Getting Productive Using Virtual Assistants

Hello everybody, hopefully you can see me here and now I'm hoping that anyone who might be waiting, I can go ahead and invite you in to join. So see if this is possible. Okay, so I think I've invited The original folks who have RSVP'd, yes. And I see Monica. Hey Marcus, how's it going?

Hey, I'm very well, how are you?

Good, good. I know it's late by you and I'm still trying to get some other folks on. So how did you get on? Did it have like a button for you to join?

The marvels of technology. Is that too bright?

No, you're fine.

Yeah, I just— luckily, rang my diary flash and said, hey, remember you've got to do this thing. I was like, OK, shit. So yeah, that's great.

Wonderful, wonderful.

Yeah, I just got it ringing, answered, and then it said join.

OK, great. Well, it seems like everyone else is on with us now. We have— Monica, do we have you? I don't think we have audio yet for Monica, but if you're there, say hi. And I see Denise.

Hi!

Hi Denise, how's it going?

It's going. Thanks for having me.

No problem, it's great to have you here. And so I believe that just one more— you guys can say hello and mix and mingle among yourselves. I see one more person we're trying to get on.

Hello! Hey Denise, Monica, good to finally meet you in person. How strange is this, huh?

It's always good to meet you folks. This is my first time, so I'm glad I found my way in.

Yeah, I had a little play with it a while back. It's interesting because I could really make good use of this technology if only everybody else got on board. Yeah, like you, it's my first time actually taking part in a live session, which is great.

It is great.

Yeah, and so I'm gonna— I'll likely edit out this beginning part. I'm sure people are watching, but it doesn't really matter. But I'll edit out this first part, and I'll do a little bit of an intro just so people have an idea what we're talking about, and then we'll get right into the discussion. So as not to sort of like keep everything held up, let's just get started. So for the folks who are watching and those who are watching the recording of this. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith, and I just happened to have come across a conversation that was happening on the Google+ community, and it was started by Troy Christmas of TaskClone. He was asking about some of the questions that sort of were relating around virtual assistants, and so I thought, well, we haven't done a Google+ Hangout in the Google+ community for quite some time, so why not actually host one? So I threw up an event, asked folks if they wanted to join us, and here we are. So it's really great because I've actually never met any of you in real life, so This is really cool to actually meet some of you who I've been corresponding with for quite some time in the Google+ community. And so this is really about getting productive using virtual assistants. And so if we want to start off, let's start off with introductions of the folks who are actually on the panel here with me, who joined me on the live call. So Monica, do you want to start? And then we'll move over to Marcus and then Denise.

I'm getting an echo where it's repeating.

You might want to put on headphones then. That's usually a good way to stop the echoing, because that's your own microphone playing it back into you. It's feedback. So you might want to put on headphones.

Can we maybe send her a little Hangout message so she can read it? Maybe she can—

Yeah, maybe that will work. Let's see.

I'm just going to step away for a moment. Bear with me.

I think I might just need to listen right now, just because I'm getting that weird echo.

Headphones.

Share.

Okay. So I just messaged you, Monica.

Okay.

Yeah. So Denise, do you want to introduce yourself while Monica—

Yeah, I'll go take a look.

Okay.

I'll be right back. So for those who don't know me, My name is Denise Duquette. I'm the owner of Out of the Office Virtual Assistants and the community owner of the Virtual Assistants community here on Google+. It's probably not the largest community of virtual assistants, but it is the most engaging one. It is a community for supporting the virtual assistant industry, not about link dumping and article sharing and all that. I've been a virtual assistant since 2006. I live in Vermont where it's cold and snowing right now, and I will never ever look back. I mean, I absolutely love what I do.

Wonderful. Welcome, Denise. Marcus, do you want to introduce yourself?

Yes, forgive me, I had to run off and get my magic pen. I'm very digital these days. You know, there's nothing like writing with a digital pen. So Marcus Boswell, hello world. Very, very odd to be here. I have no idea how many people are watching, but for those that are, welcome. I am currently working with an organization called ADP, who as I understand it, most of you American folks will know. My role is very much managing our social presence, so I operate in a small sort of sales enablement team. I say small, but obviously being a massive corporation. As it goes, I actually manage the social presence of about 15 countries, so all of the sales associates within that. So my interests are a bit sort of dual, really. On the one hand, I'm, you know, a self-confessed Apple fanboy, I suppose. Don't shoot me. So in that regard, part of the role that I have is very much sort sort of trying to stay ahead of what's happening in the land of social. Whilst that's happening, as you know, it's— although it's something that's been with us for a long time now, it's also still relatively a baby. And the guys that I'm dealing with, I've got many, many issues, I guess. Some of those issues are to do with the countries that we operate in, because obviously I'm English-speaking, and that's fine for you guys, but obviously there are other countries that are not English-speaking. So I have that challenge, and one of the biggest problems I've got, I guess, is whilst I try and find my feet— and you've heard me or seen me online sort of playing with ideas about productivity. That's kind of how Monica and I came across each other, and again with yourself. You know, I'm really interested in, as I was saying, workflows and processes. I'm not a big man on New Year's resolutions. I'm not all about changing everything. I just want to get my processes and my workflows right. Part of that, it seems to me, that's been niggling away in the back of my mind is always this thing after— I think I was going to say I read The 4-Hour Workweek. I kind of binged on it a little bit. What I found was that the idea of a virtual assistant, the idea of offsetting some of the burden of the workload that you have, it kind of appeals to me. This opportunity to discuss this type of idea with people who are, one, involved in it or have some experience in it. And of course, just the cool idea of sort of conversing with people from all over the world is quite cool. So thanks so much for setting it up. That's kind of where I'm coming from. It's a really great opportunity for me to just kind of hear what you guys do and whether you think I'm nuts for really trying to go down that route or not.

Well, wonderful. Welcome, Marcus. Monica's seemingly having some technology issues, so we're going to—

I think I figured it out.

Okay, wonderful. So Monica, if you want to introduce yourself for the group and let us know who you are and what you do.

I'm Monica Christofferson and my business is Efficient Organization and I am a professional organizer and also a business productivity consultant. So I help business professionals who need help around larger groups that need business productivity training.

Wonderful, wonderful. Welcome, Monica. And Sophie, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself? Welcome. Sophie, do you hear us? I'm not sure if your microphone is working.

Did get some pings a moment ago.

Well, we do have Sophie there, so I'm going to wave hi to you and we'll just get started. So let's just start off with sort of the— I'm hearing some feedback in the system there. Does anybody else hear the feedback?

I hear it too. I guess if everybody mutes their microphone one at a time.

Well, I have control over the microphone, so I'm just muting everyone's one by one. Yeah, so that's Sophie. Sophie, if you can check in to see what's going on with your sound there, because it's— yeah, so I've got you muted. If you want to message me after, like after you've sort of figured out the microphone thing, I can put you back at full volume again. Anyway, so let's get started with this discussion. I created these sort of 6 discussion questions to help us, you know, sort of kickstart things and move us in a direction, in an orderly direction so to speak, and so I wanted us to sort of talk about first, you know, what a virtual assistant is because I think a lot of us think about a virtual assistant, we hear the term a lot and we may not actually know what a virtual assistant is in some way, shape or form and so How do you all define virtual assistant? And I'm not going to try to be too moderating here. Everyone just sort of pipe up and speak and we'll talk over each other and make it all work. So how do you define a virtual assistant?

I define a virtual assistant as someone who's in a location different from myself, possibly in another state.

Great. Marcus?

All of the above. And somebody who is versed in probably operating remotely, probably having a number of different clients, and somebody who will be able to offset the burden of certain— I don't want to say manual tasks, but tasks that the client, or whomever that might be, may not be in a position to do within their day job. Perhaps. So somebody who can basically offset the burden of workload for their client.

How about you, Denise?

Um, so actually, I mean, anyone who's involved in the virtual assistant industry, they know Tonya Sutherland. She's one of the, one of the big names in virtual assistants, and her group, the Virtual Assistant Networking Association, they have an approved definition that they use that virtually every VA uses, and it's a highly skilled independent professional who works remotely to provide administrative, technical, and/or creative business support services. So the bottom line is we are someone who works remotely, we work from home, we run our own business, and we do the tasks that need to get done, whether they're manual or whether they're creative or whether they are, you know, content writing, web services, video editing. We do all of those tasks. Anything that is a non-revenue generating task for someone, we do that.

Great, thank you Denise. And so, you know, my perspective on virtual assistants has always been either an individual, you know, not located with me in my own office space, and of course those people who are, like you said Denise, highly skilled in some particular in a particular fashion, and they may be working for a conglomerate, you know, sort of like a company that has a bunch of virtual assistants, or they may be one individual who is self-employed or another type of individual who might be just employed by me but somewhere else. So, you know, I tend to think about them from the perspective of being work-related, but I know a lot of people actually think about how they can help them in their personal life. You know, what are your thoughts on how much a virtual assistant helps you if you use a virtual assistant or you're thinking about a virtual assistant, how much are they helping you with work and/or personal stuff? I mean, is there a line where you're like, I'm only sending this kind of work to personal assistants and only this kind of work to a professional virtual assistant? How do you sort of view those?

I'll jump in. So, okay, I'm going to be a real stickler about this. Do not hire a virtual assistant. You don't, because you don't employ them. And Marcus, I know that it might be a little different in the UK. But here in the US, when you employ someone, there is a certain tax implication, benefits implication. So Don't ever use the H word. Bad, bad, bad. Contract with somebody because we are independent contractors, just like the bookkeeper down the street who's doing your books or the lawyer that you're retaining for legal services up the road. You are partnering with someone else. Okay, so now that we got all that messiness aside, when you are when you are working with someone, especially if that client is a solopreneur, there is such a blurred line between personal and business that unless it's like illegal, way against your moral value system, that line is going to get blurred. So if you are willing to, you know, if you have a client that you resonate with and you work well with, It's all one and the same. It's all in one basket. One of my clients is an IT security guy. They're otherwise known as hackers, but his niche is protecting healthcare information. I know more about him than his wife does, and she's known him longer than I have, but that's because in order to secure a passport that was stolen or to get him a visa into Sri Lanka to do a training seminar. I needed to find out a lot of stuff about him, and so that, that's a very blurred line.

So, so, you know, aside from that, so what And how do you, you know, again my ultimate question is sort of how do you see a virtual assistant benefiting you? You know, if you're thinking about hiring one, how do you see a personal assistant really doing for you what you need to do? I mean, you know, so I'll give an example for myself. You know, I do a lot of activities in the productivity community and, you know, and it's like I want those to run smoothly and I don't really need to do a lot of the things that are like posting social posts and getting things updated and sending emails out for reminders. And, you know, none of that really needs to be me. What needs to be me is me generating the initial content about what's going to happen and showing everybody what's going on and, you know, those kinds of things. And then, of course, facilitating and making those meetings happen when I'm live. But the rest of it is not necessary. So, you know, I feel like in a lot of ways I can make that— I can make a virtual assistant much more useful to me by being and driving those tasks to them. How else do you see yourself using virtual assistants?

This is a big one for me, and this is— can you hear me okay? Yeah, I can hear you. Yeah, I mean, so for me, one of the real drivers about being on this call for me as well was to try and define what kind of things are okay from what kind of things are not okay. So, you know, I was kind of quite interested in Denise's comments there, and I know that Sophie as well. She and I had a brief conversation offline about this too. And I guess because of the nature of what I do in working with social media particularly, and you mentioned that point, I am coming to realize that, you know, the most effective work that you can do tends to be that which is collaborative, as opposed to that which you do on your own. Yes, you can have some vision. I mean, let's take, for example, right now, you know, I'm working to some deadlines. It's Christmas, pretty much. You know, I want to down tools, but at the same time, I feel the responsibility of making sure that I've done, you know, all of the things that I want to do before getting back to I'm back to work in January. So as I'm in this stage that I'm at now, what I really want to do, I guess, is outline all of the things that I think are low-hanging fruit, for want of a better word, and then identify which of those things need me and which of those things could be offset to somebody else. So for example, you mentioned social media posts. It's a big big part of what I do. For example, at the moment we're in the phase of developing, you know, social repositories and these kind of things. It would be awesome to be able to have somebody who could help me implement that strategy in some ways, or at least that's probably not quite what I mean. I have the strategy, but what I kind of don't want to do in reality is find myself doing a massive amount of kind of grunt work, which essentially is going to be actually updating huge reams of spreadsheets based on the information that will be driving those social media posts throughout that social media calendar for a set given period of time. So without giving off company strategy and that sort of thing, really the point I'm making is being able to identify what I can do from a strategic headspace point of view, what I need to be thinking about for the future versus literally sitting down on a, you know, 10:25 on an evening here and thinking, right, I need to get this document out because I've got these kind of things waiting for me. You know what I mean? It's really just kind of offset that burden, and that's really what I'm trying to get away from.

And Monica, are you thinking about having one? What are your thoughts there on that? I'm not sure whether we— I think we might have lost her. Well, I'm going to move us on to the next question, which I think is sort of the next step here. Are you there, Monica? Okay, well, if you come back, Monica, you just let me know. Yeah, it just sounds like your internet connection, it might be a little bit hiccups on us.

But the—

so my next sort of question for the group is what infrastructure do you need before you even get and/or search for a VA? And we'll get to your question, Marcus, I think it's really important, but I think before we get to like the what do we outsource to our virtual assistant, I really think that infrastructure is really important as thinking about what do we need before we actually get to that point. Of, you know, getting it out there. So any thoughts there in terms of what do you need to get sort of set up before you even get a virtual assistant on board?

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Define what you're asking a little tighter for me.

So for me, I have to think about a couple of things regarding virtual assistants like what What can I share with them? What am I not willing to share with them? What am I going to share with them? What tools am I using, you know, and how am I going to utilize that? As Denise talked about, you know, hiring is technically contracting, and so what is the legal relationship going to be? How am I going to confirm that legal relationship with that person? Is it going to be by written agreement? Do they have their own process? You know, is it with an organization or is it with a an individual who is self-employed, and, and so how is that relationship going to work? How's payment going to happen? You know, all of those things come to mind as soon as I think about a virtual assistant because I need to make sure I have that infrastructure in place before I even, even think about what am I handing over to this person. And then even when I start to think about the categories of things I could hand over to that person, I need to start thinking about, okay, well, what's my budget? You know, what are the things that I need to, need to figure out What are the things that like the categories of areas of my world that I need to be able to sort of offload onto them? You know, is this someone for me especially? I know that Denise talked about, you know, sort of the blend of things. I am a compartmentalizer and so I need to compartmentalize and so I know that like these are the personal things that I'm going to offload to a personal assistant and that's going to be a different assistant than my work-based assistants. So I'm going to make sure that I decide what areas of my business are there are going to be things that are going to be, you know, like I'm going to offload to a marketing assistant that work that someone who's, you know, skilled in marketing is going to be able to handle. Those things that are legal-based, I'm going to offload onto a legal assistant who can handle those kinds of things, you know, like a paralegal who can handle contract, you know, drafting and those kinds of things. And so, you know, like that's what I'm thinking about. So what are your thoughts there, Marcus? You seem to— You're thinking there, I see you thinking.

Yeah, I am thinking, and I guess I haven't entirely got a handle on those questions. They're all big questions, they really are, the big ones. I mean, before you even get to how much is it going to cost me to do this, how am I going to finance this, etc., I mean, there's a fine line. I have to make a clear distinction here between the Marcus of the future, the freelance Marcus who does what he does in his world, and the guy who works for an organization, represents that organization today. So in that true struggle between entrepreneurialism and sort of working for the man, as it were, right now the key ingredients for me are making sure that I don't overstep the mark, as you can appreciate. So there are only going to be certain things that I can physically do, which is why I was talking about sort of low-hanging fruit and stuff like that. But I think that the questions you're asking asking are definitely pertinent questions. And I think if I was in a slightly different headspace— now let's just hypothetically speaking, if I was in a slightly different headspace, we're talking my name's above the door, Marcus Boswell Inc. here, then for sure I would want to be making sure that I am legally not giving away things to any old somebody remotely somewhere. That could cause me problems in the future. I think that's obviously, you know, goes without saying. Now, I think to Denise's point, I think you said you were in Vermont, was it? I'm not sure if I picked up on that.

Yeah, she's in Vermont, yeah.

I mean, I can't even place that on a map right now, but you're in the US somewhere, right? So, is that the US or is that Canada? Am I going to be—

New England. It's in New England.

Northeast US.

There you go. You know what? Stop digging, Marcus. Quit while you're ahead. The point I'm making is that clearly, legally speaking, things will be different for you than they are for me, as you were saying earlier with regards to whether you're contracting versus whether you're not. It's interesting, I think I established that Sophie was in the UK and is currently a virtual assistant as well, so maybe you could chime in on this. I don't know from a legal standpoint what do your clients expect and do to raise questions?

Yeah, hopefully everyone can hear me now.

Yes, hey, how's it going?

I'm okay. Yeah, from my point of view, obviously I work as a free agent, so here in the UK it's probably similar freelancer basis, so you kind of charge by the hour there's no commitment. Well, at least you hope the customer will give you a little bit of notice, or you give them some notice if you want to stop working together, but it's quite straightforward, really.

You know, and that kind of sets off a few red flags, you know, to your point, Ray, as well, you know, when you talk about there being no commitment there. So, I mean, it makes sense, obviously. It's kind of a freelance, you know, free-for-all in a way. But there's a lot of trust that you have to develop. Forgive me, I'm very nasal. I've got a bit of a cold. There's a lot of trust that you have to give up to hand off any kind of workload at all. And I think we're all Evernote users, probably. So that's a conversation for another day. That's really frustrating for me right now. But the point I'm making is something is bubbling up there about doing your life's work. I can't remember, I think it might have even been you, Ray, that posted something quite recently about this. So we work hard, right? And we all do things that we believe in, otherwise we wouldn't be doing them. And again, Marcus, with his corporate hat on, I can't just go ahead and hand over any old kind of random work material to somebody whom I don't know I have a strong relationship with or who could run off with that material or could just not operate in the right way. So I'm interested in both, both you ladies' ideas, Denise and Sophie, on this in terms of how your customers define— I hope you don't mind me asking these questions, Ray, but—

No, not at all.

I was wondering how your customers define that relationship. You know, how are you approached on this kind of thing?

Denise, do you have any thoughts in terms of infrastructure? You know, when a client comes to you, what are those things that help them, you know, one, sort of lower that threshold of fear that I think Marcus has, and what do you see as the common sort of infrastructure and ways in which people want to work with you? Do they put everything in an Evernote? Do they just communicate with you via email? How do you see them generally managing, because that's my big issue. I need a virtual assistant to work in my system. I don't need another system. You know, it just complicates matters and I need them to be a GTDer. You know, like that's a big thing for me. You know, if I have a staff member that I hire, you know, if I hire someone in my company and they're not a GTDer, the first thing I know I have to do is spend 6 months training them. You know, so it's going to be much easier for me to go ahead and hire someone who's already a GTDer. GTD-er. Anyway, that's just like those little things. What are your thoughts there?

You don't need to train them, and you certainly don't need to invest 6 months of it. You just give them a book and you say, in your spare time, you will read this. I need you to understand this to work with me.

I'm a GTD evangelist, so it actually provides me with great pleasure to actually train people.

But that is not an efficient use of your time, and that's what this all boils down to. It's all about saving you time so you can make more money. Ultimately, if you guys make money, we're going to make money, so we're happy. That's the way the world works. I am annoyingly persnickety with anybody that I contract with. I don't work with just anybody. I actually turn away about 60% of people who come knocking on my door even before we have a real serious conversation. I am driven by work with people who do something that resonates with me. They have to— I call them betters. They do something that makes the world a better place, whether they're an environmentalist, a coach, a wellness doctor. They do something that, that, that's my calling, that I can, I can relate to. If you were a stockbroker on Wall Street, high-energy, high-energy, wanted me on call 24/7, I am not the girl for you. I like sleeping too much. That's the way I roll. Whenever I work with anybody, you have to adapt to their system. If the client doesn't have a system or if they're just so overwhelmed that they need to learn to use Basecamp or Asana or Trello or If email is the best way to work with them, if phone conversations are the best way to work with them. You have to adapt to your customer needs first and foremost. I'm a huge proponent in training videos. I have 2 subcontractors that work with me on a daily basis and one of them is a very boring, mind-numbing job. It's loading content into HootSuite. I made a video and it showed them exactly how to do it. Not because it's difficult, but because there's some, you know, because I have hashtags in the same cell that are, that have a hard break in there. If you copy the cell, it puts quotation marks around it. I don't want quotation marks, so I show them the little nuances. So that onboarding process is really important, and the most important thing is not delegation dump. Don't just say, here you go. Give them— give your assistant a few tasks to start off with and then plan on spending time with feedback. I didn't like the way you did this because— and you know, most of us have pretty thick skin. If we bugger something up, tell us so that we can learn from it. You know, we're all human, we all make mistakes. Even though we don't like to admit to it, especially me. But that's the thing. You have to build. It's like dating. You build. You don't just meet a guy and run to the altar, unless you're my aunt. You date. You get to know each other before you actually are fully committed to each other. And that's how I work with my clients. I have partnered. I have actively invested my heart in their business. It takes time to build that trust. There's tons of tools you can use out there, but for every electronic tool that's out there, someone can bypass that. You have to kind of go with that gut feeling with how you relate to that person. Can you actually work with them? Those are all really important questions to ask.

Yeah, I guess this really does take— I mean, I can't help but come back to the element of trust, for one, certainly, because you've got to trust that the people you're working with are doing the work. Otherwise, it's taking you twice as long. Presumably, it's costing you twice as much. I don't know if you guys all are sort of Andrew Warner evangelists and know what I'm talking about when I say Mixergy. I'm a big podcast enthusiast, so I first came up or heard of the idea of virtual assistants in that environment. And I think it was the idea of, you know, bless some folks in the Philippines who were deemed to have certainly no language issues, for one, being sort of from an English-speaking background. And the idea of kind of, you know, going to bed knowing that the things that you were dealing with are kind of there waiting for you when you wake up. I mean, the appeal of this, getting this right, is tremendously enticing. And that's what this is about, because let's face it, from my perspective, what are we all talking about here? As far as I'm concerned, the core of what this will do for me is it will give me the time to do more strategic work, better work, the work that I want to be doing, hence get paid more, you know, because I'm going to be producing more. So, you know, I've got two young 2 young boys and a mission, and I struggled with the dating analogy since I've been with my wife for what feels like forever. But, you know, we were together for like 13 years before we tied that knot, so I don't mess around with the dating vibe. But by the same token, that should tell you something. I mean, I really— it needs to be right before I commit. And so that brings me to another question, really, based on I think you mentioned— I'm sorry, I stepped out at the time when you were talking about sort of being a member of a group, I think I walked in on, some sort of a forum. I'd be interested to know if any of you have any kind of tips on forums, because for me, this is the beginning of research in this area. Actually, this is quite a big step, actually, towards the beginning of research and actually discussing it. So what do you advise on that? And again, I appreciate, Denise, you're over in the States, And so you're in the UK, which is even more strange because I don't know about you, but it feels like the UK is kind of dormant with everything always. So tell me about that. I mean, maybe it's just me, but I feel like I've got more US friends online than I do in the UK. So what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, and I would just point out that while you made some interesting points here, Marcus, one is that time zone is really important as it relates to where your VA is. You know, I have one on the West Coast and that means that every day my day is sort of shifted and I'm working, I work more hours than anyone else I think in my company and so you know, and that's just by virtue of being at the top, you know I have to make sure that I'm covering things and that also means though that my VA starts later than me but she also ends later than me which means that after the day's over, I still know I have coverage for getting things out the door. So, you know, if I have to work until 6 or 7 o'clock in the evening, I'm not worried that I don't have someone to help me if I need a little bit of research done, or if I need someone to field a phone call or something like that. So, you know, knowing that you might have one or multiples to cover time zones when you need them to, that could— that's something to take into account, especially if you're watching this on a subsequent, you know, watch of the recording. You know, it's really important to think about that. And then, then to answer Marcus's question, do you, Denise or Sophie, have thoughts on, on, on that?

I think, I think that, well, it sounds a big question really. Yeah, you know, you're gonna trust someone with all the work that you have. That relationship is not going to come easy. I guess from my point of view as a VA It is a slow process. You know, I have to learn about the client, but I've got to figure out also how to gently coax the work out of them. You know, perhaps things that they think I'm not capable of, or perhaps things that they don't want to relinquish, but they should. So yeah, I think it is a— it's like a layering thing. You know, it starts off quite simple, and then it grows. And it's got to come down to letting go just as much as trusting. I think.

Absolutely, absolutely. And while we're at it, Marcus, if you have not read the book Virtual Freedom by Chris Ducker, I mean, put it on your book list and read it almost immediately. While I'm not a big fan of this idea of some of the sort of structuring, structural, you know, sort of again like what I call infrastructure, those structural pieces that he talks about, in general he gives some really great framework for being able to understand how to effectively use a virtual assistant And I think it's a really good book as a primer on the concept. So get that on your book reading list and go from there.

Consider it done.

So I'm going to interject here with my own social media, my own social agenda. I have issue with Chris in that, you know, he has a Filipino virtual assistant practice where he has hundreds of VAs. Those VAs are generally not afforded the lifestyle that a— someone from the UK, from the US, from Australia, that we're used to. They are not compensated well, and by well I mean, you know, if you can go to McDonald's and flip burgers for the same amount of money, that's not working well. I encourage anybody that if they're going to contract with a virtual assistant, don't make it about money. In fact, that's what I tell virtual assistants who are new to the industry.

Don't—

if the first words out of a potential client's mouth is how much you charge, walk away because they're not going to value you for your experience, for what you can do and the partnership capabilities that you're offering them. I am not a number. I am a business owner. I'm a savvy business owner, and that comes with a price tag. You know, don't always— you know, you know when I'm going to be working. You know I'm going to be here. You know I'm going to be doing stuff. You're going to get reports. You're going to get probably more communication than you ever could possibly want. But you know I'm going to be here. If you contract with someone who is in another country such as the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Russia, wherever, you don't know that that VA that you have been working with, that you have entrusted with your sensitive information, is going to be there tomorrow. Let alone the fact that they're probably working in the middle of the night or at 3 in the morning, they're starting their work shift to accommodate the client's needs. So I encourage people to be socially responsible when they contract a VA and actually think about those other factors. Just like buying fair trade coffee, we know that it's better for all parties if we do that. And yeah, it costs a little bit more money.

Yeah, I'll echo your sentiment, Denise. I mean, I had I've been doing research for a particular book project and in the process of that I've been trying many different VAs across many different time zones and finding the circumstances. I mean the whole reason for me actually using an India-based VA was actually to learn about that specific VA and so I was spending most of my time interviewing this person and sort of like learning about their lifestyle. You know, we should really want to be able to help our local communities, and one of those things that we can do is by keeping it local. So if you're trying to do well by the greatest good, it makes a lot of sense to, you know, if you're in the United States, find a US-based virtual assistant. If you're in the UK or in Europe, finding one that's local there and making sure that you're really paying attention to how those cross-border issues actually can affect so many more lives than less. And so I'm gonna move us along to sort of the VA match, finding the right VA for you, and then sort of once you have found the VA, what do you do to onboard them? How do you get them sort of up to speed? I think Denise gave the best suggestion, which is these, you know, screencasting everything that needs to be done, you know, just recording everything that needs to be done. It's what I do, and I find it to be the most useful because I can just, you know, record it once and then it's there for them to review and you can actually, I time code everything so it's like, you know, at 4 minutes 35 seconds is the second step and then 5, you know, 6 minutes whatever is the third step so that they know exactly where they can jump to when they missed a spot. But what are all your thoughts on, you know, sort of finding the right VA and then getting them on board?

I'll jump in. I mean, for me, I think that the person has to have a really good idea of what they want to focus on in their business. Some of my clients, I've joined them when they haven't had a clue yet and they've slowly grown with me. Others already have a very definite idea. Perhaps they've already hired a marketing company, they know what they should be focusing on, and they've been told off, say, for focusing on things they shouldn't have. So I think that's the important thing, is knowing exactly what, you know, is low-value work to them. Or maybe it's really honestly work that they hate. You know, what do you hate doing that somebody else should be taking off your plate? I wouldn't mind doing it, you know. I do all sorts of work. I have one client who absolutely hates spreadsheets with a passion. He has to have them and he has to work data in them, and he literally practically shivers with fear if he gets sent one, and he immediately forwards it to me, you know, just so he doesn't have to open Excel. And Excel in itself is a big monster to him. So are there things that really get onto the bottom of your list as soon as you get them, that you procrastinate about, and that could just be on someone else's list.

Yeah, that's great.

I think that's absolutely part of the allure for me. And like I said, it's a fine line. The difference here, ironically, is you're all the captains of your own ship. Secretly up here, I guess I'm there. But I still work in a corporate environment, and I respect that. I love you guys if you're watching. But my reality is that I nonetheless still feel like— I guess I'm ambitious, and the fact of the matter is that there are only so many hours in the day. You know, and I have a young family and a wife who's very patient with me. At the end of the day, you know, like I said, I'm here in my office right now. Because I just feel like there are things that I want to do, and there's no question that I don't really need to be doing the things I'm doing right now, if I'm honest with myself. If I'm honest with myself, it's possible for me to kind of go, you know what, that's what needs to happen, and that's within your powers to do. Great. It's not that I have to physically do that myself. So it's not like I'm in a learning process where it's necessary for me to do those things. I think that you guys can all, I imagine, identify with just from an entrepreneurial point of view, what the hell, right? I mean, like I said, I'm a podcast evangelist, so I spent yesterday washing up listening to these guys going on about, like you were saying, Sophie, getting rid of the things that they absolutely hate. They were doing their accounts for God knows how long before deciding, what the hell am I doing this for? I hate this stuff. Let's pay somebody X amount of dollars to do do this for me. That just makes perfect sense to me. As time develops, I'm getting to that place. I don't know if you caught this, but I recently put out a little message that was basically saying, moving into the new year, wanting to look at my productivity, these are the things that I'm looking at, that sort of thing. That's really kind of where I'm at. It's really me saying to myself, okay, look, be honest with yourself. These are the things that you use and love, right? These are the tools that you're using and you've really made a part of your workflow. These are the processes that you're involved in. How can you sharpen that up? What's getting in the way of those things? You know, what are the low-hanging fruit? What can you actually do about it? Now, once I've established all of those things, and even if I gave myself the timescale of, say, March to do that, which I think is pretty realistic given my current workflow, Once I've established those things, the next thing for me really is being able to confidently say, "Okay, now I'm dipping into the kind of VA bucket. I've got these questions," because Ray's cleverly kind of framed a number of the scary ones that perhaps Marcus wasn't thinking about particularly. But actually, having said that, yes, sensibly, there's going to be costs, there's going to be legal implications, there's going to be time differences in terms of where people live. Obviously you're going to need to be socially aware, etc. Thank you, Denise, for that. For sure. But in the end, hopefully you're going to end up with something that you have defined as necessary, because you're going to be paying for it, for one, that's accurate and doable so that somebody like yourselves have got a clear understanding of what it is that you need to do for me as a client. Hopefully I'll be able to establish, having said all of that, the trust to be able to say, "Okay, well, here, I can pull the trigger. Go ahead. This is what I need you to do." It's like pancakes, I guess. You're going to screw up a little bit along the way until you get it right. It's being able to sort of feel confident about where to go and get that advice. As I sit today, I really don't have— Chris Ducker aside, I know I've listened to a lot of his work. I've heard him trying to sell his wares for quite some time, and that's kind of another reason for my interest there. Being able to sort of confidently pull the trigger and say, "Okay, you know what? This is a place where you can go and get good advice on who to use." That's really difficult, I think, for me. Right now, the world's a very, very big place. Look at us. Having a conversation across continents here. How do I establish the right place to go and speak to somebody or at least kind of maybe test out something? It's very, very difficult.

Yeah, I think it's really— well, I mean, first and foremost, I actually went to the International Virtual Assistants Association out the gate to actually look for a virtual assistant the first time around, and then I ended up meeting my current virtual assistant through business networking locally. So it just turns out that they come from different waters in terms of the flow of things. Clearly you have two people here, Sophie and Denise, who probably have connections themselves being VAs, but also other people if they're not a good fit for you, and they can tell you whether they aren't. At the outset though, and this might be helpful for some people, is I keep a very close track of billable hours. You know, having worked in a legal environment, you know, I was always clear on keeping billable hours. And so I just started tagging things as a D for those things that I could delegate to someone else. Like literally, that didn't need to be me. And after 2 or 3 weeks, I started to notice patterns of things that I could delegate. And that was immensely helpful for me. Not only did it help me understand what I could potentially offload, but it also helped me understand what things I brought to the table in terms of my value. And within the organization and beyond. And so I started to feel better about like, "Oh yeah, I shouldn't do this stuff because if I could just offload this stuff I could do more of the things that were left that are really revenue-producing and value-producing for me." And that really opened up my eyes in terms of using virtual assistants and all the other fun stuff. And then I found ways in which in my personal life I could use them, and then I wanted a personal virtual assistant. So I think what you, you know, as you go through this process through March, Marcus, I think it would be good for you to actually think about those things in your personal life first because it's an area in which you have control. I think you feel like you don't have control because you're not yet outside of the corporate environment. So if you can find a space like your home life where you can actually, you have ultimate control, you can do that. You know, think about like, what are those things I can outsource? Can I outsource, you know, dry cleaning? Can I outsource, you know, those little things that give you control? It's a small amount of money. It gives you a chance to practice delegating effectively. It doesn't make you give up, you know, as Denise talked about, you know, just jumping a bunch of stuff on someone. It's like just a little bit, and then when you're done, you're like, okay, now I can move on to the more entrepreneurial hat and see what that feels like and, and take it from there. Do you have thoughts on that, Denise?

Well, in addition to that, you know, it's because you're experiencing that level of delegation for the first time, you can also figure out what infrastructure you need whether you want to track it in something like Basecamp or if you are finding that the method of communication is email or you're anti-email and it has to be a project management tool or it has to be text or instant message. Personally, I know that I am well on my path of eliminating email and 100% anti-text. My clients have to work with me on that That's one of my foibles. But you have to, in testing out with someone working with you on a personal level, you'll know how to set up that infrastructure for your professional assistant if you go down that road.

I'm more curious about the way in which you assign your tasks? So like for me, I typically assign them by putting them into, you know, either Asana or I use Remember the Milk quite a lot, you know, as my infrastructure for task and project list management, but Asana is really where collaborative work happens. So most often than not it happens in Asana. And so I'm curious, how do most people, you know, assign things to you, both Sophie and Denise, and What are those most common things that they actually assign to you? Like, what are, what are the most common tasks that you actually help people with?

For me, I'll jump in. For me, it's email. The people I work with have almost quite a big fear of apps, so they much prefer a quick text or an email or a phone call. And in fact, it saves them time just to quickly tell me that way what they need. And generally, the tasks, a lot of them, certainly at the moment, the work I'm doing is financial. It'll be raising invoices, for example, or submitting a VAT return. But on the other side of things, it might be some more personal things, going from, say, arranging a valet car wash to picking up parents from Heathrow, remembering somebody's birthday and arranging something like that, or perhaps—

Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's you having to go and pick up somebody's parents from Heathrow?

Not me, no, no, no, arranging a company.

That's going above and beyond the call of duty right there.

That would be very much so, but no, it's contacting you know, the luxury car companies and coordinating the route, you know, from their address, the pickup dates on the return. Perhaps it's coordinating the parking at Heathrow for however long with the parking valet company. I don't know, things, things that take the stress off, you know, arranging for some flowers to be in the car on pickup with some chocolates or arranging an oven clean. That's one of the things I've got to do tomorrow because Christmas is coming up. Someone wants a really good oven clean before the guests start arriving, so that's one of the things I'll be doing in the morning.

And how about the reality of like, you know, there are all of these other individualized services, you know, like there is here in the United States at least, there's Peapod and Lyft and Uber and then what's the other one, Red Butler. There are these concierge services. Do you see yourself getting more requests to help with those sort of, you know, like what I really want is my personal assistant to be able to utilize the other services that are like apps out there better for me so that I don't have to actually like go in and mess with all that stuff, you know. It's much more like, you know, I want the home cleaned so if you can handle my Homejoy app or whatever the particular tool is to like help keep my, my place clean. And I'm, I'm a bit of an organizational freak, so I probably wouldn't need that, but you know what I mean, like the other things, you know, like getting, getting the dry cleaning picked up. And you know, there's a dry cleaning app, there's a, there's a grocery app, there's a, you know, there's all of these other apps. Do you see more people looking for that? Do you see that as a trend that might be happening? How do you see that all coming together?

On my end, it's being proactive to your customer's needs. This is a true story. I have this crazy client who is a hacker. He legitimately gets paid by the Chase Manhattans, the Bank of Americas, whatever, to try to break into their computer systems.

Systems.

At the time, he was living in Las Vegas, and one of the local Bank of America branches had contacted him to do what they call a penetration test, which is basically they flood the system trying to get into the system. And you have to be on site to do that. I don't know what he was thinking, and we'll start it with that, but he had to go into BOFA at like 3 o'clock, or at midnight, so it would have been 3:00 in the morning. And he could not, in all honesty, could not understand why he couldn't get takeout delivery to the Bank of America at midnight.

Seriously?

So the next—

and I knew he was doing pen testing for a week, and so the next night when I knew that he was going to BOFA at midnight, I arranged to have Chinese delivery delivered to his apartment at 11:45 so that he could at least take dinner with him. It's more of being proactive to knowing what your customer's needs are and soliciting them. Come October 1st, you reach out to your client and say, "Hey, do I need to order holiday cards? Because right now they're on sale. Let's get those ordered if we're doing knowing how a business runs, all the things that you do internally for your own business, that as you build a relationship with your client, how their business runs, and being proactive. Hey, you're going to Sri Lanka, do I need to get an updated visa? How's your luggage doing? Do we need to order new luggage? Do I need to coordinate a taxi service to pick you up at the airport? You know, you— instead of waiting to be directed by your client, you ask your client what you can do and be proactive in getting those things done for them.

Those are all really great points, and so we're sort of nearing the top or the end of our time together, so I wanted to make sure we covered anything that anyone wanted to talk about. So, you know, I ended it with, like, common pitfalls or missed— oft misunderstood or missed opportunities in utilizing VAs. Does anyone have any final thoughts, anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to talk about, burning thoughts, and sort of, you know, anything that you might think would be, you know, like pay attention to this when you're doing, when you're hiring a VA, other than all the other great information that both you, Denise, and Sophie shared. What are some things that we might be missing in the in the process?

I think for me, one of the ones would be what, you know, what kind of person you're seeking has to, I guess, be quite similar to you. So, you know, if you're the kind of person that needs a response really quick, or you start getting anxious, or you start worrying, then you're going to need to find someone that can mirror that. But if you're quite a laid-back person that doesn't mind when the work comes in and you've made an arrangement that it can be in a few days Then you need to find someone that fits that as well, because sometimes expectations can be different unless that's ironed out from the beginning. Everyone's got a different way of working. I've got one client who's extremely relaxed and doesn't mind when things go through, and I've got a couple of others that things need to be practically on the hour, or they think that I've, you know, gone to the beach or something, you know. And it's not mistrust, it's just that you know, if I can't do it, then they'll find someone in the, in the real building that they work in that will help them out, and it's absolutely fine. But I, I know the different personality types, and I've grown with them, and I know what they expect from me, I guess, is what I'm saying.

That's great advice. That's definitely great advice.

Thank you. And that's awesome that you can do that, that you can handle both types of personalities. 'Cause I'm just bored, I'm so, you know what, if you need an answer like in 2 seconds, I'm not the girl for you, you know. So I applaud the efforts that you can actually do that, 'cause I can't.

I can't always, I can't always, but if I know that they're like that, then I try, I try.

My big takeaway, my big red flag is lack of communication, you know. Unless somebody says, you know, has said, you know, there's been a family emergency or there's a something-something going on. If it's a general overall lack of communication, not replying to emails timely, and by timely I'm a generous 24-hour person, you know, if it has been agreed upon that you will be on Skype between the hours of 9 and 4 and you're they're not on all day. If there's an obvious communication issue, that's a huge red flag and that just breaks trust like that. You just don't need that.

Yeah, for me I would say for my virtual assistant, I always want there to be good communication about all of the various things that are happening between us and so I really need the debrief. So if you're doing anything with a virtual assistant and you're like, me, which is probably a little bit like Sophie said, more on the anxious side. And not that I— I'm not actually someone who needs a lot of communication. Like, I don't need a response right now. I'm much more like, I need a response in 24 hours. However, like once a week, I need someone very similar to the GTD Weekly Review for us to just sort of like touch base and say, what happened? How can we make it better? And let's move forward in terms of what needs to happen and that's a great time for a virtual assistant to facilitate, you know, you did this, this and that last week and that was really unproductive with your time, how about I take those things over if you can show me how to or what to do, I can now do that and that has been so helpful for me to be able to say, you know what, great, here you go and when I've had VAs who just sort of are silent and I forget that I even have them then I feel like I'm losing value especially if I'm paying sort of a monthly subscription for those kinds of services, I need someone someone who's much more assertive and saying, "Hey, this is," as Denise said, you know, like, "anticipating my needs." That's going to get me— get you to be invested and built into my daily life, and I think that's really, really helpful, and I hope that helps somebody out there.

And that also increases our invoice revenue, and we like that.

Absolutely. There you go.

No joke.

Yeah. So Marcus, any final thoughts that you have, and then I think we'll close out.

Yes, and with that in mind, I want to be respectful of your time because I could take this a lot further. But firstly, thank you so much, all of you, for your input, because from my perspective, I guess where I am is not having one, hired a VA, or two, had experience of working with them. So it's been a really interesting discussion from my perspective to speak to people who are certainly doing it as as well as using a VA, so that's been awesome. I'm really grateful for that. I've taken a lot of information from you guys actually, and I think the main points for me would obviously be to Denise's point about making sure that communication is high. So the video rundown aspect from yourself, Ray, and obviously looking at sort of somebody who's similar, I think those are really key things that are— excuse me— me, definitely things that concern me about how I am not quite 100% GTD. Certainly within my own realm, I guess I like to try and be, but I'm not 100% there. So I think that it's going to be important for me to kind of take a step back and work out what it is that I need and how it is that I can get that done. I take your point about sort of looking at what are the bits that I could delegate. Delegate, for example. I mean, right now somebody else delegates to me ultimately. But I am very much in a strategic scenario where I need to be able to have the headspace to do that. And I think I'm at that space where it does make sense for me to look at alternative ways of organizing my time. I have offset that into the area of productivity solutions like, you know, your Evernotes and your Sunrise calendars, and I hear a lot of people talking about Asana. And I know there's a huge love out there for Todoist, I think it is. But I'm just not— I just don't want to commit to yet another application that I get into. Right now I'm sort of playing with Things as a productivity management tool and stuff like that. So I think there's a lot of things that ultimately I can do for myself. I'm really— I wouldn't use the word gutted, but it's a shame that Troy Christmas, who sort of originally post this question, I wasn't able to make this call because I know that obviously he's actually been great in responding to me just in the last few days on this kind of, in this area. So I guess as a final thought for myself, I think it's awesome that you took the extra step of setting up this engagement just off of the back of that initial question because it struck me as something that was poignant and relevant. I still don't 100% feel like I have the solution to it. Oh great, I can go in that direction and speak to a bunch of VAs. So if any of you guys have any latent thoughts on that, or you want to fire any messages across, then that's great. I picked up obviously the International VA Association for myself, and I get that. That's fine. And I will go and investigate Mr.— is it Drucker?

Yeah, I think it was. Ducker, I think. D-U-C-K-E-R, I think.

Yeah. Thinking of The Economist, aren't I, Peter?

Well, I would say—

Go ahead.

I was just going to say, no, I will look at that because I think that there still needs to be a certain amount of investigation that needs to go on in my mind. But I don't want to end up in that place where you can be, which is that kind of paralysis by analysis or whatever, however the expression goes. Which you ladies basically know all about because you're essentially in the business of helping people who struggle with that to get away from it. And that makes sense for me to really take a step back and think about what it is that I really want to get done and how I want to get that done. So this is a good start for me, and I'm really grateful for your help.

Wonderful. I'm happy to be able to put this together. And, you know, the first thing I would say to the folks who are watching— hi, and thank you for watching— and I hope this was useful to everybody. And I want to thank of course Denise, Sophie, and Markus for joining me here in this sort of wonderful conversation today. And as well, I think this is sort of the beginning of the conversation, it's not the end of the conversation. I think we should do more of these when topics are of importance that can bring us together. And so, you know, I'll post the video once it goes live on YouTube or however that works out. I think I have to trim out a couple pieces and whatnot. And then And then it'll go up, and we can continue this conversation so that we can put resources. And I'm sure that— I think that people who are VAs in the community, as well as those who are outside of the community who can provide help, I think we should really reach out to them and see how they can do that. Because there's no reason for you, Marcus, to be floundering, and no reason for any of us to, with so much knowledge out there, so much wisdom within the crowd. We should be able to help everyone get the things that they need to get done done. And so with that, I'm going to close this out. Thank you very much for joining us, and have a great evening or later evening or whatnot, depending upon where you were calling in from. And take care. It was a pleasure.

Have a great Christmas, you guys.

Thank you very much, everybody. Happy holidays. Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.