PPB May 2020

Quick ROI Reminder All three of the VA tasks presented are as easy as it gets, so I’m not surprised if you’re thinking, “Well, that won’t save me that much time. I’ll just do it myself.” The truth is, as an entrepreneur your time is valued at a minimum of $100 per hour. For argument’s sake, let’s say hiring a VA to handle these three tasks would save you two hours a week. That’s $200 of your time and if you had a VA do it at $20 an hour your net savings would be $160, and you’d get two hours of your time back. That’s two hours that you can dedicate to selling and bringing in new business, or two hours that can go towards living your life, working out or other things you’d like to do. The real magic happens when you scale these numbers. Just keep in mind that this example is to get you on that VA bicycle with training wheels. You’ll be flying down mountains and saving 15 hours per week in no time if you stay dedicated to the practice. Where To Find VAs I highly recommend a site called FreeUp.net and here’s why: • Just like a distributor, FreeUp is big enough to take care of you but small enough that you can reach a contact there by phone should you need support. • It offers a flexible weekly hourly limit. I recommend setting a weekly hourly limit for each of your VAs so you always know how much you are spending on VAs per week. • FreeUp takes the recruiting and sifting through hundreds of resumes out of the equation by matching your business with two to three VAs based on your job posting. Start Onboarding The Right Way Always communicate the way you want VAs to handle your tasks. So many people want to cater to their VAs—don’t fall into that trap. If you like to communicate via email and not by phone, then communicate via email. If you like to track projects on Trello and not on Slack, then use Trello. Teach the VAs to work within your systems. From Tiny Tasks To Big Projects Start with a tiny task that can (and will) lead to a bigger project. In other words, rather than giving your VA a huge project, break it up into pieces and give the VA a piece at a time. For example, for the three task ideas described here, I could have presented them all as one project but that might be overwhelming. It’s better to break up tasks in a sequential format so each new task builds off of those already learned. If you follow the steps in this two-part article, you will be successful in working with VAs and free up valuable time you can use to grow your business. See part one of this article in PPB ’s April issue at pubs.ppai. org/ppb-magazine/management- clone-yourself. Sam Kabert is principal and creative director at SwagWorx. com in the San Francisco Bay area. He also has a podcast about mindfulness called Soul Seekr and is founder of WhatUp! Silicon Valley, a media network for news in business, sports, networking and innovation. Read more at CloneYourselfu.com and reach him at Sam@SoulSeekrz.com. 58 | MAY 2020 | THINK