighted that my local football team will not have been a proud supporter for many years. Yeah, so these are actually making a result. People that now like to work for me anyway. So we've got online jobs performing says this is your say these are links to Belmont job's profiles that you've touched their emails on. The following people have completed the project. So Patrick Rodrigo, the stewards and Calvin, Pablo, sampling hasn't completed the sample project in time. So as we've made clear in the last video, if they don't complete in time, they're not going to get into. So where are we going to have here five people lined up for the interview? And this is how it might look for you. You might have a few gaps, which is absolutely fine. Modern back to buck. You might have loads of interviews. Ammonia. All depends how many people apply for the role and ultimately, how many people complete sample projects. But anyway, we've now got our people and this is where the fun begins because we can now interview them. So we've arranged to meet on Zoom and send them a link ahead of time through the online job portals, you send them an email or a message, sorry, with links to the online, to the Zoom meeting. And these are some of the questions I think you might want to ask them. So here we go. If I just scroll up here, these are the questions that I asked my VAs when my confidence I interviewed for a role of my VA on I'm going to talk you through each question and why I asked that. So first question, tell me about your last job. What did you do? So this is just to see if they've got any relevant experience, really insist see if they enjoyed their last job. I think it's important to find out hopefully that all of these candidates you interview, I've actually got good words. Become a previous employees. Because if employers rather because if they don't, which is a red flag, because like red flag, if that part moving the previous employers, it's not a great sign. So we're hoping here for Joseph, I'm kind of friendly words. Maybe the role they got so far in the company, but then they decided they want to change your scene or something like that. That's what I'll be looking for. Question 2, once you delete lost job, this is kind of follows on from last question. Why did you leave? Was it because you weren't being challenged enough with it because you felt you've got as far as your codes with it because you've got a change in circumstances. Again, as long as the answer is kind of an example, okay, Fair enough. That's a reason why it leaves the job. No issues whatsoever, but just kinda gives you a bit more background. Question 3. If you were to get this job, how many hours are you looking to work? So for me personally, I was looking for someone on a part-time basis between solve 8 to 15 hours a week. If they met our criteria grades, they were looking for more hours and not necessarily a bad thing either because there were tasks I could push forward to them. If they could only do three to four hours a week for me, I wasn't going to work. So that was kind of just gives me an indication of whether these people might be able to fit a question for what are you looking to get from this job than a paycheck, obviously. So this is kind of just to gauge the motivation for my case to the VA wants to learn new skills around podcasting. So fantastic because this role might be for them. If however, they're just looking to get a paycheck, can actually They just apply it because they saw it and I thought, You know what, I want my money, It looks really good. It's not really enough motivation for me that might be a red flag. But otherwise, you know, looking at here for broad motivation still they have an interest in your industry. If you're looking for someone to work or social media to that like social media, posting on Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. Just kinda gauge the motivations. Really important. Question number five, the road, a computer and internet connection, really essential for me, this one and nothing for all VAs. If they haven't got their own computes and FM got Internet connection, is it's going to be difficult to work with them long term. You know, admittedly, there can be solutions in the short-term. You know, maybe they could go to internet cafes and work probably that way. But if they haven't got incident copies open 24, 7 usually, so that could be an issue. Yeah. I think it's fair to say that if they haven't got their own competition, Internet connection could be, could be tricky. Question number 6, do you own a smartphone? For me? This is actually quite important because although I don't really contact my VA through through small phone, you know, which e-mail lot, the time which you can do obviously on the computer. There are certain faster. I asked my VHDL where she is required to go on a phone. So you can kind of gauge that question for yourself is important to you. If so, probably worth asking. Question number 7, how fast is your internet connection? We've already kinda covered this in the sample projects when the screenshot of the complete that test could see that download and upload speeds. But you might just want to check that to see again, if, if it's looking goods. And of course actually when you're having this interview with the VA, important gauge how good their Internet is, by how well the connection in how good the connection is, is the video slow? Is it a fairly good can you hear them all? It's all signals. If your signal, if the speed is good, question operates. When would you be able to start if you've got the job? So for me personally, I was looking for someone as soon as possible. But you might personally want some more mournful two, or however long. Someone your, if you're willing to hire someone very quickly, but they're actually they've got to work notice maybe like three or four months notice wherever you can weigh up. Is that worth it for you with someone else? Be more suitable? Question number nine, Have you ever worked for for for an employer before? You might decide this is relevant or not relevant, but I thought it's quite an important question to ask because it just gives you a sense how they go experience working for someone remotely before. If they haven't, not necessarily a bad thing, or if they do, then obviously great, they kind of know and understand how this process will work. So for me, particularly someone who's never managed to one before that harmonic model either side of the world. I thought it was good to see if at least they have experienced and they might be able to help me to some degree. So that was the question I asked. A question what Sen and in previous, in my case, podcasting experience, but you could apply whatever school you want there. I think that kinda speaks for itself, doesn't it? If you're looking for so what we've experienced and they have the experience, great. If they don't have the experience. Modern consonants and vowels equally, if you don't mind if the co-experience, know if you're going to train these VAs up anyway, then you might want to consider does not really matter if your Internet goes out. Question number 11, do you have any options? What happens? Taught you work? So for me, this is really important because I know in the Philippines, the Internet cuts out fairly regularly. Now they have fairly frequent storms and things like that. So it's an outage is fairly common. So if this is the case, what are their backups? Come I go to an Internet cafe for the day and actually do the work off the gulf friends that could visit. So they have more than one internet connection, one more than, more than one service provider might be a doula parser. So that was one solution for roads that have been times where internet is going out, electricity is going on, which is not to go and work in a cafe. So again, as long as they felt about list, that's kinda what I'm looking for him. What you should probably look for us. Well, question was, Well, do you have a PayPal account? So putting someone on the other side of the world of say, back in the day would have been near impossible. See these days flights a PayPal stripe TransferWise, this is a lot easier. So initially this was why I was hoping my VA would have a herd. She would have a PayPal accounts in Vietnam where she is sometimes based. Paypal doesn't really works, not really a thing because there was restrictions on US companies. So we had to kind of find a solution. We ended up going with TransferWise and they've been fantastic and actually I would recommend them to anyone anyway. So I'll kind of talk about later in this course when I talk about payments. This is just a question to consider. How can you actually pay your VA, public got a PayPal account? If so, great. If they don't, can you use another service like transfer wise or pioneer? There are plenty of services out there. We just questions to consider. Question 13, long-term goals. What are they hoping this role that they want to work for you in the long term, medium term. They see this as more of a short-term stopgap. Obviously for males looking for some on a long-term basis because I see this relationship going for, but you might only want someone on a more short-term basis. So to you, but ask the a, C, there are missions, are they've got missions to maybe start your own company one day. And actually they don't want to work for you long-term. Consider, is that what you're looking for? Question 14, how many of the companies are interviewing with? So this is to kind of gauge. How competitive you have to be if you're looking to get out the a. So for example, if there's someone you're really, really, really like them, they seem to come across really well in the interview. Do you think you might want to hire this person? How they go through companies chasing them, how they got the Brown's novel opportunities. So it's potentially go for, if so, you might want to kind of speed up your process and actually if you've got over introduce, maybe consider canceling them or make it obvious that you want to hire this person and try and do that as quickly as possible? Or is pull up pressure on so to kind of get up dumb. Question 15. Does the advertised wage work for you? Fairly simple, yes or no. If it doesn't, then maybe ask them why doesn't it work? Is it too low? Is if there's some way we can negotiate or if you don't rely on this person anyway, they do not want means interview than federal law the way Java then you might want to say, well, fair enough light. We're not going to work together anyway. It's really Watson. Question 16, how many hours you work? So actually we already covered that question. The final question, Question 17, live around them or mess. If you could have a conversation with anyone, who would you choose on why? This question for me is just purely to test their ability to think on their feet and English. So can they carefully put together a case of you that want to speak to and y. And you'll find that most VAs in the Philippines, they speak particularly in relation. Actually many Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam as well. People do speak good English. So it shouldn't really be an issue. But if you have your doubts both smaller than their communication skills, these questions should be able to open that up. And hopefully I'll just provide a nice way to kind of tie this interview. That's a nice closing question. Other things to look out for major nerves of hair, so do they turn up on time for the interview? Important note here, being an hour early is just as bad as being an hour later. And I held want VA for example, we was in my Zoom waiting room for all cellular closest 20 to 30 minutes. And not in itself is a signal that then follow the instructions like they might as well have been late thing not early, just means this wasting their time. And it kind of just looks bad on the heavens are hung around so that red flag, they should be turning up, I'd say MAX 10 minutes early anymore than that. Just something to be aware of. How prepared are they? The VA I hired in the end, I was super impressed with the amount of work she had done. She clearly it on her research about what is podcasting verbal me. She'd been on my website, she listens to my episodes. And really she was one of the only VHS you'd actually don't not. So that wasn't immediately like tick. This is really impressive and it just makes them stand out. So have the confidence you've interviews, have they done extra preparation of a gone above and beyond what you'd expect them to do. If so, it's a really good sign. And then the final thing to consider candidacies of working with this with this person. This is arguably the most important question of all because on paper, someone might be a fantastic candidate. However, if you don't quite feel like you're going to work comfortably with this person. That actually that might be a red flag and you might want to consider someone else. So even though it's the last question that I put here, I think it's arguably the most important. So those are some questions you might want to call it a dependent out of the sun might be more useful to you than others. And I'm now going to show you for my mentor what a, an interview might look like. So I haven't actually record anymore in series, which is a shame I hope it should adopt. But luckily, a calico traverse moles Gianni, who's been on my podcast and who is an amazing entrepreneur. He has put together a video of what his interview looked like. So I'm going to show you a clip of that now, just to give you a sense of how this Zoom conversation might look. So here we go. This is his virtual system in the Philippines. We ended up hiring all the troubles to take away from him. I guess. Welcome to the interview. Tell me a little bit about your last job. You did there right now. Okay. It's not that I am teaching Chinese students English basically a minute. But before I do that, I am working for Philippine Airlines or well, no. I was Quality Assurance Specialist for late. What they what they did was morally board calls from our agents in the reservation site. Whether they adhere to standards. That company not just for us, but also e-mails and covey also check me e-mails if they are also adhering of quality. And what how come you're no longer with that job? Okay. The reason behind that is my partner guy. So I'm going to consider, but you kinda get the gs, these odds or questions that traverses asked on. So you can see here I'll actually, I think my first impression of this VA was dressed really slowly. Very good. First impression. Speak really good English. Yeah. As long as I mentioned, travels, went on to hire this VA any from what I know is done a fantastic job for Chavez and actually monitor is over VAs for him, which is a really cool position to be in. So that's this. This is like I say, probably the most exciting part of the process. So I really hope you enjoyed the interviews. He gets a half of your candidates. And of course I hope it goes well. And in the next video we'll talk about how to go on to hire this person, you know, your dream va, how to watch this, message them and say they've got the job. Congratulations Next Steps, and then kinda that relationship moving forward and managing them. So hope you found this video useful and I'll see you in the next one.
13. Hire a Virtual Assistant: Okay. Then so this is kind of the premises. So I've written it all out here. So starting with the first step is actually muslim, but the applicants I knew for sure I wouldn't be hiring on online jobs. So thanking them for the time, gave them some feedback. And it's really important to do as well while in their interview, how they can improve your future interviews. And we look in the search for a role. The second thing is actually e-mail on the same day the virtual assistant I wanted to hire. And I messaged them with the following, so I emailed them the following. High. Keep the name private. Thanks once again for interviews that I was really impressive. Your preparation and answers on like to offer you the role. So congratulations, cheek emoji over cheeky emoji as a quick summary of what I can offer you. So just kind of reminding them of the benefits, why they should work for you just in case they have any lingering doubts. So hey, ATS 20 hours of work each week at $3 an hour, as we kind of agreed upon an interview to go up to $60 a week, $240 a month. And splitting those 20 hours across the week hover works best for them. Working whenever they want to. Flexible vacation opportunity to learn new skills on can start working from as early as next Monday. So some message on the Friday gives them the weekend. Think about it offsets the one at longest. Think about it. Well, how does this sound? You let me know what you think and I'd be happy to discuss next steps. So as I kind of highlight that remembering that this process is as much about what you can offer them as much as what they can not use two-way relationship. And as I pointed out here, thankfully, my virtual system was delighted to accept shops him and I was delighted as well. So she email me, but pretty much I think maybe a few hours later saying, thank you so much I would love to work with you. Sounds like an amazing opportunity for all. Congratulations. We're now we're now on the same page and I'm going to be working together. So after this point, once this via it confirmed then message about the UVA applicants out on my reserve list. Let them there with the button use. I wouldn't be working with them on just like a hard to overcome to this. I let them know some feedback on what went well, why wasn't hiring them? And in some cases there were a couple in particular. Actually, they were really likely are probably would have had them as well, H-E-A-D and needed to or has this VA decided she didn't want the job. So just letting them know, being really honest, saying, you know, you were really close in the end just came down. So preparation and I thought this would be a better fit. So being as honest as you come, step 4 in impact my new versus the following. So saying, thank you so much for accepting that's great news. These are the next steps. So if he was able to, unless you're on a Zoom meeting next Monday at that time. So seven-thirds CBS t. So if this doesn't work for you, map to create ANOVA, here is a Zoom Meeting Room link. If you're happy to start next Monday. Here's the first year orientation document. We shall have alertness we created way back in module one. This is where this comes into the widths which you may help you get some systems, basic systems in place. For me, it's not working. I'll make it clear. I'm not expecting you to complete these tasks today or over the weekends, but if you're able to do these tasks before me to come one day, they'll be really helpful. Let me know how this all sounds to you and I will see you soon. And as I say polities Alembic calls, you know, this is a really exciting moment. Once a various decided to come on board review, you're going to start working with them. Can I make your life a lot easier because you're gonna save all it's time for you over the course of the weeks and months. So this was kind of a little bit. Ok. I mentioned do not message above and the e-mail above. She's not the complete anything for me in advance. But as I say, Hey, what is the best? And she came back on the Sunday morning with the following. So She'd already made a store and all of these systems. She put it in a really nice table as well in the email. And just to summarize what she'd done, any issues that might have cropped up. So for example, she had issues with mixed captions, which was a tool I mentioned way back when in the handbook video back in module one wishes to add captions to videos shot an issue with that, it turns out it wasn't really not too much. We have to work around it. Hey, asking for access to Slack Asana, convert, things like that. So she put it all in a table documents that all out. And she lays her suddenly, how many hours should worked on this as well? So very smooth.
14. Giving Feedback to Your VA: So this is how I like to give feedback to my VA. And the first few weeks when I hired her set-aside, a couple of weeks where I didn't really help much on my schedule. So I took a couple of weeks of work and I even though had things to do during those couple of weeks, it meant I was available to jump on email or jump on Slack if I needed to again, towards you, my virtual assistants. So having a clear schedule as you count, I think is really beneficial. Definitely appreciate that this isn't available to everyone. You know, you might be self employed and have your own business and therefore, actually having this time to suicide isn't realistic and I totally get that. I think even then there are still ways to provide feedback. It might just not be as instantaneous. I was able to give feedback to my virtual assistant or get in touch with her within the hour. And it might just mean you've got bit more of a delay, maybe 24 hours or however long. But I think yes, particularly in the first few weeks given detailed feedback is really important. The way I give feedback, which I'll cover, show you a bit more shortly, is through the sandwich method. So if you are a teacher or you have ever been taught, then chances are you've come across this method even if you're not explicitly aware. So hold the sandwich method is as follows. You essentially have kind of a good thing that you tell your VA the beginning, this might be something they are doing well. So that's kind of the bread, if you like. Then the meat is where they can improve, not criticism per se, but certainly the areas for improvement. Things you'd like them to get better up. So it's kind of the meat of the sandwich. And then you finishing the sandwich, we have another slice of bread and another compliment. So just kind of reinforcing the idea that they're doing a good job. Particularly if it's early days and there's only been working for you for a short time. Latin them though. You really appreciate it. You're doing a great job. You're saving me time. Thank you so much. It's kind of sandwiching that, that criticism with two complements or two positive, not necessarily compliments, but certainly to positive piece of feedback. And then having the meat of the message where you wanted them to improve or do you think slightly differently? And then moving forward? Like I mentioned, I think it's important to give feedback on that, to give it as quickly as possible. So as I've already touched on, it might not be possible for some of you to give feedback immediately. When I say immediately, it doesn't have to be like checking your phone every minute, but it could be within the hour or every couple of hours or whatever. But I think it is important to give feedback as soon as you can. Reason for this is, I don't know about you, but when I was at school, for example, you are given feedback on essays that were 100 in weeks ago. I kind of forget not what the essay was about, are probably remember that but I'm not really care. I just kind of things are great. I got this grade or, you know, my my employees told me I did this well that well, great, So beard, but it can kind of make that feedback process seem a little bit pointless. So I think by giving feedback in as soon as you can hope for, I mean, I'd say preferably within a couple of days. And it just means that the feedback is relevant to your VA. They haven't forgotten about the task they've done for you. And also it gives, it shows them that you are serious about this relationship, right? It shows that you are putting time aside and your schedule, your busy schedule to give them feedback and they will really appreciate it up. So, so many benefits of giving feedback like this. So what does this feedback look like? Well, this is one of the very first pieces of feedback I gave to my V8 via e-mail. And I'm just gonna kinda go through and kind of point out a few things just to make you aware of things you might want to consider when giving feedback as well. So, hey, my verts and the system, thanks for doing a great job of the emails and absolute posts on my website and SoundCloud. It seems like you've gotten too good system with these. So that's just let my VA, you know, that sum, which method the breads. You did a great job to say this is early days. You seem to have gotten to a really good system with this. I'm really happy. Thank you. Just one tiny thing with the episode show notes to guess which I haven't told you about. So I would have expected you to know, just making it clear, okay. This is something I would want you to improve on. But actually in this case, it wasn't something I would've expected you to do anyway. This is kind of my bars my fault. So just letting them aware that they shouldn't feel guilty about any of the feedback. I think that's one thing to know. But particularly in this case, I wasn't expecting her to know this. I wouldn't expect her to do this. Go on to kind of explain what that feedback is. Hopefully this makes sense, but do let me know if it doesn't. I say this with all the feedback I give my VA if what I've explained doesn't make sense or she still got questions, she can ask me at any point whether it's on Slack or via e-mail and I will get back to her and give her response. Enjoy the rest of your day and really appreciate your work today. So again, just finishing on a nice high note, let them know that you really appreciate what they're doing. Then I'll saving you time. You're not having to do these tasks that you want to do. You really are grateful. I just kind of reinforcing that point. And I basically do that with every single piece of feedback I give because it's true, right? I really do appreciate that. I am really grateful for my VA and all the worksheet. I know she knows that, but it's nice to let people know that let them know that you are thinking about them and that you appreciate what they're doing. So that is kind of how feedback would look like in my case, of course, you can do feedback however you want. If you prefer to send video messages, then by all means do that. If you want to do on a weekly call, I do that as well. So actually, I tend to during our weekly meetings, that might be a no, that you know what you're doing a great job and I really appreciate what you do and kind of reinforcing that. And it's not to try and There's no kind of ulterior motive to any of this is not to kind of, you know, kind of what's the worst kind of pump of them or anything like that. It's just genuine feedback is genuine appreciation. So I think both everything when you are given feedback, be genuine for something you're not happy with. Let them know and they can improve it and you can improve it together. I hope you found this video useful and I'll see you next time.
15. Ongoing Communications: So yeah. What did the ongoing communications look like? Well, I have a weekly Zoom call my VA typically on Mondays around seven AM my time. And yeah, this is usually set in stone and we only cancel this if something crops up, say my VAs on holiday or I can make it for whatever reason, something like that. And in these weekly Zoom calls, they're very, very informal. It's hard to make it sound like it's also a board meeting and really isn't it usually last for around ten minutes, 1015 minutes. And half of that time is usually just as catching up about four weeks. Now, I'm asking the house or WEP and what you can opt to, horror cuts because you've got some really adorable cats, but sorts of thing. And I want to kind of hammer this point home throughout this video. But particularly in this point here, the relationship you build with your VA doesn't just have to be about work. We talk about all sorts of stuff. And actually, as I mentioned very shortly when it comes to Slack, she suddenly pitches when she's been on holiday of light places you've been to. We kinda know got like a place where it's like, okay, she's doing work for me and I'm paying her, but it's almost like we're kind of more we kinda like friends as well, which I think is really nice and it's a nice position to get to. And I really look forward to our weekly calls because we can kind of both finite how we're both going on without week. So that is kind of where to aim for. Like I say, in terms of structure coal first 56 minutes, then I usually just as kind of catching up, kind of shooting shooting the effort, so to speak. And then when it goes into kind of more work-related issues, I just usually ask the question, how is gone for you this week hasn't been any issues or anything you can clear about because our tax now been ongoing for so long and the kind of into a nice routine, Usually the risen and if there is, then usually my VA would let me know during the week either via e-mail or via Slack. So when it comes to these weekly meetings, unless something happens on the Monday morning, then usually there's nothing really for image. These are a good opportunity as well though it's fine now, if your va schedule is changing or if your schedule is changing, you know, to let them know, keep that dialogue open. The okay. I might not be able to might be as noise accessible this week to give you feedback or minor belts, a jump on things as quickly and UVA's case. But just to keep that dialogue open and make sure you're both on the same page. Really important. I mentioned the slack communications. So if you've never heard of slack, it's essentially like Facebook Messenger or some of the messaging platform. Bit more professional. And it's the one we use is a free app you can download. And it just keeps everything kind of system. But to be honest, we could use WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger just as easily. And we tend to use Slack for more kind of things that crop up quite urgently. So I have slack notifications come with my phone and I don't have email push notifications. So if my VA once again to watch me urgently, This was the how she did it. And to be honest, It's usually if a more recent example is for the show notes, she wanted me to provide her linked to our Amazon affiliate page. So I gave her access, just kind of jumps in my notifications and said Yep, approve, and she was unable to fulfill our task. So it really is kind of smaller things like that, which is what we use Slack for. We don't have extensive conversations. We don't message each other outside of work or anything like that. Usually it's pretty pre-professional. So that's what's like as for like I mentioned before as well, you can keep it informal and you actually, she has sent me videos when she's been on hold, not videos, pictures when she's been on holiday of AI, really pretty places you've been to and just things like that. So again, human, we are both humans. That's key, the human approach and I think you're both benefit from daily report. So this is actually the third pillar of this communication and this is arguably the most important. So what my VAD doors now at the end of every vendor of her workday is you'll send me a report of the things she's done in that day. So things like okay, what task has been completed, how long those tasks to occur and if there are any issues that she run into, I'm going to show you what's report looks like very shortly. And then I will just typically sent her reply via e-mail. So I'll check through the work he's done, check for any screenshots you might send me just to check. They're okay. And if it's all good, I'll say yes, that looks great, Lou, thanks for your work today. Or if there's any thing I want change and not just learn. Again, very simple usually takes me like less than five minutes to send these inner replies. And that's how we get to a point now where I'm spending less than our week managing my VA because you get some of these tasks automatically. We have the weekly Zoom meetings which are like ten minutes. The five-minute email replace all the week. So you can see it is less than an hour a week. And that's the point I believe you can get to you as well. So what does a daily report look like? Very simple. So this one came a couple of weeks ago, I believe. You can say Good morning, Scott. Happy first day of the week. Below is my entity reports. Please do let me know if you have any questions and speak later because this was on a Monday. So you can see here the table I've talked about called the tusks in this column here. And then we've got the status whether those tasks have been done or if its long-term projects issues you run into. So in this case was actually an issues you've just let me know that she touched a screenshot to this email and then also location of the file. So this is quite important. If we are working on the same projects where her, she saved it in Dropbox and in this case, absolutes folder here we have a billboard projects as well. We won't go into why she saved that as well. Total time she has here. And we'll use this total time, which we'll talk about in the next video when it comes to actually paying a virtual system. So I use these e-mails almost as like a check against the time she's sending to me in her time report. I cannot, you know, talk on the next video, so I'll make more sense. But that's basically the daily report. I'll just send a quick reply to that. And that's kinda what I want. Our daily communication would look like.
16. Paying Your Virtual Assistant: So initially, as we talked about earlier in this course, mean my VA used a tool called Hope stuff, which was great. Allow those to truck my VAs time. She just simply that's a clickable button. It would then record what was taking place on a screen on it record the more times you're spending on the websites. It would then generate a CSV file or an Excel file for her to export to me with all the details of how meow she'd worked each day, each week, and then ultimately in a month. I could then use this time to, you know, calculate the hour she'd worked with our hourly wage which agreed upon. That would then tell us, okay. How much do I owe her for the month? How much money do I owe her for a month? This would be given in US dollars. So it's worth pointing at this point. If you are based in the UK or another country, then of stuff to do some sort of conversion. So my case from US dollars to British pounds and then uses money to transfer to her with following commonly, which I'll talk about shortly in this video. That was how we did it originally. Now we've gone to a system where my VA manually keeps track of her time. And she just cheated this anyway, really with the daily reports, emails that she sent to me. She uses this time pause it a very simple Excel doc, which I'll show in a couple of slides. And it just shows okay. How many hours or she worked on what task. So she worked and therefore, how many hours she worked in a week. Very straightforward indeed. And I can of course check these hours that she sent to me against the daily reports. So when I open every single daily report that she sent to me over the past month. She always includes the time taken to do the tasks in a day, the bottom of the table, if you remember. So I check the report that she sends to me in the Excel doc against these hours just to see if there's any discrepancies. Nine times out of 10, there isn't an occasionally there might be just an hour or two hours, but it's usually nothing to worry about. And it's just a pretty straightforward way of calculating the hours. So what might this report looked like from UVA? Well, this is what my VA sense to me in terms of the time reports. So this is a touched on the last day of the month or the last relevant data model. So for example, if it's a Friday, but the first is on the weekend, then she'll send it to me on a Friday. Filmic sense. So this will be what she sends to me at the end of the month. It's like and then pay her on the first of the month. And it is three columns here, so date, time, and then he notes. So the notes would be if there's any reason why she's words longer than she stated on her emails or something like that. Usually that columns blank and it's just the days of the week. So you'll see every five days, there isn't any time She's calculated. That's because it's the weekend. My VA doesn't work weekends for me anymore. So we have the hours hair calculated. And typically now my VA works around eight hours a week for me initially, before she got so good at the systems, she was working about 12 to 13 hours a week. She's got more efficient in the task. She's been able to reduce that time. And of course, I've compensated for that because that would mean she's getting paid less even though she's doing a bad job, right? So that's why I increase my wage from $3 and our $3 13 hour on in next year. I suspect I'm going to raise that again and I've given a Christmas bonus and things like that just to show how much I appreciate what she does for me because I really do. So that's how you can calculate or rather your VA can calculate for you how many hours they've worked each week. So now once the payment process, how do you pay your VA was a few options available to you or she's more than a few options. These are just a couple. The first one is PayPal, and this is the one I originally thought you're going to use. Paypal of course, is widely known across the world, makes it very easy to send money all across the world. A few things worth noting about PayPal. So the fees are typically higher than what you might get elsewhere, particularly the company I'm going to compare against shortly, which is the company I use. There can be some delays with payments as well. So usually it takes around two to three days, which doesn't sound like much in for you personally, probably isn't that much for your VA, that might be a problem. So it's worth kind of bearing that in mind. The reason we didn't go with PayPal in the end because that's coming. I did want to go with was because at least until fairly recently, there were some issues in Vietnam where my VA is usually based with getting PayPal account when Paypal access. Because the amino don't know the ins and outs of that book and just meant it was quite difficult for her to create a PayPal account. So we looked at some of our options once we decided paper wasn't really going to work for us, one of those options was pioneer, which I would definitely not recommend. Sorry if anyone works, the painter watching this video right now. Yeah, the system just so complicated, so unnecessarily complicated. You need it to send reams and reams of documentation and just things seem to take for our hours to get for people to get back to you real pain. They wouldn't recommend them. Which leads us draw moral flees to the company. I would recommend that communist transfer wise. Now, I'm not going to lie. I've never heard of TransferWise before. So using them and essentially they were company based in UK, in London. They allow you wish what PayPal those, but the fees are a lot lower and they're actually very transparent about the fees on the website, which I'll show you very shortly on that very, very easy to use. You don't need to somewhat so documentations, crane accounts, your VA doesn't need to send you lots of details to actually send payments. So then all you need is that e-mail address, which is ridiculously easy, and that payments usually sent it within hours rather than days. So, so many reasons to use Transfer Wise. I'm now going to show you what their website looks like just to give you an idea of how it works. And if you're looking for a way to send payments, you'll be a transfer wise is the way to go. Okay, so we're now on Transfer Wise.com and I'm just going to show you how easy it is to send money to anyone in the world using the homepage and on the homepage. Let's say for example, I wanted to send the 100 pounds to my VA, which is why she's usually based. So I put a 100 pounds and then type in the country. Told you what the currency is, Vietnamese Dong. And you can see here that always makes me laugh. The currency conversion means that 400 pounds, a 100 pounds in the UK will get you just under 3 million Vietnamese don't. In Vietnam. So yeah, that rates of 12, 30000, which is just bananas. It makes me laugh every time. But actually, I mean this is a complete tangent. But when I went to Vietnam in 2015, it always surprise me that I could get a pocket of warriors and it would cost me $33 thousand. Let's kinda like currency converter in the end. Anyway, back to this. So that is one of the calculations here. So it has the fee will tell you how much that you pay Transfer Wise and you can change this here. So if you wanted to reduce the fee, you can send money directly from your bank account rather than going through Transfer Wise, typically means it's a bit slower. And advanced transfer here if you want to send outside the UK. So tau is one of the fees there, then tells you how much transformer it's going to convert for use of the hair just on, just over 97 pounds on the guaranteed rate, which I've already talked about. Providing you submit this this application if you like, or this transfer within 42 hours. That is the rate that it's going to be guaranteed to use, gonna be locked in. So it's not going to fluctuate. You don't have to worry about any sudden currency fluctuations that, so that's how much your recipient would get. And hey, got few more details just to entice you even more. Apparently you could say for this particular transfer, seven pounds, just over seven pounds versus of a bank's. I don't know if that's true, but if it is then great. And I think actually two pounds 73 is a good price for this particular transaction. And you probably can't see it, but it says it should arrive to your VA or not. You'll be able to see your PR person in this case, I'll VA within 14 minutes. So that is very, very quick. You know, instead of a couple of days, what you usually get from like PayPal and over providers, the money will arrive within your VAs account within 40 minutes. And that is typically what I see. So I know that to be true. So in order to be able to go through this process, you do need to create a count all completely free to do that. You just need to provide a few details, just like you name, address, that sort of thing. And the owner of a step then would be to actually get the e-mail address of your VA. We should have. They should have. And you can then send money to them. You don't need that bank account details, which is another great feature Transfer Wise, just simply need their email address. Then Transfer Wise, how it works is they'll send an email to UVA saying someone is trying to send you some money. Can you provide your details? They'll create a transfer wise account, private provide that bank details and that money will come to them. So it's a very simple process. The fees, as you can see here, a lot lower compatible for banks apparently identify as true, but I do know they are lower than PayPal and other providers I've worked with or seen on. It's just really transparent. I like how easy it is to use this. I mean, this is just a witch on the homepage, but actually when you go into the account and having count yourself, the process is pretty much the same. You have like a similar looking which are here. So what you see here is what you get essentially, I would highly recommend using transfer wise. I'm not affiliated with them, but anyway, I wish I was there while people are sent away, but now I don't get any commission or anything like that. And looks I wish I did for now I turn. So this is just my personal recommendation. If you have other providers that you know, are goods that obviously go with them like this isn't something I'm forcing upon you. But if you're looking for an alternative, it's highly recommend transfer was. And that's concludes this video. Hope you found that useful and I'll see you in the next one.
17. Wrap Up Lesson: Okay, So hi and welcome to the final wrapping up lesson on. This is just a summary of the things you've learned in this class. So we started with identifying tasks to all souls and then moving from there, actually setting up the systems. So things like creating the virtual system, Humbug, whether that's through videos or through written texts. And then also the VA rule book, which is laid down some of the expectations you're hoping from your virtual assistant, from a few more documents, stores the orientation document which you would send to your virtual assistant on that first day of working for you, as well as the sample project which would send two candidates once they applied for your role. There's also the various tools that we use, such as Last Pass on Dropbox. And then there were also some things to consider when actually posting your job. So we went through the process of creating a job on online job stop pH of course, the rover platforms you may want to use like 50 or freelancer. And then actually whittling down the candidates from here. It's then a case of interviewing your virtual systems, which is a really exciting part of the entire process. And from there, it is simply a case of choosing the virtual system you want to work with. We then go through the onboarding process as well as the continuing monitoring of your virtual systems with the weekly task spreadsheets, ongoing communications, and given feedback to virtual assistants. And from here, the rest of the journey is smooth sailing. Now you may make some mistakes along the way and that's absolutely fine. I've made so many over the last 15 months or so. And I should stress as well if you're feeling nervous, a little bit worried, little bit scared about this process. As normal to, this is quite a scary leap for lots of people, particularly if you are going to manage them one on either side the world. And you've never money someone before. It is a big step, but I'm confident you can do it and you have got my full bucking. So if you ever want to reach ultimately ask any further questions, I will drop my e-mail address right here so you can check it out. Ping and e-mails in my house, me. All that's left to say though, thank you so much for taking part in this class. I really hope you've got volume from it. And of course I'm really looking forward to seeing your class projects. See you on the other side.
Scott Stockdale, Host of Entrepreneurs Can Party
