Episode 70: Finding, Hiring, and Delegating to a Virtual Assistant in Your Business

Hey, welcome back to the podcast. I am so glad you're here. I just am coming off of my first ever content creation retreat in Charleston and it was just absolutely magical. I had, there were 12 of us total and this awesome Airbnb, everybody had their own bedroom, their own bathroom. We had a photographer and hair and makeup and we just created a whole bunch of content for Instagram and it was really awesome.

We definitely didn't get as much completed as I had originally hoped, but I think that I was able to give everyone a lot of confidence in like just what the heck to do and going forward in their creation. So thank you to everybody who came. If you're listening, I so loved getting to spend the weekend with you and we already have a waitlist link up for next year.

It's just mollycahill. com slash retreat. And we're already looking to plan next year's retreat. And it was just so much fun. So today's episode actually, uh, came by request from that retreat because one of my attendees said she didn't really mind filming reels or video, but she did not like putting together carousels in Canva.

And I said, well, why don't you just have a VA do it? And she was like, well, what, what, what does a VA do? What can a VA do? And so here, uh, VA short for virtual assistant is what this whole episode is about. And I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Holistic Marketing Simplified, a podcast for health and wellness professionals looking to simplify their marketing.

I'm your host, Molly Cahill, and this podcast is brought to you by My Marketing Roadmap, which is a five episode private audio training that's kind of like this podcast, but not exactly because it's a podcast. It's not available to the general public when you search on your podcast feed. So the great thing about consuming free content like this for me or on my Instagram or my blogs or whatever is that yes, you will learn a lot, but you kind of have to go searching for what it is exactly you're looking for.

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Hi, I'm Dawn Wiggins and I'm an integrative healer and I listen to the holistic marketing simplified podcast.

Talk about all things virtual assistant or just like, it doesn't have to be virtual assistant It was just like getting help in your business because I find this strange thing happens and I guess my brain just doesn't comprehend because I'm like the world's like biggest outsourcer. Even in the online business space, but I would say I see it more in the brick and mortar business space.

People just kind of expect to have to and need to do everything themselves. And there's also a misconception that, oh, I can't, you know, I can't outsource this or I can't get help until I've blank, like, and I'm not a business coach, right? Like I, I've talked about it on the podcast before that, um, I, I approached growing my business a little differently than probably most business coaches would advise you to do.

I'll never forget. I had, um, Someone DM me and this was about, I don't know, a year ago and she goes, wow, I've never met anyone who manages to do more than I do. And I was like, wow, that's so inaccurate. Like am I portraying this person on Instagram who's like doing it all? Let me tell you, I am not. I have someone who helps me clean my house.

I'm actually transitioning to have someone to come once a week who's going to help with laundry and cleaning instead of like just like normal deep cleaning. I, my daughter is in school full time and then when she's not this summer, um, the neighbor is going to come watch her four days a week. four hours a day.

Um, so I've always had childcare even before I could quote afford it. I literally sacrificed paying myself a lot in the beginning to put in some foundational pieces only because I know my personality, so that might not be the right, that might not be the right path for you. Right? Because I'm saying like, I'm not a business coach, you know, whether or not, okay, I've got to pay myself to put food on the table or whatever that this is not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the fact that, like I said, especially in the brick and mortar space, I think a lot of people hear the term VA and they're like, Well, first of all, they ask what it is, and I'm going to define that. So don't worry. And they're like, well, I'm brick and mortar, like I don't need a virtual assistant, but this doesn't have to be somebody who's virtual.

It can still be someone who's virtual if you're brick and mortar, or it can be somebody, you know, who physically comes into your office. So, just consider, and I, and I'm going to talk about my litmus test for knowing like what tasks, um, this person can do for you, but just think about for a moment, what would happen if you could let go of just a little bit and get some help in your business.

Okay? So, first of all, what is a virtual assistant? What is a VA? So you're going to be saying VA. Again, as I said, VA doesn't necessarily have to be a virtual, um, it could be somebody who like works. If you're in your office part time or if you're an online business, it could be someone who is completely virtual or even if you're online, it could be someone who comes to your house part of the time, even if you're, you know, comes to meet you at a coffee shop at work.

So don't let the, like the word virtual throw you off cause it can be, or it can't be, or it can be hybrid or whatever. VA is like the most generic umbrella term for so many things. So when someone asks me, what does a VA do? I mean, it's like asking, I don't know, I don't have a good analogy. It's just like a very generic umbrella term.

You think about like a lot of people have like personal assistants, right? Like we think about like CEOs and stuff, having personal assistants, but why, why does it have to be a CEO? Why do you have to be a C suite executive to have some type of assistant? Um, I'm also going to talk about the term OBM, which stands for online business manager.

Some people do lump that person under the VA umbrella. They aren't necessarily VAs, but I'm going to talk about that. And then just thinking about. Um, even if they're not a quote VA, think about any contractors who can, and I'm going to talk about employees versus contractors as well, but think about any contractors who could just can help you in your business.

So for example, I have a podcast editor who's a contractor. I have a copywriter who helps turn these podcast episodes into SEO rich blog posts. I have a bookkeeper. I have an accountant. So a lot of people are quick to think about, Oh yeah, I outsource my taxes, but it's like, well, why can't we, you know, outsource some other things.

Right. And then also I do, I am going to touch on how a social media manager and I guess technically you could lump social media manager under the umbrella. That's kind of like every social media manager's like cringe because we're like, it's just so, so much more than that. So anyway, we're gonna talk about that as well.

Just to kind of paint the picture for you, some tasks, and this is so not even remotely an all inclusive list of things a VA can do for you. Okay. This is just like scratching the surface. Can they help you make graphics, uh, whether it be like, you know, like, for example, my VA just recently helped me make a trifold brochure for the, uh, Stephanie Wigner scale up event, or, you know, sometimes I want like a carousel on my Instagram.

This is a way you can kind of dabble in having someone help you in your social media without having an actual, quote, social media manager. Are they someone who can help you with, you know, checking your inbox and maybe doing like the first pass at filtering your emails? I know when my grandfather passed away, I was able to ask Maria, my amazing VA, to go in and reschedule all my appointments.

So that's another thing they can do. Tech is a huge one. Huge, huge, huge. Can they help you set up landing pages for your email, or maybe even just set up your email list altogether, help keep your email contacts updated? Can they help, you know, do updates on your website or, I mean, you name it, set up many chat triggers.

Like I said, the possibilities are seriously endless. Sometimes you might hire a virtual assistant to be more of just like for a project, like a project basis, or you might hire somebody to be more ongoing. And I'm going to talk about. This a little more in a little bit, little while, but I always recommend at least starting someone for a project just to kind of see if you're the right fit.

So you're going to be like, Hey, my project for you is to, uh, you know, I've been wanting to start email marketing. I want you to take all of my contacts from my EHR system. I want you to sign this HIPAA release form. I want you to export it as a CSV file, import it, you know, and you might not even know these steps, right?

Like if you get somebody who's skilled, they're going to know what to do and you're not going to have to tell them what steps to do. Create an account in Flowdesk and set up, you know, a landing page. Help me create this lead magnet of all these things that I've like brain dumped onto a document and make it pretty and then set it up.

Like I said, like you can always come, come up with some type of project basis. And then the other, the next thing I want to talk about is Certain virtual assistants can be specialists and some are going to be more general. What I mean by that is when I transferred, I had like four different softwares all having to like talk to each other and I transitioned everything into Cartra, which is my favorite all in one tool.

So Cartra is what hosts my course, my email list, my affiliate programs. You name it, it's kind of like my CRM. It's all in one. Most of you in my audience don't need anything that robust because you have to remember, like my main bread and butter is my online business, right? So that's why I needed something a little more robust, like Kartra.

And so when I first switched to Kartra, I hired someone on a project basis to do the migration, which means, you know, they had to pull in, um, I used to be on Thinkific was where my course was, where was my email active campaign. And then I'd add one other, what was that? Oh, lead pages is what I was using for my landing pages.

So basically this person on a project basis took all of my assets from those three different platforms and then migrated them to Cartra. So to find that person, I literally just like Googled. I actually, she was a referral, but if I, you know, not known where to find her, I would've googled like Kartra specialist.

So some people are, like I said, like, like true specialists. Um, some people might be kind of like, I don't know, I'm gonna call 'em like a subspecialist where it's like they're really great at tech, but they don't wanna be any type of client facing, like, they don't wanna be in your email. They don't wanna be responding to clients, but like, they're super techie.

They are good at like troubleshooting and figuring things out and then you'll have some people that are probably like more on the creative side and they're better at the like visuals and the graphics and they're more, they're okay, you know, being client facing. So as you can kind of see, like I said, there's just, there's like a whole big variety of these types of, of lovely humans on this planet that can help you now in terms of pay, obviously the more.

Specialized, and the more experience they have, the more it's going to be. I would say, um, I have paid anywhere from 20 all the way up to 75 an hour, depending on what this person was doing for me. When I say 75 an hour, that was someone who, she really wasn't hourly, it was just kind of like a contract and she, I can't, she just literally, I don't know how to describe it.

She just somehow was this magical unicorn who was good at tech. She was good at pretending to be me and writing copy, like she was just like magic. So don't, don't think like you're going to right off the, out of the gate, like be paying somebody that much. I am going to touch on kind of like a slightly, I don't know what the word is, it's not taboo, that's not the right word, but like a lot of people will talk about outsourcing and hiring a virtual assistant in the Philippines and they're like 5 an hour is a great rate for them.

My main virtual assistant is actually in the Philippines and I definitely do not pay her 5 an hour. She makes Way more than that. And I asked her about this. I was like, Hey, what's the deal with this? Um, is it a misconception that Americans have that 5 an hour is a great wage? I was like, I hate, I hope this isn't like a super sensitive topic, but I'd love to, you know, like help fix this in at least my circles.

If, if that's the case. And her response was actually that, unfortunately, in some provinces in the Philippines, people are so poor and they live in such poverty. Really, really, really, she's like, her exact words was like, you wouldn't believe the conditions that to them 5 an hour actually is better than what they were getting.

And a lot of the agencies that employ, like, see, there's a lot of like, um, I don't know the names of them, but like, there's like agencies where you can go and find someone. Well, then my brain's like, okay, well, if I'm going through an agency and I'm paying 5 an hour, well, then the VA isn't getting 5 an hour because the agency is going to be taking a cut.

But the upside is also like they are training them, they're giving them a skill, they're providing them with a computer and internet, which she says a lot of people in some of these provinces don't have. So she said it really just depends on where they live in the Philippines. So anyway, I'll do with that information what you will.

It's never sat well with me, but, you know, then again, maybe, like I said, maybe it's a big opportunity that this person's gotten that they wouldn't have got otherwise. And anyway, anyway, that's all I'm going to say about that topic. So I would just say though, like a general rule would be to start out somebody who doesn't have a ton of experience, 20 to 25 an hour.

And then someone who's more experienced, who you literally, they're like, they're just like, they don't require any handholding. They don't require any training. You're going to be paying a little more. The other thing I wanted to note about virtual assistants, which is so great, is sometimes I like to hire based on their personality traits versus their current skill set.

So sometimes you'll just have someone who's like, Oh no, I'll figure it out. Like. I'm just somebody who can figure it out. And like I have one girl on my team in particular I can think of who we wanted to add Google business profile services for our Instagram management clients. And I'm like, well, I don't know how to like, I mean, I know how to like physically I could like go figure out how to do it, but like, I don't know best practices.

It's kind of like with Instagram. Like, yeah. Like. You might have someone who's like, I know how to post or I know how to make camera graphics and they can go put that on your Instagram, but that doesn't mean it doesn't make them a social media manager and it doesn't mean that it's actually all optimized.

So I bought a Google business profile course and she went through the course and learned how to do it. So, I would say probably about the last 10 students of mine for Holistic Marketing Hub have actually been like a, a CA or a VA or a, a office manager or someone in an office who, and not just chiropractic, who is actually taking the course on behalf of their employer.

So it's like, that's really cool. Cause then you're upskilling somebody who's already physically in your office, which I, I highly recommend because our foreign thing, our agency's full right now, but even if it wasn't, we love working with our clients, but you know, we have certain clients who give us lots of video and assets and certain ones who don't.

And I wish I could be close by to the ones and just like actually go film it myself. So. What a cool thing when there's somebody right there in your office, right? So like I said, that's another way of training is to put them through a course. If you're like, Hey, I want to learn how to set up these mini chat triggers.

And then like you get someone who just has the personality type who maybe doesn't already have that skill set, but is willing to learn. Okay, my favorite part of this episode is going to be, how do you know what tasks to give your VA? And there's two different ways you can approach it. My litmus test has always been, what do I find myself putting on my to do list that doesn't get crossed off?

If you've ever heard of, uh, the Eisenhower matrix, is that what it's called? It's like the quadrant where there's four quadrants and it's urgent and important, urgent and not important. Not urgent, but important, and then not urgent, not important. I find the majority of the tasks that I end up delegating are the ones that fall in that third quadrant, which is not urgent, but important.

What that means is those are the things that are really going to move the needle in your business and move your business forward. But other things that are higher priority time wise just keep coming up and I don't want to say like you're always like putting out fires all day because it doesn't necessarily have to be anything negative.

It's just like, you know, there's certain things that have to be done on a timely basis and then you run out of time. So when I first started my business, I always tell the story, it's so funny because I'll look back, you're like, like facepalm. I knew I wanted to start an email list and I'm pretty tech savvy.

I can usually like figure things out to a certain extent, except for don't make me figure out Facebook ads. I bought a course for that and then like literally cried three times. Um, but my email list, I knew I wanted to do it, but I kept putting it off because at the time I was just literally me. It was just a one woman show and I kept putting it off, putting it off, putting it off.

Yeah. Yeah. And finally, I was like, I'm just going to pay somebody to set up my email list for me because I had this idea for a lead magnet and I had it kind of all like typed out. I don't remember. I think it was around like 75 bucks. I paid this lovely gal to create my lead magnet and set up my email list for me.

And it took her like several hours and then it was just done like, Oh my gosh, why did I not, why did I not do this sooner? So like I said, the things that you just keep putting off and you're like, Oh, I'll get to it when I get caught up. Like that quote, I'll get to it when I get caught up and you're like, yeah, yeah, right.

When's that day actually going to come? Those are great things to outsource. And other people like to look at it from the whole like zone of genius perspective, which is also not a bad idea. It's like, okay, well, my zone of genius is, okay, I can only be the one who's actually seeing clients or seeing patients.

Well, that's obvious. You can't outsource that. I also enjoy XYZ in my business. Those, um, or that's like the things that I'm really good at. That's my zone of genius. I think that's really great in theory. It doesn't always work out that way for me and I guess maybe it's something I'm doing wrong. I don't know.

I'll give you a prime example of my zone of genius is talking to you. I love being in my DMs. I love talking to potential clients and students like sales are my jam. Networking is my jam. It's literally my favorite thing to do. It's definitely my zone of genius, right? But just because I am the CEO, one of the things that I really wanted to do in my business was to follow up with anybody who commented the mini chat trigger word on any of my Instagram posts.

I wanted to make sure to go follow up with them and DMs like, you know, three to five days later to make sure that they had actually been able to download the free resource and look at it. Because I'm somebody who needs follow up personally and so I'm like, I want to provide that for my people. Right?

Because, you know, when you've commented a word before, I'm like, my favorite Amazon paint supplies. And then you like comment the word and then it gets like lost in your DMs and you never see it again. Maybe that's just me, but I wanted to make sure I had built in an extra touch point for all of those people who wanted my free resources and I just like kept not doing it.

So now one of my awesome assistants goes in and helps follow up with those people, even though that's something that's in my zone of genius, it was still one of those important but not urgent tasks that wasn't getting done. All right. Next, let's talk about how we, and then don't worry, we're going to wrap it up with where to find people, how to pay them, are they contractors, employees, whatever.

But next let's talk about how to kind of help manage the tasks for whoever is going to help you. I use loom a lot. L O O M. It's just a free Google Chrome plugin. I mean, I have the paid version because we literally make so many loom videos in my business that I have to have the paid version. But It's just a free screen recording tool that you can just like literally record yourself making videos if you need to make training videos.

Our team also uses Asana, A S A N A, as our project management tool, but there are a million of them. There's Trello, there's ClickUp, there's Monday, you know, don't, don't like go leave whatever tool you're currently using because I say we use Asana. It's just like, they're all great. We also communicate via Slack, which can integrate with Loom.

It can integrate with Asana, all this kind of stuff. But you, again, it's not something you have to use. You can still just do text or Voxer walkie talkie or whatever, just depending on how big, like we didn't move to Slack until probably two years ago, we mostly communicated on Voxer, which is like a walkie talkie app.

But now that the business has gotten so big and gotten so complex and I have such a large team. It's just easier to keep things more organized in slack. So that's how we do that. And then I also want to know, you remember at the beginning I talked about an OBM or an online business manager. So what that means is this person is really more like the integrator.

Like maybe you've heard visionary and integrator. So many people are trying to do both roles, right? Like you're the person like thinking of the idea, like you are the intellectual property or whatever. So that, you know, you might be the provider or whatever, and you have all of these, you Ideas, and I'll give you a prime example.

I have a lot of clients who, you know, they're still seeing patients full time, but they have created an online course and it's just sitting there, not selling. A VA would be a great person to come in, but really an OBM online business manager would be probably an even better person. And full disclosure, they're usually more expensive than a va.

But this is the person who's gonna look at your business from like. The COOs like chief operating officer, like I said, integrator operations, whatever you want to call it from that lens. And Carolyn, my OBM has been with me for four years in June and she's literally like my right leg, like the Charleston content creation retreat I just had, she basically planned the entire thing.

She's the one that contacted the restaurant and. You know, set up the catering and, you know, did the gift bags and kept the budget spreadsheet and, you know, even like the landing pages to talk about what was in the retreat. OBMs typically aren't the people actually setting up, like setting up the pages, but They're the ones that are communicating with your VA.

So usually you have an OBM and a VA, and then the OBM serves as like the person who's actually like tasking and following up with the VA. She's even helped me do like interviews and hire, like when we were migrating to CARTRA, I'd be like, Hey, can you help me find someone who can help with CARTRA? They can kind of, like I said, be more of like the manager of the people.

So, you know, how, think about it like an online version of if you have an office manager and the office manager helps hire and train your CAs, that's the like, what an OBM is for your online business. So like I said, they're not thinking in tasks where like in that same example, Hey, I've created this online course that it's not selling, but I don't have time to think about it because I'm seeing patients full time.

A VA would be great, but you're still going to have to be the one steering the ship and telling them what to do and tasking them versus an OBM is going to be the one who's like going to think in the more like. broader scheme and then can go and in some OBMs are kind of hybrids, especially if they're just starting out.

And they'll be like, no, I can, I do tasks as well. Like, yes, I'm an OBM, but I'll also like go in and create the landing page if I need to. So you just got to interview and look around. Okay. And if all of this overwhelms you and you're like, Oh my gosh, I don't want all these people. You don't have to, just like I said, start with somebody simple, start with something simple with the thing that annoys you the most and keeps getting not crossed off your to do list.

And then you can always grow from there. Don't feel like you have to like, like I've had my business for five years. I definitely did not have a team this large in the beginning. It was a slow, slow, slow buildup. Okay. And then the last thing is how to, uh, or where to find them and how to pay them. Okay. So in terms of where to find them, a lot of people I have found have just been through like referrals from friends.

So I've looked at other businesses that are similar to mine and said, Hey, do you have a really good virtual assistant you like or whatever? But there's also like my friend, Sarah Wiles trains VA's and she has a free virtual assistant matchmaking website and that's S A R A W I L E S, you can just Google her name and she's got VA matchmaking website.

There's also free Facebook groups. Um, one's called the virtual assistant savvies. One's called like how she did that. You can look in local Facebook groups. You could even like look at like existing clients or patients in your office. And again, look for more, Hey, you never know. You might find someone who's already trained, or you might see someone who just really has that go get them attitude.

Who's willing to learn. And if you want them to help through social media, put them through the hub. And then remember how I said a lot of times I have them start out on a project basis versus ongoing just to make sure that it's all going to work out and don't get discouraged if you choose the project basis.

Don't get discouraged if more communication and time is needed in the beginning because as you know, you two get used to working with each other, it's obviously going to get easier and easier just like it is training anybody new in your business. And then last but not least, how to pay them. I am not an employment attorney, so I am not telling you what to do, and don't say Molly said to do this, because every state is different, some are stricter than others, typically from what I've heard, it's like as long as you aren't their sole source of income, and you know, you're not providing all their equipment, you're not dictating their hours, whatever, they don't have to be an employee, but like, I mean, all of mine are contractors just because they fit the criteria to be 1099 contractors.

So my bookkeeper sends them, you know, the proper tax forms at the end of the year. I don't withhold taxes. Like I said, they're all contractors. And of course, if they're overseas, they can't be an actual employee anyway. Right. And, um, so like I said, you'll have to figure that out. What, you know, talk to your own, uh, employment attorney, CPA, what's going to work best for you.

If they are already established, they're already going to know all this. They're going to know how to, to invoice you. Um, I've had people invoice me with PayPal, with wave, honey book, dubsado. Like I said, most everyone already has their own invoicing software, but if they're brand new and they're just learning, then you could even do like a direct bank draft, which is how I pay most all my people now.

Um, I use Relay Bank because it's set up for profit first. So direct bank draft, or like I said, WAVE is another really popular invoicing software, you know, or just do PayPal, whatever. I pay all of mine monthly, so they bill me on the first of the month for their hours the previous month. I have, some people are hourly, and then some people on my team, like my OBM Carolyn, she's on just like a retainer contract, so I pay her the same amount.

Monthly, no matter what she doesn't track her hours, you know, whatever. It's just like, she's like, like I said, more of a retainer. And so I would recommend at the beginning, like either getting a quote for like a project basis or doing hourly hourly, just as you can kind of build up that trust with somebody.

So like I said, it's, it's all kind of different. Some people want to be paid every two weeks. There's just a whole variety, but I hope that was helpful. And I want to end by telling you about one of my favorite new resources. I created a very in this. This is more like I said on the social media side. I created a very in depth three reef resource on that.

You can use for someone that's going through the hub on your behalf. It has a checklist for each and every individual classroom they've watched inside the hub, and it has a free Full checklist of weekly and monthly deliverables and the deliverables we pulled, I didn't just make them up. They're exactly what we would do for our Instagram management clients.

Um, there's also like a sample job description and pay rate and you can literally just grab that. And that's like, if you're looking for help with your social media specifically, then that's kind of your blueprint. Like it tells you exactly, like I said, the hours, the deliverables, the sample pay rate, everything.

It's really cool. So you can just grab that at mollycahill. com slash SMM and we will link that in the show notes. All right. There you have it. Uh, if you have any questions, please reach out to me on Instagram via DMs. I love chatting with you and I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you for listening to Holistic Marketing Simplified, and hey, you know how every podcaster at the very end of their episode asks you to rate and review their podcast?

Well, that's because it's super important. These podcasts take a lot of time and heart and effort to produce, to bring you free information. So in order for me to be able to continue doing that, we need more people to find out about the show. So if you could please just take like two minutes out of your very busy day to leave me a rating and share this on your Instagram stories and tag at Molly a Cahill.

C A H I L L. I would greatly, greatly appreciate your support. I know your time is valuable and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.