Top 10 VA Hiring Mistakes: Lessons Learned from Building a Staffing Business

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation, brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome to the Coaching Equation Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop.

0:46 And In episode 16 of The Coaching Equation, we had our COO, Vanessa Malkin, come on and talk a lot about processes, people. In that episode, we talked a lot about leveraging virtual assistants and learning how to really protect your time as a business owner, as a leader, as a CEO, as a coach. And in this episode today, in episode 32 of The Coaching Equation, Brooke and I are going to take you behind the curtain. You see, for the last 18 months, we have been running a staffing business, largely built up a virtual assistant.

1:31 And we have seen the good, the bad and the ugly. We have made mistakes. We have watched others make mistakes. We have seen the things that work, the things that don't work and everything in between. One of the things we're always trying to do on this show is to get you where you're going faster. And that's exactly the objective here. So in this episode, we're going to break down the 10 biggest mistakes that we see when hiring and employing a virtual assistant. Now, this is going to be for you if you are thinking about hiring a virtual assistant. This is going to be a masterclass in what to do, what not to do. If you already have a virtual assistant, this is going to be a masterclass in helping you probably iron things out and, you know, And if you're in a spot where you're not even thinking about hiring a virtual assistant or you need to bring another member of your team on, listen, this is going to be a master class in staffing in general.

2:22 It's absolutely vital if you're ever going to work with anybody else other than yourself in your business. So buckle up and let's get after it. This is episode 32 of the Coaching Equation Podcast. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. What's happening, brother? What up, what up? Happy, well, I guess for us, it's Happy Friday. I don't know when people are going to be listening to this. Who knows? We don't know where you are or when you are, but it's Happy Friday for us anyway. Man, today's gonna be such a great episode. You know, one of the things that we really love to do around here is to take you behind the curtain on the things that we have had the opportunity to see and experience, both in our work with our clients on our side of the fence, as well as the things and the mistakes that we see our clients making.

3:13 Part of, you know, why we created this show in the first place is to get you farther faster. And that's exactly what we're going to do today. Today, we're going to break down the top 10 mistakes that we've made and we've seen others make in staffing virtual assistants. Now, you may or may not know this, but we have been running a staffing business for about 18 months now, and we've learned a lot. And I would say, Brooke, you know, one of the things I was reflecting on this morning before we dive into the top 10, one of the things I was reflecting on this morning is what a great example that business is of not having to have it all figured out before you start.

3:57 We didn't know shit. It was one of those things we thought we knew. Yeah, yeah. We're like, oh, we're good. We got this under wraps. Oh, okay. No, you don't. No, you don't. We found out a lot. What we saw was a need and a gap. And it wasn't that there weren't any virtual assistants out there, but... We saw that it wasn't being done very well, quite frankly. The management of the virtual assistants was terrible. The quality of the work wasn't very good in a lot of cases. Honestly, I didn't know very many people that were very happy with their VAs at that point. And so we'd had so many clients coming to us asking us like, hey, who do you know that can provide us a VA? And we finally got sick of it and broke to his credit.

4:39 pretty much comes in the office one day and is like, hey, we've got a VA business. We've got a staffing business. I'm like, what the fuck? I never done that with anything else like 10 times. No, no, never, ever, never, ever. But you know what? It has been a really amazing learning experience. And with that said, let's go ahead and dive in. So number one, not seeing them necessarily as a VA. Unpack that for me. What are we talking about when we say not seeing them as a VA? What are we talking about? Yeah. So there's, so I'm going to, I'm going to hit on a couple of pieces and then I'll dive straight into that. So one is the staffing state side. And obviously I know we have a ton of clients that are global, but to go get good help in the United States right now, I'm not going to lie here.

5:20 I'm not going to sugarcoat this. It is really funky. The expectations of the, the employee is funky. Their demands of how quickly they get raises is funky, their hours and their availability, their passion. Like we have very self-centered culture right now as it relates to staffing and to employees. As a whole, obviously there's tons of amazing people out there. And so what comes with that is you have a cultural shift. And so I think it was a huge part why VAs were also so appealing in their culture. They are so freaking happy and joyous to work and they want to like, they want to do good work. Now, what comes with that is we have a gap of how we perceive the staff members.

6:03 It's like, oh, I have a virtual assistant. Like, I have low-cost help from a third-world country. So, we create this unconsciously, this gap in our head of who we're working with. And the reality is, they're incredible human beings. Almost all of them are college graduates. They're multilingual. They're multi-skilled. And so, why we want to... Take away the label is if you don't look at them as a VA where there's like this gap of who they are and where they're at and your business. And if you truly bring them in as part of your team, we actually had a client. She referred to them as her international team. And I thought that that was such a cool reframe. Right. And like it just looks like, oh, yeah, like this is my team.

6:45 not this VA that I've got for a few hours that I'm paying less than I would pay somebody in stateside. Right? So I think that was like a huge distinction of just change the label, change the engagement. I think that's so key. And I love that you hit on that because I don't think that many people have thought about that, quite frankly. And I think it's really easy to just treat it that way. And like anything else, the frame that you put on it and the lens through which you view it is going to drastically affect the results that you get out of it, how they feel. Because here's You know, a lot of times when we pick up a VA, we're expecting production.

7:32 And we'll talk more about this in a little bit, but we're expecting production. In many cases, we watch people literally just treat them like they're, you know, a machine. And they're not. Newsflash, if that's what you want, find an AI VA. Maybe that exists yet. Probably right around the corner. Yeah. But the point is, you know, they really are human beings and they're going to show up in the way that you treat them. And it's one of the things that I love and respect so much. And I don't want to go too far deep right now. So we'll talk about this in a minute. But one of the things I love and respect so much about our partner in this venture, Amy, is the way that she really treats them. And obviously, our VAs internally get treated a completely different way than most.

8:18 But that's because of the fact that we view them differently. So I think that's Okay, number two, not managing and not having a clear list of tasks or outcomes when hiring. Okay, so I'm going to preface this. This is somewhat of an umbrella where this falls under. What I will say is this, if you've never hired somebody, if you've never had anybody on your team, if you've never managed anybody, Brooke's words of caution on this beautiful Friday is, You have to step into being a leader. So if you think you're just going to hire a VA to just take things off your plate because you're overwhelmed and you're just like, I just need to hire somebody to do the stuff I don't want to do. I'm just going to be very candid.

8:58 You are setting yourself up for failure and you're going to have a very rough go. So the reality is this, you have to have an identity shift and you have to step into that space of cool. I am now bringing on a team member, which means I am now stepping into being a leader instead of being a solo man or solo woman operator. This can rattle people's cages if they've never managed anyone, because here's where the wheels fall off the tracks. I'm actually just talking to somebody yesterday who's bringing on a VA. He's actually a photographer in San Diego. Super good dude. His business is rocking. And I go, cool. As far as why you're looking to bring a VA on? He's like, I don't know. I'm just too busy. Right? I'm like, okay, well, we got to pump the brakes because...

9:40 Who do you want to bring on? What do you want them to do? What tasks are you going to hand off to them? Like, you're going to have to train this person to do the things that you either don't want to do or you need to get leverage in. So if you're too busy and you're looking to hire somebody and you're not exactly sure what it is, you just are like, I'm too busy. Take my world and fix it. It ain't going to work. So... So before you bring anybody on, whether you hire VA through our world or you go, you know, you go out there to different service providers, you absolutely have to have a list of what it is that you actually want them to do. And you also want to, this kind of weaves into it. We'll touch on it in a moment, but you want to make sure that your tasks are somewhat similar. If you've got somebody you're like, I need you to be a customer service person.

10:23 And then I also need you to, to, to be doing like, you know, accounting work. Like those are two very different dynamics. So we'll, we'll touch on that in a moment. I completely agree. And listen, I've seen it as I've watched other people do it. And I've also experienced it firsthand. The very first VA I ever hired a couple of years ago was through a friend who has a really wonderful service. And I was so not prepared. I rushed into the process. Similarly, I was like, I don't know. I mean, you know, I just got stuff and I was so not prepared and it was an absolute disaster. It was, I mean, nothing short of an absolute disaster. And the poor guy, I mean, the lack of results was 100% on me and not on him.

11:06 And I think one of the things too, that we really have to own, I love that you talk about needing to step up as a leader. Listen, if you're listening to this right now and you're like, oh, I was hoping I didn't have to do that. Guess what? Yeah. Guess what? Even if you're just working with a service provider, even if you're just working with, you know, an outside agency, guess who's got to actually be the leader at the end of the day? You. And it's the same thing when you hire a VA. And quite frankly, you know, it's so interesting, Brooke. Last podcast episode, had a wonderful chat with Mariana Lacombe. We were talking about the employee mindset. And how detrimental it is to, you know, many coaches who are trying to transition into running an actual business.

11:49 Well, this is part of it. If you're hiring a VA with an employee mindset, you're in big trouble. Big trouble. Okay, so this was a really interesting one and it seems like it would be trivial. But number three, not having a clear onboarding plan. Yeah. So it was interesting. So working with Tony Robbins, they are HR director used to always have this sentiment and she would say the way you onboard is going to be how their experiences and that's going to be exactly the same reasons why they off board. And when she said it the first time, I was kind of like, okay, that just sounds like HR jargon, right? Like, cool. And then I hired my first assistant and I had a terrible onboarding plan when she came on.

12:35 I didn't train her up. Like in my mind, I'm like, I need a human. I need help. Like do a thing. And because I didn't have a plan, she was sitting there just basically like deer in headlights going, what do I do? And I'm like, I'm too busy. I don't know. Figure it out. Her quality of figuring it out was a mess and it took forever for her to get her feet underneath her. Yeah. And it ultimately became the friction point. And then I had to let her go because she couldn't do her job. Now, was it that she couldn't do her job or did I do a shitty job of bringing her in? And did I do a shitty job of managing her? And then ultimately led to having to let her go. At the end of the day, it was freaking my fault. And it's no different than if you bring on like a true assistant or you bring anyone you bring into your organization. So this goes back to don't see them as a VA to do like a little task over here.

13:19 Bring them on as your team member. And again, just to repeat the HR sentiment, how you onboard them is going to be exactly how the experience is in terms of your engagement with them when they work for you. And it'll likely be the reasons why they offboard if it doesn't go the right way. Yeah. You know, I want to give people a couple of little tidbits here because this is one where I feel like it's a little bit nebulous. It's kind of like, well, if you've never had to onboard somebody before, you're probably like, well, what the fuck is my onboarding plan then? We could probably spend an entire episode on this. And you know what? Maybe we'll drive Vanessa and build a whole course on it. Yeah. Oh, maybe so. Oh, maybe that's allegedly happening.

14:00 I don't know. Yeah, maybe. See, new business. Right? See, here he does it again. You see everybody listening right now. This is what happens. But let's do this though. Like 30,000 foot view, like couple things that people should be aware of. Two, three, you know, quick hitters that people should be aware of if they're doing, trying to build an onboarding plan. Let's just stick to a VA and keep it simple. I'll keep it super, super high level, super simple. Number one, you want to be able to share with them what your mission and vision is for the company. If they don't know the outcome, what's the outcome? They're going to go doing tasks to no man's land. Love that. So knowing the outcome and the mission and the vision that you have is paramount. Number two is be very, very clear in terms of the tasks that you want them to be to be focusing on the quality that you desire.

14:48 make sure you set up clear communications with them, right? Like here's what I'd love for you to communicate. Let me know when you're starting your day or if you get stuck, here's how I need you to communicate with me. The other big piece is I would also make sure you have a ecosystem for red flags, like, Hey Houston, we've got a problem. Red flag. And then the other one, something, this is something we do internally. We call it the parking lot. They're going to see things and come up with ideas. You don't want to kill that. You want to make sure you have a world, a zone. Like for us, we use Slack. And so we have a channel that it's open for everyone in our company. If somebody has an idea or they see something, they drop it in the parking lot. So that way, no ideas go to the grave. They go to the parking lot. We can go drive that car when it's time. Yeah. Right. So those are the mission critical ones.

15:30 And I know because, Ryan, you work directly with our VAs internally. What are some of the things that you'd also add to that list, brother? Yeah, I think that, I mean, really, the small list that you just gave, I think, was really good. But I would say simply that the success that we've had in onboarding the VAs that we have... is one additional thing I would say. I think it's important circling back to the one that we just talked about, having a clear onboarding plan and also having a clear set of tasks or outcomes that you want. The other thing though, in your onboarding plan, plans... Plan for failure. And here's what I mean by that. You know, you will hire a VA and like, for example, if you do it, if you hire a VA through our staffing service, we ask you, what are the things that you really want your VA to do for you?

16:17 Where are the areas that you really need help? And we'll pair you with somebody who has expertise in those areas. Now, with all of that being said, when you bring your VA on, oftentimes, they're gonna get into some of the tasks that you wanted them to do. And you're going to realize pretty quickly, and they are as well, that like maybe they could do it, but it's not their zone of genius. A great example of this, like, you know, one of our VAs right now that Vanessa works very closely with. I mean, she just freaking turned him into an absolute rock star. And the guy was no less talented when we brought him in the door. I just had him doing activities that weren't really his superpower.

16:59 And we played around a little bit with a few different things. And now, I mean, the guy is a monster. He's incredible. So I would add that one little caveat in your onboarding plan. Plan to fail and make sure that you've got you know, plan to shift if and or when any of the things that you have, you know, laid out for them to do maybe isn't the proper fit. It's cool if I piggyback on that. And I won't say any names because I almost just did. So I had a mentor director early in my career and his philosophy, which it's carried with me and through my leadership over the course of time. It was if somebody makes a mistake, shame on them. If they make the mistake twice, shame on me as their leader, because I didn't help coach them up to avoid that mistake a second time.

17:45 If it happens a third time, the person needs to go. Okay. So why I bring this up to piggyback on what you've shared, like plan for failure is As a leader, be prepared to have some grace. So we had somebody who placed a VA and they're rocking, had two months of like literal perfection. They were doing their social media for them. They're creating posts, doing the editing, doing all the things. And then the VA posted something where the copy and the text was like grammatically, it wasn't proper. And that client fired the VA lickety split. There was zero grace. Now, At the end of the day, here's the crazy part. It was technically that person's fault, the client's fault for not having a quality assurance process and what they were delivering, right?

18:33 They were so busy, they weren't checking anything. And they just gave the keys over to the VA and just said, take my social media and run. And they took their eye off the ball. And then when the VA made one mistake, they went, you're gone. You're dead to me. You're out. You're out. So, again, this goes back to see them as human beings, but you also have to realize they're fallible human beings. They're going to make mistakes, but if they make a mistake once, great. It's your job to coach them up as the leader. If it happens a second time, now it's on you for not having trained them properly. If it happens a third time, it's a pattern... You got to make a change. So I just wanted to throw caution to the wind on that because I think so often we have these grandiose ideas of I'm bringing a person that's going to come into my world and they're going to make everything better and they're never going to make any mistakes and life's going to be peachy keen.

19:17 Yeah, no, it's a great point. It's a really great point. So number four, not having a communication strategy. This is another one that's kind of a little bit sneaky that most people wouldn't really think about, but it really is absolutely vital. Just like everything else in business and in your personal life, if your communication and your strategy for communication sucks, the experience is going to suck. So unpack that one a little bit. Yeah, this is where I see hiccups. If you go to some of the online services for VAs, and usually we'll go to an online service for a VA because we have like this one thing where like, oh, I need somebody to set up my email system. Like we go find somebody to do that thing. What tends to happen is usually there's a communication thread in that system, or we get into an email world and we're sending communications back and forth via email.

20:04 It just gets messy and stuff gets lost and things get lost in translation. Yeah. And we also have to remember, like for our VAs, as an example, like we source our VAs in the Philippines. They all speak English. However, English is their second language, right? So this is where I get a little frazzled with our American patriots. Very few of our American patriots who hire a VA speak a second language. So they don't know what it's like to translate something over to Spanish entirely and put that into an email or put that in those different places. So your communication, the strength that can happen in this, like for us, we use internally, we use Slack. So all of our VAs are in Slack. For many of our clients, they use WhatsApp, right?

20:45 So especially for a lot of our international clients, but you want to have a dedicated space where the communications happen, where it's very clear, where there's consistency, where there is an opportunity to get clarity. And there's a space where it's quick response times. Additionally, like for us, one of the things we have that's mandatory for all of our VAs that we place, they have to communicate through our channels as to when they're starting their day. We have hourly check-ins and we actually have a management team on our side that if they don't check in on their hourly marker, we're finding them, we're hunting them down. They have to let us know at the end of the day what they completed and what they worked on. And they also have to share their distinctions and their learnings of the day. And this helps them stay in that space.

21:27 I know, Ryan, we've talked about this many times in the sales world, but it keeps our team in a space of curiosity versus criticism because, again... they'll go critical on themselves, actually even more over than a U S based employee. Yeah. Cause they have such a burning desire to help. It's so true. And you know, this is one in particular too, where, you know, I've experienced a nuance of this internally, you know, we have an amazing VA that helps out with our podcast and he does a great job. Yeah. And, you know, with we were really clear in the outside and outset, and he and I were communicating really, really well. That was very clear. The method by which we were communicating was really strong. The timing of it was really strong. And at some point, I decided that I wanted him to do more.

22:10 And what I made the mistake of doing is kind of just telling him all the different things that I wanted to do and not circling back and doubling down on that same communication strategy that was working when we first started saying, hey. Here are these other things. This is my expectation on when I would like them. This is how I want you to communicate to me that they're done. One thing that was crazy about this is that I literally, I was getting frustrated because I thought that there was, you know, something that wasn't getting done. And we're having a conversation one day and I'm kind of like, hey, listen, you know, we talked about this weeks ago and I really want to start seeing these, you know, things that I've asked for, blah, blah, blah.

22:52 And he's like, well, they're right here. Yeah. They're right where? Right here in this folder. What do you mean? They were there the whole time and it wasn't on him. It was on me because I was not clear about where I wanted him to put it and how I wanted him to notify me when it was done. And listen, it's embarrassing when you make a mistake like that, but owning it is really important. And especially with people like this, this is another thing that I want to mention, because we talked about not seeing them as a VA and the lens through which we view them. Well, a lot of times because they're a VA, it seems easier for us to not have to own our mistakes for some reason as a leader.

23:37 And you have to do it. You got to own it. You got to fall on the sword. And just like anybody else who is going to be a valuable asset in your company, they're going to see you owning your mistakes. And guess what they're going to do? They're going to do exactly the same thing, which is something that you want, because quite frankly, it's one of the biggest mistakes that we see is that, you know, a lot of people don't lead in the right way. And then consequently, they get pissed off when their people don't show up the right way. So, you know, that's a trickle down effect. Now, speaking of connections, this is number five, not having consistent weekly connects. I think, man, this is one in particular, I think it kind of circles back to that original sentiment that we said where it's like, oh, I just need stuff and I need a VA to do these things.

24:22 And I just want to like chuck it all at them and then not have to check in and hope that magically it's all done. So tell me some of the things that you've seen. You work so closely with so many of our clients who have VAs. What are some of the things that you've seen that really tell you that this is the route that you need to go? Yeah. I'll share a couple people who stepped on landmines experiences. We had a client who brought on a VA. He was in massive overwhelm, was just super busy. And he's just like, I just need somebody to help. Great. Brought on a VA. Didn't do the onboarding properly. Didn't do the pieces. Two months, he had his VA on. Didn't know the VA's name. What? Yeah. Didn't know it was the VA's name. He was just like dropping messages into his Slack ecosystem and just was like, assumed somebody was picking up the ball and running, which VA was.

25:09 But here was the kick because there wasn't that consistent connection. He was only getting a fraction of the value from the VA. And it was interesting because when we caught it and we finally found in one of the, the VA actually was the one that let us know. He's like, Hey, I haven't had a meeting with my person in ever. I was like, yeah, And we're like, oh my gosh, we red flagged it. So we called a three way Zoom meeting, laid out how to do those weekly connects and what to focus on and how to, and it's crazy because that VA that he now has is getting like 90% more output. 90% more supports and they're blown away at all the things that he's able to help them do.

25:54 And it's a crazy thing, that point of connection. I mean, think of our, well, shoot you and I, if you and I didn't connect for an entire week, I mean, we've had this happen before. We're down, busy, busy. And we immediately are like, what are you working on? What am I working on? Do you got this? Do you have that? Oh my God, is this done? Is that done? What are we missing? And like, we immediately spin out your VA is halfway around the world. Yeah. They're on an island, literally and metaphorically. So if you don't have that consistent connection, they're going to try and connect dots and they're going to do their best to stay busy because they want to add value. But if you're not there to consistently ready the ship, yeah, it will create hiccups and challenges. Great distinction on that one. And yeah, maybe like 5A is know your VA's name.

26:39 I don't know. Like probably a good start to that end, because some people may or may not know they are born with their native name and then they all take American names. So if you don't know your your VA's native name, that's also a big indicator that you're probably not connecting with them enough. So great point. All right. Number six. Ooh, this is a fun one. Micromanagement. At the other end of the spectrum. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. I want to actually highlight this because this is a, in the world of VAs, the number one issue in the world of VAs. If you go, you know, you go to some of the online services and I won't say names because I don't want to I don't want to talk trash on anybody.

27:24 But the biggest risk, the biggest variable that's there is you hire a VA and you think that you're paying them for the hours that they told you they're going to work on your project or they're going to work for you. Now the big hiccup that happens, they take on two, three, four, upwards of 10 contracts at a time, and they're billing you for hours, and you have no way of knowing if they're actually working on your stuff. And so what we see with this is there's a there's a massive risk that's there. So what we actually do on our side of the house, by the way, to combat this, number one is we run all of our candidates, all of our VAs, their IP address gets run through a system to make sure they're only working on the contracts that we we assigned to them.

28:10 The second thing we do is we have a piece of software that they have to keep on their computer. And if they take it off or if they don't turn it on, it's grounds for immediate firing. But that software takes random screenshots during the hours that they're working for you. So we know that they are, in fact, working for you. And if there's ever a time where they're working on something that's not your contract, they get written up the first time, they get terminated the second time. So there's this piece that happens on that end. So we recommend putting systems in place so that the micromanagement happens. Now, what we've seen from a client perspective, we also see where they are like micromanaging and nitpicking and they're spending more time looking at every little detail and nuance of what a VA is doing versus like letting them have a little room to run.

28:53 So. We can also get in for our high SC clientele. If you're not familiar with that language, if you don't know your disk profile, go do our disk assessment and learn about yourself. But if you're a high SC and you want every piece of your world to be documented and SOP'd and in a workbook and you want everyone to follow step by step by step, and if you go so robotic with this, you'll also burn out your VAs because they feel like they can't do anything within their control. So. And I just want to put a couple pieces. Yeah. Well, one of the things that I just want to mention about this is like, look, we all have our own leadership style.

29:34 And I recognize that you can be effective if you fall a little more on the side of being a micromanager. But I'm going to tell you something. I have studied leadership for a very, very, very long time. I don't know a single great leader that is a micromanager. Not one. Not one. It doesn't mean that you can't have some form of success. You can, but I don't know a single great leader that is a micromanager. In addition to that, most of the true micromanagers that I know fucking hate their lives. Because it's like they wind themselves into this special little prison by having to chase after every little moment and every little activity and every little step that somebody is going to take.

30:21 And the truth of the matter is that when you free yourself of the paranoia. that accompanies micromanagement, it's a whole new world. Now here's the deal. A lot of people micromanage because they've had poor experiences in the past. They've had somebody, they've had an employee or somebody that has been working for them that has screwed them or they let them have some freedom and they took advantage of it or whatever. And they're pointing to that, in a lot of cases, they're pointing to that one experience and go, no, I won't, I'm not gonna let that happen again, you know, blah, blah, blah. Well, how about you just be a better leader?

31:01 How about you just actually learn to become a better leader and install people below you that are also effective leaders? Great example of this. You know, once again, I'll circle back to my own experience with our internal VAs. You know, I came to a point where our podcast VA, after I kind of asked him, you know, for some of this expanded work, would come to me and ask me questions. And sometimes it would be days before I'd be able to answer him. And part of that is that I'm not going to be a micromanager. I literally refuse to do it. And so what I realized is that I needed yet another, I needed another layer of leadership in between me and him in order for him to, you know, most effectively do what he needed to do.

31:52 And when I installed that extra layer of leadership, it has worked unbelievably well. The dude's far more productive because I got out of my own way, you know, instead of trying to force the issue. And if you find yourself in a spot where you tend to micromanage, and it's because of the fear that someone's not going to do a good job, there are a couple of things that I would just leave you with. Number one, as I said before, learn to become a better leader. Part of learning to become a better leader is doing a better job of something that we talked about at the very beginning, which is having a very clear list of tasks or outcomes. A lot of times we micromanage because we've done a poor job on the front end of giving clear tasks and outcomes.

32:35 Secondly, When you give people very, very clear instructions, circling back two more things that we just mentioned, you have scheduled connects. You don't have to micromanage. If you give people a clear expectation of what you want and then you say, hey, on this day, we're going to check back in with each other. You're going to tell me how you're doing. We'll find out if you're on track, if you're off track, blah, blah, blah. Like that's effective leadership and management at the end of the day. So something for those people that have a tendency to do the micromanaging. Honestly, you're not going to argue with me and tell me that it feels good for you. I don't believe that. I believe that's a load of horse shit. And I can tell you one thing.

33:15 It doesn't feel good to anybody that you're leading. So something to consider. All right. Stepping down off of soapbox. That's a really important soapbox. Do you remember Bob Proctor? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So Bob had this incredible sentiment. He said, the person who has the most rules usually has the least amount of joy. So for those micromanagers, think of it this way. You're not micromanaging. You're just putting a ton of rules into the equation, which means you're taking joy away from the people who are participating. So just a little quick for that. That's a great, great drop. I freaking love Bob Proctor. Number six. Number six. Six. Seven. We have a bullet point, so it's hard to know.

33:56 I think we're on number seven. We're on number seven. Yeah. Seven. Not having a culture. Why do we need culture with VAs? Why is that important? Because they're team members. They're humans. They're human beings having a human experience in your business. And so when you go from a team of one, you may not be aware of it, but you have a culture even as a team of one. It's just your own experience. It's your own world. And you're the only one who's likely going to be affected by it directly. Others will get affected by it indirectly. So when you bring a team member on, poof, now your culture has now, it's multiplied. And it's not one and one is two, it's one and one is 11. And so you want to be mindful of this because the vibe that you bring into your meetings weekly or how you communicate with them in Slack, or do you tell them like, hey, good morning, I'm stoked to have you on board.

34:43 Let's rock it today. Or are you just letting them do their thing in the distance? Right? There's this element of like, what energy are you cultivating and creating? Because that will have a direct effect on how they perform and how they play. Now, some of the things we do internally, our team, we actually, all of our VAs. So we do VAs as a staffing service. So we're not like placing a VA and then like, good luck. See ya. We actually place that VA and we continue to manage them and support them. And we've, they're actually placed. We stay in the fold as the management team for ongoing support to them, as well as our clients. And one of the couple of things we do every morning, they actually come on and they have like a morning meeting as they call it the huddle.

35:26 So think about this. Every VA we have placed out on the planet right now, they meet every single morning for a huddle on our side to help boost that cultural experience, the energy. Yeah. They also have weekly coaching sessions with our team to make sure that they're supported so that they're getting the feedback. They're getting to voice any concerns that they have, and we can loop that back to the client. So there's a culture that's there of accountability. There's also this element of raising the standard and celebrating victories. And so we have different bonus structures that get woven into that that. Again, most people don't think of this when they hire a single VA because they have never been in leadership. So part of the benefit of working with us, we do all of this stuff behind the scenes for them.

36:07 So just a couple of the little pieces that are there. I think that's so vital because what we talk about so often in the conversation of performance, we talk about environment and the importance of environment, right? So critical. Yeah. And look, as we've been saying, your VA are people unlike you or anybody, you know, any other human. They need an environment that is causing them to thrive as opposed to typically there's just no thought put into it. And I think this is especially dangerous, Brooke, for people who are... Like, you know, you're a solo coach or a solo business owner, solopreneur, and you're grabbing a VA and you think, well, I don't need culture.

36:49 It's kind of like not recognizing that you're a leader. It's kind of like not recognizing in a lot of cases that, you know, the minute you took your first client, you became a business of one. Well, if you had a business, would you not have culture? You have a culture one way or the other, whether it's just that you have a shitty non-existent culture or whether you've got a culture that really incentivizes people to thrive. And I think Amy has done such an amazing job with this because it is such a benefit for someone to be able to hire a VA that already has a culture. At which point, you now, if you're one of our VA clients, you now have the opportunity to double down on that and create an incredible culture in your business that they can walk into.

37:42 And they kind of get it in their home space, so to speak, right, with Amy and our team. And then they get it in your space as well. And quite frankly, one of the things that's cool about that, dude, we have seen our internal VAs grow so much. since they started with us, they were already very talented when they began, but they've both cultivated these incredible skill sets. And I firmly believe that that's a direct correlation to the culture and the environment that we've put them in. So, you know, you've heard the sentiment, you know, it flows downhill, right? Yep. And there's this interesting piece and I don't know if many people know this. There's actually, it's funny. We learn more and more every time we engage with our team.

38:25 Uh, Amy, so she's in charge of sourcing and vetting. She runs the, she's the grand pupa of our, of our VA business. But she grew up in an orphanage in the Philippines. She then, I just found this out. She went on to, she's actually a licensed teacher in the Philippines and She then became a VA. That's actually how we met her was on a project. And then we found out she had created an entire virtual assistant training school in the Philippines that she gives away for free. So for her, it's a way of giving back to the community. And then the VA is she gets a pool of talent and she can see how they participate. And that gives her her applicants.

39:05 Well, yeah. Because she's been in the seat, that's why she knows where they can do all of the sneaky things. And so that's why she set up all these bumpers and barriers so that our VAs don't do those things. She also knows where people can, like, give faulty answers in the interviewing process. Because she was a VA for a number of years... She knew where it just didn't feel good when she was working with a company or the different VA placement services that were out there. So the beauty of that is when she came into creating and building this out with us, she wanted to do it. If you asked her, she probably said she wanted to be magical, right? Like she wanted it to be this experience. Not that's just great for our clients, but that's just incredible for the VAs where they don't want to go anywhere else.

39:47 And we pay them way better than anybody else that's in our competitive space. So it's like they get better compensation. They get better supports. They have this cultural experience. They get to connect. And now here's the beautiful part. Amy is such a beautiful soul. Her daughter's actually an attorney. And so her daughter helped hers and us set up a nonprofit in the Philippines. So not only is all this good work to the people and creating a better experience for the VAs. Now, anytime somebody places a VA, we get to help on a massive scale, like boots on the ground, like feeding families, helping children go to school. Like we just sponsored a girl this last month because her father passed away and her mom was too ill to be able to take care of the family.

40:31 And this young daughter, she just graduated high school. It was so cool. She was the valedictorian of her school, but because of her family situation, she wasn't going to be able to go to university. And so because of the VAs that we placed in the team and everybody working together, not only do we feed her family for three months, we also paid for her year of university. We also were able to get her brand new computer. And then you got to see the cultural effect that happened within all the VAs that work at all of our other clients who have VAs. So there's this ripple effect of like literally them working with us and working with our clients who are predominantly coaches who are having a positive effect on the world. It's literally transforming these villages in different spots all across the Philippines.

41:14 So I didn't mean to go on a tangent, but I'm like, there's so much, this is the cultural effect of what's so cool. That's so much beyond like, oh, I need somebody. I'm busy. Like somebody helped my business. It's like this whole other ecosystem exists. So yeah. Now, I'm actually glad you mentioned that. And in fact, we'll have the team link up that video. That'd be awesome. Yeah, because Amy did us the favor. You know, it's unbelievably gratifying to see the difference that we've been able to make because of our charitable works that are tied to our staffing business. And the gal that Brooke just mentioned, who was able to get into university because of us and Amy and the work that we do, made just the most beautiful. I literally, like, I totally cried when I watched this.

41:55 It was like waterworks. We'll link that up in here because I think it'd be really impactful for people. Okay, let's keep this train moving. So number eight, this is really, really a big one. Not knowing when you need an executive assistant versus a VA. I'll start on this one because I had my own experience with this and Brooke, I would love you to add to it. You know, first things first, there is a difference between an executive assistant and a VA. One of the things that I found after the disaster VA, I went honestly, literally like a couple of years before I was going to go there again. And when I finally decided that it was an absolute must that I do it, I mean, I was hitting constraints like crazy from a timing perspective.

42:42 And there was stuff that absolutely had to get handled. And if it didn't get handled, like I was going to burn out, honestly, absolutely. Not to mention, I found myself in a spot where I was dropping the ball on certain activities because I still had things on my plate that I had no business doing. And so I decided to hire a VA. And one of the things that I realized probably within about the first four weeks was that... The VA that I had hired was very talented, but some of the things that I wanted and needed him to do required someone who had a slightly different skillset. I'm not gonna say better because it's not about that, but a slightly different skillset and was stateside that spoke fluent English.

43:31 And that was for me, When I made that shift, things changed very drastically because my executive assistant was really handling things that were, in a lot of cases, very personal to me. So she was handling high-level communications, really... Handling my calendar, but at an even higher level where I would give her full on permissions to do certain things. And part of that has to do. Listen, one thing that we have to recognize is that when you hire a VA, even if they speak fluent English and many of them do. There's oftentimes just a language barrier there.

44:13 And so when it comes to doing things like writing really important emails or, you know, having communication with high level people, oftentimes I've just found that for me, the executive assistant was who I needed. I needed kind of like my right hand lady, my chief of staff. That's Carrie, by the way. She's frigging amazing. Shout out. She's like my, she's my savior. She's also my boss. She's kind of a big deal. She is a big deal. But you know, the truth is the production got so much better when I was willing to realize that I just needed a slightly higher level of help. than I had in my VA. And what we did, we didn't fire the VA. We shifted him and he does a frigging amazing job with what we've given him.

45:01 I mean, quite frankly, I'm so glad that he's not doing the things that I hired him for because he's way better at the things that, you know, we're having them do now. Carrie is fantastic at what she does. So talk a little bit about this, because I think this is one that you and Vanessa have definitely seen front and center when you have somebody that's hiring and they think they're hiring a higher level than they really are, or they need a higher level than, you know, than where they're hiring. This kind of goes back to one of our opening sentiments, right? It's like outcome. Like, what is your outcome from bringing this person in? Do they have the skill set, the mindset and the heart set to get you that outcome? You know, they might have the mindset and they might have the heart set.

45:41 But if that skill set's not where it needs to be, like, you got to be real about that. We look at like three different buckets as it relates to VAs and EAs as they overlap. Yeah. One is we go, is this person going to be a tinkerer? And so what we mean by tinkerer is like it's a rinse repeat activity, right? Like video editing. It's like I'm looking at a video, I'm editing, I'm cutting. There has to be a little bit of thinking in there, but it's predominantly rinse repeat activities. Customer service. It's usually a rinse repeat activity. Doing accounting type work. Rinse repeat. Rinse repeat. You know, working on CRMs or technology, those oftentimes require more of a tinkerer. And this isn't just like limited to VAs, by the way, that we're talking about your team members, right?

46:26 The second group is what we would refer to as thinkers. They need to anticipate. They need to be able to think outside the box. They need to be able to understand a multitude of different pieces in your business. This is where EAs tend to fall more into this bucket. Where tinkerers, we look at, that's way more of a VA role. And again, it can start to move into thinker. But if you need a dedicated thinker, like somebody who understands your process, somebody who really has a good handle on your business, they have to play in a different space that moves into bucket number two. Now, the third one, and this is where we see in this. This will move into our next bullet here in a second. But I want to put it on radar because it falls into the three buckets.

47:07 The third one is, do you need somebody who is a strategist? If you need strategy, do not hire a VA from a strategy standpoint, right? Like if you're expecting your VA to come to you, like here's a whole baked out strategy, unless they have a real good experience of background in that particular thing, we don't recommend that. You can weave your EAs into strategy as well as that anticipation piece. Yeah, I agree. And I also think that, you know, with the EA, it also depends on what level you're at. You may be in a spot where you're not able initially to afford to hire an executive assistant. And what that means is that you've got to get really clear at the beginning if you can't afford to hire an executive assistant because it is significantly more expensive as it should be.

47:53 You've got to get really, really clear on the things that you need to hold on to, because, you know, one thing that's important is as you bring a virtual assistant on, if you're unable to hire an executive assistant, you have tasks that would be worthy of that person. There's no harm in attempting to go through the VA. But you need to be able to pivot quickly. When you see that it's not working, you got to be able to pivot quickly and then, you know, get clear on the things that the VA should really be doing and the things that you should be doing. Otherwise, you know, for those higher level tasks and that higher level of performance, you're going to need an executive assistant. And that's actually why. This is one of the reasons we look for this when we're sourcing VAs for people.

48:38 We actually look for it up front in people's expectations and what they tell us they need. We, quite frankly, we don't want to hand you a VA if we actually believe that an executive assistant would be a better fit for you. And that's also one of the reasons that we've partnered with somebody who's absolutely out of this world. If this is something that you're interested in, just send us an email, support at empirepartners.io, and we'll get you hooked up with our partner who does executive assistant services. But they're fantastic. And it's a great partnership because that's not something currently that we offer. And I would rather have somebody get served at a really, really high level and not use the service that we currently have than use the service we currently have and be disappointed or, you know, end up with a poor result.

49:26 This is a big one. And this kind of ties into the executive versus VA discussion. But it's one that we wanted to break out because we want to dive a little bit deeper. Number nine, not setting proper expectations. So this is one where, I mean, I've got kind of a polarizing example of this and I don't mind sharing it, which is that... You know, we have a VA that we placed with a client that we've done a lot of business with and multiple consulting projects over probably about a three year span now. And we have long lasting standing relationships with these people. And we placed a VA with them to do some social media work. Now, we knew that they were paying a pretty good clip for social media help, you know, before they brought on their VA.

50:15 What we didn't know was the level of help that they were getting and the expectations that they were now putting on the virtual assistant. And so to be clear about this, you know, they were paying several thousand dollars a month to a marketing agency to develop and execute a social media strategy. Right. The agency was, you know, writing the copy. They were selecting the images. They were looking at the strategy. They were actually digging in on the engagement. What's working? What's not working? Tweaking, changing, shifting, running paid ads from time to time, boosting posts from time to time.

50:56 And that's what an agency does. And so they get a VA who comes in and is doing a good job just posting on their social, basically, taking what they're given and posting on their social. And the expectation was what that the VA was going to replace an agency that they were paying several thousand dollars to. No, no. It doesn't work that way. In most cases, not all. There are times where you're paying way too much money for something that a VA could totally do. However, this is a perfect example of expectations being way off. You cannot replace an agency that you're paying several thousand dollars to, who, by the way, has a really good reputation for doing what they do with a VA that you're paying 10 bucks an hour to and hope they're going to do exactly the same thing as a full-on It's crazy.

51:50 It's huge, man. There's some interesting layers that come into this one as it relates to expectations too. So 100%, if you think you're going to replace an entire team that has that expertise that when you have an agency specifically to this, this instance, they've got like 10 to 20 people on their team. Yep. Right. And that's their lane and their native language is yours, right? And then you think you're going to bring somebody on for 20 hours a week and you think they're going to do all the work of like, yeah, it's just insanity. The other part of expectations too, if you've never had a VA, you don't know what you don't know. And so part of what we do is we help you navigate. We help you with like, what questions should you ask when you are interviewing your VA?

52:35 What are good answers? Wow. How do you onboard your VA properly? It's like making sure you have your, not just communicating your expectations to your VA, but you've got to have proper expectations. And so we help navigate because again, there's so, it might sound overly simplistic. Like I'm just hiring somebody on, they're going to help me. Yeah, but like, okay, what happens if there's a miscommunication? What happens if they're sick for the day? What happens if they turn something out that you don't like? Like, how do you navigate that? So we want to make sure that as somebody who has somebody on your team to get maximum value from that, we also want to make sure that you know what's real, what's not, what's the right way to approach things. So, yeah, expectations is, it's a vault of, we could do a whole thing on just expectations.

53:16 But be really clear, be graceful, be patient. And as well as on the same loop expectations, make sure you're really clear and communicating those expectations to your VA and perhaps any of the other team members that you have in case you have a bigger team. This isn't your first hire. Yeah, that's really well said. All right, let's round it out with number 10. And this is really like trying to avoid hiring the Swiss army knife. VAs can do a lot of things, bro. And this is something that you've definitely seen a lot from a lot of our clients. And it can be, I think, very enticing to go, holy crap, I'm going to hire this one human and they're going to do all the things.

53:57 So why is that a danger? Yeah. So here's how it usually presents itself. We're very transparent about our fees and all the things that are there. So our fees are $10 an hour for your VA. Where this can get dangerous. So we have a client. They wanted their VA to be customer service, a social media manager. They wanted them to be doing their social media posting and communication with clients and their group. They wanted them to also be their editor for all their videos. They wanted them to also be a sales. Well, if you went stateside and if you think about this, like, would you go put a job post out on Craigslist or on, you know, Indeed or any of the job postings for all of those roles?

54:39 Or would you stop and go, wait a minute, those are probably different skills and different humans. Yeah. But in our brain, we go, well, I'm going to pay a VA for 40 hours a week. And well, I have all these tasks I need to get done. So I'll just hire this one person to do all these things. They're going to get half-assed and they're going to drop the ball somewhere because it's too much to tackle. And funny enough, so this was a learning experience on our end. We're like, oh, we have these tasks. Like, let's hire this one VA. Like, we had our one VA who was dope. We had him on for 20 hours a week. We're like, great, let's amp him out to 40 hours a week and take on all these other tasks. And Amy was like, whoa, whoa, pump the brakes. Uh-uh.

55:20 She goes, what are the tasks that you really need done? And she goes, let's add a second VA to your team. Let's give them that those other 20 hours. So technically your business is paying for 40 of one person full time. But we had two people that were specific to an outcome that were specialists and holy crap. Like they're both rock stars in their lane. But the reality is if they had to do each other's tasks, they'd probably hate their job. Yeah. 100%. Well, and you know what? My friend Rory Vaden says diluted focus equals diluted results. It's no different when you hire a VA. I mean, think about this, and we really are a good example of that because we did exactly that.

56:02 The results were amazing. If you think about this in your business, especially when you're talking about a virtual assistant or anybody that you're going to bring on your team, if you bring somebody on your team and you say, okay, look, I want you to focus right here in this lane and I want you to just master it and dominate it. How much more effective do you think that person is going to be in that area of your business as opposed to taking the shotgun approach and just being like, I mean, quite frankly, there's not enough time in the day for any human to master anything when you're doing all the things. It goes back to the old saying, jack of all trades, master of none. And that is not what you want in your business.

56:44 VA is no different than hiring somebody else that you're going to hire to bring onto your team. You want people to get really, really good in one specific area and knock it the freak out of the park. I mean, at the beginning, where this gets a little bit tough is at the very beginning. You have been the Swiss army knife, right? When there's nobody else, you're doing all the things. And you're thinking to yourself in your head, well, if I'm doing all the things, why can't I bring somebody else on who's doing all the things? Well, let me ask you a question. How's that working out for you doing all the things?

57:25 And is it solving the problem of you doing all the things to bring on another human to do all the things? No. You're just doubling your problem at that point. So as tantalizing as I think it can be to get really excited about somebody doing, and by the way, like I can hear this when people are like, oh my gosh, oh, they can do this and they can do that and they can do this and they can do that. And it's like, slow your roll there, all right? One little piece and not to interrupt you, but just wanna pose the question. Would you go do all of the things in your business for $10 an hour? Yeah, no. Like when you think of the volume of what we do, if we knew we were going to get $10 an hour to do all of the things, like, so you got to have some real realistic expectations there too, but yeah.

58:11 Yeah, I completely agree. I completely agree. Well, look, I hope this has been helpful for you. Whether you currently have a VA on staff right now or anybody on staff, I hope that this has been helpful. Honestly, what we really wanted to do was hand you a masterclass on how to not screw it up. And that's from the things that we've done poorly, from the things we've seen clients do poorly. We've seen everything in the last 18 months. And we'll continue to give you guys all of the learnings that we've got. And if you want to hire a VA, if you've heard enough and you're like, man, you know what? I now feel like I know how to do this and I want to get the right one with the right culture who's trained properly, who's really going to help me.

58:52 And I want to have a great onboarding experience. Brooke, tell them where they can go if they want to use us to hire a VA. Yeah. Coachingassistance.com. So coachingassistance.com. You can see a number of the different tools that they're versed in. Actually, one of the other things we should put in the show notes as well. We'll drop a PDF that you guys can download. It's got a hundred plus things that a VA could do for you. You can't have them do all hundred. Not all hundred at the same time. But if you're trying to get your head wrapped around, like, what are the different things that these VAs could take off of my plate? It's really quite eye-opening, by the way, when you look at like the first time we did this, right? I know we were like, holy crap. Like, these are all the things we're spending hours every week doing.

59:36 I was doing lead gen or if I was doing sales or if I was fulfilling or if I was networking, like how much more money or revenue could I generate if I handed this off? So for $10 an hour over here, like, woohoo. Yeah, it made it crazy. So we'll put that in the show notes as well, just to get your gears turning. Awesome sauce. All right, man. Well, thank you. You brought some really great insights. I'm so grateful for our, you know, I try. I'm so grateful for you and Amy and Vanessa. You guys have really led that business. And there's so much that you guys have learned process. I hope this is incredibly valuable for you that are listening right now. And until next time, thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation podcast. We'll see you on the next one.

1:00:17 Take care, everybody. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.