Hannah Hasl-Kelchner: Having a virtual assistant sounds like a dream come true, but how easy is it to turn a chunk of your business over to a stranger? What should you be looking for, and how do you make it work? Those are some of the questions I’ll be asking so that you can keep control. Stay tuned.

This is Business Confidential Now with Hannah Hasselkeltzner, helping you see business, hiding in plain view that matters to your bottom line.

Hannah Hasl-Kelchner: Welcome to Business Confidential Now, the podcast for smart executives, managers, and entrepreneurs looking to improve business performance and their bottom line. I’m your host, Hannah Hasl-Kelchner, and I have a terrific guest for you today. She’s Barbara Turley. Barbara understands the growing pains of small and medium-sized businesses. She’s a founder and CEO of The Virtual Hub, where her mission is to eliminate the feeling of overwhelm and remove the friction that stunts business growth. And she does it by helping clients optimize their operations using offshore teams of virtual assistants, clever automations, and streamlined processes. I’m looking forward to learning more about how virtual assistants can improve productivity and unlock business potential. So let’s have her join us now from beautiful Australia. Welcome to Business Confidential Now, Barbara.

Barbara Turley: Thanks so much for having me, Hannah. Excited to be here.

Hannah Hasl-Kelchner: I’m excited to talk to you here because the concept of virtual assistance really isn’t new. And I imagine that, with remote work gaining more acceptance in a post-COVID world, it’s also pretty popular. Now, if someone is feeling overwhelmed in their business and realizes they need help, but they’re not really ready to hire a full-time employee, they don’t need that much help, what type of projects or work is ideal for outsourcing to a virtual assistant? Sort of help them dip their toe in the water. What do you suggest?

How Assistants Can Improve Productivity and Unlock Business Potential

Barbara Turley: That’s a great question. And you’re right, having a virtual assistant isn’t a new concept at all. It’s been around for, to be honest, decades. But in the business world, or in the small to medium business world, it’s something that’s been around for about 20 years. But it still doesn’t make it any easier. And it’s funny, I’ve been doing this for almost a decade now, and I still get asked the same questions. So people are still struggling with the same ideas of how to do what to delegate to a VA. So it’s not uncommon if anyone is feeling like they’re having these questions that you’ve just asked. It is the most common question I get asked.

And the first thing I would say is what you really need to think about. I think people do think about a virtual assistant as a sort of a stopgap measure until I can hire somebody else or somebody local. And the way I would encourage people, firstly, to think about this is to forget the concept of somebody offshore or a virtual assistant and start thinking about your business in terms of every business, no matter how big or how small, has a set of departments. You know, even if it’s just you or if it’s a billion-dollar company, it doesn’t actually matter. Every business has departments. You’ve got marketing and sales and product creation, et cetera, et cetera.

And inside each one of those departments are a set of recurring tasks or projects that need to be done on a weekly or monthly or quarterly basis to keep the engine of a business moving forward. And then there’s another set of tasks and projects that may be involved in new business or driving the business forward from where it is today. And those buckets are separate types of things.

And the way I get people to think about this is to say, within each of those departments, if you map out what needs to be done, you can very quickly start to say to yourself, well, here’s a set of tasks or processes or things that I do all the time that actually they’re always the same. And maybe they do require some of my IP that’s in my head, but I can actually process-map that and write all of that down. And that puts you in a very, very powerful situation because now you can delegate those processes to an assistant.

Now, that assistant could be beside you, or that assistant can be somewhere like the Philippines, where we have assistants that are far more cost-effective and cost-efficient to do it this way. The reason I sort of say that first is it starts to get people thinking about all the things that you do every day in every department that you don’t need to wait to hire somebody locally. You can actually bring on an offshore team member, an offshore virtual assistant, to be a part of your team and to start to slowly collaborate with them and bring them fully in eventually to actually take over some of these more process-driven things that you can process up that maybe you haven’t processed up yet.

So that is the way I like to get people to think about that. Does that help to start to open our conversation?

Hannah Hasl-Kelchner: Yes, it definitely does because you’re talking about compartmentalizing and drilling down. I think sometimes, especially for entrepreneurs, they’re so busy wearing multiple hats that they’re really not thinking about the process and what they can delegate and thinking about the individual steps because it’s so second nature to them. So I think that’s really very helpful and insightful just to kind of step back and say, all right, now let’s focus on this in order to break it down into bite-sized pieces.

But let’s say we do that. How do we find the right virtual assistant? What steps should we take? How do we know who to look for?

Barbara Turley: Okay, that is literally the second most common question I get asked. It is something people ask all the time. And of course, step one, what we just spoke about, is really about before you’ve ever even hired somebody, is strategically taking a step back to look at your business and say, what is it that needs to be done in order to keep this thing moving? And what is it that needs to be done to move it forward, and mapping out what you need to do and what somebody else can do.

Of course, the next step is the hardest part, is how do you find that person and how do you know they’re any good and how do you recruit them? And that is a whole other discipline all by itself. And it’s one of the reasons, I guess, that The Virtual Hub exists, because part of the problem is recruiting, then hiring, then training, then managing, and all these things. And that is what we do.

But the easiest way, first, to come at it from a prepared standpoint is very important, which is doing the step one that I spoke about. But also thinking about you’re about to hire an assistant. And people, again, the mistake I see people make is that they want to hire for a role and they try to develop a role or a role description, when actually what you’re looking for is a support assistant.

And if you’re in the early stages of business, let’s say it’s just one person, what you really want is a great all-rounder that can fly alongside you and can assist you in all sorts of departments and all sorts of processes. If the business is larger, we’ve got to start thinking about which department are we putting this person into? And again, remembering that virtual assistants are assistants, and you want them in this support layer.

And after you’ve done that, it puts you in a more powerful position to go out and know what it is that you’re actually looking for. When it comes to recruiting, of course, that is a minefield. You’re going to get a lot of resumes; you’re going to get flooded. So first of all, it would be to allocate time to doing this. And then once you have settled on the person, you have to have some sort of a way of measuring whether that person is able to do what they say they’re able to do, because sometimes resumes can be great and people can interview very well, and then they’re absolutely terrible on the job.

And this is the bit where I think people get shocked when they try to hustle and they go, but they look like the perfect person. But when they came on the job, it really was substandard. So the best way to get around that is actually to give some test tasks or to try to formulate some work. You could pay for it and have a selection of people do that work for us to see what the output is like.

And then after that, once you hire them, you have to make sure that it’s not hands-off, that there has to be some sort of performance management thereafter with that person.

Hannah Hasl-Kelchner: Those are all great tips because I can imagine that there definitely are situations where, like you said, they look great on paper, but then the performance is disappointing. And that’s really no different than when somebody is getting hired full-time locally. That kind of thing happens all the time as well.

I’m wondering, what kind of processes would you recommend to put in place to make the workflow smooth? Because especially when you’re dealing with offshore teams, you’re dealing with time zone differences. You’re very often dealing with language barriers, maybe, where English is not their first language. It’s a second language, maybe even a third language. So what would be some recommendations that you have in order to smooth those potential speed bumps?

Barbara Turley: Okay, so the first recommendation I have, which cuts across no matter what size the business is—I recommend this to large organizations that we speak to and also one-person businesses that may be bringing on their first VA—so it doesn’t matter the size of the business. You need an operational framework to slot somebody into.

Now, let me unpack that for you for a second. So what I mean by that is you need a place, because we’re all virtual now. And this came up as a major problem during the pandemic because everybody went remote where, all of a sudden, people who were used to being in an office beside each other found it more difficult to operate remotely because they didn’t have the operational framework that is required for remote work.

So if you’re using tools, you may have heard of tools like Asana. I’m a big Asana fan. I’ve built our whole company on Asana, but there are other ones. There’s ClickUp and Monday and all these different project management tools, they’re called, but they are actually more like workflow management tools. And they are brilliant for collaborating across time zones and making sure that within a task or within a project, you can actually map out steps and process maps and everything and have everything at the site of where the work is taking place.

So that’s number one. I could talk for four hours about that topic, but it’s making sure that you’ve got somewhere in the cloud where you both collaborate on work and you talk about work together.

The second step—you mentioned people in different time zones—if you are going to do that, you first need to be very clear together and work out your communication plan. Now, this is something that most people won’t do. They will assume that the other person is going to communicate in the way that they want and vice versa. But you need to work out: how are we going to communicate? What is our communication rhythm? And what is our communication plan?

So, for example, people who are using Slack and Asana and email, they will never lay out in the beginning: what is Slack for? What is Asana for? And what is email for, and what are they not for? And this sounds—you might think this is a bit micromanage—but if somebody is sending WhatsApp voice messages and then sending instructions over email, and another day they’re choosing Slack, sometimes they chat on Slack and sometimes they send instructions on Slack, and the same with Asana, then there’s no clear format for how we’re going to make sure that we stay on the same page.

And the final step of that is utilizing the amazing tools out there these days. One of the best ones for async communication, which is across time zones, is Loom. So Loom, L-O-O-M, is a tool where you can record yourself, you can record your screen, and you can actually pretend that you’re on a meeting with someone—screen share, show your concept, describe it—and send the video link inside a task in Asana, for example, to the person who’s about to wake up and you’re going to go to bed.

So it’s making sure that you have this plan and you’ve agreed the plan together, and everybody understands the plan and how we use the plan so that there’s no confusion later. And those tips are vital.

Hannah Hasl-Kelchner: I like what you’re saying about the communication plan because what’s happened with any kind of virtual communication post COVID, even for people that used to see each other in the office, is how do we communicate? How do we stay on the same page? And with all of these different tools, it’s very easy to get sidetracked. Well, I thought you were gonna respond by email. No, I sent a text, and that type of thing where people are really speaking past each other and they don’t realize it. So I can imagine that is so, so critical, especially when dealing with people that you haven’t met face to face. You don’t have those other cues for how to create a relationship. So thank you. I think that’s very colorful.

Barbara Turley: You know, I mean, I will just explain one of the big rules we have in our company, and we have hundreds of employees, is we know Slack is for chats, but we can chat about something.

But when we agree with the instructions, so we can be on a Google Meet, we can have a meeting, we can do Loom videos, we can chat back and forth, but when we agree with the instruction, the instruction goes into the site of where the work is happening, which is Asana for us, inside the task. And therefore, we don’t pollute the task with chit chat in the thread. The thread is the instruction. So does that make sense? So there’s no like, I didn’t see that comment, or where’s that bit? There’s none of that going on. We’re very clear on that rule. And we don’t use email at all for internal communication at the Virtual Hub. That’s for external communication only. So that just gives you an insight into how strict we are about it.

Hannah Hasl-Kelchner: Well, at least everybody understands what the rules are, and that’s half the battle. I mean, someone else may prioritize things differently, and that’s okay. As long as, like you say, people know what the rules are and they know where to go for what type of information, that in itself is incredibly powerful. Is the communication piece the biggest hiccup you see when people start working with VAs, with virtual assistants?

Barbara Turley: Yes and no. I mean, you mentioned English as a second language. I mean, in the Philippines where we operate, English—not everyone, there’s a hundred million people over there—not all of them speak English. But the ones that you want to be hiring are the people who are, it’s almost like English is their first language, and there shouldn’t be a communication barrier.

In saying that, though—and this can happen regardless of whether it’s the first or second language—communication blocks happen, I find, when people use jargon or assumptions. So when you’re writing an instruction, it’s really good as a business owner, to be honest, or as a team member or anyone working in any company, to be honest, to get better at the written form. And to have brevity and clarity in the written form is difficult, but it is something that’s a skill worth honing, especially for the person doing the delegating, so that it’s clear on the other side.

But I think the other area that really trips people up is setting the boundaries for how we are going to work and how we’re going to row this boat together, if I could put it that way, from the beginning. And here’s what that looks like. Day one, everyone’s excited to work together. We all flow, and everybody wants to be light. And I do this as well, by the way. We all want to feel like we’re being liked by the other person and that everyone’s getting on well. So we allow a little bit too much flexibility, and we don’t have structure.

What happens then is somebody goes off on their tangent, and you go off on yours. And before you know it, you’re both working in different ways. Somebody likes to update at the end of a project, and you, as the delegator, are like, I don’t know what’s happening. Where’s the work? What’s going on with this project? Because you haven’t been clear.

What you’ve done is you’ve said, look, I don’t really mind as long as you keep me up to date, but that’s not clear because you might be someone who likes to be kept up to date at the end of every week or at the end of every day or at the midpoint in a project. So you see, we’ve got to have some sort of clarity about the boundaries that we set. You’re not being difficult; you’re actually just being clear. And I guess being clear in both communication and in setting boundaries and structure is what actually sets us all free and makes sure that we don’t fall into these holes and everyone’s clear.

Hannah Hasl-Kelchner: I love that distinction about clarity. I think that’s so important because I think some people also fear that they’re micromanaging. In a way, it’s like, if I have to provide that much detail, then I might as well do it myself. It’s faster. But by the same token, if you want to be—

Barbara Turley: That’s the biggest hole ever, though.

Hannah Hasl-Kelchner: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so if you want to be able to delegate, you have to provide enough instruction to manage the expectations so that you get the work product that you want, and they have enough information to do it right.

Barbara Turley: You know, I had a thought just as you said there, but that mindset of, if I have to give that much instruction, I may as well do it myself—this is a major mindset roadblock that many entrepreneurs and business owners have. In fact, executive managers everywhere. Because people, it’s tedious to give instructions. It’s tedious to create process maps. But what I would say is, if you’re feeling like every day you have to give new instruction on something, it means that you’re throwing ad hoc tasks at somebody all the time, which is fine, but that will require instructions every day.

And there will come a day that you will wake up in the morning and you will be so busy, and you will say, gosh, what am I going to give the VA to do today, right? This is a classic one. And what you’ve actually done is created more work for yourself. And that’s when people feel like this is not working.

So I go back to my first point that I made at the beginning of this episode where I said it’s important to identify what are those sorts of processes, what are those things that have to be done recurring. It’s the easiest place to start. And then once you go through the tedium of creating a process map and testing it out with your VA and making sure that everyone’s clear and all the things we talked about, then you delegate that process and you define and you set the update schedules, the deadlines, and how this is going to be done.

That’s not micromanaging; that’s actively managing somebody and helping them to be successful in their role. And only then do you let them out if they’re in an assistant role. Otherwise, you’re expecting too much from the role. Does that make sense?

Hannah Hasl-Kelchner: Yes, yes, very good, very good. I have a question, though, as far as organizations such as your own, and I’m not familiar with how the Virtual Hub works, so please don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s not uncommon for there to be turnover in somebody’s payroll business or when working with a service provider. And so, if you started to develop a relationship with a virtual assistant and now they’re no longer with the company that you’ve hired them through, how do you handle the transition? Because sometimes it could just be a surprise—you have somebody new on the team. Well, who is this, and what can they do, and why?

I mean, fine, people move on. Things happen in their lives, family health issues—that’s understandable. That happens everywhere. But making that transition smoother, what recommendations do you have for what to look out for?

Barbara Turley: Okay, so I’ll start with generic first, like as if you’re not using the Virtual Hub. You may—and I’ll come on to how we do it in a second—but the first step would, and this really applies, look, this doesn’t matter if you’re hiring virtual assistants or you’re hiring an employee locally in your office. This kind of applies to all hiring.

People don’t like to see it this way, but at the end of the day, a business is actually a machine, right? A business is a machine. It is a vehicle. The purpose and the vision of the business is different. That is what we want to achieve, the impact we want to have, the amazing thing we want to do. But the actual business mechanics itself of how a business runs is a machine. And a machine needs to be made up of systems and processes when we’re talking about business.

And the stronger that your systems and processes are, the easier it is for you to transition people in and out. Like you might love Mary, but John can do it just as well because your process maps are dialed right in. And you might be sad to lose Mary, but you can bring John on and onboard him really quickly. And I know this because I do this all the time.

So the first step to avoid this issue is to make sure that your systems and processes are so strong in the business, it actually raises the asset value of your business as well, the stronger it is. But it means that you can move people in and out of those types of roles very quickly and very seamlessly.

With also the Virtual Hub, we have dedicated people. So when we put someone inside someone’s business, they are dedicated to that business—that’s number one—but life does come in, you know, get in the way, and people change and move on. We have a transition process. So we actually, we don’t just say, hey, you’ve got a new person. There is, you know, the person has to actually resign or get promoted or move on. There’s a 30-day handover period. We have already lined up a new person, and we allow a two-week time when you’ve got two people working on your account for free. And person one will transition in person two before they will exit the account.

Now, that’s great if a person just disappears or something happens where they have to go immediately. We still help with process mapping, and we help a client step through that transition. But if you’re doing it yourself, the easiest way is to have strong systems and processes in your business in general.

Hannah Hasl-Kelchner: Well, that’s remarkable because I think that brings us right back to where we started about understanding what it is that needs to be done, setting the parameters, identifying the tasks, because that’s also what’s going to make the transition easier, because you have those processes identified step by step so that somebody else can step in.

Barbara, this has really been eye-opening. It’s been very informative. I love your advice for working with virtual assistants. And I hope that if anybody’s listening and has been sitting on the fence, that they can take some time to do the recommendations, the suggestions that you’ve shared with us so that they can then, in the long term, free up their time. Because those processes, mapping them out, is really an investment in their future productivity so that they can hand off those tasks with confidence.

And it can really leverage not only their time but their business growth if we know how to do it right, and you’ve certainly laid that out. Now, if you’re listening and you’d like to know more about Barbara Turley and her amazing work at the Virtual Hub, that information, as well as a transcript of this interview, can all be found in the show notes at businessconfidentialradio.com.

Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to tell your friends about the show and leave a positive review. We’ll be back next week with another information-packed episode of Business Confidential Now. So until then, have a great day and an even better tomorrow.