A short, informal YouTube video by Kimberly Crowe (Kimberly Hobscheid) explaining two practical ways to train and manage virtual assistants (VAs): 1) if you already know the process, record a screen-capture while you perform the task and send it as training (showing good and bad examples and explaining edge-cases); 2) if you don't know the system, assign the VA to research (support/helpdesk or Google), become the expert, and report back. The video closes with a call-to-action to apply for mentorship at Entrepreneurs Rocket Fuel.
Chapters
Hey folks, it's Kimberly. So a lot of folks have asked questions last night about doing virtual assistant and how it works to have a virtual assistant. And I was chatting with them about it and I thought this would be really good information for my group in entrepreneurs rocket field. So I wanted to share a little bit about it with you. But I don't have a whole lot of time while I'm here at this event. So I thought I'd do a car driving episode. We'll see. Thou art. So one of the questions that came up was like, how do I manage a VA once I have them? Like they're asking me all kinds of questions and they're, you know, they're not. It's almost making my job more difficult by creating, it's creating more work for me because now I don't just have the stuff for them to do, I actually also have to teach them how to do this stuff. And so one of the questions that I asked was, well, do you know how to do it? And is it a system that you're very familiar with? And if you are, there's one solution and if you're not, there's a completely different solution. So if you are familiar with what they need to do, the best way to do to teach them is actually when you're doing the work, when you're doing one of them. Like say for example, you're doing data entry into a system, right? So you just turn on something that's a screen capture, like zoom and you start recording a message to them, like, hey, I'm going to show you how to enter these people into this, into our database, into our system. And then you switch to screen mode and you do like drag and drops and put where everything needs to go. You just actually do the work. Now maybe the first one actually doesn't go well, like, oh, it's not a really good example. Totally fine. Then you tell talk about why it's not a good example. Like this one isn't really somebody we put into our database because you know, they're not the right kind of person. They have the wrong title or they have the wrong program or system or whatever. They're not the kind of person. So then you explain what you would do with that kind of situation and then the, the next one comes up and you put it in and it's a perfect match. Good example. And then you do a third and a fourth just to show what happens if it's not a perfect example, alright? So then you record the video, you stop the video and then you send the whole video to them so that they can watch you go through the process of what you need to do in order to make. Make the data entry incorrectly. So if that's, that's if you actually know how to do the process. But the second one was that somebody said, well, I don't even really know how it works. I just want them to figure it out. And I said, okay, well, if you were going to figure it out, what would you do? And they said, I don't know. I probably, you know, ask their help desk or their support. And I suggested that that's what they. They say, you know, go ahead and contact support. Let me know what they say that we're supposed to do for this. Or Google it. You know, go ahead and do a search on Google, figure out what needs to be done in order to use this system and then let me know because you're going to become the expert on it. I'm not going to know anything about it. You're going to figure this out and then get back to me and let me know. This way, you've sort of batted the tennis ball back into their court, and it's their responsibility now to go do the work, research it, figure it out, and then get back to you to let you know how it turned out. I hope that was really helpful. I know a lot of people get concerned about hiring a VA because they're not really sure how to use one and then not really sure what to offload. So I hope you found this helpful. We're going to do a lot more Talking about hiring VAs in the future because I think that someplace a lot of people get stuck. I'm Kimberly Hobscheid. I'm the creator of Entrepreneurs Rocket Fuel. And if you don't already have a mentor or a guide or coach or someone to take you through the murky waters of being an entrepreneur, I would love to work with you. Go to entrepreneursrocketfuel.com apply and just fill, fill out an application. You and I will get on the phone, we'll chat a little bit. I hopefully won't be driving during that. And we'll have conversation about the mentorship programs that we have and see if one is available that might work for you. It's been a pleasure chatting with you this morning. I'm Kimberly with Entrepreneurs Rocket Fuel, and I look forward to working with you. Cheers.
