#256 How Doctors Can Use Virtual Assistants to Save Time and Scale Their Income

Hey everyone. Hope you've had another great week. Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast. Let me ask you a question. Are you a busy physician looking to free up time, reduce stress, and even increase your income? If so, then this episode is for you. We're going to be talking all about virtual assistants, so stay tuned. Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast where we talk about creating your ideal life through multiple streams of income. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe. Now, let's get on with the show. Okay, today we're going to be diving into a game changing strategy that so many doctors are using to get more done while working less. Doesn't that sound awesome? Sound good to you? If so, we're going to be talking about hiring a virtual assistant, otherwise known as a va. Now, whether you're managing a growing practice, running a side business or side hustle, investing in real estate, a VA can help you operate more efficiently and scale your income. Let's explore how you can use a virtual assistant or VA to transform the way you work. Now, I know that most doctors, when you're listening to this, you're probably thinking you're drowning in tasks already, many that actually do not require medical expertise in any way. These things include scheduling, emails, paperwork, business management, managing employees. Whatever it is, it can consume hours of all of our days. And the truth is, I believe that our time is better spent on high value tasks. Things that really move the needle, things that only you can do, whether that's patient care, maybe some strategic planning, or even just personal time with family. That's high value time. And so here's the key takeaway. You don't have to do everything yourself. By leveraging a va, you can delegate time consuming work and focus on activities that again, just move the needle. I know it feels like as a physician, it's hard to give these things up, but I can tell you just from personal experience, a virtual assistant. I don't believe it's a luxury. I believe it's a necessity for anyone looking to scale their time, their productivity, their income. And that means all of you listening to this. So I know you might be wondering, what exactly can a VA handle? I know many of you have thought, I don't have enough things for them to do. But here are some of the most common tasks that doctors outsource. Number one, administrative support. This is easy. Just managing your emails, scheduling, managing your calendar, even billing, data entry, transcriptions. Maybe you get them involved in marketing and social media. Many of you have brands out there where you are putting things out in social media. This help your practice, helps your business. They can handle blogs, they can handle email marketing, content creation, all of that. Maybe you're in real estate investing. There are ways for them to help with your real estate investment portfolio as well as other investments. Like they can screen tenants for you if you manage your own properties or you have your own properties. They can do research for you. They can manage your rental listings. They can talk with property management, be the liaison for you to make things easier so you can talk to them while you're busy doing what you want to do. And as I mentioned, number four, they're able to help with research and reports. Obviously these days they're so much easier to get access to data and information and check markets out and do things like that. But still, it takes up your time. Wouldn't it be nice to have somebody who could just gather all of that for you? You give them basic instructions. They can utilize some of the tools available today, whether it's Google ChatGPT to curate and gather market data. They can compile research for investments. Even if you're trying to figure out how to spend your cme, for example, this year, they can do research on different conferences and events that you could go to. And lastly, a lot of doctors are using medical virtual assistants. I know any of you might be surprised that you're able to do this, but there are specialized VAs out there to train to support healthcare professionals with tasks like patient scheduling, medical billing, verifying, insurance, charting, even scribe work. Many of these VAs are HIPAA compliant. You can find those specifically and they can be trained specifically to work in medical practices. Now, how do I use virtual assistants? I have virtual assistants for so many different subjects and for different areas of expertise. I have a personal assistant. Now, this person handles I mentioned before all of my travel, my email, my scheduling, my calls, even if I need to book appointments, like for a haircut, things for my children. They plan my travel, help book hotels, research flights. It's amazing when you start thinking about all of these things that you do, how much time it takes. I also have somebody helps with design. I have somebody helps with some of the tech stuff I'm involved in in my business. Anything that you can think about today, you can find somebody trained in that area probably who are going to do it better than you. And in a moment I'm going to talk about how this thing can really benefit in terms of scaling your time. Now, I know many of you are thinking, how do I hire one? How do I work with one and I can tell you that getting started with a VA is a lot easier than you think. Here's a simple step by step process. Number one, you just have to identify tasks to delegate. I know that might sound difficult for a lot of you. Again, it's hard to imagine what could I have a VA even do? Here's my challenge to you. I would write down everything you do in a week, from the moment you wake up till when you go to sleep, all of the little tasks you do and figure out what are the things that only you can do, figure out the things that you don't enjoy doing, figure out the things that somebody else could do. And those are things that you're going to delegate. I'm going to promise you that if you look throughout your entire week, you'd be surprised at how many things that you actually don't need to be the one doing. And it would save you so much time and headspace and mental burden. Hey, what's up everyone? Just want to ask you a quick question. Are you ready to take your medical career beyond the traditional boundaries of medicine and amplify your impact? Well, I want to tell you about the Leverage and Growth Accelerator community. Just so you know, we created this exclusive community just for physicians like you who want to expand their identities without giving up their doctor identities. It's an add on, it's not a replacement. When we hosted our first Leverage a Growth Summit, I know many of you have been part of that. We realized that so many doctors were inspired by the what and why of entrepreneurship, but needed help with the how and when. And that's why we created this community called Leverage and Growth Accelerator to help doctors learn how to start, grow or scale a thriving business and connect with like minded individuals who also want to make a positive contribution to the world. Within this community, you can experience a life of greater fulfillment. It's really a powerful antidote to burnout where you can leverage your medical degree for new opportunities and take command of your time and schedule so you can invest in your family's future while enjoying today. In the Leverage and Growth Accelerator, you're going to have access to educational materials, you can have insights from expert speakers, small group coaching, and most importantly, you're going to have community support to help you realize your untapped potential and in 2024 and beyond. And we're so confident in the transformative power of this members only community that we're offering the first 30 days for free. If you're interested, I want you to take Advantage of this. This window of opportunity is not going to last forever. So go now to lgacommunity.com again, that's lgacommunity.com if you're ready to take your medical career to the next level and make a profound impact in the world and do it together with other like minded people, it's time to join us. We can't wait to see you inside. Number two, you want to choose a hiring platform. There are sites out there, many of the ones that work well connected to e.g. virtual Latinos, Phyllis Song Consulting, Upwork, Onlinejobs, PH Fiverr, hello, Rach, Medva. These are all sites that have specialization or general VA information, things that can help you. By the way, if you just go to our website, passiveincomemd.com and search for VAs, we've got some great resources for you. Then you're going to want to test and interview candidates, people, doesn't matter who you go to, they're going to get some candidates in front of you, you're going to figure out how to interview them. And if you're not sure what to ask on this, just go to ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT what questions you should ask them. Eventually you want to narrow it down to your top candidates. And then what I would suggest doing is give a small task to each of those candidates and see who performs the best. You can gauge their skills, their efficiency, how much time it took them, and typically I pay them for that task. But it gives you an idea of how fast they do things and how well they perform. They understand your instructions and the completeness with which they do their work. And then based on that, I hire somebody. After you hire them, you want to set some clear expectations. In the beginning, they're not going to know who you are. Exactly. They're not going to be able to read your mind. Eventually you want them to be kind of your second brain. But that comes with time and with giving them responsibilities. You want to make sure these things are well defined. What are the responsibilities? How are we going to communicate? How are we going to measure how well you're performing? And you want to be able to add on some productivity tools to help you out to manage these things. I use things like Slack, I use asana, I use WhatsApp. These are things that help streamline our workspace and our workflow and help us keep track of all the tasks that we need to do. And in the beginning, yes, you start with some few small tasks. Maybe you don't feel Comfortable giving them some of the more critical ones. But over time you will build trust with this person and eventually they'll be like your right hand. Someone that's indispensable, who has does an amazing job of not only taking your tasks and making them real, but is eventually able to anticipate your needs. And how nice would that be? I promise you, with the right approach, a VA can really seamlessly integrate into what you're doing right now and become an essential part of your life and your business. Now I know a couple physicians who have really transformed their work life balance of VAs. Let me just give you a few examples. I know a doctor who runs this really thriving real estate business and still practices medicine. This VA goes out and researches, talks to brokers, does research, does information, even sets up spreadsheets, works with property management, does pro forma. It's incredible what you can find in terms of a skilled VA out there and if not, you can train them. I know another doctor who uses VAs for their practice. They act as scribes, they act as insurance verification people. Charting. These are HIPAA compliant VAs out there who just save them so much time. I mean, how many of us stay late? As an anesthesiologist, I never really had to chart like that, but I know many people suffer when dealing with charting late. They're done their day and the last thing they wanna do is battle a pile of charts. They may stay late at work, missing time with family, maybe they need to do some follow up calls. A VA can help of these things. Again, it's not just about saving time, which is one of the most important things and again your most precious resource. But then there are other opportunities that you could also get to that you're not able to at least think about or manage because you're spending your time in other things that someone else could be doing. So let me tell you, if you're feeling overwhelmed right now, I know many of us do, I do at times. It's really time to rethink how you manage your workflow. Is your workload too much for you right now? Is there a way to delegate much of that out to a VA so that you can feel like you have a little bit more control of your time. You can reduce stress, you can focus on the high value things that will really move things along in your life and career. It can also help grow your income, especially with the new opportunities that you can find. So I'd say start by outsourcing a few small tasks and then gradually scale up over time, eventually they're going to feel like they're indispensable for you, whether you're in private practice, whether you're an employed physician, whether you have side hustles, whether you have real estate income. I believe that all doctors can benefit from these vas. Oh, and I didn't even mention sometimes you can find these virtual assistants for six to fifteen dollars an hour. Isn't your time worth more than that? Even if you're using that time to spend with your family, it's not just about making more income. It's about doing the things that you love doing. What if it's going out and spending more time on your passions? What's that worth to you? Your time is your most precious resource. Can you find tools, not only tools through technology, but virtual assistants to help free that up so you can do the things you love doing with the people you love? And if that didn't convince you to hire a va, I don't know what else to say. We've got a great resource online about how to hire a VA and the things you can do to delegate properly. This free resource and download will be available in the show notes of this podcast episode. We're trying to do more of these, so look out for that. Hope you have an amazing week and let's talk again soon. Enjoy the show. Let me know by dropping a review in the podcast app you're listening to us in. And if you haven't already, make sure to hit subscribe. Join thousands of physicians who are also on this journey to creating their ideal lives through multiple streams of income. Learn more at our website, passiveincomemd. Com. Thanks again for allowing me to be a part of your journey. See you next time.