Scale Your Credit Repair Business FAST with Virtual Assistants w/ Paul Durelli

Hey, credit heroes. Imagine if you could double your productivity without breaking the bank. One of the biggest and scariest decisions a credit repair business owner makes is hiring their first employee. It's so daunting that many never do it and then their business never grows. But here's the secret. Hiring help is the number one way to grow your business. And with virtual assistants from overseas, it can be very, very affordable. Our guest today, Paul Durelli, will show you exactly how to build an amazing team on a shoestring budget. So if this is a challenge you're facing, you better stick around. My name is Daniel Rosen and welcome to Credit Repair Business Secrets. Paul d' Ralli is an expert in hiring virtual assistants from the Philippines. With almost 25 years in advertising and marketing, Paul has worked with big names like Disney, Warner Brothers, and he's now the founder of Digital Kahuna, with an all new course that teaches entrepreneurs how to hire virtual assistants to scale their business quickly and cheaply. So if you're just starting your credit repair business and you're feeling overwhelmed, Paul is here today to share some awesome tips to help you to hire inexpensive VAs and lighten your load. So please welcome the podcast Paul Darelli. Hey, Paul, welcome.

Thank you, Daniel. Thank you for that great introduction. It's my pleasure to be here. By the way, thanks for having me on your podc.

What is your background and how did you become such an expert on hiring VAs? What's the backstory?

In 2022, a colleague of mine reached out for help with YouTube channel creation and I built out a whole team for him and that YouTube channel creation. And in that journey, I learned the virtual assistants that were working for other people's YouTube channels were approaching me and telling me, hey, nobody, you know, nobody has their system, their digital ecosystem as organized as you do. So I had the light bulb moment that I had to put this into a course for a lot of people that struggle with outsourcing and having a very organized digital ecosystem for all of their marketing needs. Right?

Oh, that's good. So for people listening, what exactly is a va?

So VA is a virtual assistant. Then you hire to do specific tasks that are maybe outside of your technical wherewithal and, or are tasks that are that are not in your best interest to be doing because you need to be client facing and handling clients on the front end. So you need all of the administrative stuff to be handled by your virtual assistant. Content creation, email marketing, all of these tasks are typical of the things that most any entrepreneur, particularly anyone in the Credit cloud that would need and they need to be able to have a system to onboard the VAs and track their work and have them submit their hours that they've done. Maybe you only have five or ten hours a week of work available for your virtual assistants and maybe that virtual assistant is administrative help or phone answering or email. Flush out the best candidates for their PR work or their admin or web development and what softwares to use and then be able to hire them on on a fractionalized or hybrid basis and then you can scale them up into your company as your business grows.

The last time I searched this a While back in onlinejobs, ph and freeup.net, i was surprised to see many of the VAs on those popular sites actually understand the credit repair business. And many of them even know how to use credit repair cloud. People can actually hire assistants to do their credit disputing in credit repair cloud.

With the credit repair cloud system because it's so robust. You've been so successful now with your business, you've done an amazing job. And I think I just can compliment and help bridge the gap for the people that have a little bit of intimidation and they want an easy way to to bring on VAs in a hybrid fashion and then be able to scale them up as they scale their business.

Now here's a question. Why hire from the Philippines?

Any of the organizations that we look at today, you know, Amazon, Google, everyone outsources. So anyone that's dealing with a computer or a phone or a keyboard, you're part of the outsource ecosystem already, number one. And number two, a lot of those people are really trying to improve themselves and they have little or limited resources to getting really good jobs like the ones you might be providing to them. So you're providing them a great job, a great opportunity to upskill and learn and become better growth opportunities for themselves that they might not otherwise have. And I think it's very kind and noble to be able to afford that to anyone. I don't care where that in the world. If someone's interested in growing and becoming a better person version of themselves and you're able to collaborate together and help them with that, it really doesn't matter where the person that you're hiring lives. We, I mean Covid really pushed remote work past the tipping point, right? There's actually Another book about 13 years ago, I don't know if you're familiar with the guys that wrote the book Rework. They outsourced to all over the world Italy, Poland, Argentina. And their philosophy in that book is that, you know, good talent for your business can be found anywhere in the world. Now you'd be surprised at the amazing amount of goodwill and good talented people you can find there.

Sure. Plus you can save money if you're just getting a business started. What, what does it cost to hire a VA?

Great question. So they range, they start at 3, 4, $5 an hour and up from there. Usually somewhere in the 3 to $10 range. Right. In addition to the academia, they have a very positive disposition and goodwill to really provide good work. I've had more than, more often than not I have had great experiences. What I do in my schematic is I pay them the hourly rate that they're requesting on their profile online jobs. Ph. I tell them we're starting off with part time work and, or hybrid. Right. Or fractionalize. And, and over, you know, usually over time you see how well they're working out, how well they communicate, how creative they are, how responsive they are in the different workflows or tasks that you're having them do. And if there's opportunities for growth, then what I do is I offer them, you know, monthly or paycheck bonus systems to help keep them incentivized, you know, and as the company grows, you can bonus them more.

Sure. What inspired you to create your outsourcing course?

Well, it was what I was mentioning earlier is when I built out the YouTube channels that I built out for myself and my friend and the teams that I had hired were working on other people's YouTube channels and the vast majority of them were excited and they were elated that they were finally working with someone that had a proper organized digital ecosystem that they could, that they could easily acclimate to and made sense. So. And there's another hidden secret that comes with that is by having this level of organized digital ecosystem, you free up cognitive resources. So this is particularly important when your people have to do some of your marketing tasks or creative tasks or even admin staff tasks. When everything is organized and searchable and findable in a clean cut way, then people aren't bogged down by the frustrations of not being able to find things and locate things by their job name and number.

Very cool. What are some common mistakes you see people make when first outsourcing?

What I've noticed is a lot of people that haven't done it before, they struggle with the people skills, the people management and learning maybe some language skills from someone like you or I who's already Been there. And you have a, maybe a greater development of communication skills for smoothing over technical issues, you know, and adherence to standard operating procedures and actually even creating the standard operating procedures for your teams, right?

Absolutely. What should entrepreneurs look for when hiring a virtual assistant?

Obviously they need to have the underlying skill that you're looking for, right. Whether it's credit repair or admin tasks or email marketing or web development or whatever the, the primary task you're looking for. But if they have that skill and they can't respond back on WhatsApp or via email or Skype, whatever, you know, response systems you have set up with them, then it really doesn't matter how skilled they are. Right. Because you could be the best skill skilled person. But if your communication skills and your response skills and your show up skills aren't there, then it's not going to work out. So you need to have the trifecta of good response, good communication and the good technical wherewithal.

Makes a lot of sense. And for someone who's never hired help in the past, how does someone decide what to take off their plate first?

I think the easiest way to answer that is by asking yourself introspectively, is this somewhat something that somebody else could be doing while I'm handling other tasks that somebody can't handle? All of the back end stuff is the stuff that VAS can typically handle that nobody's going to see who handles it. And as long as it's getting done to 80% correct capacity, then you can, you know, modify or modularly course correct elements along the way. That's it.

How do you interview onboard and manage a whole team of remote VAs?

So my primary tools are Zoom and WhatsApp. I have in my WhatsApp. I have a it WhatsApp channel and a content creation channel in there. Most my VAs fall into one of those two categories. So that even when I'm away from my computer, if any tasks come up, they can communicate with me and my primary va. So there's me and then my primary VA and her and I manage the rest of the team. You know, the more you journey with your primary va, the more she'll be able to think and act like you and in place of you. But that takes a little bit of a curation process. Right.

And then they can manage others.

Exactly. And you know what? I'm going to tell you another little secret, Daniel, that I've learned along the way that really helps entrepreneurs a lot that I've noticed when I'm helping people on board Is, you know, when you hire a va, a lot of times you're figuring out some of these processes yourself. And your VA actually acts as a sounding board. And oftentimes if they've had good exposure with some of the other companies that they've worked with, they have good ideas and good feedback about a good way to remedy or solve a technical or workflow solution. And here's another big secret for having VAS last a long time. Here's my number one rule with everyone that I work with, all the VAS that are on board, here's what I tell them. I tell them there are no silly questions, only silly mistakes. And silly mistakes happen when we don't ask the silly questions. And that's very important because what that does is that affords them emotional safety and psychological safety, that they're not going to get ridiculed if they don't have the answer to something. Because at the end of the day, it's not about being the person that knows everything. It's about being in a collaborative environment so that you can find remedies and solutions to the challenges that present themselves when you're starting out of the gates as an entrepreneur.

Absolutely. What are your courses and how do they work?

So my primary course that I have right now is, is hiring VAs and using AIs with VAs to, to get a lot more work done to hyper leverage yourself. And the way I teach you to do it is to be able to have this skill to for yourself so that you carry it forward as an entrepreneur everywhere you go. Now I know there are a lot of agencies out there that, that charge to put VAS into your business, but they want. But what I learned, in fact I learned this at the funnel hacking where you and I met this on in 2022. I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, including yourself and, and many of them were telling me about how they were in addition to the sixteen hundred dollar fee, if a VA was working out really well and they want to extract them from the agency that they contracted with, they're wanting to charge somewhere around $10,000 to. You have to pay that to then remove them from within the agency. Otherwise you're stuck into that sixteen hundred dollar a month contract with the outsourcing agency. I show you how to leapfrog that. So you don't have that sixteen hundred dollar a month fee anymore with the agencies that provide those services. Because if you learn the skill, then you don't need it and then you carry that forward for the rest of your Life. And I think as an entrepreneur, that's a cornerstone, foundational skill that'll serve you everywhere you go moving forward for every business journey that you have.

I did try to hire from an agency and it was a disaster. And I found out later the guy who owned the agency was making all the money and the people doing the actual work were not making much at all. It was very sad. So we discovered it's much better to.

Hire people directly if they are contracting the virtual assistants for 3, 4, 5 dollars an hour. Sometimes they're charging the individual 8, 9, $10 an hour. So they're putting, they're layering on an hourly rate onto the VAs. They're piggybacking an hour early rate on the vascular. That's costing you additional money.

How can people learn more about your courses?

Yep. So the primary link is digitalkahuna.com courses or you can go to digitalkahuna.com linktree and my link tree is in there with a bunch of different links, including the courses. I give two free trainings there that they can, when they opt into it, they, you know, can sign up with their email, check out the free training where I give an overview of what I teach and what I provide if they want to join in. And like I said, right now it's in the early stages, so anyone that wants to join in is going to get in for the best price, best lifetime price. And you get access to me and I will be able to answer and address any and all questions above and beyond what you might think regarding the VAs and technical wherewithal.

Very, very cool. And again, that link is digital kahuna.com courses and we're also going to put the link down there in the show. Not. Okay, Paul, I want to switch gears real quick and I want to ask you a few rapid questions. Answer with the first word or phrase that pops in your head. Okay?

Okay.

What's your business superpower?

Leveraging virtual assistants and artificial intelligence to maximize your productivity.

I love it. What does business ownership mean to you?

It means freedom and control over your life and your destiny.

What drives and motivates you?

I love helping people and I love when people have that light bulb aha moment when they've learned things that they didn't know were possible before.

What's your definition of success?

Achieving what you want without violating the rights of others and being able to help people along the way.

Nice. And if you could go back in time and tell yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Get started. Sooner push yourself past your fears. You know, everyone has fears and trepidation about going out on their own. And I think the more you push yourself, the more you grow. And I think pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone is what causes you to grow. And when you grow, you tend to become a better version of yourself and happier because you like the new developed version of yourself.

I love that. That is a great answer and a great way to end here. I want to thank you again, Paul. You've been awesome. I wish you continued success. Thanks so much for being here.

Thank you Daniel for having me. It was a pleasure coming on here and I hope that I can help all the credit heroes that come your way that are starting out. If they need my help, I'm happy to help them. Thank you so much for having me on your show and thank you.

And for those of you watching, if this was inspiring, click the like button down below. Give me a thumbs up so more people will see this video. And if you'd like to learn how Israel Cordova built his seven figure credit repair business from nothing, check out his amazing interview. And if you'd like to improve your credit score and learn how to earn extra income repairing Credit for others, check out my brand new Start Repairing Credit Challenge or Doors are closing soon and it is completely free. So sign up right now@startrepairingcredit.com and keep changing lives.