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There are tons of books about it.
The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris – How to lean on support and create time freedom.
Rocket Fuel by Wickman and Winters – The difference between a visionary and an integrator.
Virtual Freedom by Chris Ducker – How to build a team of assistants and what jobs to hand off to whom and when.
I read all of these books while navigating relationships with a handful of different virtual assistants before I did something different.
(I’ll admit, these books were guiding me to do it sooner, but I didn’t take the time until I finally did.)
After having a variety of different relationships with VA’s (virtual assistants) from Chicago to the Philippines, I found that I was not being clear enough in the kind of support I was after.
I had assistants that were amazing, but overrun with too many clients, and assistants that were not as experienced, that I only felt comfortable handing simple jobs off to. Still others that were great, but got swept away by full time positions with bigger companies.
All the while, I was overrun with admin, research, and marketing tasks that I was growingly fed up with doing myself.
I knew what I wanted:
*Someone who resonated with my mission who would grow with me. Start at 10 hours a week, average pay, and as my business expands, they’d take on more work and better pay.
*Someone who could help me manage all my output. Tell me when I needed to create more content and manage the research side of what was smart to create next, for youtube, my podcast, my blog etc.
*Someone who was paying attention to my business, my online presence, and putting thought into where I am, where I want to go, and how they can fill in the gaps. Someone aware of the gaps.
Here’s what I did differently this time:
- I sat down and created a Wild Hearts Rise Up Culture Manifesto. The key principles of the ‘workplace’ that I desired to uphold, the space I wanted to create, especially specific on the vibe of my business and how I desired for us to take care of ourselves and each other so we can best serve my audience.
This included things like make everyone/everything right (to remove wrongness and judgment from the game), strive for excellence (Don Miguel Ruiz’s agreement, “Always do your best”), and communicate needs and desires (so that everyone feels supported and knows what’s up).
- I then compiled my lists, from various different places I’d been making them. I had lists on Trello, Evernote, Google Docs, my ‘Things’ app. Everywhere I made notes of tasks that I was ready to hand off, I put them all into one big list.
I took these two things, the culture outline, and the robust task list and posted them on a site called upwork.com.
I added a note in my post that I was looking for someone who would grow with me and my business. Someone who could take on roughly 10 hours a week consistently right now for $-$ pay range, and how that would grow to more hours and pay raises as time went on.
I received a handful of responses to my post, strangely by more men than previous times I had posted. Some were impressed by my list of tasks and curious if I had been handling all that by myself so far.
Yes, in fact, I had.
Some were native english speakers, and others were not.
I responded to those who had mentioned their alignment with my culture outline.
This is because I know I can teach anyone how to do what I need done, but I cannot give them my vibe if they don’t already align with it.
Let me tell you. I am so happy with my current VA!!!
He’s a world traveler. He speaks English as a first language. He gets what I’m about and he is so fast at completing tasks. He has an eye for design, he’s tech savvy, and he readily asks me for details that I left out of my directions. He also keeps meticulous track of how much time he spends on each project so I know where the money is going.
These are a few things that I think are important to do, or have your VA do:
- Keep a detailed record of time logged on each project. So you know what you paid them to do.
- Invoice me weekly, so that I don’t feel overwhelmed by a big bill I didn’t see coming.
- Create the System of Operations folder as we go. For every task completed, create a written, or video tutorial that someone else could follow to do that task in the future. (Great for overturn to new VA’s. I also create these videos for my VA’s as we add new jobs to their plate.)
- Use Lastpass. This allows you to keep all your passwords secure, and easily share them with subcontractors like VA’s so they can log into things as you, without showing them your password.
- Communicate regularly. They need to know what you need, you need to know what they’re working on. I use a Slack channel to keep in regular communication with my VA.
- Project Management tool – Asana, Trello, or something like that allows you to put all the tasks, and prioritize them, add docs, links, videos etc. and keep your team on track to completing projects.
- Keep file sharing EASY! I used to keep everything for my VA’s in dropbox, but it can be difficult to share certain folders with multiple people. I find Google Drive to be a much easier platform to keep files, and especially the SOP folder organized, shareable, and easily accessed by all.
- NDA – Non Disclosure Agreements are a great way to keep your intellectual property safe when working with any subcontractor who’s handling your content. You can edit and print a free one online, just google NDA and poke around.
Here are some of the tasks I hand off to my assistant:
Video editing
Video posting to Youtube
Title and Tag optimization research for youtube videos
Podcast editing, adding the intro and outro to raw files
Podcast publishing
Emailing podcast links to podcast guests/interviewees
Scheduling posts on social media about podcasts and youtube videos as they go live
Scheduling social posts to groups about call reminders for programs
Creating images for podcast and youtube episodes…
And so much more. That is just the beginning of what I’ve been handing off…
Soon I’ll add tasks like…
Querying agents for my books
Researching speaking gigs and applying for them
Submitting guest blogs to online publications
Posting call replays to my online programs
Creating landing pages for new projects
Automating emails to go out the way I like them to go out
Maybe even watching my Ad stats and letting me know what they think needs to happen next.
Hope this inspires rather than overwhelms you.
The important things to remember are you do NOT have to do it all alone, there is a perfect person out there (or many) to support you, and when you lean into support like this, more is possible.
More time freedom.
More clients.
More income.
More time spent doing what you love.
To infinity and beyond,
xo Molly
