How to find and leverage a virtual assistant to maximize your time with Valerie Trapunsky

If you can't hear me, let me know where you're calling in from. I'm here in Brooklyn right now. Valerie, how about yourself?

I'm in Panama City now.

Okay. A lot more exotic than Brooklyn. Cool, cool.

Yes. I live in Long Island City, but I am for two weeks in Panama, so I was also nervous about the connection, but seems to be. It seems to be good.

Yeah, yeah. Looks like you're strong. Cool, cool.

Yeah.

All right, we got K joining in. Rick. Okay. Good to see you. We also have Rick as well. Okay. Thanks for always showing up. I appreciate that. We also have Gabriella from Seattle. That's my daughter's name. We call her Brie. Her name is Gabriella, but she goes by Brie. We got Catherine here in Brooklyn too. Catherine, good to see you. Hopefully the weather stays this way. I know it's been kind of temperamental. I got Charlotte from Arizona. Charlotte, thanks for showing up. I think you've been here before too, so, so appreciate that. But who else do we have here? Where are you calling in from? It's out of curiosity. Here.

Here, the traffic.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's funny, like whenever I do a live event and obviously, you know, Brooklyn's loud, I used to feel self conscious about it, but now I'm like, hey, if you've never been to Brooklyn, here's your chance to experience it.

By Kira Yes.

And that way it's like you're gonna.

Hear some noise, you know, it's authentic. It's. It's authentic.

Yeah. And we have a let here from Trinidad and Tobago. So good to see you. I'm not sure if you watch Atlanta, the TV show, but there was an episode about this woman from. From Trinidad last week that was pretty cool. But back to the noise in the background. It's hard for me sometimes to create content. So what I'll normally do at the beginning, it's recorded content. I'll say, hey, look, you're going to hear some noise. But if I waited for the perfect time, this would never happen. So bear with me. Here's a picture of my street, looks like. And you know, just carry on with it. Otherwise it's like you're always self conscious about stuff, so just gotta admit it.

I love it. I used to sometimes, you know, have a conversation. We have a team in South Africa and. And sometimes I'm like, oh my gosh, there's birds. They are so loud. They're like, oh, we don't even hear them anymore. And I'm like, shame. I want them. But it's, you know, whatever you're, like, not used to in that second or like, in that moment.

Yeah, I used to always apologize for my kids making noise in the background during the pandemic early days when they were all home. And eventually enough people told me, like, dude, we don't care. Don't worry about it. That I was like, okay, I'll stop. Because it was just, like, not helping the conversation. Cool. We got Linda here. Been in Europe and ran into people from Brooklyn before. Yeah, there's always someone from Brooklyn. We got Linda. Sorry, you got someone else from Chicago? I used to live in Hoffman Estates, if you know where that area is in Chicago. Near Schaumburg, but. Cool. All right, so let's go ahead and get started. And today we're talking about how you can both, both find and leverage a virtual assistant. My name is Terry Rice, and I'm a business development consultant. And what that normally involves is helping other entrepreneurs grow their brand and revenue through. Through the right actions, tools, and mindset. And what I want to talk about before kicking this off is the last couple weeks I've had, which have been challenging. My entire family caught Covid, My son, my 3 year old first caught it at daycare, then spread it to the rest of my kids, as well as myself and my wife. So it's been a tough couple weeks, but as of today, I'll show you my proof here. I am actually negative, so I'm feeling good. I finally had negative after 11 days. But what's been interesting is my business actually grew over the last month, even though I've been sick and have not been able to be fully present because of my executive assistant who's on the line. Her name's Megan, and I really do appreciate her. And Megan is a part of Chatterboss, which is the company that Valerie founded. I'll let her introduce her in a moment. You can tell I'm still kind of sick, but it's been amazing just having this resource, this partner to help me over the last month, where literally my business grew. And another thing about Chatterbox is they heard that I was sick, so they sent me a care package, which is great. But the email, like, it started off saying, you know, with our condolences, and I'm like, what the hell? I'm like, something wrong with Megan. Like, that was my first thought. Like, did I lose Megan? Not, like, worried about being sick or my family or anything. Like, oh, no, did I lose Megan? So maybe change the wording a little bit. But. But. But I Appreciate that in the fact that Megan is still, still with us, so.

Oh, Jesus.

And it's funny because, you know, I actually talked to her yesterday. I have a call every week with Megan in regards to our plan for the week. And I was under prepared because I've been sick and I felt like I was in trouble. I felt like I was in trouble. And I'm a Growned man, right? 43 years old, four kids on my own business, so forth. But I felt like I was in trouble because I had this accountability partner in Megan to make sure that I'm getting my content done for the week. And she was cool with it. But it's like, it's good to have that feeling because as a solopreneur or even when you have a small team where you're like the person managing everyone, you need someone to bounce ideas off of and to hold you accountable. And the last thing I'll say is, you know, even today I, I mentioned a problem I was having with a tool. I'm like, hey, is this, is this running kind of slow for you? And she replied, yes. And here's an alternative. So I was like, you know what? That's, that's what I need is to not be the smartest person on my team because the team would fail and have someone proact, actively come up with these solutions as opposed to me saying, hey, you should do this, you should do that. So that's me, that's my background, that's my health record. But Valerie, I want to pause and let you introduce yourself, but before I do, I want to acknowledge that we have Brittany calling in from, from Michigan. We also have Luke from Farmington Hills, Michigan. Not sure how close you two are. John already gave me a really great tip in regards to a company called WAVES that will help you reduce the background noise. Thanks, John. And we have Diane calling in from Houston, Texas. Don't hold that against me. Why would I hold it against you? I've been Houston's cool. I dig it. Megan's chiming in to remind us that she is alive. And Bianca's calling in from Windsor, Ontario. I used to live in Buffalo, so I was in Ontario quite often, so great place. But I'm going to stop talking and let Valerie introduce herself.

Terry, thank you so much for this opportunity. And hello everyone. Very, very excited to be here and have the opportunity to talk about my favorite top. And it's even more fun to be able to have this conversation with you. Terry, who you've jumped in to use our service in this kind of a way. And so we can really have that dialogue from your experience. So that's really, really exciting. My background is that I am a former personnel executive assistant and a chief of staff. I've had an opportunity to work as an executive assistant for high net worth individuals and list celebrities and kind of my funny anecdote with entering, you know, this phase of my journey where I started Chatterboss is that I actually wasn't the best assistant. My story is that I was really good with certain things, but there were certain things that I was really not good at, I really struggled with. And as a personnel and an executive assistant, it was like, oh my gosh, if only ever people found out that I'm not good at these certain things. Right. That's it. My whole career is done. And so there was a lot of this, like, stress for me being in that role. And then what was incredible was that, you know, but I did have this really niche experience and I was able to transition it into building chatterboss, which is a remote executive assistant agency. We pair busy entrepreneurs to a dedicated and on demand executive assistant. And so it's been fascinating. Our focus is on the people. Our focus is on creating these frictionless connections, but also to do it in a way where, you know, executive assistants are like Jills or Jacks or Jills of all trades. But the truth is we all have our strengths and we all have our weaknesses. So it's been a fascinating model on my own experience to create this kind of a. To create this kind of an environment where people can be themselves, where you can have an executive assistant that says that I'm really, really good at these things and this thing I'm not as good at. So I'm going to give you somebody else. And it's just a win, win for everybody. So it's been a really fun journey so far.

Yeah. I want to dive deeper into your model momentarily, but just I want to gauge the audience whether or not they have a virtual assistant. So do you have a virtual assistant? So let's say yes, know or interested, meaning you're interested in learning more about having one. And I want to go back to what Valerie just said, where you can have the best virtual assistant possible, someone who really is committed to you, someone who's really hard working, but there's certain skills they're just not going to have. And that is what it is. So the strength, in my opinion, of the chatterboss model is that you have one main executive assistant. Right. In this case, for me, it's Megan. And then that that person can tap into the whole network of chatterbox and saying, look, I'm not good at video editing, but Kelly is. I'm not good at writing, let's say, you know, social media posts. But Mike is so and so forth. But you still have this one person who's doing it for you. That way I'm not talking to Kelly, Megan, and Mike. Right. Because that would get confusing really quick. So on my end, I think we all know we need help. But then you're like, well, shoot, now that's like five people I have to manage. And, you know, I'm already struggling to manage myself. And I think that's why we hesitate, unfortunately. And I know I waited too long. I'll give you an example of how I know I waited too long. One time I was trying to format a document, so the document's all going to be portrait. And I wanted one page to go landscape and the rest to go portrait. I spent three hours trying to figure that out. Three hours. And then finally I went on fiverr and found someone to do it in ten minutes for five bucks. So I was like, you know what? Maybe that wasn't the smartest use of my time. So, Valerie, I know you're a pro at this. I mean, when is the right time for an entrepreneur or anyone, a small business owner, to start looking for help? And maybe it's when they have to rotate a document. I don't know. But let me know.

Yeah, I love that story. And, you know, kind of also makes me think, right, the value of done. And, you know, we can spend a lot of time talking about ROI as it is related to working with assistance. And so, you know, for sure, you know, in terms of the right time, Terry, I'm not sure if we're able to pull up that slide, but it's. I've thought a lot about this because, you know, over the last six years, we get entrepreneurs in different parts of the journey. And some of, you know, some of the objections that we get about people starting with an assistant. There are objections at kind of every. At every stage. You know, when entrepreneurs are getting started with their business, they're just in those beginning stages. You know, we say that the objection. Right. This is not what I believe, but the objection is that it is too soon. So where we're looking here, this kind of beginning stages of, you know, you have few years of operation, you're just getting started. And then in terms of resources, okay, we say that in the beginning, you have more time. I Know that this is objective in terms of stress. The stress is lower. What we mean by that is that there are more pull activities than there are push activities, meaning you get to control your calendar. And as an entrepreneur, I define that the stress is lower when you get to choose what happens on your calendar. It's not like you wake up and There is from 8 to 10, 7, every single minute is taken up. I consider that as high stress. So in the beginning, you control it, you have more time, little bit lower in terms of the stress. And then we're also kind of, you know, we're cash strapped in the beginning. You know, we all have to start somewhere. So we're not starting usually with this kind of huge customer base. So we are watching the dollars that we spend. So entrepreneurs usually feel like this may be too soon for me to get started started. And I want to paint the picture of what happens next. Right. Entrepreneurs believe that this perfect, magical space is here where all of these points are at that interaction in intersection. That's the just right. That's exactly like, you know, Goldilocks. That's just the right time. That's when I'm going to do it. The issue becomes is that we as entrepreneurs have now trained ourselves and we've gotten ourselves accustomed to doing the administrative function. So it's very easy when we do get a little bit more money, a little bit more customers, we're getting a little bit more busy. That's when entrepreneurs say, now I'm going to hand it off. Very, very easy to miss this point. I think it's a very short amount of time. Usually before we get into this, what then entrepreneurs call the too late category. This is the time where I don't have the time to train somebody. I don't have the time to choose the right partner. Everything is feeling kind of chaotic and hectic. And so for that reason, you know, I'm just going to let some balls drop and going to, you know, kind of keep running, you know, in this way, or do a triage hire, which is super, super painful. You bring on the wrong person or the wrong company, you know, just because you want to get some help. And then you actually spend more time cleaning all of that up. So, you know, is this a little bit biased because I have a remote executive assistant agency. Yes, Right. But I believe that the right time, from my experience of watching small business owners over the last six years, the right time is really now. Because if you get into the. If you get into good habits about how you use, you know, what happens in the administrative function of your business. I really believe that you have a lot more returns in your business because then you're focusing on your, on your zone of genius.

Yeah, I love that. And on my end, I would say as soon as possible because one thing I help entrepreneurs do is like help them grow their brand. And one thing I say is do events like this, right? It's a great way to get people provide value, so on, so forth. But on the back end, Megan, again, my executive assistant will take this content and post it to YouTube and on my website and she'll select clips to go on social media. All that stuff grows my brand, but it doesn't need me to do it. So even if it's month one and I'm like, hey, how can I get leads without begging people to respond to my DMs, this is a good idea right now. I don't have to say because it's mine, but it's also time consuming. So if you can pay someone 500 bucks or so to do it, I would. Right. So I see so much bad advice, unfortunately about entrepreneurship and my, my goal is to just debunk these things. And what I hear often is, oh, you shouldn't hire someone until you're making at least $10,000 a month. And I'm like, well, the reason why you're not making $10,000 a month is because you're trying to format PDFs, that's why. It's not because there's something wrong with you or your model. It's the fact that you're using your time and your resources and your energy in the wrong spot. So I just want to just address that and say, look, I get it, you know, it seems hard to put out money when you're not bringing any in. But this isn't an investment. This is a revenue generating resource. You know, it's not like a, you know, you're buying like a new laptop that you don't need. It's someone who's going to help you correct you, guide you, and share some of their best practices that they're learning from their other clients as well. So that's why I think it's so important to realize that. And I see Jimmy's chiming in here, she's saying, hey, I love this topic. I'm always so thankful for my VAs. Tap me with my business work. Follow Jamae, by the way, she's a LinkedIn creator manager. So if you want to learn more about best practice on creating content on LinkedIn that's her. Check her out. And then we have Brittany Barnhart chiming in saying how she, she loves this visual. So, yeah, I think it's, it is a good way to think about it. But here's, here's the thing, right? We know that it's okay, cool, get a va. But then how do you find one? And people ask me that question all the time, like, how do you find this? How do you say that? How do you find that? So and so forth. And my default is to say, ask your network. And if you're like, well, I don't have a network, I'm like, so. So, Valerie, I mean on your end, Craig Gardner, thanks for joining. I used to work at Craig in Buffalo, like years ago. Craig, good to see you, man. Valerie, I'll walk through what I would say, how to find a va. You're gonna have a bias opinion because you have a VA service. Let's just put that out there. But what I've done in the past is I've asked my network, right? I'll put up an Instagram story, hey, does anyone have a VA who can help me? And I've gotten good responses. But then when I say I need them to do this, that, and that, they can check, you know, three out of the seven boxes. And unfortunately, sometimes they don't necessarily aren't as proactive as they could be because, you know, they're new to it or there's a lot of VAs right now and I can respect that. Or executive assistants, I can respect that, that have full time jobs. They have a full time job, like, hey, you know what, I'm working remotely. I'm saving like 10 hours a week. Yes, I encourage you to find that side hustle. But on my end, one thing that I really was adamant about was finding someone who didn't have a full time job. Because if you're making $80,000 a year at Microsoft and I'm giving you a thousand bucks a month to help Terry, Microsoft's gonna trump whatever I need to get done, right? So, yes, I recommend finding someone you trust to your network if you can. But even if you find that perfect person, it's way too much to expect them to know how to do everything. And you are going to be upset, you are going to be disappointed. But you were set up by design to somewhat not be successful because of the way that you found your va. So Valerie, I'm going to hand this over to you. And again, knowing you have this service, what can people do to find a.

Va, which they look for in a va. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think that there is a few things, you know, like my opinion on the administrative function is that a lot of the times this person becomes your right hand. And we know, look, everyone in your business, there's no one that's indispensable, right? So. And that's how your business should be set up, so that you have the ability for other people to step in. I think that the administrative function as a one person kind of unit is a danger because of how much, how much weight they can carry in your organization and what can happen to you as the entrepreneur if your assistant is away or is sick or something happens and then how much of that then falls back onto your plate. So just like, like a very quick like side thing, like when I was working as a personal assistant and the chief of staff for these high net worth individuals and for these celebrities, that's where I discovered that all of them had more than one assistant. There was not one of them that led this function be done by one individual without any kind of a backup. And so that was where we came up with this model, was that you need a backup person. So for every assistant with us, they also have a backup function. So when. So with that said, I think that.

Real quick, I have a backup for Megan, which is great, and her name's Meg. So I'm like, maybe that's not great, but anyways, it's good to have that, that team that you're talking about because. And I don't mean to interrupt, but like, I can't expect an individual to always be at my beck and call. Right? You have a life to live. You are the client, so and so forth. So the value of this model is pretend. I asked Megan for something that is kind of, you know, last minute, which I try not to do. Meg is there to chime in and I still don't know who did it because I get their games confused. So all I know is like the stuff gets done and I appreciate it, but I don't feel like a jerk for asking someone to do something last minute because I didn't plan properly.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm loving that you're having that experience. And so, you know, with that said. Right. Can you replicate this on your own? Yes, absolutely. The way that I like to actually like suggest for people, should they hire on their own or should they go through an agency. The, the benefit of when you're going through an agency is, is, you know, with us there is this continuity. You have these, these multiple individuals, but you can also, you can also lean on the expertise of like hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs. And so you get the processes when you're hiring on your own. I would say if you are someone who does have existing processes, if you have big blocks of time that you, with that person, if you have a little bit of leeway to kind of, you know, go back and forth with them a little bit more because you're the one now solely responsible. With us, we also have an assistant success. Right. So there is this function of. We're always asking Megan, for example, hey, how are you feeling? How is it going with Terri? How is he doing? How are you doing? Do you like it? Do you want to continue going? Right. So all of that. We always do. And then. So what did she say?

How's that going?

It is a.

All right. Well.

No, but this is, you know, in this case, it's like no news is good news. Right. Like, we would also like from our function is we always encourage the communication to happen directly. But you know, sometimes it's hard for people to process like how they're, they're working together. And so we'll step in in those cases. So, you know, you would have heard from, from your client's success if, if, if there were any improvements. So I know that things are going well. But you know, with that said, right. Like it's more of, of you to watch for those signs. Sometimes people don't tell you that, like, things are becoming a little bit too stressful, something isn't working. So we try to do that from our side. If you're hiring on your own, yes, you can do it. Some people are just born teachers. They are, you know, and this is what they love and they love to nurture talent and they love, they love the process of hiring for looking and building that. And so, you know, in those cases, you know, I absolutely, you know, encourage individuals. Of course, you know, we want to work with all of the most wonderful entrepreneurs. But yes, in those cases, you know, sometimes people have that preference and I really respect that.

Awesome. And thanks for the information on the feedback loop because on my end, my goal is not to annoy Megan. Like, honestly, because I'm like, I can't have her want to walk or I'm in trouble. So I feel like I'm on eggshell sometimes because I'm intense. I mean, I wake up at 4:30 in the morning and you know, I do CrossFit and stuff like that. So I don't expect someone else to Adopt that stuff. Same, you know, intense drive towards their business. It is great that, you know, she's there, but I never want to be that guy who's like, being too, like, aggressive or annoying. So I'm like putting extra emojis and stuff in our WhatsApp chats to. To make sure that we're good there. But let brings up a really good point. She's saying, I'm struggling to find a good va. I'm always in the unfortunate position to have to take up some of what I'm asking for help with. Yeah, same here. Sometimes because I didn't plan well and I'm like, I need this by tomorrow. And it's like, well, how long have you known? Three weeks. Well, that's on you, right? Other times it's because I don't want to take the time to explain it. And that's on me. So what do I do? I use a tool called loom L o o m to record myself doing things because I'm not good at explaining processes sometimes because I just think A to Z. Like, I skip all the things in between. So you might see me doing a video and I'm talking through it, but when you're watching, you're like, he just missed that part. You know, blah, blah. So that's. The documentation part is really important. But I think really in those moments, it's important for all of us to realize if you're doing stuff that feels like a waste of your time, your talent, your energy, whatever it is, and I'm not saying it's not important, it's just something you shouldn't be doing, that's when you have to say, look, it's going to take me twice as long to document it right now, maybe three times, but then I never do it again. So there's this compound effect to the time that you're getting back where you just keep on getting more and more and more back. And what I want to do is share my screen again real quick to think about some of the tasks that you could and should consider outsourcing. So great stat here. The average entrepreneur spends 30 to 40% of their week bogged down with admin tasks. Now, true story on my end, I don't even spend the time sometimes. I just don't do it. So one thing you see on here is invoicing. I have someone who owes me money from September of last year, and like Terry, if you don't send us an invoice, we're not going to pay you. You're Messing up our books. So it's not the fact that I'm spending time doing these things, I just don't do it. Which is, which is bad, right? But one of my favorite parts here is just the content creation for me that's so important. Social media, video editing, so on and so forth. Because as a knowledge based entrepreneur, which a lot of us are, the value you provide people is you talking, you know, sharing information, stories, so and so forth. But that's part of it. The other part's distribution. And if your best thoughts, ideas, worldviews and perspectives stay trapped inside your head or only live on one platform because you're not repurposing it, that's a problem, right? So on my end, I think that's one of the biggest benefits of having a virtual assistant is having someone say, hey, look, Terry, look, give me this stuff, I'll clean it up, I'll design it. So and so forth. And you're on your merry way. So going a bit further to other stuff. And this was new vacation planning, right? My wife and I and my family were going to Watkins Glen, which is in central New York for a car race. And we need to get a hotel. Guess what? We haven't booked it yet. So what's going to happen is we'll decide a day before, oh, we need a hotel, the rates will be too high and we ain't going, right? So little things like this that can just slip through the cracks because you're so busy, you know, working on your business or in your business, you have this executive assistant to help you with as well. So just take a look at this list and think about it. Like little things like finding a camp for my kids, right? I mean, if I take too long on that stuff, they're going to a camp that's 20 miles away and twice as expensive, all because I didn't take a half hour to my day. Well, you don't have it sometimes. But if you have someone who's here to partner with this stuff, then you can. So a lot of great opportunities here. But I'm just wondering again, in the chat window, can you put in just examples of tasks that you do that are important but you would rather not do for whatever reason? And I already started by saying, you know, content creation, scheduling, invoicing, like there's a lot of money that I'm owed right now, that I'm not kidding because of that. But what are some other examples? Everyone, if you want to chime in, and Valerie, if you have some examples too, that Might be surprising. I think it would be cool as well, that an executive assistant can help you with.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, like, on the personal side, it's. People have an emotional kind of reaction to handing off personal tasks sometimes, I find, especially because the personal things, they're related sometimes to our families, to our spouses, to our kids. And then sometimes it feels like sometimes there's this belief that if I'm not the one doing it, that I don't love these people in my life as much. And so there's a little bit of that barrier. But, you know, a lot of, you know, what we talk through with entrepreneurs who are struggling, delegating in that. In that space is that, well, if it's getting taken care of, for example, and your spouse asked you to do something and it got done right, what is that feeling versus they asked you, you couldn't find the time for it. You didn't do it yourself. And so now, you know what position you're in. And oftentimes, you know, we'll start supporting, you know, one entrepreneur, and then, you know, their spouse will come along and will start supporting the spouse as well. So that's been. So that's been really fun. But, you know, we started talking a little bit. We mentioned, like, in terms of roi, of working with an assistant. And for some of us business owners, we can, you know, we're very clear on, you know, certain metrics when it comes to parts of our business. But when it comes to the assistant, it's like, it's a little bit vague and fuzzy. And so there is, you know, you can have these financial ROIs, but then you can have ROI that's just related to, like, I just need this done. And, like, one example that I can give is that we had a client that had a candle. It arrived broken, and so the client was having a hard time finding the time to send it back. But they're worried about the environment. They don't want to throw away the candle. So having an assistant do the task would cost the same amount of money as the candle itself. So they got stuck in this way, and then we had a conversation, right? Whereas as long as it's done right, even if. Even if it costs more than the price of the candle itself, what it freed that entrepreneur up for was that this candle was no longer on their table. They weren't looking at it every single day, feeling guilty that they're not doing anything about it kind of in this, like, stuck space. So I find a lot of those things, and sometimes we get stopped because we're like, I don't know what is the value? And, and I always encourage people just to dig a little bit deeper. Like what, what are some of like the other like psychological benefits that you can have from delegating.

One thing that came to mind, I do want to answer some of the questions came in as you were saying. That though is like, I just bought some new contacts. Like I wear daily contacts so you know, they're pricey. But there was a rebate of $250 if you send in the receipt and some form within X amount of dates. As you can imagine, I didn't do it right. So I'm much better off paying someone else to just handle that stuff. Like here, I scanned it. Now please go through with it. And I would have made more money than I paid because I would have got the actual rebate. So little things like that, it's the opportunity cost, but it's actually a financial cost too that you're, you know, you're, you're, you're incurring so few questions here for your notes. Jimmy actually hates invoicing and she also hates outreach. She likes creating content, but then pushing out to platforms is a challenge. And then again with the contents, sorry, the comments can also be a bit of a challenge too. Yeah, I hear you. I mean invoicing, I don't know why, it's just like you should be happy, right? But it's like it's busy work and you like the creative work sometimes. Tanya, good call. Scheduling service for my car. Yeah, little things like that. Now you get a good time and your car doesn't break down. Good question coming in from Catherine. Here is your. First of all, she's saying va and I keep on saying the terms interchangeably. Can you correct me on the difference between an executive assistant and a virtual assistant?

It's a good, it's a good question, truthfully, when it's actually a very interesting question because a few years ago we had to do a little bit of research internally. Virtual assistant and executive assistant on the face of it are not different. We call our assistance executive assistants because we saw that clients treat. It's about the treatment of the individual virtual assistants. Just the name of it was seen as a lower level worker, somebody who's just kind of moving like small little things. An executive assistant. And so not like it's a little bit sad, right? But there's like a lesson there. It just, you know, we're working remotely how much value we put on other people. And sometimes we have to make an assumption about someone's value, someone's worth in our company, how much they're able to contribute. So it's a, it's a little bit like a bittersweet question. I like that you asked him.

Let's go deeper because I think it speaks to the culture that you've created and just, I'll put my digital marketing hat on for a moment. The term virtual assistant is going to get more searches than the term executive assistant.

Yes.

So if you were just trying to grow your business and didn't care about the culture, how you were getting treated, you would say virtual assistant all day. Right. But you, by design, it sounds like after some thought said, no, let's call them executive assistants. And I, and I agree, first of all, in regards to how people get treated and the outcomes you get are different. I feel like Megan's more than an executive assistant. It's almost like an operations manager, slash, I don't know, psychic, whatever you want to call it. But it's, it's more than that. But the question that came in from Katherine and Valerie, I'm going to let you answer this too, is, is vegan making up names? Is Megan an admin or a pro? Can you explain those levels and then also answer Catherine's question?

Yeah, absolutely. You're putting me in a little bit on the spot because I have to check in our back end, but I can give you the differentiation. So our partner level assistance, this is our, this is the level of support that is do it for you. So this is when you are coming to us and you say, I do not know how to do something, I do not have a process for it. And so then you want to delegate things with the, you know, you just get it taken care of and I'm going to sit in the background, you ask me the questions. That's our partner level support. Our pro support is a do it with you solution. So that is when you are saying, I have these processes created and I need you to follow through with them. You can still expect thought leadership at the pro level, but the assistant in this case is leaning on you as the entrepreneur in terms of next steps and how you want certain things executed. Lastly, our admin level support, this is our low intensity process fulfillment. When processes become so well defined, they are like a well oiled machine. It's the same thing over and over. Then those kind of projects and they don't have a lot of variation, they can then be handed over to our admin level team members. You usually will not work with the admins a lot in the beginning because it takes time for us, even if there is an existing process for us to be able to edit it, audit it, make sure that it's actually running. But then it would be your assistant that's kind of handing it over to the admin, and then they just kind of run it in the background.

Perfect. And yeah. So Megan, I'm going to say, is going to be at the highest level just because I just gave her a mess and I'm like, hey, make it pretty. She does. But one thing that I like about her, and I don't mean to say talk to us about her, just my. My experience is she's not afraid to say, like, hey, dude, that's a bad idea. Because we were talking about. And this actually builds on the next question, how to organize my content. Like my content calendar and my posting schedule. And how do I actually give them the information? Because, like, what happens is I'll give Megan text and I'll say, hey, can you make this into an Instagram post by putting some logos, some icons, and some, like, arrows that point at something, put a picture of me on there, so and so forth, and then she makes it look nice. Right. But I was describing a process initially of how we could do it. And she's like, or we could just do this. I'm like, that sounds great. So she's listening for outcomes, not process, and then designing the process that would make more sense for everyone. And I think, again, that's the challenge you might have with another assistant who just wants to help. Right. They'll say, if that's the way you want to do it, cool. It might be wrong, but whatever. Right? Whereas Megan's like, hey, your desired outcome to do this efficiently, here's what's worked for me or my other clients, so on and so forth. So I think that's, that's. That really, that's really important. And a question coming in from Vanessa. Vanessa, thanks for joining. You're here quite often. I appreciate that. What's a good way to delegate your social media to someone who isn't you? Seems like you have to first create content for six months, bank it, and then have your VA repurpose it, repost it. Any tips on how to make that first six months of content go faster and where to. I can't read that fast. And where to store that content for later reposting and repurposing? Right. So the question is, how do you have someone post on your behalf? It seems like you need to have a lot of content ready already and then where do you store the content afterwards? So first of all, you actually don't need weeks or months worth of content ready. But as a best practice, a week or so would be good because that way they're not rushing to get it in one platform or another. The one that I use is called Publer, where Meg or Megan will take my content from a Google spreadsheet and then put that into Publer so it can go out on LinkedIn or Instagram. But my goal is to be a week ahead and then Megan will politely remind me if I'm not. But the thing is, the content that you might see me put on LinkedIn, this is now to your point, months ago. What they're doing is proactively saying, hey, this might look good on Instagram or this might look good as a LinkedIn carousel post, because right now it's a text based post. So yes, it's beneficial to have that content. But Vanessa, I would argue that you already have a history of content ready because I follow you, that you could use for repurposing purposes. Now when it goes back to your tone of voice, you know, how do I speak? How can someone do that? And that's tough, right? Because for me, I'm a writer, right? I wrote a book, I write for Entrepreneur magazine, and I like to think I'm very unique, right? So I would not outsource that outright to someone. But the thing is, if someone can just get you 80% there and then you fix the other 20%, you've saved a lot of time, or in my case, actually made sure it happened. So right now you're watching this event, right? It's going to be on my website with show notes saying, hey, what happened at what time? So and so forth. I'm not writing that, Megan is. And then I'll go in and I'll double check to see if I want to change anything. Majority of time I don't because it's so well done. So I think there's a degree of trust you have to have. I think there's a degree of done is better than perfect, right? Because some of my content from years ago and even recently, there's typos and stuff, words that don't make sense. People kind of see through that and focus on who I am as an individual, hopefully. But if you're like, if you're micromanaging, I don't think you can bring the best out of anyone because they're always worried about Making a mistake. And with, with my team, with Meg and Megan, I'm like, make mistakes. I don't care. Because that tells me that you're pushing the edge of your capabilities and you're trying new things. And if we fail, fine, we learn something. Because failure is data, so long as you learn from it. But the lesson you learn is, this guy's a jerk. When I mess up, you're not going to try hard again next time. You're not going to try anything different. So that's why I strongly believe that it's on the person who's hiring the executive side assistant to set the tone of the relationship. And it should be one of respect, it should be one of innovation, it should be one of productivity. But it shouldn't be, you work for me, it's you. You're helping me and I appreciate it. Gonna stop preaching now. So anyways, hopefully that answers your question and Jimmy's chiming in here saying, you are unique. Thank you. I appreciate that. And yeah, and I think here's the thing, like, let's just, let's get tactical. If you're not busy doing some stuff like reformatting a PDF or posting your stuff on Squarespace, you know, you have more time for writing, creativity or just white space. You know, that time when you have time to think strategically. And there's this really cool study out of HBR where 97% of CEOs said that white space, that time where they're just kind of letting their mind wander is where their best strategic decisions come from.

From.

But only 4% of them actually schedule in time for white space. So what you're getting here is that white space, that time for it. And you don't have to be doing something. You can just be present and let the doing come from there. Right? So now we're getting more into mindset, high performance, so and so forth. But you can't do that if you're trying to figure out how to format a PDF, that's what you're getting back. Right? So hopefully that answers your question in a long winded way. But let me also pivot to how you can hand off instructions, because I said earlier I ain't good at that. Right. I'm just like, here's what I'm looking for. Make it happen. But Valerie has a really cool, we'll call it a cheat sheet on how to think about it. And Valerie, if you want to walk through this one and go for it, I can take a, take a pause here.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, you mentioned you used a word that I think a lot of people kind of assume, aspire to in that virtual assistant relationship or executive assistant relationship, which is you use the word psychic. And so a lot of the time, you know, business owners strive for this relationship where I can be understood and I can be myself and someone can, you know, be a few steps ahead of me. And I want to say that, you know, especially with. With individuals, Terry, like yourself, you know, and I do agree here, you know, that you, you are un. Unique in the way that you think about, you know, the other person and, you know, just the way that you carry yourself as a client. This is, you know, our, you know, if we could say, like, what's ideal? Like, this is, you know, this is kind of our dream is to work with individuals like you. And so, you know, why I say that in preparation for how to hand off things is that we want, we want to get to that stage. We absolutely can get to that stage where the other person is understanding more and more about us, but it takes time. So if we go back to that slide, I like to show that in the beginning, you will need. You will need to explain yourself a little bit more. You're going to need to show a little bit. You're going to have to give a more of a. Of a blueprint for what you're handing off. And even as you establish the relationship, right, if you have something that is very specific, you have a very specific outcome, it has to be done exactly in this way. You already have it in your mind. In that case, the way to not be disappointed by the outcome is by preparing the work a little bit ahead of time. So if you have a specific spreadsheet that needs to be done, well, I'll go in. Sometimes instead of explaining, I'm just going to go in and make some of these columns as a starting point and give one example. Sometimes that's what's needed. If I'm just very specific, there's just no variation that I'm going to accept for the outcome of this project. Now sometimes I'm a little bit more flexible with the delivery. Then you can send a voice note. Loom can kind of go into both camps, right? Sometimes if you do a really super detailed loom, it becomes very specific. But sometimes you're like, hey, something like this, just kind of get it done in that kind of a way. And I like to give an example of. I had a situation where I was invited to speak to a group at a webinar and the event was two Days away. And so I didn't have a presentation to present. And I also looked at my calendar and I also didn't have the time to work on a presentation. So what I did in that case was I made a really, like a blank PowerPoint. I made it super simple and I did 10 slides, just like 10 text from there. But I had the. Because. Because I already had the assistant, the relationship with the assistant, they were able to go in and do the formatting. And Terry, I'm not sure. I think I sent this link a little bit late, but if you have the link, I have like a sped up version of what it looks like.

Don't have it handy. So if you want to explain it, that'd be great.

Yeah, let me see. Can I share? I think I can share my screen. Let me see if I could actually. No, okay, I'll explain it. So the way. It's not like the most brilliant graphic anyway. So it's just. I had that PowerPoint and I made it very blank. And then I had the assistant go in and, you know, I made some of the notes, right? Like add the branding, add the pricing from the website. So I could be. I could say exactly the things that I need, but I don't have to spend the actual time going in, finding all of the details, formatting them. And I think it took her like three hours to put it together. It took me 15 minutes. And it was specific enough to get to an outcome that was okay. It wasn't a hundred percent perfect because my handoff instructions weren't a hundred percent perfect, but it was like, it was enough that I was able to use that presentation and deliver it. And so, yeah, that. That's it. Yeah, that's kind of my blank. Mm.

Cool. So from here, just to reiterate, what you did was just gave her like the bones of it and said, hey, can you, can you help me out here? And this is enough for her to turn into something. I mean.

Oh, yeah, so you can see, you know, like she's formatting, but it was like 10 slides, like very, you know, just some text. And then, you know, for this slide in specific, I said, you know, please go, you know, you know, get the pricing from our website. And so that's what she did. And so I didn't, you know, that would have taken 15, 20 minutes just to put it out there like that. And so that was, you know, really helpful. And now the caveat here is that this person knew me. We were already working closely together. They knew where to find Things. This is not just a relationship that I started that day. So I got had the advantage of being able to tap into someone like that. And that's going back to earlier, what we were saying. When is the right time? If you start delegating even a little bit at a time, you just let the person into your world a tiny bit at a time. Eventually you can have this superhero moment. But it does take a little bit of time.

Yeah. And if you were paying attention, you noticed that it starts as low as 70 bucks a week. I mean, that's a pretty good deal for you to get all this time back. And on mine, I need a lot more help because I have a lot of stuff going on, and I'm unorganized, and I've. I have four children. But it's. It's. I think people overestimate the investment and underestimate the outcome of it. So what I would say is, if you're on the fence about getting a ba. I mean, you saw, like, you can get help for. I think it was like, less than 300 bucks a month, if I'm doing the math correctly. And from there, scale up, because that's what I'm going to keep on doing. Right. Like, right now, I'm like, hey, let me think of some more stuff that I don't have to do anymore. So I'm just going to keep on, scale it up, and I'm happy to do so. Megan, every time I'm talking to her, I'm like, just charge more hours if you can. I'm like, if you have the time. Because I want to be respectful, too. I want to see if she's waiting around for Terry to give her something. But I'm like, if you have the time, please do more stuff. And I'm excited for those outcomes, but I want to circle back and let was saying, you know, if I have a VA from the US What I have to be concerned about? Cultural differences. You know, not that I'm expecting it, but I've often wondered, and I want to. Valerie, I'll let you hop in. But one thing that's unique and I don't think you can get from your network or from another service is when you sign on with Chatterboss, you actually go through a personality assessment where they're trying to figure out, you know, what kind of traits you have. You know, how do you work with people? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? So you're not auditioning. I don't know if you can fail it. Maybe you can if you're like a jerk, it's like, peace. But what they're doing is, by design, matching you up with someone who will be a good fit for your personality. So if there's a cultural issue, then great, we can. We can flag that. I don't mean great, but it's good. We can understand this and move forward. And one of my friends just signed on with Chatterboss, and she was talking to me the other day. She's like, hey, Terry, you know, my. My current VA is on vacation. She won't be back for a week. But I'm really excited to get started. You know, what should I do? I'm like, wait a week. Wait a week. It's going to be months. First of all, that you're with this person, probably years. Second of all, you wouldn't even know about it if I didn't tell you about it. Third of all, they matched you with this person on purpose. On purpose. So there's this delayed gratification because they could have grabbed anyone and said, oh, no, we want to make her happy. We'll give her someone Monday. But they put that much thought into how they're matching people. They're at risk of someone saying, oh, forget it, because they have this impatience. So you're not going to get matched with the person who's low on hours, which happens often. You're going to get matched with the person who's a good fit based on your personality. And that. That test, and I talked to Valerie about this, was very transformational for me in understanding how I can better communicate, not just professionally, but. But personally as well. So to speak, to your question, like, the cultural differences, all that stuff solved for by their. By their onboarding process. So it's unlike anything I've seen before. And, Val, if you want to go in deeper on that, feel free to.

Yeah, you know, Absolutely. And, you know, I. There is that character side, how we do that matching. If you give us the opportunity to peek into your character, we know the character of our assistants. We know who we're bringing on. But if you also give us that ability to peek into your character, then we can make that optimal fit. Because the difference between executive assistants and all other types of roles that you can bring on, like designers, copywriters, you know, accountants, in all of those things, of course there's variation. Of course there's creativity, but there is some kind of a template. You know, these are the. You know, this is what's in the realm of possibility when you're doing design. This is what's in the realm of possibility when you're building a website as an ea, this role is so broad and can have so many different legs into so many different types of areas. And so, you know, for us we over index on good communication. How do we get you with the person with whom you have the highest chance of good communication? That's what we are always looking for. And you know, the other piece of it is that, you know, now you ask about, you know, like the cultural like from the US or not. And a lot I'm not sure, you know, where you are. For the majority of our, of our entrepreneurs are US based and the assistants that are dedicated are US based. You know, there are certain markets that were able to support Australia, very similar. Some areas, you know, in the UK were able to kind of work well. But you know, the reason that overall we focused on the US market and have had the dedicated assistance being in the US is that there is, there's so much room for miscommunication. So we like it when you and the assistant at least are still starting from that place of, you know, what's happening, you know what's happening kind of politically, you know, what's happening kind of. There's, there's just some stuff. Right. And so that is a shortcut. So you know, I do like it, you know, from that perspective, if you're talking about like which country you're in and which country your assistant isn't. I like having at least one person on your team that's in the country that you're at. I think that, you know, sometimes it creates a little bit of a, of a fewer. I see that you're in Trinidad. Yeah. So you know, it's, I have to be honest, I do. I think there's a benefit, right. Of having, you know, the assistant in the US and you do lose that little bit of something. Right. There could be something cultural where, you know, if the person is not from there, you know, can you have some small kind of like not seeing eye to eye? You know, it's possible, but I think that it also depends, like where are your clients? If your clients are US based, then you can use this individual, you know, as, as leverage. But you know, as long as you're patient. But, but that does happen and that, that's something that we do keep in mind.

Thanks for that. So one thing I want to do is just kind of go through a checklist of tasks that I recommend outsourcing or delegating and then obviously want to make sure that everyone has the link to learn more about Chatterbox. So, Megan, if you don't mind putting that in soon, that'd be great. But here's my, my checklist. The first thing we talked about a lot was content. Not just content creation, content distribution, repurposing and getting unique ideas for how you can use your content over again. So you have to do that. I mean that you're your own best marketing channel. Right. So if you can talk once and have that repurposed several times, there's, you know, you can 10x the impact from it as well. So that's that. Also billing, invoicing proposals, because often it feels more comfortable when someone else sends a bill than you do. And I think maybe that's why sometimes I delay. It's like, oh, I don't want to actually do this, but if I have someone else do it, it's like they know what has to get done. On the 15th, it's done. It's not me saying, oh, should I do it now, should I do it later? So on and so forth. Also scheduling. And I don't mean just proactively scheduling. I think it's really rescheduling that's the biggest pain. Because scheduling, you're like, cool, boom. Like, I'll make this decision. It's rescheduling in those late, you know, those last minute opportunities when you're actually sorry. Claudia's asking for a link to Chatterboss. So Megan, if you don't mind. Yeah, it's rescan that's really the pain because you're like, oh, so sorry, my apologies. Right. I get it. But when you have someone else do it, it's like, hey, sorry, Terry had something come up and you're kind of off the hook and you can just be. Whatever reason you had to reschedule for, it probably wasn't pleasant. You just want to get that part done so you can get to the unpleasant thing. Get that done with also research, which is so important because let's say you're doing some kind of content. It's beneficial to start with some kind of stat. Right. Did you know that, you know, 40% of people would quit their job if they could work from home? That's why I think you should start your own home business, whatever it is. I don't want to take the time to do that research. I want the powerful data behind it. But that's going to take me a long time to get the sources that are correct, so and so forth. So any kind of research, not just Research for your content. But for me it's getting speaking gigs. Hey, find organizations that are grant funded that want someone to talk about entrepreneurship. Why grant funded? Because they got more money lying around than someone who maybe doesn't. Or find organizations that are in Seattle that might want me to speak there because I'm going to speak at Amazon in June. Maybe I can speak somewhere while I'm there as well. Right, so that's someone doing that research for you. What's your zone of genius? It's finding the smart stuff to talk about. How are they helping you? Finding the place to talk. Right. So again, that research is so important and the last thing is just automation, processes, tools, tactics, so on and so forth, because you might be really good at doing stuff and I get that. But if you could find a process where you can hand it off to someone else or do it more efficiently through automation, especially, great, now you got some time back because you spent 12 bucks on a tool that does XYZ. But if you're so busy just doing this stuff, you don't have time to sit back and think, how can I do this better? It's not going to get done. So that's my checklist again. It's content, billing, scheduling, research, automation. And then obviously there's so many things on the personal side, but this is what you, you have to gain from working with someone. And also on the flip side, what you have to lose if you don't. All right, cool. So Fabian's good. So what? I also just want to kind of close the loop on by saying is this is one of those things that if you, if you don't do it early enough, I think just like Valerie was saying, it seems like you're just, you, you settle, you settle for where you're at as opposed to ascending to where you could be. Because especially if you get kind of comfortable, you're like, yeah, I'm making six figures. You know, no one else in my family's making that much money and I'm doing well enough. You could be doing a lot better. Right. So don't settle for who you are. Just keep on aiming for who you could be. And how do you do that? It's through the right strategy, it's through the right networks and partnerships that you can make time for if you're not doing all this admin stuff. So that's why I feel it's so important. But let's go ahead and wrap things up here. Megan, if you don't mind dropping a link to my, my Additional resources or ways people can catch up with me, that would be great. But, Valerie, just any kind of closing thoughts on your end that you like to share regards to best practices, your experience with, you know, how people, you know, taking the chatter boss floor is yours.

Yeah. You know, I think that for any of you guys, you know, whether you've already had an experience of working with an assistant and, you know, for some reason you're a little bit wary, it hasn't worked out in the way that you want or, you know, you're someone that is, you know, in the camp of, I know that I need the help, but it feels, like, so overwhelming to get started. You know, I think that the most overwhelming piece of it is the getting started itself. I think, like, once you take that action, you know, it, you know, it's little by little. Delegating it is like a muscle. We all have to start somewhere. We work with entrepreneurs who are really delegating geniuses and, you know, it took them time to get there. They've had their own share of mistakes. You're not going to save yourself from making mistakes. You know, I can, you know, kind of put that out there. You're going to make mistakes in that delegating realm. There's going to be something to learn, you know, but on the other side of it is freeing yourself up so that, you know, you know, a lot of us go into business because we want that freedom. You know, we want. We desire freedom. And so sometimes we get to that point in the business where it's controlling us, and now it's starting to feel like another 9 to 5. And, you know, we have those thoughts like, should I really be here? Like, it's a lot of work for. For what's happening, you know, and there's a lot of strategies to freedom, but one of them is getting some type of. Some type of support. And, you know, it just, you know, we're very grateful for having the opportunity, Terry, to be working with you, to be working with such brilliant entrepreneurs, to be seeing how individuals are changing the industries that they're in. So it's been really fun. I'm really grateful for the time, for the attention, especially because as entrepreneurs, we are busy. And so any, you know, anyone who spends, you know, 58 minutes, 38 seconds, you know, with us, you know, very, very grateful.

Yeah. Yeah, agreed. So everyone, thank you very much for that time. Valerie, thanks again. Megan, thank you again. I want to say it publicly. Thank you so much for what you're doing for my business and my family. And join us next week on Tools and Tactics with Terry. That's my first time using the name in public and I'm going to be talking about pitching proposals and pricing. So if you have questions about any of those three things, please do join in. But outside of that, please do follow me on LinkedIn. Follow Valerie as well, and I'll catch up with you next time.