How to Hire Your First Virtual Assistant

Hello CEO teachers. Welcome back to the show today. We're going to be talking about a topic that I am excited to share, but I've also never talked about it before and what so crazy is that last week on Instagram, I ask you guys, I said, hey, we are planning our 2024 podcast in advance for the next year, 52 weeks of fun, and I would love to know what you want to hear about. So I want to ask that question to you guys, I would love to hear what are listeners. I just want to hear if you would do me a favor, I'll do you a favor if you'll head on over to the review section in the podcast, wherever you get your shows, whether that's on iTunes or in Spotify, and leave us a review here for the show, go ahead and tell me exactly what you want us to talk about next year. Any topic is not off limits, we can chat about literally anything when it comes to marketing or about life, you can ask me about mental health, you can ask me about your teacher business, you can ask me about how I manage my kids, I don't care what it is, let's talk about it. I want to make sure that we're giving you the best value in 2024 and that we are having a win-win relationship all aboard the CEO teacher train coming by today, though, what's crazy is that I ask Instagram this question, I'm sorry, I got down a little rabbit hole there, and I said, hey guys, what do you want to hear about in 2024, send me a direct message, and a lot of people sent back that they wanted to talk about virtual assistance, which is crazy because we already had this show planned and you guys just sent those messages. So today, that's exactly what we're going to be talking about, it's how to hire your first VA, which stands for virtual assistant, but really, how to start thinking about what it might mean to delegate your business, because that's a really important part of growing and making your business even more successful. And if you're listening to this thinking, I've just started, I don't even kind of want to think about it, I want to encourage you to put your listening cap on and still hear this message to still hear what I'm going to say, because I think sometimes when you listen to things before you're ready, it encourages you to push forward even faster, so stick around, you don't want to miss it. Hey teachers, welcome to your home away from the classroom, whether you are a full-time educator just getting started and thinking about the possibilities to advance past your current day scale, or you're a seasoned CEO teacher looking for extra strategies to make money online, you're in the right place, no impressive tech skills or marketing experience necessary. Just the passion and desire to transform your life by doing what you love, leaning in to your unique teaching magic. I'm Casey Morris, a former eighth grade ELA teacher myself, mom of the five, teacher marketing expert, and while I am the visionary behind the CEO teacher movement, this amazing community is continually being built by you, one beautiful dream at a time. Coming your way every Wednesday, as an extra credit bonus exclusively for teachers, welcome to the CEO teacher podcast. Go ahead and turn up the volume here. Are you the educator with a multitude of talents and passions, the classroom teacher who dreams big, or a rock star human with a passion for education? Because keep listening, it's your turn to make your mark on the world. As a teacher, you work so hard for your students, you create meaningful lessons that impact your kids for years and years to come. And when you combine your passion and your experience with something educators need, you go all in. And that my friend is where the magic happens. It's time to share your teaching ideas, your materials, your resources to start making a bigger impact and influence the world of education. You're not totally crazy for thinking that your teacher business can be successful. It can be a real money maker. Even if you have no idea where to start, zero tech skills and a serious allergy to marketing yourself. The 10 steps to get started selling your teaching resources online is your roadmap to help you take massive action and prioritize the most important business tips as you begin the journey towards living your hashtag best life when you're ready to take the guesswork out of turning your teaching skills and talents into an online business and turn your passion into profit. Go to Casey Morris dot com slash 10 steps to get your brand spanking new workbook and join a world where there is no cap on the pay scale and where you get to make a bigger impact on your own terms. That's Casey Morris dot com slash 10 steps and you can type it in your browser just like this. K-A-Y-S-E-M-O-R-R-I-S dot com slash one zero steps and I'll see you inside of the workbook. I feel like I need a support group for women who love quotes because I trip out like I shared the thing on the first webinar we did a couple weeks ago like three or four quotes in the team the next day was like, you know what if we just like cut it back to one like what if what if we just didn't share all four quotes that took like 15 minutes because I started just rambling about it and they were right but it was really hard to just narrow it down to one I am a quote girl I think that's why I love Taylor Swift so much I just live for words. I did I do so I'm going to share three quotes they're going to be really short the first two are the first is you have to know when to delegate down so you can rise up that was cheesy but it's true it doesn't say who wrote that I'm not sure and I don't know who wrote this one either but do what you do best and outsource the rest but my favorite one is from an author that I read before I was ready to read this I started reading this book probably five years ago I am going to go get it in physical form I listen to it on audio. I'm going to go get it in physical form tomorrow I feel like I need it again but it changed a lot for me because it allowed me to see the future of a company that just was in its infancy so the CEO teacher started in 2018 about five years ago to the day and I listened to this book it's called the emeth revisited I think it stands for entrepreneur entrepreneur myth you know I'm not sure. The emeth it's the letter E dash m y th for all of my auditory learners out there revisited and it was written by Michael Gerber he also has a book called the emeth but I read the revisited version which was supposed to be like the new and improved version but it talks about hiring people and I remember listening to those first couple chapters and I remember thinking holy cow he said if your business depends on you you don't own a business you have a job and it's the worst job in the world because you're working for a lunatic and I really resonated with that because I was not in my best energy I was not in my best self and so I remember listening to that book and being like oh wait Michael might be my people and so this is one of these quotes that I realized I have to start hiring out now did I hire to the best of my abilities to begin with no was I had great balls absolutely not but over the years we've gotten really good at understanding what it takes to hire someone but Michael Gerber said the key is to plan in vision and articulate what you see in the future both for yourself and for your employees because if you don't articulate it and I mean write it down clearly so others can understand it you don't own it. You don't own it and do you know that in all the years I've been doing this work with small business owners out of the thousands upon thousands we've met there have only been a few who had any plan at all nothing is written nothing committed to paper nothing concrete at all and over the last few years of working with amazing people in the entrepreneurial space we have Facebook ads teams we have copywriters we have professional web designers and things like that they are always blown away blown away at what we have written down and I don't tell you that to boast or brag I tell you that because if you're looking to hire your first virtual assistant you have to have your things together or it's going to be a rocky road and you're going to blame them for not getting the results that you want it I did when I first hired my first couple of virtual assistants I said wow I'm paying you and you're not doing what I wanted you to do and they didn't know what I wanted them to do it was on me although I wasn't self-aware enough to know that in the very beginning. So let's talk about the difference between a virtual assistant and an employee a VA which I'll refer to it that way from the for the rest of the show now is a virtual assistant it's someone that you hire you usually pay them a lot more money hourly than you would an employee because they don't do as much work for you they usually have specialized knowledge which if you've ever read Napoleon Hill you know about the importance of specialized knowledge you make a lot more money but you don't work as many hours and so a VA is someone who has a very specific job for you but they charge a very high hourly rate I'm talking about like 35 to $45 an hour an hour which is insanity to me thinking back on it but if you're not ready to hire someone for multiple hours they have to be able to withstand enough work right they're getting these 10 99s from people they have to be able to say okay I only have five clients and I only work 20 hours a week so in order for them to make it happen they have to charge a very high hourly rate no taxes taken out like there's so many things that go into that equation when you're first getting started having someone work for you a couple hours a week at that insane rate which could be 25 to $55 an hour it could be more than that I'm not sure today's going right that's what a VA is which sounds crazy but an employee is someone that you take on a lot of responsibility for that you're not really ready to hire to begin with so an employee is someone that you're going to give them a W2 you're going to offer them benefits if you can you're going to offer them incentives and bonuses whereas a virtual assistant you really don't have that deep one-on-one connection and I tell my students this that are inside of our more advanced programs and people that have been with me for a while is that if you know you have this thing that's going in the right direction I always encourage you to think the employee route because nurturing and loving on people is going to help you build a business faster but if you're not ready for that let's say you're not ready for that let's talk VA virtual assistants they they come with different skills and different specializations but usually have very specific knowledge in a certain area so hire someone who can tackle the pieces that you may not have time for or those pieces that give you hives to think about completing I hate responding to emails now let me let me take that back I love my job I love every part of my job I just if I had to choose I would not choose writing emails that was not my favorite and so to free up some of your time you get to have more creativity so I am the visionary of our company I literally get to sit at a state park like in the zone thinking of new ideas that's so much fun and so it hasn't always been that way but as I have delegated task and give them to other people it's given me more space to grow as the visionary so it's going to help you save time on initiatives and on certain projects it may help you with data entry or customer service or administrative task you want to look for someone who can manage their schedule though efficiently you don't want them to look at you a virtual assistant and be like when do you need like them to pin down you for everything virtual assistants should have their own calendar their own schedule they should be able to tell you what they can offer you and give you a little bit of direction many virtual assistants though they work part time so I'm talking 15 to 30 hours per week some do work full time in this capacity and some work more than 40 hours but usually virtual assistants especially in the teacher world are doing this in addition to their teaching job or in addition to their teacher business part time virtual assistants make about three to $6,000 per month and many virtual assistants they have colleges degrees but it doesn't necessarily mean that they can do their job well we have had amazing virtual assistants we have also had many virtual assistants that have basically stolen money from us that haven't finished the job and that's on us I'm not I'm not blaming them for that I I accept full responsibility for that 78% of virtual assistants are older than 40 which is crazy to me and 16% of them are in the 30 to 40 range VAs can be called OBMs which stands for online business managers and you can find VAs at these places my favorite one is Fiverr F-I-V-E-R-R I have had amazing experiences with Fiverr I still work with someone on Fiverr constantly and I don't pay him enough money I'm like I feel like I don't pay you enough money for the things that you do but he is very specialized knowledge and a very specific area and he takes me as a client like in an instant if I have an issue he can call me on the phone and work good to go now that's taking years to get there but I also found another person on Fiverr I don't work with anymore but was absolutely amazing Upwork is another great example Daft Co D-A-F-T-C-O Zirtual Z-I-R-T-U-A-L V-A staffer and wood bows which has bilingual support friends if you're looking for anything I just mentioned you can check them out in the show notes to click on them and I highly encourage you to search there before you go into any of these groups and find teacher VAs because these people are going to be less expensive if you need basic generic work now if you need specific teacher V-A work then you may want to go in those groups so today I want to give you six tasks or projects that you should hire out starting today as you begin to hire your first virtual assistant the first thing you should delegate in my opinion is graphics now when I'm talking about graphics I mean social media maybe some resource images like flatlays or the covers or table of contents inside of your TPP products maybe you're launching a program or a service so what you cannot do though is that you cannot expect a virtual assistant to read your mind or not Ms. Clio they do not know the future you have to be so specific that at the end of hiring them you should be able to say it might even easier if I had done this myself and that's going to sound dumb it's going to sound dumb to say because the first time you do it it's going to take you longer than if you would have done it yourself and you may think to yourself and I love sharing this when I'm on stage and I'm sharing to an audience that you're going to think this to yourself you're going to say nobody can do it as good as I can do it that is the most ignorant thing you could think as an entrepreneur because let me tell you something somebody can do it as good as you can do it in fact if you let them they can do it better and I never believed that until I hired the dream team three years ago when I let go and let them step into their creativity our business went to new heights when I said this is on you I want to see what you can give me but make no mistake they had a very specific guy now it was a toolkit not a rule book it was here's what we do here's what it looks like here's 20 examples of it here is exactly how you do it step by step my employees when I gave them a task when they first started there was no gray area I showed you step one to step 101 via video via step one step two step three step four written out via images and examples all of that and now every single thing in our company is written out like that it took us two years it took hiring someone that could see how much I needed help in that direction because I'm actually not very good at the fine details I'm actually really bad at it but when I hired these people I had to get good at it and so being able to give that to someone else if you come on in our company and I'm not here for a year everything that we do minus my voice and me and person could be replicated by anybody that comes on it any day and time that is powerful so if you're going to delegate something like graphics you cannot assume that people can read your mind they can't they have no idea what you want and so I've had graphic designers in the past where I tell them and then they make it I'm like that's not it and they're like we'll tell me what to do better and sometimes they get offended but the best type of work is when you send out a vision you have all the step by step things and if it comes back and it's not what you thought you can say hey let's do this let's do this and they go okay and they fix it and they do it when I tell you we have very few revisions now because our people we all are we are firing on all cylinders our graphic designer slaves our web designer slaves our integrator slaves our copywriter like I never go didn't just miss the mark I don't do that because the vision is so clear but action brings clarity and clarity produces results the vision doesn't get clear until you've been doing it for a while the graphics don't get good until you know what works and what doesn't but let me just be the first to tell you that as you hire people and you want them to create your graphics the first time you give them the task to do it it's going to take you 10 times longer than if you would have done it yourself but I want to re-hit you with that quote that I said earlier and that is if you believe that no one can do it better for you that's the most ignorant thing that you can think of as an entrepreneur and I'm not joking and I know that all of you are thinking it because I thought it too so remember that if you let them they can do it better than you can do it all right next is writing emails I said that that's not my favorite thing to do I love to write but email writing email copy it's different so one of the first things that I delegated was the creation of our newsletters there's not a lot of creativity when it comes to a newsletter right you're just sharing about what's going on in your world now there is a plan and there is something that you should follow when it comes to newsletters but for me it didn't spark the fun of creativity neither did the sales emails or the welcome sequences now is there a way to write them a very strategic and psychological way to write these yes do we teach that in our business school for teachers also yes but for me delegating that was really important so I gave them the know how here's exactly what you do here's what our newsletters look like here's what our sales emails look like from step one in our launch sales email to step one hundred and one I didn't know what I was doing until I had done it over and over and over again so it was hard for me to delegate that until I knew exactly what I wanted and that's very important I asked this to our students a lot and to people in my life to my kids is what do you want if you can't tell me what you want you're never going to get there it sounds silly to say but it's the same way in your business and writing your emails and if you can't tell somebody what you want you can't expect them to know they don't know they need your help number three on six tasks or projects that you could hire a virtual assistant for today is customer support another thing that I love now that's like students needing passwords or fail payments or member retention so we have a customer support specialist and she does all of that she sends them messages and we hired her and we got on a call a couple zoom calls with her before we hired her because we wanted to make sure she knew so here's where I want to give you some direction on this is that it sounds like you're just hiring someone and you're going to say here's what you send back if someone needs help with the password here's how you ask them for a failed payment here's how you work them for them for member retention and those are great like that is like a generic thing of what customer support specialists do but here's where the game changed for us is that I spent a lot of time with our employees creating a company folder a company vision a company mission our plans and I teach all of that in our business school but I spent a lot of time working on who we were as the CEO teacher our core beliefs our expectations our number one core value be a good human be good to all people our number two core value is family first family always and when you have a picture of your vision of your mission there are images that we show that says here is the tree here's how we plant the seeds here's how we grow here's how our students grow in the roots grow when they can see everything when they look at it and your employees or your virtual assistants go oh then if there's ever a question you go back to our core values so if there's a disgruntled customer be a good human be good to all people if someone has a hard time with a payment because they had a baby or they are struggling because they also love one you remember a family first family always and so having a get chills just thinking about it I love my job so having these like core values and these core beliefs is that it steps in when you don't have all the answers because customer support undoubtedly is going to have moments where you don't know the right things to say so instead of the employee having to come ask me oh well this person just had a baby and they're really struggling financially and they want to know can they just pay their payment tomorrow even though it was due yesterday yes of course of course they can we're going to hold it we'll email them tomorrow and that is such a way to sleep at night is to know that you have a vision and a mission now it's not easy to create these things there is a very step by step procedure that needs to be taken but knowing that going into it before you hire someone is so important next is web design and maintenance you should get help setting up the back end of your website making sure all the pieces work together and they run smooth you should get great quality help we have some recommendations that will leave in the show notes of people that we have seen prove themselves again and again I think about Alexis at laugh eat learn our students share her name on our coaching calls all the time I can confidently tell you that Alexis at laugh eat learn is going to slay she's going to slay her web design as a teacher she's going to slay the calendar the timeline she's going to do what she says she's going to do and I would never recommend someone on my show unless I had seen that I've seen that for years now and so that is wonderful hire someone in web design and in maintenance is going to help you I hired someone in web design who I thought was the real deal y'all the real deal come three hours before we launched our biggest sales page in the world crickets ghosted us I spoke to this person on camera multiple times I'm a pretty good judge of character and I got bamboozled we we got bamboozled that was the most stressful three hours of my life we made it we made it but make sure you do your research Google the people look at the reviews don't trust someone with your web design and maintenance unless you know they are the real deal that's a really big deal okay another thing that you could hire people for number five is managing your social media I still like to connect with my audience I still love the voice messages I still love the DMs but you can absolutely hire a via help you especially during launch periods or as a way to sift the noise of spammy accounts and legit contacts but here's what I know for sure is that if you are not having a direct hand in your social media if you do not have the vision if you do not see the picture it's never going to be anything but basic because people are not able to articulate what you want in social media it's boring it's bland it's basic the three b's of not knowing where you're going so I'm gonna ask you again what do you want so for us going into this launch is I wanted to be very personable I wanted to do reels that weren't just motivational so back in March I started doing 75 hard and I started testing every day I'm gonna show up I'm gonna see what hits what doesn't and I realized that fostering that relationship with my customers was so important I see the very large entrepreneurs right now struggling because they have forgotten to be a person they forgotten that they are not just a business or a company they have to really connect with people and I want to encourage you that even though you don't have to be the face of your business you do have to be the heart and so hiring someone in your social media in the beginning remember it's gonna be twice as hard because you need to know where you're going you need to be able to answer what do you want and then finally is scheduling or time management this is the best thing I ever hired out I know that my company would not be where it is today without Ali Elliott our virtual assistant I know that I am not a good scheduler I know that I am really bad with time management finding someone she is an employee she started out I would say as a VA that can tackle your daily schedule that can set your meetings up that can tell you into podcasts tell you an interview tell you when you're gonna be doing speaking arrangements and color coordinated for you for me that was everything because I cannot keep track I can only see the larger projects but I can't break them down and detask my task I know where we're going but I can't get there without her and I tell her that and cry about it all the time all the time so I genuinely know that I could not do my job as good as I do it without someone now breaking everything down for me making sure that they are developing our company piece by piece it takes the biggest load off of my mind and helps me be a better visionary for our job now a few things to consider before you hire virtual assistant is that you need to do your research before hiring which I mentioned before that you must create systems in your business first I kept saying it's gonna take you more time in the beginning we have an entire many course program in our business school just over how we have built our systems and our processes single hand and lead the most valuable thing you could possibly get in a cheap monthly membership in my opinion because we know the systems that work I can show you how to break a task down how to put dates on it it works and it's work for us and we have proof that our people that we work with our ad scenes are like I can't believe how organized you guys are clearly outlining task and responsibilities is how you have a very successful virtual assistant creating video recordings voice overlays step by step written instructions images that they can follow having contracts in place we have a very detailed contract that our people get before with their responsibilities what they will execute when they will be due to us if there's a non compete clause how we share our passwords with them how long they'll be in our programs how to keep track of their time what our communication will look like whether it'll be email text message slack all of that is written out before we hire out and I'm not saying that you have to do that today but what I'm saying is it must be on your mind if you want to be successful and always know it ain't always going to work it's not and it's not personal it's business and my brother who have two brothers that are attorneys I know I share about them a lot one is sweet salt to the earth and the other is the bulldog they're both I love them dearly but my bulldog brother tells me Casey it's not personal it's business it's black and white so don't don't take it personally do not let someone else's energy affect you if it doesn't work out I'm sorry bye we'll find someone else it's fine it's okay to take time to find the right thing in a season of waiting it's always going to be okay because the next best thing is coming your way the flexibility having a diverse skill set and creative opportunities are the advantage here and so you're not always going to find it but the feelings of isolation mean that you just need to work on yourself discipline and that someone will come in the right time because my one of my favorite quotes is when it's right it'll be so if you're thinking about becoming a VA for teachers know this the market is not saturated if you're interested in starting a VA business on your own there are so many ways to tap into the online space the term virtual assistant y'all it's very broad and the possibilities are limitless starting your own business as a teacher is step one and becoming a virtual assistant because you don't know what you don't know and understanding the world of being an online teacher is where it all begins thank you so much for listening guys I'm grateful for you every day but especially today thank you for lighting the up inside for painting my world in vibrant color I am eternally grateful for you as always remember your best is yet to come and I'll see you next week bye guys are you the educator with a multitude of talents and passions the classroom teacher who dreams big or a rock star human with a passion for education because keep listening it's your turn to make your mark on the world as a teacher you work so hard for your students you create meaningful lessons that impact your kids for years and years to come and when you combine your passion and your experience with something educators need you go all in and that my friend is where the magic happens it's time to share your teaching ideas your materials your resources to start make a bigger impact and influence the world of education you're not totally crazy for thinking that your teacher business can't be successful it can be a real money maker even if you have no idea where to start zero tech skills and a serious allergy to marketing yourself the 10 steps to get started selling your teaching resources online is your roadmap to help you take massive action and prioritize the most important bids tips as you begin the journey towards moving your hashtag best life go to Casey Morris dot com slash 10 steps to get your brand spankin a new workbook and joining world where there is no cap on the pay scale and where you get to make a bigger impact on your own terms