Online course specialist, Janet Kafadar, shares the trials and triumphs in recruiting the right Support Assistant for her growing business
Virtual Success Show
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Episode breakdown
In this episode, special guest Janet Kafadar, who is the Fairy Godmother of Online Course creation, shares her experiences, both good and not so good, in finding a Support Assistant that was the right fit for her and her business. Janet steps us through the trials she faced when looking for the right support assistant and how she has finally found the right person, with the right skills to really take her business to the next level.
- The three biggest problems faced when you have an offshore support assistant
- The importance of recruiting the right support assistant
- Working to your support assistants strengths
- Helping your support assistant grow in their role and in your business
Sometimes people's resumes can say one thing, but their performance says another.
In this episode
00:00 - Introduction
Barbara Turley hosts the Virtual Success Show solo while her co-host, Matt Malouf, is busy with consulting clients. Today, she interviews her friend and client, Janet Kafadar, an online course creation expert. Barbara introduces Janet as someone who helps people successfully create and launch online courses. Janet expresses appreciation for the intro, and Barbara notes the challenge of creating courses that gain traction and generate passive income. She then invites Janet to share more about her business, how she started, and her current work.
01:46 – Who is Janet Kafadar?
Janet explains that she is an online course design specialist who helps clients create courses and information products. She initially focused on coaching and mentoring but noticed clients often struggled with implementation and launching their courses. To help them move faster, she shifted to a done-for-you model, handling the setup and creation herself. Over time, balancing hands-on work with family responsibilities became exhausting, prompting her to pause done-for-you services and return to coaching. After having her son, she is now returning to done-for-you services with clearer processes, systems, and defined service parameters, while also managing virtual teams. Barbara highlights how this shift required a lot of implementation work and asks Janet about the moment she realized she needed to hire an assistant.
05:44 – Knowing when to hire a support assistant
Janet realized she needed an assistant when small but important tasks in her business weren’t getting done because she was focused on clients. Over the past three years, she’s gone through five assistants. Her first assistant helped with social media and website setup but wasn’t consistently available. Another assistant lacked attention to detail, often skipping instructions despite Janet providing clear step-by-step guidance. Barbara notes that this is a common issue, especially offshore, where even detailed processes don’t always guarantee quality. Janet agrees, acknowledging the frustration of having well-documented instructions yet still encountering mistakes.
08:48 – Dealing with quality issues
Janet dealt with her underperforming assistant by giving her a few weeks to improve, but the ongoing frustration and time spent correcting simple tasks became too much. Even though Janet was willing to invest time in training, the repeated mistakes were inefficient and stressful, so she ultimately decided to let the assistant go.
09:45 – Sometimes things just don’t work out
Barbara emphasizes that dealing with support assistant challenges is normal, highlighting the importance of proper recruitment, communication, and giving feedback. Janet shares that her next two support assistants had issues: one was skilled but faced personal distractions that affected work. Barbara notes that personal and family responsibilities, especially common in places like the Philippines, can impact performance. Janet agrees, explaining the difficulty of balancing empathy with business needs, especially while managing her own young children.
12:00 – How to deal with employees personal issues affecting their work
Barbara notes that personal issues affecting support assistants, particularly in the Philippines, are common and can create guilt for business owners trying to be supportive. Janet shares she felt a “second layer” of mommy guilt managing both her kids and her team. Over time, she learned to detach from that guilt. Janet’s next support assistant was unsuccessful due to extreme personal distractions and disappearing for days, leaving tasks incomplete and communication nonexistent, causing significant frustration.
14:20 – The 3 biggest problems with having an offshore support assistant
Barbara points out that Janet experienced the three most common problems with offshore support assistants: low quality/attention to detail, personal/family distractions, and going MIA. After multiple struggles, Janet turned to The Virtual Hub, feeling skeptical but overwhelmed with projects and pregnant with her third child. She found her current assistant, Joseph, who transformed her workflow, significantly increasing productivity. Janet emphasizes that having a baby pushed her to step up as a CEO, create proper systems, and ensure her business continued to generate revenue while balancing family responsibilities. Barbara notes that such life events create urgent deadlines that force business owners to make their systems work.
17:30 – Recruiting the right support assistant for you and your business
Barbara highlights that The Virtual Hub trains support assistants in key business tasks like funnels, landing pages, social media, and processes. Janet shares that when Joseph started as her assistant, he was already the best she’d had, free of the common problems she’d faced before. While the transition wasn’t entirely smooth, Barbara explains that their careful recruiting process filters out the major support assistant issues—low quality, personal distractions, and going MIA—so those problems didn’t occur, though some minor challenges still needed refinement.
19:00 – Working to your support assistants strengths
Janet shares that once Joseph joined, she focused on identifying his strengths, inspired by a podcast episode on working to a support assistant’s strengths. Joseph expressed a preference for automation, segmentation, and email marketing, which aligned perfectly with her needs when moving from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign. He excelled at handling complex systems, tagging, and customer journeys, freeing Janet from the technical details. His lesser strength is social media and creative work, which she accepted. Barbara notes that it’s rare for one person to excel in both technical and creative areas, and praises Janet for strategically channeling his skills. They then discuss plans to further develop Joseph’s role to help scale her business.
22:46 – Helping your support assistant grow in their role
While on maternity leave and a six-week family trip to Europe, Janet left Joseph in charge of running her business, and sales continued smoothly. During this time, she identified a gap in the market: many people buy courses but don’t implement them. Her upcoming program addresses this by offering a more done-for-you membership model. Joseph will handle the technical setup, automations, and membership management, while next year she plans to hire a full-time designer to manage the creative side, creating a two-person team to efficiently handle client projects.
24:35 – Building your virtual team
Barbara highlights Janet’s journey from struggling with multiple failed support assistants to finding a successful support assistant, growing her business, and now building a team. Janet reflects on how she resisted scaling for years but, through dedication and hard work—even late nights during pregnancy—she set up processes, systems, and clear communication. This combination of the right team member, proper utilization of skills, and solid business systems has allowed her to scale effectively. She’s now developing a done-for-you membership program for clients’ online courses, continuing to evolve her business. Both emphasize that growth comes from consistent effort and applying learned strategies.
27:43 – Wrapping things up
Barbara wraps up the show, thanking Janet for sharing her success story and encouraging listeners to apply the strategies discussed. Janet shares her website, JanetKafadar.com, for those who want to connect. Barbara reminds listeners to subscribe, leave a review, and suggest topics for future episodes to continue learning about achieving virtual business success.
