Why you should hire a Virtual Assistant with Tega Diegbe S7E7

Hands up if you have a guidebook that you leave for your guests when they enter your property. Now, keep your hand up if you've got a digital version of that. Now, I have always had a printed guidebook full of places to visit, the WI fi code and all that jazz. But at the start of this year I wanted to set out and look for a digital guidebook because the amount of times that I've had to replace those guidebooks in the rooms or in the properties because of things going out a day or people walking off of them was crazy. A good friend of mine recommended I check out Hostfully and I've been playing around with it now for a while for myself and my clients, and I love it. So much so that I reached out to them and I asked if they could put together a little promo code for Boostly listeners. So if you head over to Hostfully.com put in the promo code Boostly2M the number two, and then M you get two months off their premium service. But the even better news is is that you can go over to hostfully.com so h o s t f u l l y.com and you can get one digital guidebook for free. So you can start playing around with it, see how it feels. And then if you want to upgrade, you get two months free just because you're a Boostly listener. So again, hostfeed.comboostly2m is your promo code. Let's get on with the Boost Hospitality Podcast.

Boost Hospitality Podcast My name is Maximson. I'm the founder of Boostly and we are in season seven, episode six seven. Today we're talking all about hiring your first virtual team member. I invited On Tayga who has been helping small business owners solopreneurs for the past few years now figure out where in their business they need help. And he helps people by then hiring team members from all over the world and then he helps manage the whole process. Him and his team do a fantastic job and I wanted to get him on this show because we wanted to scale back. What exactly is virtual team member or virtual assistant? The pros and cons of doing it, which type of business owner should be looking to outsource and exactly what it is that short stay accommodation owners need to be looking at. We talk about social media, we talk about McDonald's, we talk about Big Mac, we talk about SOP, and we've got loads of really cool tactics and tips for you in this. Before we get started, I just want to thank you, our podcast sponsor for this season. This is horrible. Hostfully Hostfully are a US based company that helped design digital guidebooks for your guests for pre and post stay. I have been on Hostfully for a while and the guests that we use at the Granary have commented on how good the guest guide books are not only for our own family business, but Boostly Academy members such as Paula Butler use it for her business Cockington Cottages. And again their guests are commenting on the guidebook on arrival. Really recommend that you check out Hostfully. Go to Hostfully.com if you go to Hostfully.com you can check out right now. If you go and put in Boostly 2M in the coupon code you'll get two months free of their premium service. But what I love most is you can get started today for free for one guidebook. So go and check it out. Before you go and check it out, please tune in to this Boostly podcast which is with Tege.

Good evening everybody in Bustle Land. Nice to speak with you guys virtually those thus live and those who happen to be listening. Pleasure to be speaking in your ears. My name's Tega. As Mark pointed out, I am based in Newcastle up on Tyne in the northeast of England. So pretty, pretty cold winters and it's pretty cold today which is why I'm wearing a hoodie for those who may be watching. And my business is helping self employed entrepreneurs go from being self employed to actually having businesses a business by leveraging the power of outsourcing and systemization.

Nice. Brilliant. So today we're going to talk about outsourcing, we're going to talk about hiring and what the first thing that I want to just delve quickly into is from all of the self employed business owners that you chat to take. What is the one mistake that you see people make time and time again when it comes to the running of their business?

It's almost like a domino effect in my opinion. The one mistake that I noticed time and time again is the fact that people don't tend to treat their business like a business. They tend to treat their business more like a hobby than done a business. If you look at someone who's successful from the outset, I can almost guarantee, I can't guarantee it because obviously I wasn't there when they started their business. But from the outset I can almost guarantee that they would have started and acted like they were running a business and not hobby. That's not to say you can't start out as if you are running a hobby because we all have to start Somewhere. But as soon as you realize or you notice that things are getting serious, then you need to get the, you need to dump the hobby hat and put on the business owner hat and start operating things like it is a business.

So obviously we're going to be talking about, about outsourcing and hiring. And I can pretty much guarantee that through the people that you've helped in the past and to people that you're going to help in the future, that they're going to ask a lot of questions specifically when this is what we're talking about, a virtual assistant. So let's just delve right back to the start. And when somebody says virtual assistant, what does that mean?

That's a good question. My answer may not be provide any illumination for some people, but when I say a virtual assistant, I just, I refer to someone who is helping you run your business, but they are location independent. 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, they that use the term online business managers and VAS interchangeably, they're usually put off 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, 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 assistant, it's better to think of them and treat them as a virtual team member than just a virtual assistant.

Yeah, I think virtual team member is. I can see a lot of businesses doing it and bringing it back to hospitality. If you look at cloud beds, Cloudbeds is a property management system for hospitality owners. And they've got one central location, but they are filled with staff from all over the world and they actively talk about this and you know, they don't call them VAs, they are virtual team members. So I think the way that I would sort of break it down, if you've got an assistant then that would be somebody that is working alongside you in your office. The term virtual just means that they are not in your office and they're somewhere else around, around the world.

So that's an even. That's an even better way to describe it. I just, I muddied the waters with my explanation. Yours just made it super, super easy.

Hey, we both have ways of explaining it. I just get straight to the point. I love it how you just fill it with lots of lovely takerness. So o, so we've got assistance and we've got virtual. We've got in house, we've got outhouse. Now, 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. And let's just say just for argument's sake, we've got, we're based in the UK here. So I'm in the uk, I want to hire assistant. What were the pros of doing it virtually? Where I hire someone who is elsewhere.

Right out the gate, the pros of doing it virtually is you. You instantly, by doing it virtually negate any tax responsibility that you have for that person so your, 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 straight off the bat, that's one of them. The other thing is, as well as reducing the tax liability, hiring someone outside of the country that you're loc is usually very, very budget friendly because the standards of living and the. No, not standards. The cost of living in the other countries where you. Well, where I tend to find my guys is, I don't want to say cheap because that belittles it, but it's of a good enough standard that you don't have to pay them the kind of money you have to pay someone in the UK and they would still live a very, very good life.

Yeah, 100%. I mean it's just common sense really. For anybody that has traveled, let's say just Philippines, for prime example, the cost of living in the Philippines compared to the cost of living in, you know, say, say the uk, say London is, it totally outweighs. And for somebody, say from the Philippines or from say India or anywhere, we're sort of talking those sort of locations. If they were to offer their services in those locations and they were going to work in country, say get a job in an office in, say, Manila or wherever, the amount that they would get paid would be a lot less than if they're in the uk, but they aren't as fortunate to jump on a plane, fly to the uk, sort out visas and go for all that. So instead they then offer their services virtually. Which. Which again. So for a UK company, I would say we're in. I'm talking about this example for the UK to hire somebody virtually from, say, someone from the Philippines is I get a lot better standard of work for a lot less fee if I was to hire somebody, say, from Scarborough, where I'm based and the business is based. So those are two really good pros. I think the first one, the PAYE one, is a massive pro and obviously the cost as well for the quality that you get. But 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 in office?

The biggest one and the one that most people tend to hang their hat on is the fact that it's virtual. So there's no way for you. Okay, there's no. 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 the mere fact that they are virtual, that would actually throw a kink in your plans. Because you don't know how to manage, 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.

Yeah, we are definitely going to move on to that later on in this podcast. But I totally agree with you is that I think so many people hear of VAs. They hear of the term virtual assistant. They go, yep, great, I'm gonna hire somebody. Virtually save loads of tons of money. They go and do it. And then they realize once they've hired them, they haven't got a clue how to manage or do the process, which of course is. We're going to come on to how you can help later. Let's go and talk on about Personas, then. So it's a real tricky one. You know, there's people that are watching this that the way that they run their business or manage staff, or potentially manage staff, they would be more suited to a virtual over an assistant or vice versa. So 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, would do best from hiring virtually?

That's a bit of a trick question, I believe, 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 virtual team member.

Yeah, I like that. Now here's a little side topic to go off on that question. What would you say would be the best way of somebody getting started 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 going to 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 their business?

Yeah, I do have, 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. Because it's been years now since I've been using. I've been using virtual team members. I would have done everything myself. I would have done everything myself. So what Alan's method is, is for you to make a note of everything that you do for a period of about seven to 14 days. And in those seven to 14 days, you grade things according to how essential it is. Essential being this task brings money into the business, or this task is one or two notches away from bringing money into the business. And then the other grades are this task does not bring money into the business. And for fun, you can say, I really hate doing this task. And it doesn't bring money into the business. Right from the jump. If you see a whole bunch of tasks going in that last column, which is I really hate this task, and it doesn't bring money into the business, that would be where you actually want to look to start outsourcing things, in my opinion. But before you go ahead and outsource or bring anybody on board, you need to make sure that your. You need to make sure that your SOPs are all on cue. When I say SOPs, that's just standard operating procedures. And back at the start, whenever you ask me what's the number one mistake people make, I said they treat their business like a hobby and not like a business. If you go to any McDonald's in the world, I'll use McDonald's because everybody knows McDonald's. You can say with nine out of 10 certainty that what you get in one country is what you're going to get in another. And the reason that is is because of sop, the fries are cooked a certain way. The fries are cooked for exactly the same leng of time. They use the same kind of fries. Some may argue that's bad environment because the type of potatoes that they use for their fries are quite difficult to produce. So they use the same kind of potatoes the world over. Burger buns are toasted the same way. The burger pops are toasted the same way. Everything is. It's almost like everything is built on, like a. On a production line. What you want to do is you want to look at how you can actually start building that production line for your own business. So rather than thinking, I'm going to get Sallie Mae over here, who's a virtual assistant, to help me do my social media, you need to think, what do I need to do on social media? And when you, when you say, what do I need to do on social media? That's how many times do I post? How do I create my social media images? How do I create my social media captions? Where do I find images if I haven't got images? Am I doing video? Where am I finding music for my video? Am I using stock footage for my video? So when you answer all those questions and you have that documented, when you then find Sallie Mae, who has to do your social media management, it's easier for you to then give that task to Sally and make Sally responsible for doing your social media as opposed to if the SOP wasn't there.

I like that. And so basically what we're saying again, in like, simplistic ways is that you're breaking down the tasks that are important to the ones that aren't important, the ones that you like doing, the ones that you really don't like doing, doing. And again, I think with this especially breaking it back into hospitality, is that if there is a task that you really don't like doing, find a ways and means on how you could outsource it. Now, all of these don't have to be virtual. I said right at the start, and I said it jokingly, but if you really hate the ironing, find somebody local who can come in and do it, because there'll always be somebody that, that can help. Now, obviously we're talking about the virtual side. We're talking about social media as a prime example. Somebody has said to me before when I've talked about outsourcing, well, I just don't see the benefits for me. But I think that something that you'll testify to, and I'll say as well, is that if you're trying to do everything, and if you're trying to do everything because you're trying to save money, then what you'll find is that you're trying to spin all the plates yourself and you're spreading yourself too thin. There's only a certain amount of hours in the day, there's only a certain amount of mental capacity that you've got to try and do all of the things. So if you can, instead of spinning those plates yourself, pass one or two off to somebody else so you can focus on Taking your business forward, as in being proactive in getting bookings and getting more heads on beds, getting more people through the door, just by making sure that you, you outsourced a few of the things that you didn't need to be doing but were essential to getting done. Then I say you'll save a lot of time. Now I'm getting hungry. I'm going to obviously go get a Big Mac after this, after that. Lovely reference. But what are you doing then to help hospitality owners or just business owners? Anybody that's tuning into this, what are you doing? What have you seen a gap in the market and what have you created and what are you doing to help sort of match tasks to potential virtual team members?

Okay. I guess the biggest opportunity point that I see right now is the labor is so cheap and with most businesses going online right now, there's no reason why you cannot hire for lack of a better terms like a number two or a number three who's just one removed from your number two and have them do the things that you don't want to do. So we're using the term outsourcing a lot. I prefer to call it delegation because when you delegate things in the business, you maintain responsibility for it, but you don't have the need to be the one actually doing the grunt work, if that makes sense. So using again, social media as an example, when you delegate social Media, if your SOPs are in place and if everything is the way it should be, your responsibility is then making sure that your social media is actually driving whatever action is you want it to drive. Whether that's people liking your page, whether that's people sending you emails saying, are you free? Have you got availability? Whether that's calling you on the phone to be like, we saw what you did on social media, we want to feature you on newspapers or whatever. As the business owner, you get to decide what those drivers are. But if you have SOPs in place, SOPs then feed back to those drivers, which you can then use as monitoring tools for what that person is doing. So to answer your question, I'm more looking to help solopreneurs or solo business owners who established but they find that they haven't got enough time in the day to do everything. Rolling in the circles that I roll in, I know that there's online trainings for almost anything out there. If there's an online training for almost anything out there, there's no point in me or you as a business owner sitting there trying to figure out social media when you can get a course and give it to someone to do it. They can do it at like three or four dollars an hour.

Yeah. Okay. So I think one of the best things to do, and I know there's going to be a ton of questions on the back of this because we've thrown in a load of different ways that people are going to be made to think about their business here. Now, if there is a place that people want to get in touch with you and just sort of go, okay, take it. So I realize that I need help. I really want to go about delegating and finding a virtual team member. Do you have a website? Is there anywhere that people can go where they can find out more? Obviously, we're going to have a talk about a link or a blog post, but where's the best place for people to go to to find out more about you and what the work that.

You'Re doing right now? That will be my website, Simply my first name and my last name. Takeadiebe.com, if you can't spell that mark is going to be nice enough. This in the show notes, I assume.

Yeah.

So that will be the best place to. That would be the best place to go. I mean, right now on the website, there's a blog post which I put out, which breaks down my entire process, actually, how I hire people. The next post that I'm working on is how to manage people virtually. Because whenever people talk about outsourcing, they tend to. They tend to sell you the sizzle in the sense that when you outsource, you free up your time. When you outsource, there's going to be people working for you for like between $2 and $4 an hour. When you outsource, you're going to have the freedom to actually live the life you want to live whenever you started your business. But what they don't talk about is how do you manage the people that you've just brought on. So with what I'm doing and the content I'm going to be putting out, it will be mostly to answer those questions. As I said, the first one is how actually find someone reliable. Because that's the process that I use from deciding who I want to hire to actually put in a job post out, to interviewing the person, to getting the person onboarded as part of my team. And then obviously the next step after that is what happens when they are part of your team. How do you give them tasks? How do you communicate with them? So that that's the next blog post that I am working on and I.

Can personally vouch for the blog and for the training. I've watched the videos, I've gone through the writing and I followed Tega step by step and I have hired four full time virtual team members because of this.

And congratulations.

Three of them are going to be watching this because they're going to be cutting this up and they're going to be creating the video content and starting to help me push this on all the social channels. So whether you are watching this on YouTube, you're watching this on Facebook, whether you're watching the full recording in the replay or you're watching little five minute chunks on LinkedIn, on Pinterest, on Twitter, you name it, I am not doing any of this. All I'm doing is recording it. It's then going to go into a Dropbox folder and then through Tega's guidance and through the blog that we're going to send you all to and from. You know the latter part of what Taker was saying there, the next steps. This is all the key part, because it's super easy to hire somebody. It's really tricky to keep hold of the good ones and to find the good ones and keep hold of them, because unless you do things properly, unless you've got the processes in place, then you might as well just be creating an extra job for yourself. And this is what, like I say, this is why I really wanted to get Tega on. I really wanted to talk about these things because I find that so many people, when it comes to getting started on all of this, they'll jump on upwork or they'll jump on fiverr and then they'll just get bombarded and they'll get overwhelmed and then they'll just go, fuck this, I'm not doing it, I'm gonna go and just do something else and then they'll never come back to it. But realistically, if it was just broken down in simple steps, easy steps to follow, which Tiger has done on his blog, and you can go to boostly.co.uk te G A and you will go to it. Sorry, I've been trying to teach Alfie how to sound out words and I've literally got baby talk in my head. So I do apolog for that. But yeah, you go to it and it'll all be in the show notes. I really recommend you go on and check it all out and keep in touch with Tega because it is key to everybody in here, key to your business. I have been able to free up so much time in what I do with Boostly and I'm able to now focus on all of the important tasks where in the past I was trying to do everything and I was never getting anywhere. Since doing all of this and since hiring, the progression has been massive. And I can only thank you, Tega, personally again for doing this. So thank you very much. Is there any final thing, anything you want to say to anybody that's thinking of maybe now getting started before we end the podcast?

The only thing that I would say is nowadays everybody's trying to show something in your face, especially as a business owner. Facebook ads and will have you telling you this is what you need. You need to have this funnel. You have to do xyz. I don't want to be one of those people and not want to be one of those people. I'd be remiss if I didn't say outsourcing may not be for you or delegation may not be for you. If you have a business that you are happy with, you're happy with the amount of work that you're doing and you're happy with the amount of money that you're bringing in, by all means go on and keep doing. Not us trying to say, oh, just because you're happy, you need to add this extra notch to your belt or you have to add these extra tasks to your plate. No, if you are in business and you have a vision to grow your business or you think like I want to see how far I can take this, then I guess the message is no man is an island. It takes a village to raise a child. And just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes the team to build a business. And if you want to build a business, you need to start building the team, virtual or otherwise.

Amazing. And on that we're going to end it. Really appreciate Tega for taking his time out to go through this. I just want to quickly thank the sponsor of this podcast which is hostfully Hostfully will give you digital guidebooks that you can wow your guests pre and post day arrival. If this is the first time that you have tuned in to a Boostly podcast then you have got seven seasons and nine more episodes that you can.

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Simply go to boostly.co.uk podcast. It's available on itunes, Spotify, even now on Google, Google Play as well. So if you go onto Google, type in Boostly podcast, you can listen to a podcast right there in Google Search, which I think is pretty cool as always. Please go and rate, review and subscribe and I will be back for another episode of the Boostly podcast very soon. Well, thank you very much for tuning in and we'll speak to you all very soon.