What it means to have a virtual assistant with Tega Diegbe

I tend to find that nowadays the term VA is just being used without any real consideration. Perfect example of this is they are online business managers. So these are people who traditionally in a brick and mortar business would be business managers. The only difference is they're working online. But rather than call themselves online business managers, they call themselves VAs because they call themselves VAs and in reality they are online business managers. They charge online business manager prices. So when you say to someone you need to get a VA in the traditional sense of the virtual assistant and not an online business manager, because they know so many people that are online business managers that use the term online business managers and VAs interchangeably, they're usually put up because the fees are quite high. Traditionally, whenever you say virtual assistant, people tend to associate that with low level work. But from what I've done and the people that I've helped, the key mindset shift that I tend to make people adopt is the fact that if you are running a business and you are going to get a virtual assistant, it's better to think of them and treat them as a virtual team member than just a virtual assistant.

What would be the pros and cons, in your opinion? Let's go through the pros first of hiring somebody that would be virtual instead of somebody sat with you in the.

Office right out the gate. The pros of doing it virtually is you instantly, by doing it virtually, negate any tax responsibility that you have for that person so your business doesn't have to carry the burden of payee and health insurance and all the other things you may have to pay if they're in the uk. The other thing is, as well as reducing the tax liability, hiring someone outside of the country that you're located in is usually very, very budget friendly.

Let's just move on to the cons. So what would be a potential downfall, would you say, in your opinion, of hiring somebody virtually compared to hiring somebody?

The biggest one and the one that most people tend to hang their hat on is the fact that it's virtual. They would say that there's no way for you to monitor their output. There's no way for you to make sure that you're hiring a real person. There's no way for you to make sure you're not scammed. I have an argument against that. I'm sure we'll get to that in the call. But that would be one of the cons. And then another one is because it's virtual. If you don't know how to manage people just mere fact that they are virtual, that would actually throw a kink in your plans because you, you don't know how to manage people. Because you don't know how to manage people. That then filters into everything else that has to happen in the business or about the business.

What would you say from your experience, from everybody that you've helped, the ones that have succeeded and the ones that failed, what would you say are the types of Personas or the type of people that would do best from hiring virtually?

With the exception of your specialist services, like your doctors, nurses, lawyers, to some degree, your bookkeeper and your accountant, Those are not positions that you want to hire out virtually. But if you have a business in this day and age, and let's say 70 to 90% of your business activity is done on the computer, in my opinion, there's no reason why you cannot hand the tasks off to a virtual team member.

What would you say would be the best way of somebody getting started in this process of looking to outsource? Now, there's going to be a lot of people listening to this who are really busy. Hospitality and short stay accommodation owners, they're trying to do everything themselves. Now, you know, we're not gonna say go and outsource your ironing, you know, because there's some things that you need to do and there's some things that you don't need to do. But have you got a sort of a foolproof way? Have you got like a little checklist system that you can just sort of quickly walk people through on, on how they can go about discovering what tasks they don't need to be doing to be running that business?

I have an elaborate way and I have a not so elaborate way. Let me go over the not so elaborate way. The not so elaborate way is if there's something in your business that you're doing that you don't like doing. I can almost guarantee you again that if you go on the Internet, you'll find someone that's willing to do that for you for a price. The price depends on what your business can manage to pay that person to get that job done. And if that person can get it done to the level that you're satisfied, you're satisfied of the output. That's the not so elaborate way. The more elaborate ways. It's from a guy who I watch on YouTube called Alan. I'm gonna butcher his name, Alan Shielinski. If he happens to be listening to this and I've just destroyed his name, I profusely apologize. It's basically journaling your everyday. So for me, for example, using myself as a case study, today I woke up, there was a whole bunch of things that I had to do. Some of them vital in that I had to do them. No one else could do them, some of them not so vital in the days gone or in the years gone. It's been years now since I've been using. I've been using virtual.