25: 7 Tasks a Course Creator Should Outsource to a Virtual Assistant

Welcome to the Course Creators MBA Podcast. I'm your host, Destiny Kopp and in this podcast we are covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. But before we begin, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my free mini course Course in a Box, which is your plug and play system with templates and videos to get your online course created. You can grab your free Course in a box by by going to destinycop.com and I will make sure that this link is in the show notes and today we are talking about all the tasks that a course creator should outsource to a virtual assistant. And to join me and share her thoughts here I have Danielle Cuomo. She is the founder of a forum, Virtual Assist usa. Danielle has used her MBA background to have a different vision for the company and her large team. She saw the benefits to business owners for having instant access to hundreds of different skill sets, instant productivity and cost savings. Her firm is currently the largest US Based virtual assistant team in the United States. Danielle, thanks so much for joining me. I'm very excited to talk to you about this topic today.

Thank you very much for having me. I'm glad to be here.

Before we jump into all the questions that I have for you, can you tell everybody and just introduce yourself, tell them about your entrepreneur journey and just a little bit more about your business and what you do?

Sure, sure. I have had my virtual assistant company, virtual assist USA for 11 years now and it's been a really great journey. I've had the opportunity to work with business owners from all across the world which has been really exciting for and in that timeframe, what we've done is grown the business to be able to offer more than just the traditional administrative services. We've been able to offer a really broad range of all inclusive services for our clients that include things like tech support, social media, marketing, etc. So it's been really great to be able to see that growth as well.

Well, you had me at tech support because I know a lot of the course creators who are like listening here. That is one of the areas that they really just pull their hair out with. You know, they can do all the content and you know, everything else that comes along with delivering their services and their coaching programs and their online courses. But tech stuff just really, you know, for a majority of us it is difficult.

Yes, I hear that very often. And really what my job is is to be in the business of giving back time to my clients and for them, using a virtual assistant for tech support. Can really be a game changer. Before someone starts working with a virtual assistant, they can be using a lot of different people, a lot of different technologies, trying to learn a lot of different platforms themselves to get going. And that can take several weeks, it can take months, take a large investment just to launch and get it off the ground. And so what my company has been designed to do is streamline all of that for our clients and they can come to one company and get that all done in a seamless and efficient way.

So I like what you said, giving back time. And that is something I think all of us need more in our day. So let me just jump into my questions here. I have a lot of great questions for you, but really the first question is, and I am going to kind of set the stage for everybody here, how do we know when we are ready to hire a virtual assistant? And can you go in a little bit more detail? We talked about it just a second or so ago. But how do we know when we're ready to hire and what exactly, you know, doesn't make sense?

Yes, I think there's a really important distinction here that's being whether you're needing to hire a virtual assistant or you're ready to hire a virtual assistant. So. So there is a distinction in there and it's really two different points in your business. So I'm happy to talk about that. Most people will easily find themselves in the bucket of needing a virtual assistant. That can be when you find yourself spending more time on admin than you're spending building your business, your family's complaining that they don't see you, you've lost that excitement for running a business. Oftentimes I'll have clients, prospective clients come to me and say a lot of things are falling through the cracks and I feel like I'm never catching up on work. Those are definitely scenarios where you need a virtual assistant. However, sometimes needing a virtual assistant isn't always enough. And you need to know when you're in the point of your business where you need, you not only need to hire one, but you're ready to hire a virtual assistant. So there's really three parts there that I see in my experience that you're ready to hire a virtual assistant. Your business has to be, you know, generating enough revenue. You don't have to be a six or seven figure business rolling in the cash flow. And you know, you can certainly start slow. You can start for just one or two hours a week. Some VA companies, like my, my own company, we have Flexible plans, so there's no minimums to start. But you do want to have some revenue coming in so that you're not completely cash strapped or stressed about budgeting for this. You have to be ready to let go at least a little bit. You have to be ready to give up on the idea that you have to have your hand in every little detail of the business. You have to be ready to just give up a little bit of control and trust your virtual assistant and know that they are the experts in their area, they've been hired for a reason, and that you can feel comfortable relinquishing some of that. And then finally, you have to have processes in place. And if you don't, you have to be willing to make them. So our virtual assistants will work with clients to establish processes, establish standard operating procedures, create systems for things. And that's absolutely fine if you don't have anything existing, just as long as you're willing to make some processes. It's really important, not only for the sake of the relationship with your VA and the efficiency and the time and the money that you're spending, but it also really makes sure that the integrity of your brand is protected, that your mission and vision are protected, and that you're doing things that are going to drive your business forward. So that's what I would say is most important for knowing when you're ready to hire a virtual assistant.

I think all of us would fall in the category of needing a virtual assistant, right? Probably. Stuff may be falling through the cracks. We feel like we're doing a lot of admin work rather than strategically working on our business. But go into your three points where you mentioned when folks are ready, so generating revenue. And it doesn't have to be a lot, as you mentioned, because you can hire somebody for like one to two hours per week when you have flexible plans. So that's really good news. Ready to let go. I know a lot of us are control freaks for sure, but I think you can probably get there. But I also like the point that you made about having the processes in place.

Yes.

Or willing to put them there. Because you need to, like if somebody's contacting you, they have an issue with your online course. You need to have processes in place so that VA actually knows how to handle that customer situation.

Yes, absolutely. And like I said, it doesn't have to be something that you have a whole operating manual for a virtual assistant on day one. Experienced virtual assistant can work with you to create those processes. And they can say, here's what's worked in the past, here's what hasn't, here's what we should look at doing. But it's definitely something you want to be willing to systematize your business as well.

Perfect. So let's talk about some tasks that a course creator should outsource to a VA. So based on your 10 plus years of experience, what do you see working best for most online smaller entrepreneurs?

Yes. So in terms of course creation, the easiest way I would say it is all things tech, something where I see a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners who are amazing and they're phenomenal at creating the content. But the tech piece can really trip them up a little bit. The tech and the marketing piece, I would say. And while it's certainly something that they can learn or they can study and do online tutorials, it's really not a good use of their time. They should be doing, you know what I like to say, the high level, the thousand dollar an hour tasks, which would be that creating the courses, the vision for their courses, being the face of their coursework, rather than, you know, the $30 an hour task that might be something like promoting the course, it might be setting up the templates for the course, etc. So in terms of specific types of tasks that a virtual assistant can do for someone that's creating a course, I'm happy to share a few of those. One of those is definitely setting up the templates for the various pieces of content. So that's any of the course emails that are going out, any of the other materials, setting up not only the automation for the templates and the drip of those templates, but also the graphics for those templates is really important. The merchant assistant can also help with research for the courses. That can be things like researching quotes, statistics, research studies, adding links to that content in the courses. Certainly the branding, the images, the graphics. We have a number of virtual assistants on our team that are skilled in graphic design. And so that visual branding is a really important piece and a really important component for courses these days. And then of course I mentioned the tech pieces. So whatever online structure or platform that you're using for your course, maybe it's teachable. For example, your VA can help set up the module titles, the course pages, the lessons, and uploading all of that content on the platform, testing the user experience, doing a QA QC test to make sure that everything is working and that your students and your participants are going to have a really seamless experience. And then finally I would say, you know, setting up the funnels. That's your sales pages, your opt in pages, your thank you pages, your email sequence, follow ups. There's a lot of moving parts there and the automation is wonderful. It saves people a lot of time. It really streamlines your marketing. But there's also a lot of things that can go wrong when you're setting up a bunch of different pieces to work together like that. So it's best to have a experienced VA handle that piece.

So what about social media management?

That's another big area that virtual assistants can support in. It's a lot more than just making some posts and sending them out. What you'd want to look for certainly is a virtual assistant that will help with the number one thing that I see on social media is engagement. So you want to look for a virtual assistant that's going to help you not only create the content and push out the posts, but have that engagement there, have a strategic plan. I have virtual assistants on my team that work with Facebook ads, for example, and other paid advertising. So if that's the route that you're going to go, it's really best to have someone that's an expert in that area to help you not only create those ads, but to run those ads. There's a lot of moving parts. Facebook's constantly changing the algorithms there and to make sure that you're getting the most bang for your ad dollars, that you're not overspending, that you're targeting the right audiences and that you're just using the best practices for social media. So really utilizing a virtual assistant to really run the gamut on your social media promotion is something to think about as well.

So tell us a little bit more about content creation and I know you touched upon it in the social media management, so creating content and putting it out there on social media. But what other types of content creation could a VA handle for you?

VA can handle a lot of areas of content creation. VAs can assist not only with social media, but with blogging, with your email content creation and even assisting you with your course development. So I had mentioned that your virtual assistant can help to research for your content development things like statistics or studies that you might want to reference. But certainly the VA's can do a lot more than that as well. As much or as little as you want them to do there really. Some of our clients like to follow sort of the 8020 rule, so they will want to put their touch attach on 80 of it, 80% of the content. And they want the VA to polish up the rest of it, fill in that 20% and they still feel like it's, you know, coming from them, that it has their voice to it, it has their vision, but they're not worried about the sort of filler pieces and that that really ends up saving them quite a bit of time there. And so in an example for that, your VA can take a piece of content that you have, edit it, edit, enter an intro and an outro, polish it up, and then certainly upload it to all of your target platforms. So Whether that's your WordPress, blog, SlideShare, Facebook groups, YouTube, LinkedIn groups, so on and so forth, your VA can take care of that as well.

So I like that with the 8020 rule is, you know, 80% is your content and then let the VA handle the rest, whether it's, you know, checking for spelling, grammatical errors and adding other information to it. So that's perfect.

Yes.

You know, accounting, bookkeeping, financial aspect, you know, that can be a headache for a lot of us. Do VAs handle that at all? How does that work?

Yes, absolutely. That would fall under administrative. So anything like email management, bookkeeping, travel arrangement, scheduling, calendar management, those are all very common tasks for virtual assistants to do. That is really where we started out working with clients 11 years ago in that admin space. And personally we begin to expand as we saw the need for more. But the admin piece will always be a big part of the virtual assistant business. And they're tasks that are really easy to outsource. I say easy because they are tasks that really the business owner does not need to be doing. I talked about a few moments ago that the business owner should be focusing on the thousand dollar an hour tasks as the owner of their business. And that's the stuff like the vision, the strateg strategic growth of planning being the face of the business. But an entrepreneur that is thinking like a CEO certainly should not be doing something like booking a flight or reconciling credit card statements for the month. Those are things that can easily and should be outsourced to someone else that can do it much more efficiently.

So Danielle, let's switch gears a little bit. Let's just say you absolutely sold us. We want to hire a va. We know that we need it for our business and we want to focus on those thousand dollar tasks versus the, you know, $30 or less tasks. So tell us a little bit about how should we hire a va? What should we do? How should we evaluate all the options out there?

Yes. So the first thing I think is most important is to understand what you're hiring a VA for. So basically just like you would with a regular job description, but it can be less formal. But think about your priorities for hiring a virtual assistant. This will really help you in having that initial conversation with the virtual assistant company. You'll have a place to start and you understand really what you want your virtual assistant to do in there. I think it's important as well to think about your deal breakers. What would you require of your virtual assistant to have? So for example, in my company, all of my VAs are my full time employees. So they're here all day, they work during business hours, and they're, you know, accessible throughout the day. There are some folks that will do this like as a freelance type of gig, maybe evenings or weekends. So that's something to think about as well as you're hiring a virtual assistant, do you want someone that's going to be there during the day or do you. Are you okay with having someone that's maybe a freelancer or you know, a part timer? Do you want to hire a virtual assistant that is in the US or are you looking to maybe offshore? There are some, you know, pros and cons there as well. So those are the first sort of two steps. And then from there it's really easy just to reach out to a virtual assistant company. Say, here are my top priorities, here's what I want to get done and they will, you know, take it from there. In our company, we can get you set up with a virtual assistant in a business day. So we have clients fill out a questionnaire. It talks about their communication preferences, it talks about their working style, work behavior, personality, that sort of thing. We match them up the same day and get them a virtual assistant and they hit the ground running. So it doesn't need to be a process that takes a terribly long time to do. And once you really have that solid description and understanding of what you're looking for, it can be a very quick process from there.

Can you give us an idea of how much it would cost hourly to hire a va?

Sure, sure. In my company, for example, we have different packages that are just per package. They're not per month. So you just buy a block of ours at a discount and you can use them whenever you wish. They range between 33 and $36 an hour. You'll find that that's a pretty standard price for US based virtual assistants. So you're looking in about the high 20s to mid-30s or so per hour for a virtual assistant in the US and then of course there's offshoring options as well that are typically under $10 an hour. But there are some, you know, cons, of course, to offshoring with security and language barriers, that sort of thing. But if you are looking in the US let's say high 20s to mid 30s per hour.

Thank you so much, Danielle. I enjoyed our conversation today. Do you have any last minute tips for the course creators who are listening here?

Yes, I would definitely say if course creation is something that you are focusing on, that should be your focus. So don't let it. All of the other administrative burdens really drag you down and take up your time. You should really strongly consider focusing on the course creation and giving the other pieces to somebody else, someone that can do it better, faster, maybe cheaper. And I think that that can really make a difference in the content that you're able to churn out, the courses that you're able to do and the people that you're able to reach.

Thank you. Danielle, can you tell people where they can find you?

Yes, they can find us on our website. It is virtualassistusa.com and I will make.

Sure that that link is in the show Notes Course creators. Thanks so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this episode and this gives you some idea for outsourcing your minimal tasks to a va. Would love for you to rate and review the podcast on itunes or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day. Bye for now.