#626: Hiring A Virtual Assistant: What To Delegate & How To Manage With Tricia Sciortino

As soon as you can kind of bring that person on, I think you see your business accelerate because you're able to spend your time really focused on the business and what it means to grow that business versus being buried in the processes behind the scenes of the business. I'm Amy Porterfield, ex-corporate girl turned CEO of a multi-seven figure business, but it wasn't all that long ago that I lacked the confidence, the budget, and the time to focus on growing my small, but mighty business. Fast forward past many failed attempts and lessons learned, and you'll see the business I have today, one that changes lives and gives me more freedom than I ever thought possible, one that used to only exist as a daydream. I created the online marketing-made easy podcast to give you simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies to help you do the same. If you're an ambitious entrepreneur or one in the making who's looking to create a business that makes an impact and a life you love, you're in the right place, friend. Let's get started. I want to tell you about a podcast that is so good. It's called My First Million, hosted by Sam Parr and Sean Purry, and it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My First Million features famous guests like Alex Hermosi, I love that guy, Sophia Amaruzzo, and Hassan Menage, sharing their secrets for how they made their First Million and how to apply their learnings to capitalize on today's business trends and opportunities. They recently did an episode with Jesse Itzler, and it was so good. I just love his energy and unique take on being an entrepreneur and a successful one at that. Listen to My First Million wherever you get your podcasts. So, do you ever get stuck on coming up with podcast topics and getting together your whole process to make sure you get enough content out on a regular basis? Well, you know I love a good process. So today, I'm excited to share the ultimate podcast topic meeting template. It's a free resource that my team and I swear by. So this document is the secret to keeping the podcast meetings where you select your episode topics like a bunch of topics in one setting so that you can batch. Well, I'm going to show you how to run that meeting like a well-oiled machine. Now, here's the cool thing. Whether you are a solar entrepreneur and you don't have anyone to pitch and catch with yet, or you have a fantastic team and you can do a meeting with them and you can strategize and come up with new topic ideas. Whether you're doing it alone or with a team, you can customize my template to make it work for you. And the best part, it's a Google Doc. So you can easily update it with your own topics at any time. So remember, the key to a thriving podcast is staying on top of your content game. And with the ultimate podcast topic meeting template, you'll have all the tools you need to stay consistent with your podcast episodes and make sure that you get a lot of downloads every single week. So go to Amy Porterfield.com forward slash topic to get yours now. That's Amy Porterfield.com forward slash topic. Welcome to another episode of online marketing made easy. Get your pen and paper out right now because this episode is jam packed. And I'm not even exaggerating jam packed with information. You will not want to forget. So today we're talking about hiring a virtual assistant and how a virtual assistant can support you and your business. Specifically, we're even getting into how they can support you with marketing efforts. So I have my friend Trisha Shortino joining me today. And I'm so excited to have her here. She is the CEO and a board member of Belay, one of the nation's leading virtual staffing companies. So Belay has landed on ink 5,000s list of fastest growing companies and best places to work under Trisha's leadership. I love this woman. Now take it from me. Hiring a virtual assistant is such a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to take at any point in their business. But it's essentially, in my opinion, the best first hire you can make. The key is to know what you're hiring a virtual assistant for and how to train them. And we're going to talk about this in the episode today. Now I want to kind of take you behind the scenes really quick. First of all, Christine is my executive assistant and virtual assistant executive assistant. I would say same thing except executive assistant definitely takes on more responsibilities. And you can hire a virtual assistant and kind of move them into an executive assistant where Christine handles a lot of personal and private stuff for me as well as the day today. Now I got Christine four years ago from Belay. That's how I found her. I used this staffing company. I didn't really know anybody at the staffing company yet, but I had heard great things about them. And so I found Christine. And soon I fell so in love with her and did not want to share her with anyone else because you can hire a virtual assistant for just a few hours a week and they can work with a few different people. But I realized I want her full time. So I actually bought out Christine from Belay a while into her working with me. So now she is 100% working with me. But before she was just with Belay and had other clients. And it was a perfect way for me to start because I was nervous about hiring someone full time. I didn't know if I was ready. And I also didn't want to have to search for them online. I didn't want to have to do all the vetting myself. They do all of that. So it was like a really big deal for me to cut through all the noise, cut through all the confusion of, is this the right person? What questions do I ask them? How do I know they're qualified? Belated all of that for me. Now the woman you're going to hear from Trisha. This is kind of a funny situation how we're connected. It's like that seven degrees of separation Kevin Bacon thing because we were very connected. We just didn't really know it. So number one, you know that Michael Hyatt is my executive business coach. He hired Trisha many, many, many years ago before he started his company. He had just left a publishing company where he was running the show but he went on to be his own boss after that. Before he had made a penny with his new company, he hired Trisha. Like that's how important he knew a virtual assistant was going to be. Before he started making money and what is now full focus the company he runs, he hired Trisha. And then Trisha got hired by Brian Miles and Brian and Shannon before they made a penny starting belay, they hired Trisha to be their virtual assistant. So they hired Trisha and then together they all built up belay and now Trisha is the CEO of belay and Brian and Shannon have now exited. They sold that company. Brian and Shannon happened to be dear friends to Hobie and I. We go on vacations with them. We love them so much. They spent time at the lake this weekend or this weekend, I mean this summer over the weekend. But it was so much fun to be spending time with them and we love them dearly. But we got to learn a lot about how they started this company, why they started it, what it looks like. It's an incredible company belay. So this episode is not all about belay, but I just wanted to tell you kind of how it all came about. And really the important theme here before I bring Trisha on is that both Michael Hyatt and Brian Miles, two people that have multi, multi million dollar businesses, they hired a virtual assistant before they were making any money. And I think that is a very important entrepreneurial mindset that you hire even before you're ready. You get support even though you're scared of like how am I going to figure this out? What am I going to give them? Am I making enough money? A virtual assistant will help you make more money. I 100% have had that experience. And in addition to that, taking the leap and having the faith that knowing that there's no badge of honor doing it on your own, I know that many solo pernors are listening to me right now. You are stunting your growth without hiring your first virtual assistant. It will change everything. If you're an OG of this podcast, you know that my first virtual assistant was Rebecca. And I hired her for five hours a week before I ever got Christine. I had Rebecca. And Rebecca came into my world because she found typos in my blog. This is like, I don't know like 13 years ago. She found typos in my blogs. And she was really sweet about it. She wasn't like the typo annoying person. Like, you've got a mistake here. It wasn't like that. She was just like, hey, I noticed you had some typos and I'd love to help you out. Like, do you need a little extra help? I'm an executive assistant in a corporate job. I'd like to go virtual. Do you need any help in your business? And I could start with your blog. And it was just so sweet and so non-judgmental that I loved her instantly. And then from there, we started talking and I hired her five hours a week. She kept her corporate job at the time and worked with me in the mornings, lunchtime nights until I started hiring her for more hours. And she eventually quit. So Rebecca will always have a special place in my heart. But I did it early on. So I think it was like the by my second year in business. And I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to afford her. I was afraid that I didn't know if I can give her enough jobs or tasks. And I was afraid that like, am I getting in over my head? But I also knew I wanted to create something amazing and I could not do it alone. I knew that there were tasks that I shouldn't have been doing. I wanted to be front stage of my business. I wanted to be on my podcast. I wanted to be on video. I knew that I was the visionary, the leader. And so there were tasks that I was doing that were keeping me from doing what I was meant to be doing in the business. And so when I realized, wait a second, I don't need to do this alone. There's so many things that I need help with so I can do the tasks that I was meant to do to attract the audience to build the brand to start making more money. When that clicked for me, everything changed. So that is why this episode is so important. That is why I brought Trisha on to talk about finding hiring, working with a virtual assistant. So use this as your sign that the time for you to hire just might be now. I won't make you wait any longer. Let's bring on my guest. Hey there Trisha. Welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you here. Hi Amy. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited. Me too. I've been looking forward to this topic. It's one that comes up with my audience over and over again, hiring a virtual assistant. When do you know you're ready? How do you find someone good? What tasks do you give them? It's something we talk about a lot in our communities. So I'm so glad you're here. But before we dive in, tell everyone a little bit about yourself and about Belay. Yes, such good questions. I can't wait to get to it. So a little bit about me, I'm the CEO of Belay. I've been here with the company since founding back in 2010, kind of made my way up, started as the first virtual assistant. And then over the last 13 years, kind of just made my way up and have had the privilege and honor of being the CEO since 2020. So it's been a great ride and have enjoyed loving, sourcing great leaders with the help they need to grow their businesses. And so that's truly what Belay does. We're a flexible staffing solution that equips small businesses, solarpreneurs, entrepreneurs, leaders with the right help, whether that's a virtual assistant or an accounting professional. And it's been a journey and a beautiful ride. It really has because I did not know that you first started as a virtual assistant, the first virtual assistant, and then moved all the way up to CEO. That's pretty impressive. Thank you. Thank you. It has been a ride. I took a step back, like maybe most women do. I took a step back so that I could catapult forward. My children were born and I was going through this place in life where I wanted to take a step back and be present. And then I stepped into this awesome opportunity where I got to work for a virtual remote company back in 2010, which really wasn't a big thing. And allowed me to be a present mom. It allowed me to hone my skills. It allowed me to work for an amazing startup and help just take it to great places. So it's been great. Yes. And you've seen a lot and you've done a lot throughout those years. So I'm excited that we get to have you talk about this because you know it from an intimate perspective. So here's my first question. In order to grow and expand a business, it's important for business owners to work on the business rather than in the business, which means they need to delegate. Now, I know delegation is so tough, especially for my solar pernoors who have been doing it on their own for a long time and are a little bit scared to spend the money to hire. It's usually their first hire. A lot of people in my community, their first hire is going to be a virtual assistant. So let's start at the very top. How can a virtual assistant contribute to the overall growth and success of a company? Yeah. And this is such a great question. I've had the privilege of watching so many leaders starting out, starting with this mindset that actually startup is when there's so much administration to do. There's so much setting up and busyness and creating processes and systems and order and organization as you're getting the business started. So having somebody come on early earlier than you think and sooner than you think will allow you to actually focus on the things that will grow this brand new business of yours that you just created. The things that you want to be doing the reasons why you've created the business. It allows you to focus on who is my ideal client? Where am I going to meet these clients? How do I get in front of my clients? I have to create the content and be the voice to speak to my clients. How am I going to source great work when I do get a client? How am I going to source the right products for my client? Right? The vision for the company and you're doing that all alone in the beginning. So I think you know it's so critical and I always advise people. There's soon or you can kind of bring that person on. I think you see your business accelerate because you're able to spend your time really focused on the business and what it means to grow that business versus being buried in the processes behind the scenes of the business. Oh, so true. That is so perfectly said. So tell me this. Are there specific types of tasks for which a virtual assistant tends to be particularly well suited for? Because that's something that comes up. What do I even give my virtual assistant? Will I have enough work for them? How do I get all that organized? So are there specific tasks that are perfect for this? Yes. And here's the beauty of a virtual assistant. They're specifically custom to you and your business. And so you know virtual assistants truly run the gamut of the type of administration and operational support that can give you regardless of where it sits inside your organization regardless of what your business is. We have seen that we're so industry agnostic being able to provide virtual assistants for so many different types of leaders. So it can be very specific. But I mean when you look at the core baseline of what a virtual assistant can do for you, there are the general ones we all know about scheduling is huge. Even if it's just scheduling, how are you going to meet with your first clients or scheduling, how are you going to get worked on? Or maybe you're working with outside vendors. You need to coordinate a lot of scheduling coordination could easily be handed off in the beginning. Email management of course is a basic one that we always see coming through to really free you up. But then I think you want to look at the things that help you take steps forward and remove whatever it is from you that you're spending your time on. And that's where we would recommend kind of you as an individual going through. And I do this myself still. You know, I've been working with with a virtual virtual assistant for 12 years. And I've done this every year where I kind of walk through and say, what am I spending my time on? What should I not be spending my time on? And who else should be doing that thing? That's not me. And you know, even every year that iterates. So I think when you're starting, you really just need to sit down and take stock and take inventory. What is my day look like? What am I spending my hours in my minutes? And then realizing that the things that you spend minutes on compound and become hours and those are the things you can give away. Yes. Okay. So when you're thinking about hiring a virtual assistant, what kind of qualities or skills are you looking for when you're hiring them just to ensure a successful working relationship? And then I want to add to that. So that's my first question. My second question is, can you follow that up with some great examples of questions that you can ask during the onboarding process to help you work with them seamlessly? Yes. Love this. I've got some great questions. Before we go there. Okay. Before we go there, you know, baseline, they have got to be a great communicator written and verbally. This is probably the person in my organization that I communicate with the most on a day-to-day basis. It's my virtual assistant, right? Same. They are like the wind beneath your wing. They are the right hand next to you. Don't tell my CFO. I said that. I said. I'm not going to tell. Yes. We love them. But like on the day-to-day basis, so they've got to be a great communicator. They have fit your communication model and type, if you will. So that's number one. Plus, they're representing you to the outside world, whether they're emailing on your behalf or scheduling on your behalf, so written communication and things like that. So important. The second one for me is that they're actually very driven. So I view a really good virtual executive assistant as someone who can lead me and lead through task and is not a passive secretary sitting back waiting for you to delegate to them that they are really proactive and comfortable leading into the relationship and saying, hey, you've got this coming up. I need to talk to you about next up or, hey, I'm going to get ahead of you on this thing and I see this is coming down the pipeline and I'm going to get it started. So truly someone who has leadership type skills and is comfortable more than anything, sitting in that type of seat of leadership. And then for me, details, details, details. I mean, they are in the details. I don't like details. I don't want to be in the details. So I need my my assistant to be all about the detail. Yes, we still oriented. So those are my three top qualities for great virtual executive assistant. Those are fantastic. I love them. Okay, talk to me about those questions questions. Okay, questions. Okay. So obviously we're going to assume you've already questioned them on their skill set one they've done in the past. So we're going to skip over all those boring ones. So we're going to ask things like this is a good one. Your leader client, whoever has not delegated anything to you this week. What are you going to do? Oh, okay. So why do you ask a question like that? This tests their pro activity. If I'm not giving to you, are you trying to take for me? Because a lot of us as we get started, have a hard time letting go of things. Either we're too busy to think about what you need to delegate or we have a little control freakism inside of us that just we hold on to the things that we love even though we shouldn't do them. Yeah. And so you're kind of getting to the plate. You want to see will they reach out? Will they come to you and say, hey, I see you have this on your task list. Can I may I do this? I see that you have this thing coming up next week. May I prep for that? So that's what that question is really looking for is will they come to you or will they say, I will just wait until I hear from Amy, right? Like I will just wait till Jennifer to Jennifer reaches out to me or Trisha reaches out to me. We don't want that. We want to know that they're going to come to you and ask work. Second question. Tell me about a time in your career when you received feedback. How did you feel about it and how did you implement on it? So we asked that question because we want to know like, are they action oriented? Do they have feelings about feedback? We review feedback as a gift. We actually believe that feedback goes in a circle and it's very secular and it's a loop. And we want to know that they're comfortable receiving it, taking action on it and doing that repeatedly throughout a relationship. Because if you address the things that aren't perfect when they're not perfect, then you never have to have the we need a conversation conversation because it's just part of the conversation. You know what time it is? So what do we have especially here in Tennessee? And it's football season. Oh my goodness, my husband is very excited. And I love quarter four, the home stretch. It's time to close out another year of growth and prep for the next year of revenue. So to bring a more business this quarter form beyond, you need sales software that helps you score. 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And I don't know about you, but as an online entrepreneur, my customers experience, especially when it comes to checking out is so important. Plus, not only do they support your customers, they support you as the entrepreneur. Shopify's award-winning help desk is there to support your success through every question and every step of the way. There's a reason Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the US because businesses that grow grow with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash made easy all lowercase. So go to Shopify.com slash made easy now to grow your business. No matter what stage you're in, that Shopify.com slash made easy. Okay, that is huge right there. You never have to have the we need to have a conversation conversation when the feedback is just flowing on a regular basis and it's just part of how you communicate. That's right. It's just the leader you are. It's just the person you are. And that's a great skill to take everywhere. I mean, I'm that way with all of my executives and we just we iterate is the way I like to put it. We're constantly iterating so we're never having to have a conversation. So I love that. Yes. Next question would be like what steps would you take to make this relationship successful? What strategic questions would they ask to serve you best? Like if they were coming to serve you, how would they approach you to get started? What is their plan of action to be a great virtual assistant for you and let them lay out the steps and go through. Here's how I would approach you being my new client or leader. Let's see what they bring to the table. That's good one. And then lastly, what excites you about being a virtual assistant? So, honestly, you want somebody who's passionate about doing this work. Someone who actually thrives in the details. They are an excellent communicator. And this type of role is something that fills their cup because they're servant in nature and they love planning and they love organizing. And that's what that question will tackle. Okay. These are so good. We're going to make sure we list these in the show notes. So all of you can copy and paste these and don't forget about them. Once you start to hire your first virtual assistant. So I love these so much. All right. So and my next question is this, when deciding the task to be delegated to a virtual assistant, I think it's fair to say that marketing often gets overlooked because entrepreneurs and buddy entrepreneurs, they tend to write it off as too complicated or too involved for a virtual assistant. They think I need to hire a marketing project manager. So I need to do all the marketing until I have enough money to hire that role. But it just isn't true. Virtual assistants can help in some of these areas. So what I want to do is give you some specific areas. And if you can help me with specific tasks or activities, a business owner can delegate to a virtual assistant underneath these areas of marketing. Are you good with that? Yes, please. So it's crazy myth. Yes, let's debunk it. I love that. So the first one is social media marketing. How can a virtual assistant support these knowing that they are not a social media marketing expert, but can they still help? Yeah. So I think there's a difference between a social media manager or a social media strategist and then a social media assistant. So if you have a strategy laid out, which might include the what of what you want to post, the content of what you want to post, and when you want to post it, then the virtual assistant can be the executor of your strategy. And I think that's what holds true in all the areas of social media, of marketing, honestly. So give them the strategy. And I've had a social media assistant before as well, but the strategy was already written. The content was decided. They were just they were just scheduling the posts. They were maybe doing some commenting. Maybe they were looking for a picture that went well with a theme we were going through. They were blocking time on my calendar. So I had the time to create the content that was needed, but really you can think of them as the administrative executioner of the strategy. Oh, that's perfect. Absolutely. That makes perfect sense. Okay. How about this one? What task can they do for a podcast? Yes. So scheduling kind of Amy and I in our coordination, right? Even to get to where we are today, the reaching out to guests, the scheduling, the following up with guests, making sure they have the right links and those things, making sure they have the outline they needed, working with your team to create the outline, maintaining the organization of all of the podcast content in the editing room, making sure the assets go to the right people for editing, prepping the client for the interview, prepping the guest for an interview. So so many things. That one is huge. Yeah, there's so many things a virtual assistant can do to help with the podcast. I remember my first virtual assistant, Rebecca. That was the biggest thing she did was help me get my podcast up and running. Initially, she was part of that. And then together, we just worked out a system. We had no system to start with. But together, we worked something out. What was she going to do? What was I going to do? And it was just Rebecca and I with my podcast. So this podcast is huge now. So it's proof that you could get started with just a virtual assistant and get your podcast up and running and streamlined as well. So I love that one. Yes. And then the last example, just for the sake of time, how could a virtual assistant support someone who is creating or launching a digital course? Yes. So similarly, there really can take on a lot of the administration. Even from setup, whether that's research on the topic of the course on your behalf, it could be organizing the content and the outline of the course, outline formation. What are the modules? They can put it on to a beautiful outline for you. They could coordinate the support for any follow-up email campaigns that might come from that digital course. They could monitor the sales funnel of the course and feed that information back. They could set up and monitor reporting of the course. It's usability. What's being used? Who's clicking? Who's not? Who's buying? Who's not? They can send out invitations for the course to those who sign up. So again, so many opportunities. It's true. It's funny. You hit on one that was really big for us. So we just got out of a digital course academy launch. And we are so busy for the eight days that the card is open. And one of my marketing directors, she was in charge of pulling the sales reports a few times a day. We needed to know where we are, where we on goal. And if we weren't on goal, we were going to pivot our strategy a bit. So it was so important to know throughout the day where we were as we got closer to closing the enrollment. And she was just too busy with emails going out and broadcasting and supporting our affiliates. So I called up Christine, my executive assistant. And I said every hour for the next three days as we get close to in closing enrollment, can you pull the report? And we already had an SOP. This is exactly how you pull the report because there's lots of levers to pull to get all the numbers we wanted. And so she learned how to do it. And then the last three days, the biggest stressor we had was where are we with numbers? Got taken off the table. And that was a perfect thing for her to do. And it changed everything. So I'm behind you 100% on those. Yeah, you're just going to think creatively. I love that. I love that so much. And speaking about thinking creatively, collaboration and creativity are essential in the marketing world. So can you share how a virtual assistant can contribute to the creative and ideation processes? Yes, I think the biggest way, and I leverage my executive assistant this way, is to create and facilitate the moments where that's allowed to happen. So it's really assisting and gathering the right people in the room in a creative environment, booking the right space for the right people and getting everybody there so that those creative juices can be flowing and also contribute to agenda ideas for that time. So for me, I get in person with my team, even though we're a virtual company, every month or two in person. And my executive assistant really helps to ensure that that time together is very meaningful. She comes with ideas on icebreakers and team building activities and things we're going to do to help inspire great conversation. And I think they can really facilitate. I almost use my virtual assistant as a mini event planner, if you will. And it's literally her most favorite thing to do. And then we aren't stressed out about coming to that meeting and what preparations we have to make, we can just come free and ready to have great conversation and not worry about the logistics of anything. We know the foods coming in when it's supposed to. We know food's going to be cleaned up when it's supposed to. We know the coffee is going to be filled. We can just do our best work. You know, we take those little things for granted. You're like speaking my language here. We, when we ended the launch, the last day I wanted to have a nice dinner for my team that was vert, our was on site at my house. And it's like half the team comes out for this. And I had an idea to get a personal chef. So I had already said, let's do that. But one of our CEO's vert executive assistant, she actually came on site like you were mentioning to support us. Now I just had an idea that we would sit all over the house because I don't really have a formal dining that would fit everyone. So I said, people could sit outside on the couch on the table. I didn't really think much of it after that. I came downstairs after the launch had ended. She had found a way to save money, but still rent all these chairs and make the table beautiful with flowers. And we all got to sit together. The food was impeccable. I didn't have anything to do with the menu. Like those little things make all the difference because the team felt really special as we closed the doors to a huge launch. And she did it all. And I think it's important to let your executive assistant have a little creativity on their own. Run with it. Give them a little room to run with it because I would have never come up with any of that. Exactly. And I'm the same exact way. I love it. And she will surprise me. Sometimes not tell me what she's doing. Yeah. She'll have to a meeting. And to your point, she, you know, she brought in all this belay gear. And she has like the belay rug rolled out. And I'm like, Oh, okay, girl, I just thought I was about to walk into a boardroom. I don't know. It's fantastic. It's the best. So encouraging your executive assistant to kind of branch out and do those things within boundaries, of course, is so delightful to the person that is managing the executive assistant. I just felt so loved and taking care of. So it was really cool. If you've been in business for any length of time, you know that remotely collaborating as a small team or with contractors and VAs can be a bit of a challenge. Now, I'm a big believer in the power of teamwork, which is why I'm excited to share an incredible tool to help small and remote teams like ours rise above this challenge and excel. And that tool is Miro. Miro is a digital collaboration platform designed to facilitate remote team communication and virtual project management. So with Miro, you can auto generate processes, visually demonstrate ideas, effortlessly organize your data, and collaborate on big ideas, whether your team is in the same office or working miles apart. It's an incredible tool for online businesses of any size that want to work way more efficiently and save time by automating processes and organizing your business information all to create bigger results in your business. And you can get your first three Miro boards for free when you sign up today at miro.com forward slash podcast. So for three free boards, totally worth it. Go to miro.com forward slash podcast. As an online business owner, you've heard of Facebook ads. You've heard of Google ads. But what you might not hear about as often is LinkedIn ads. So here's why promoting your business on a platform with over 160 million daily logins could potentially be the best bang for your marketing buck. Listen up my business to business marketers and online creators. LinkedIn ads allow you to build relationships with decision makers, decision makers who would be very interested in what you have to offer. Because out of its 980 million members, 180 million of those are senior level executives and 10 million are sea level executives. You'll be able to see way better results reaching those decision makers with LinkedIn's targeting and measurement tools built specifically for B2B. In fact, 79% of B2B content marketers said that LinkedIn produces the best results for paid media. With the cost of ads these days, that just might be music to your ears. Just think of all the people hanging out on LinkedIn waiting to hear about your offer. Oh, and even better, you can even get $100 credit on your next campaign by going to LinkedIn.com forward slash Amy to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com forward slash Amy terms and conditions apply. Okay, so I know we're getting to the end, but I have a few more quick questions. How do you recommend entrepreneurs train their virtual assistance when it comes to executing their tasks? So this can be one of the hardest undertakings for entrepreneurs. So please share all the tips and tricks because what I see is my students are not hiring their executive assistant because they feel like they don't have time to train them or get them up to speed. Oh, yes. I mean, my first tip for training is admit you have to do training. That's why it's number one. Okay, just, I mean, anyone you hire, virtual, not virtual assistant, marketing, whoever, an accountant, whatever, there will be training involved. So just prioritize it and make the room a first of all. Just make the room. I promise you that if you spent 30 minutes a day recording yourself, I love screencasts and I love looms, like recording yourself doing things. Just, you know, 15, 30 minutes a day, record yourself doing some things, hand them off and never do them again. Like if you just do the quick math, you realize like it's truly worth the investment of time. So that's my, my first tip is actually just do it, carve out a day, carve out an hour a day and prepare yourself and just make the training. You will, you will be so grateful on the other side. I promise I have never had a client come back and say that was that was the waste of time. It's never a waste of time. It's just never a waste of time. It's always the opposite. Oh my gosh, why did I not do this so much sooner? So that's the first tip. With that tip, like I said, I love screencasts, recording looms, showing and showing in my teaching, and then I say for the first couple weeks, just plan to have a couple of quick 30 minute zoom calls or whatever that may look like so you can topically go over all the things. And to not overwhelm you and your virtual assistant pick maybe two or three things you're going to start with, teach those things, keep the feedback loop alive so it doesn't feel like it's feedback, just iterate and iterate. And then when you've gained comfort and you've fully released two or three great things, then you can add on to that 30 days later or so. So that is my recommendation is start, create looms, invest the time, start small, and then just keep building. I'm still finding things that I can delegate after a dozen years or so having a virtual assistant. Amen. The list is endless. So you will constantly be able to iterate, but you have to start. Yes. And the longer you work, I've worked with Christine for four years now. The longer you work with your executive assistant, the better they get because they're growing in their role. So things you would never even think to give an executive assistant year one. I'm giving to Christine and she's just running with it year four and it's incredible. So it's like she's so much more than when we first started together because we were so new working in that capacity. So if you can keep your executive assistant for years and years meaning keep them happy and keep the relationship good, it will pay dividends beyond what you even expected. So that's one thing I really have loved. So in terms of scalability, how does hiring virtual assistants allow businesses to adapt to changing workloads and demands either during peak seasons or slow seasons or setting growth? So we're talking scalability now. Yes. And this is our bread and butter right here. I mean, this is foundational for Bale and what we do. You know, when we started this company back in 2010, we knew that there were leaders out there who needed just a small starting amount of support. They needed 40 hours a month or whatever that looked like. The beauty of it was sometimes they needed 60 hours a month because of their industry or their workload. So you can find virtual assistants and Bale does this really well where you can flex the amount of hours you need month to month. So if you're a business, if you're we support a lot of churches and nonprofits and the churches usually go into slow season over the summer, everyone's vacationing and so it's kind of known. And so we've had clients just kind of decrease or back down their time that they need over summer and then ramp back up for fall. And we see a lot of that when we support universities and educational facilities and we know it's part of their industry and their business and we can just flex accordingly. And if you have like a big launch of something, you could scale up for the launch and scale back down when the launch is over. So I think you find the right person organization that can flex with you and it's it's amazing gift, especially when you're not you don't want to or not ready to commit into a 40 hour a week full-time person. Maybe just don't need that now. Yes, we absolutely did that during our DCA launch. We took advantage of that and it was incredibly helpful. So I love that you brought that up. Okay, so tell me this, people are listening and so many of my listeners right now, you know who you are, you need a virtual assistant. And I believe it is the perfect first hire. But you don't necessarily need to hire someone full-time, you don't need to deal with all the things that an entrepreneur has to deal with when you hire a full-time employee all by yourself. delay has a whole other opportunity that makes this so much easier. So how can my listeners find you and learn more about delay? Yes, please. Well, first of all, Amy, thank you. Yeah, you're so awesome. Yeah, check us out at belaysolutions.com. We have created an amazing guide. We have learned a lot about delegation, virtual assistance, leadership and communication over the last 13 years doing this. And we have compiled some of our best, best resources to give to you for free. We want you to have them. We want all your questions answered. We want you to have all the tips and tricks on how to onboard successfully. We want to explain to you about matching and how to find that right hire. So you can get access to that by texting Amy to 55123 and you will have access to all of these amazing resources. 12 years of learning how virtual assistance support clients. So they text 55123. They text Amy. Yep, 255123. Perfect. We'll put that in the show notes as well. Get the guide, my friends. If you do not have a virtual assistant or if you have one now and you're struggling to make it work, this is the guide that I want you to get your hands on. belay was literally the best thing that's ever happened to me. Christine is my lifesaver. You're right. I talk to her more than anybody else on the team. And like I mentioned in the intro, Christine came from belay. You have incredible, incredible support people there that I would highly recommend. So Trisha, thank you so much for being here and thank you for sharing more about hiring a virtual assistant, working with a virtual assistant and more importantly right now finding one, which is what my community needs to do. So thank you so very much. Thank you. It's been, it's been a great conversation. Thanks, Amy. Take care. Wow. The information that was just packed into this episode. Holy cow, I hope this helped give you some clarity on how a virtual assistant can benefit you and your business and how to find the right virtual assistant and how to manage a VA once you've hired them. Always remember that you get out what you put in. So the efforts you put in to finding this person working with this person onboarding, it will be a win-win over and over again. I love that Trisha talked about iterating and the flow of communication and the flow of feedback so that you never have to get to a situation where in my family, we call it a come to Jesus talk. You don't ever have to get there because the communication has been flowing all along and it is a situation where you and your virtual assistant feel comfortable having those conversations so that they can work optimally in your business and you feel really supported. So my question is this. Was there anything in particular that really shocked you or got you excited or inspired you about hiring a virtual assistant? If so, you know I want to hear from you, right? Go to Instagram. I'm just at Amy Porterfield. If you don't follow me yet, go to Instagram and DM me. You got to follow me to DM me to get into the right box where I can see it. But DM me, tell me your biggest takeaways from Trisha and let me know if you plan to hire a virtual assistant and if so, maybe give yourself a goal, like quarter one of 2024 or quarter two or whatever it might be. So I want to know. As always, thanks so much for joining me for another episode of online marketing made easy. I cannot wait to see you again next week. Same time, same place. Bye for now.