Host: This is the S1S podcast Startup Lessons with Barbara Turley.

Host: Welcome, everybody, to the Stage 1 Startup Lesson of the Week.

Host: Where we bring experts to the show to teach you various valuable lessons on how to build your startup the right way.

Host: In this week’s lesson, we discuss the five reasons people fail with virtual assistants and how to fix it.

Host: So guys, kicking off the very first special startup lessons, we have special guest Barbara Turley, who is the founder and CEO of VirtualAngel Hub.

Host: And as Greg said, she’s going to be discussing the five reasons people fail with VA’s and how to fix it.

Host: And Barbara is the perfect person to teach you guys how to overcome this issue.

Host: But before we get into today’s lesson, we just want to give a quick thank you to our sponsors.

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Host: And what’s great, guys, is for a limited time we are able to give you, as our listeners, a 20% discount on all services that Why Not Pro offer.

Host: All you need to do is mention Stage 1 startup on approach.

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Host: Have a look around.

Host: You can also e-mail them at [email protected].

Host: Don’t worry, all of the links will be within the show notes, so make sure you head on over to them.

Host: And now into the lesson.

Host: Barbara, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Host: Let’s get into the lesson.

Barbara Turley: Hey guys, thanks so much for that fantastic intro, and I’m very excited to be on your podcast today sharing with all the listeners out there some of my tips and strategies for how to get success with this whole virtual assistant outsourcing game.

Barbara Turley: You know, as every startup knows, there’s so much to do when you’re a startup, or in any business really.

Barbara Turley: And so many times we try to do it all ourselves because we can’t afford to hire staff or we can’t find the right people.

Barbara Turley: But actually virtual assistants and outsourcing, when you get it right, can be a real game changer for any startup.

Barbara Turley: The only problem is that it’s not as easy as people think to get it right.

Barbara Turley: And the Internet is littered literally with lots of entrepreneurs who’ve actually failed miserably at this outsourcing thing.

Barbara Turley: And they sort of love to blame all the VA’s out there or blame the system or whatever.

Barbara Turley: But the reality is that it’s not as easy as people like Tim Ferriss in the Four Hour Workweek made it sound.

Barbara Turley: And, you know, any of you out there that have read Tim’s book, he does talk a lot about using virtual assistants, particularly offshore people.

Barbara Turley: But he makes it sound like, you know, all you’ve got to do is pay someone 2 bucks an hour and you’re going to get some sort of superstar supercheap virtual assistant that can do everything from web development right through to social media, answering phone calls, doing lead generation, you know, all these kind of unrealistic expectations that go on out there.

Barbara Turley: So what I’m here to talk to you today about are the five key areas where we see people failing with VA’s.

Barbara Turley: And more importantly, I’m going to give you the strategies of how to fix it.

Barbara Turley: Or if you’ve never hired a VA before, let’s give you the strategies to make sure that you don’t fall into any of these particular pitfalls that are very, very common.

Barbara Turley: Now, when I go through these, you guys might be thinking, oh, I would never do that, but you wouldn’t believe, you know, at VirtualAngel Hub, where we have tons of clients all around the world using our VA’s and getting VA’s through us.

Barbara Turley: Some of them think they’re never going to do these things, but they do because it’s kind of inherent in our nature as entrepreneurs.

Barbara Turley: Sometimes we’re control freaks and we don’t realise it.

Barbara Turley: Sometimes we know exactly how we want something done, but we don’t know how to actually communicate that to somebody else.

Barbara Turley: And all these little problems that come up along the way that challenge your mindset and are going to challenge you as a business owner to try and get this stuff right.

Barbara Turley: So let’s dive right in.

Barbara Turley: I want to talk about biggest mistake #1. Now, I like to call this the genie in a bottle joke, OK?

Barbara Turley: Because some people who’ve tried and failed at this whole VA thing, they feel like they’ve been somehow duped. You know, they were told that all they had to do was pay $2.00 an hour on Upwork or, you know, online somewhere.

Barbara Turley: And they would build a multimillion dollar empire while they sit on the beach and a VA does all the work and everything goes out perfectly well.

Barbara Turley: Well, reality check really.

Barbara Turley: I mean, this is just such a myth, you know, good VA’s, they’re really fantastic.

Barbara Turley: But they are also people too.

Barbara Turley: And, you know, different people have different skill sets and they’ll excel at different aspects of the role, even if they have experience in a lot of different areas.

Barbara Turley: Now, often business owners, what we see is they try to hire one person and then expect that one person to do absolutely everything for them, from bookkeeping to graphic design to marketing automation, Facebook ads, video editing, admin, you know, and all in record-breaking time with no training, no breaks, no mistakes, and no human error.

Barbara Turley: Now you know, really, this is just not going to work, right?

Barbara Turley: So if you sometimes we’re under financial pressure, I know in a startup, but it’s really, really important to be realistic.

Barbara Turley: Umm, about what a VA can really do.

Barbara Turley: Now, there’s a lot of VA’s out there.

Barbara Turley: Some of our VA’s are total rock stars and they can do a lot, but we still have clients sort of expecting a lot more than what any person in any country could possibly deliver just because they’ve read about this kind of superstar VA thing that exists online.

Barbara Turley: So if you sort of, how do you fix this problem?

Barbara Turley: Like let’s say you’re a startup and really you can only afford to hire one person because that’s the problem, but you’ve got all these jobs to do.

Barbara Turley: Well, I’m here to tell you that really before hiring anyone, you really need to get very, very super clear on the tasks that need to be delegated in your business and then the skills needed to do each of those tasks effectively.

Barbara Turley: Now, that sounds like a very simple thing.

Barbara Turley: You’ll think, oh, I can just sit down and punch that out over an hour or two.

Barbara Turley: But actually it takes a lot of foresight and thought to do that.

Barbara Turley: You’ve got to sit down and systematically go through every single thing that you do in your business and then document it and figure out what skill sets are really required for that.

Barbara Turley: You know what you’ve got to decide?

Barbara Turley: What skill sets do you need in order to execute effectively on your business plans?

Barbara Turley: So you look at your strategic plans for the business and you decide, like, do I need a team?

Barbara Turley: Do I need a team of contractors?

Barbara Turley: Do I potentially need one VA that acts like a project manager?

Barbara Turley: And then we have a developer who we can bring in here and there.

Barbara Turley: We’ve got a Facebook ads expert.

Barbara Turley: And then, of course, you’ve got to think about it.

Barbara Turley: Well, if you can’t afford that, then what part of it are you going to take on and what parts of it are you really going to delegate?

Barbara Turley: Then once you’ve kind of nailed that bit, now this is all, remember, before you go to hire anyone, once you’ve nailed that part, I always recommend going out and hiring a really good general VA to work with you and your business on a sort of a longer term contract.

Barbara Turley: So more like an employee type person.

Barbara Turley: So you’re not just saying, oh, I’ll tap into a freelancer when I need them.

Barbara Turley: You actually say bring someone into your business on a part time or full time basis.

Barbara Turley: You know, part time usually works pretty well initially, you know, 20 hours a week, that kind of thing.

Barbara Turley: I’m more of a fan of just, you know, if you’re really focused and you really want to go for it, then just bring someone in full time, a general VA.

Barbara Turley: And then you can really work with those people to, you know, or that person to bring them on board with your vision, really deeply bring them into your business.

Barbara Turley: And you can, even if they’re a little bit idle in the beginning, you now have a resource that you can build out which, you know, they can manage the back end of things for you and then start to manage some of the external resources that you may need, like video editors and stuff like that.

Barbara Turley: Now a good general VA.

Barbara Turley: What do I mean by that?

Barbara Turley: You know, here’s what you can really expect.

Barbara Turley: Some of them are a little bit of Jack of all trades, but they will naturally gravitate, as part of their personality, to parts of the business more than others.

Barbara Turley: And it’s up to you to figure out.

Barbara Turley: When you start working with a generalist, you know, over time you’re going to start to see where their real skill sets lie.

Barbara Turley: And then you start to channel them in that direction because you get ready then for hiring either, you know, contractors like video guys, web developers, and all that to come in on an as needed basis, or you might hire a second person later and, you know, maybe the social media angle of your general VA is a bit weak.

Barbara Turley: So you might hire someone that’s more developed in that area down the line.

Barbara Turley: But the idea of a good general VA initially means that they can actually do a very wide variety of jobs while maintaining that sort of realistic approach.

Barbara Turley: There is still a huge subset of tasks that a general VA can do.

Barbara Turley: And actually I’ll get the show notes for you guys.

Barbara Turley: We’ve got a what to outsource guide, and it’ll give you an idea of what a general VA from VirtualAngel Hub can do anyway.

Barbara Turley: And that’s a good starting point.

Barbara Turley: Now then after that, you would start to source specialists in the various areas that you need an expert in, but you only hire those on a project basis or potentially a monthly retainer type basis.

Barbara Turley: For example, let’s say you were doing a lot of videos and you kind of were doing videos every month, or podcasts.

Barbara Turley: Like let’s say you’re doing a podcast like this and you need a podcast editor or you need someone who is specialist in a specific area.

Barbara Turley: You may be able to negotiate a better rate if you actually go to them and say, well, I’ve got 5 podcasts happening every month or 10 videos a month to be edited, that sort of thing, right?

Barbara Turley: So you can go and get a monthly retainer from them.

Barbara Turley: Then after all of that, you know, you really have to be realistic about the training and onboarding requirements that are very specific to your business operations.

Barbara Turley: OK?

Barbara Turley: So even if you get, let’s say, a general VA who’s exceptional right now, I’m talking to someone who’s organised, who’s really onto it, who’s got a good broad skill set across lots of different fields.

Barbara Turley: The biggest mistake I see some people making is hiring someone like that and then expecting them to just naturally know what on earth you’re doing in your business.

Barbara Turley: Like your vision, how you do things, your personality, how you like things done, how you like to communicate with clients, without any training or onboarding or anything.

Barbara Turley: And then when it all goes pear shaped, you know, they want to blame the VA.

Barbara Turley: But what I find is that even when I’ve hired, and like I’ve hired some seriously skilled people in my business out of the Philippines, you know, some of them have MBAs, you know, when they’re doing more operational stuff for me now, higher than VA level, I’ve still had to do a level of training and process development with them so that they come on board in how I like things to be done in my business.

Barbara Turley: Because like I said at the beginning, we’re all a bit kind of control freakish when we run our own business and we like things done the way we like them done.

Barbara Turley: And we sort of start to make assumptions about what other people know.

Barbara Turley: And, you know, they think they can read our minds.

Barbara Turley: They can’t.

Barbara Turley: So you have to be realistic about the time investment that you’re still going to have to put in to train a new person in your business.

Barbara Turley: And this happens whether you are a large corporation in the Western world or you’re hiring someone out of the Philippines on a virtual online basis.

Barbara Turley: So trust me, this has nothing to do with outsourcing.

Barbara Turley: Actually, this is just team building.

Barbara Turley: This is bringing anybody into your business at all.

Barbara Turley: And then the final sort of how to fix it or how not to fall into this trap.

Barbara Turley: Don’t waste your time, energy, and money trying to put a square peg into a round hole.

Barbara Turley: So, you know, this is about being realistic.

Barbara Turley: Again, you’re going to get people online, VA’s, who are going to tell you that they can do everything.

Barbara Turley: Well, maybe you should ask them to do a few things for you to actually see where, where does their natural skill set lie?

Barbara Turley: Because they are going to be a square pig trying to fit themselves into a round hole sometimes.

Barbara Turley: But it’s up to you to sort of decipher that as the leader of your business and to, you know, find their strengths and then play to their strengths, play in their genius.

Barbara Turley: OK, so biggest mistake #2. I call this one Driving Through the Fog.

Barbara Turley: Now any of you that are frantically taking notes right now, please just listen because we’re actually giving you a download of a free ebook that we have that details all of this for you.

Barbara Turley: So I’m just running through basically some of the steps that we talk about in the ebook and you can get all the information there.

Barbara Turley: So in the show notes, the guys are going to put a link to the book where you can download the book.

Barbara Turley: So mistake #2, driving through the fog.

Barbara Turley: Now, so many business owners, even a lot of very successful ones, are actually running their business.

Barbara Turley: Like they’re literally driving through the fog.

Barbara Turley: You know, they typically know where they want to go but have a very vague and blurred vision of the actual path they’re taking to get there.

Barbara Turley: Now obviously in business you need to be able to pivot, right?

Barbara Turley: Especially in a startup, you know, sometimes it is a bit foggy and you need to be able to pivot.

Barbara Turley: But, you know, when I say driving through the fog, they’re sort of, they don’t even know the original path that they’re about to take.

Barbara Turley: So there isn’t really much of a strategic plan.

Barbara Turley: And then they hire a VA or a virtual team, let’s say they hire a team of people, and they just expect that team to know where the business is going and how to help clear the fog so that the business can get there faster.

Barbara Turley: Now, I would argue some of you are probably laughing at this and going, but isn’t that the business owner’s job to clear the fog for the team and not the other way around?

Barbara Turley: Yes, it is. It’s unbelievable the amount of business owners that actually think that by hiring people, the people they hire are going to clear the fog for them.

Barbara Turley: Now, it’s almost impossible.

Barbara Turley: Again, this doesn’t matter whether you’re hiring online or you’re hiring, you know, high level executives, it doesn’t really happen that way.

Barbara Turley: As a leader of a business, you are the one who has to steer the ship and then the other people execute everything for you, but you’re the leader they’re looking to for the direction.

Barbara Turley: So you really, really can’t get this particularly from a VA.

Barbara Turley: Now where did I get this one from?

Barbara Turley: Look, we get some feedback sometimes, you know, some business owners that are a little bit, I would say inexperienced with business will give feedback.

Barbara Turley: They’ll say, well, I wanted them to show more initiative and we would sort of say, well, can you define initiative?

Barbara Turley: And really what they start describing is a business strategist.

Barbara Turley: Now guys, a virtual assistant is an assistant.

Barbara Turley: They’re not a business strategist.

Barbara Turley: Can you get them there in time?

Barbara Turley: Absolutely.

Barbara Turley: My first VA is now head of operations at VirtualAngel Hub, and she is a rock star, but she wasn’t a rock star on day one.

Barbara Turley: She was a very good VA, but it took a lot of me mentoring her up into that role.

Barbara Turley: So again though, I’m still the leader of the business and I have to clear the fog for the people in the business.

Barbara Turley: So a reality check here is that a VA will definitely not help to clear the fog.

Barbara Turley: They will clear the backlog, but not the fog.

Barbara Turley: In fact, you know, hiring anyone and adding them into a blurred vision with no clear strategic path will just make the business even foggier than it was before.

Barbara Turley: And doing this with a virtual team member is even worse because there’ll be tons of miscommunications, mistakes, assumptions that cause absolute chaos and stress for both sides that can lead to epic failure and an absolute waste of money.

Barbara Turley: So this one happens a lot.

Barbara Turley: Now, how do we fix this?

Barbara Turley: Well, this is where the business coaching angle of my call comes in.

Barbara Turley: So this is kind of where I’m talking about stuff that’s not really to do with outsourcing.

Barbara Turley: This is like your tips on building a scalable business.

Barbara Turley: You’ve got to develop a clear and easy to communicate vision for the business using your sort of start with the end in mind philosophy.

Barbara Turley: Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t pivot, but your team kind of needs to have a sense that the business owner knows where they’re going and you need to bring your team into that vision in a simple and easy to communicate way.

Barbara Turley: You want to create a simple one page strategic plan that you can demonstrate clear one year, three-year, and five year goals.

Barbara Turley: Now, honestly, like business plans, big long documents, PDF’s, mean there’s different schools of thought on this, but my theory is that you need a one page strategic plan that you could literally have as a screensaver on your computer.

Barbara Turley: So it reminds you every single day when you look at where you’re going.

Barbara Turley: And then you can communicate that in your meetings with teams.

Barbara Turley: You can do like monthly huddles where you talk about the direction and how far off our goals are.

Barbara Turley: I also think you need to outline a 90 day tactical action plan pretty much every quarter with the steps and tasks that need to happen in order to achieve your one year strategic goals.

Barbara Turley: Now three-year and five years we don’t worry so much about it because like you say, you know pivots and things can change direction.

Barbara Turley: But definitely for your one year strategic goals, every quarter you need to be able to lay out the tasks that have to happen that quarter in order for you to make those strategic goals come to life.

Barbara Turley: And your team needs to be on board with that.

Barbara Turley: Even if it’s just one VA sitting in the Philippines working online for you, as long as they’re employed in your business.

Barbara Turley: If it’s someone you’re just hiring on an ad hoc basis, I wouldn’t be doing this.

Barbara Turley: This is kind of more with your employee style person that you’re going to use.

Barbara Turley: Then communication.

Barbara Turley: Oh my God, every marriage, you know, so many marriages have broken down on communication, and businesses have fallen apart as well.

Barbara Turley: So you’ve got to learn to communicate your plans effectively with your team.

Barbara Turley: And then you’ve got to learn to delegate responsibilities and develop reporting structures for success.

Barbara Turley: So it’s not just about saying, hey, here’s your task list. Go off and do it.

Barbara Turley: It’s like, how do your team start reporting back to you then on issues, roadblocks, and success so that you can keep the ship moving?

Barbara Turley: My big recommendation is to organise and commit to daily, weekly, and monthly huddles with your team to address roadblocks and questions.

Barbara Turley: Now what?

Barbara Turley: What do you mean by a huddle?

Barbara Turley: I won’t get into this too deeply, you can Google this, but daily huddles are like 10 minute meetings where everybody has two minutes or a minute and a half to say, what are you working on?

Barbara Turley: Where do you need help or what are the roadblocks and where are we at?

Barbara Turley: Like what’s the milestones?

Barbara Turley: And it keeps the whole team moving.

Barbara Turley: The weekly and monthly and quarterly ones are bigger versions of that and, you know, you sort of get up to more strategic areas, but I definitely recommend these kinds of huddles, even if it’s just you and one VA.

Barbara Turley: Now the final point here is unless the virtual assistant is clear on and believes in the business strategy that you’ve set out, you’re destined to fail and waste time, energy, and money hiring a VA.

Barbara Turley: To be honest, unless you get someone that’s really on board with what you’re trying to achieve, you’ll sometimes just waste money because they’re just going to take tasks off a list.

Barbara Turley: And that’s not, that’s a sub optimal result.

Barbara Turley: OK, so biggest mistake #3. This one is hilarious.

Barbara Turley: I call it the process allergy because, you know, entrepreneurship, it’s all about big vision.

Barbara Turley: Elephant hunting, risk taking, and excitement.

Barbara Turley: I mean, that’s what we all think, right?

Barbara Turley: So entrepreneurship is this like, oh, it’s this exciting game that, you know, the biggest risk takers in the world do.

Barbara Turley: Well, I’m here to tell you that that’s actually wrong.

Barbara Turley: That’s kind of what the media likes to portray.

Barbara Turley: But entrepreneurship is more about creating a solution to a problem that people will pay money to solve, then creating systems and processes to deliver that solution in the fastest, most efficient way.

Barbara Turley: And then delegating those processes to a team to run so that you, the entrepreneur, can go out and find more problems to solve so you can make more money.

Barbara Turley: OK, so everyone knows this, find a problem to solve that people will pay money for, but they forget the next bit, which is to create systems and processes to deliver it and then delegate those effectively so that you’re not the one doing all that yourself, because the entrepreneur needs to lead the business forward.

Barbara Turley: Now, many entrepreneurs hire VA and they talk to them about their grand vision and they say, this is what I want to achieve.

Barbara Turley: But they don’t put any effort into the systems and processes that their team will need to effectively execute on the grand vision.

Barbara Turley: And then people expect their VA to be able to just take the vision and, using their own initiative, come up with what needs to be done in order for that vision to really come alive.

Barbara Turley: Now, honestly, guys, that’s not a VA job, like virtual outsourcing, unless you’re outsourcing to some really hotshot business strategist somewhere that’s going to come up with this for you.

Barbara Turley: But in terms of a virtual assistant, like definitely they’re not going to do that for you.

Barbara Turley: They’re really not.

Barbara Turley: They wouldn’t even have the confidence to question what you know, what you need done or to suggest sometimes ideas, you know, you’ve got to empower them to do that.

Barbara Turley: But if you want to get real success with a virtual assistant, then you really need to invest time into creating your systems and processes so that you can delegate them effectively.

Barbara Turley: Now, I would recommend trying to nail this before you hire someone because otherwise you’re kind of hiring someone and paying when you’re not really ready.

Barbara Turley: And people make that mistake all the time.

Barbara Turley: Now, in addition to that, you need to continuously look at your processes to spot gaps that may cause mistakes because mistakes will happen, especially when it’s a new process being delegated.

Barbara Turley: And it’s not necessarily anyone’s fault.

Barbara Turley: It could just be holes in the process.

Barbara Turley: So how do you fix this?

Barbara Turley: Well, here’s some clear steps.

Barbara Turley: Create a clear recurring task list for the operations of your business.

Barbara Turley: So I always talk about there being the business engine.

Barbara Turley: The business engine is the operations.

Barbara Turley: It’s the internal thing that keeps the lights on every day.

Barbara Turley: And you need a recurring task list.

Barbara Turley: So what are all the tasks that happen on a recurring basis in your business to keep it moving, you need to create a step by step process map for each task that needs to be delegated.

Barbara Turley: Now, this sounds very, you know, sort of babysitting and holding hands and all that, but the reason you want to do this is because then it allows you to maintain control over your business while letting go.

Barbara Turley: Now, as entrepreneurs, we know it’s very hard to let go.

Barbara Turley: And again, we’re control freaks, or maybe it’s just me, but I find personally this way of doing it means that you still keep your fingers in it without doing anything.

Barbara Turley: So you can essentially fire yourself from a process while still knowing how it’s being done and sort of controlling the process.

Barbara Turley: The next one is to accept that your virtual assistants are just not mind reader readers.

Barbara Turley: So gaps in your processes that appear obvious to you will not be obvious to your virtual assistant.

Barbara Turley: So for example, part of your process might require some IP that you have in your head or like the way you think while you’re doing a process is different from a person who doesn’t work in your business or has never worked in your business before.

Barbara Turley: So there could be just little gaps in the thinking.

Barbara Turley: Now, if you work with your virtual assistant to spot the process gaps, you know, if a mistake occurs, for example, you could try and work with your VA to wonder, well, how did that mistake happen?

Barbara Turley: Was it human error?

Barbara Turley: Was there a hole in the process?

Barbara Turley: Is there a gap in the way they think versus how you think when doing the process?

Barbara Turley: But if you do this, it makes your relationship much stronger with your virtual assistant or any, to be honest, any team member.

Barbara Turley: And it also makes your processes much stronger because you close up the gaps together and then have clear and open communication and reporting channels with your VA.

Barbara Turley: So you have to have clear and open communication and reporting channels so you can discuss issues as they come up.

Barbara Turley: Challenge #4. I call it absent Pied Piper syndrome.

Barbara Turley: Now, we’ve all heard of the Pied Piper, I hope.

Barbara Turley: Or maybe I’m just older than everyone out there and I know the story of the Pied Piper, but, you know, the Pied Piper is a leader basically, and people will follow a leader.

Barbara Turley: But a common misconception when hiring a virtual assistant, we see it all the time, is that once they’re hired, the job from the business’s perspective is done and no further management or leadership is required.

Barbara Turley: This is the super myth that sees so many people fail with virtual assistants over and over again.

Barbara Turley: They go through the hiring and firing cycle.

Barbara Turley: They continuously blame the VA when the only common denominator in each of those situations is the business owner themselves and how the business is set up.

Barbara Turley: So reality check here, every team, regardless of virtual or what way you’re building your business, needs a pied piper to lead them and bring a sense of cohesion to the whole structure.

Barbara Turley: Without someone to lead, the team will generally have sub optimal results.

Barbara Turley: They will lose interest, they’ll lose focus, and they end up falling apart.

Barbara Turley: People end up leaving.

Barbara Turley: There’s a whole myriad of, you know, stories out there about why people leave businesses.

Barbara Turley: Doesn’t matter whether they’re virtual or not.

Barbara Turley: So you need to be the leader of your business.

Barbara Turley: So how do we fix this problem?

Barbara Turley: Well, the entrepreneurs who fly high with virtual teams are those that take on the role of leader and inspire their team to greatness.

Barbara Turley: Together, they ensure that the business feels like a solid whole, even if everyone is virtual and even if it’s only them and one VA.

Barbara Turley: They make sure that each person feels valued, knows the direction they need to take and how to get there successfully, and has a leader to look up to and drive the vision every day and allows others to run the business for them, but with clear direction and leadership from them.

Barbara Turley: So you can get people to run your business for you, but you have to have clear direction and leadership from yourself.

Barbara Turley: Now the fifth problem, the biggest problem we see, I call this the lemon squeezer.

Barbara Turley: Now, as a startup, we can fall into this because every business needs to watch its cash flow and make sure it’s getting the most out of each resource that it invests in.

Barbara Turley: But when you invest in people, it’s just a massive mistake to squeeze them like a lemon and try to get productive work out of every second that you’re paying them for.

Barbara Turley: So let’s say you hire someone for four hours a day and, you know, you want to see screen trackers where they’re working for every second of that four hours.

Barbara Turley: Well, it’s just unrealistic.

Barbara Turley: I mean, look, virtual assistants, they’re no different from anyone.

Barbara Turley: They’re people.

Barbara Turley: And sometimes people need thinking time, they need connection time, they need creation time.

Barbara Turley: And if you inspire people to focus on results and have proper reporting structures in place for that, then what does it matter if they hang out on Facebook for 10 minutes?

Barbara Turley: You know, to just zone out or spend time having a chat about life with you for 5 minutes in a meeting before you dive into work.

Barbara Turley: Talk about the lemon squeezers.

Barbara Turley: They tend to end up with overwhelmed and overworked staff that actually silently resent them and don’t produce quality work and eventually productivity falls and they kind of get disengaged and often they just leave at the worst possible time as well.

Barbara Turley: So how do you fix this?

Barbara Turley: Well, you’ve got to be realistic about how much work needs to be done and how many people you need to deal with effectively.

Barbara Turley: So don’t try and shove a full time role down a part time virtual assistant’s neck with lots of specialist skill sets in there.

Barbara Turley: Genuinely, we have actually fired clients from VirtualAngel Hub who can’t see this problem and they try and, you know, they complain and they try to blame us and the VA’s and all this and all we can see is a lemon squeezer and we just go, you know what?

Barbara Turley: They’re just not right for our business because we won’t have our people put through that kind of pain.

Barbara Turley: You’ve got to make sure that you’re fully aware of how long some things take, especially when they’re outside of your expertise.

Barbara Turley: So a common problem is like a client will say to us, well, I think that should have taken 2 hours and it took them 4.

Barbara Turley: And then we’ll go to the VA and go, why did it take you 4 hours?

Barbara Turley: And we’ll find out that actually there was a problem with the logins and then their account wasn’t configured correctly and it took two hours to actually fix it up so they could actually do it.

Barbara Turley: And the client doesn’t know anything about this stuff and they never bothered to ask the VA why they took so long.

Barbara Turley: They just immediately go to the, oh, they’re useless or they’re taking me for a ride.

Barbara Turley: So work with them, work with your virtual assistant to ascertain how long things actually take so that you can plan things together more effectively and create an open and safe space for your VA to talk to you about their experience of working with you.

Barbara Turley: So if they’re finding it stressful, like they have to be able to tell you that and that takes time to work on now.

Barbara Turley: So those are the five biggest challenges, mistakes that we see people making that leads them to fail with VA’s and waste money.

Barbara Turley: So, you know, if you’ve ever hired a virtual assistant and you’ve failed or you’ve hired a virtual team before and you’ve failed, then it’s likely that you’ve committed at least one of the mistakes that I’ve talked about, if not all of them.

Barbara Turley: A lot of people commit all of them, but even one of them is going to make you fail.

Barbara Turley: So to get success with virtual assistants, you need to check yourself and your business in all five of these areas and make a commitment to getting it right.

Barbara Turley: If you’ve ticked all the boxes and you’re still having issues, then the final piece of the puzzle is your recruiting, training, and management process.

Barbara Turley: Now, this is again, not as easy as people think, but, you know, most businesses have no idea how to recruit, train, or manage a virtual assistant effectively.

Barbara Turley: It is a whole skill all by itself.

Barbara Turley: You know, people rely on flimsy resumes that can actually say anything to judge a candidate and their ability.

Barbara Turley: This often leads to total failure, failure from the outset because, you know, the smooth talkers that tell you all what you want to know, but, and the resume looks great and then they’re totally useless.

Barbara Turley: Business owners who shirk any HR management, again, once a virtual assistant starts can lead to a very messy relationship.

Barbara Turley: So you’ve got to be very clear about your sort of HR bit of your business, you know, how are you going to make them work?

Barbara Turley: You know, is there flexi time?

Barbara Turley: And if there is, how does that operate?

Barbara Turley: So you don’t want to leave those things open.

Often another area in the HR area, the people fail is having inadequate training programmes internally to ensure their team can get success within their business.

Barbara Turley: Training is key.

Barbara Turley: You’ve got to train your people.

Barbara Turley: Look, supersonic success is very possible with virtual and outsourced teams and many entrepreneurs have scaled their businesses to serious heights using this strategy.

Barbara Turley: It’s not a myth.

Barbara Turley: It just takes focus, structure, and a commitment to getting it right.

Barbara Turley: So look, you know, we’ve got clients all over the world.

Barbara Turley: I have three different businesses that are run by teams in the Philippines.

Barbara Turley: I’ve got very few people in any other countries, as in Western countries.

Barbara Turley: And we’re building scalable, successful businesses.

Barbara Turley: There is a formula to this.

Barbara Turley: I would recommend learning from what I’m telling you here because I’ve spent years perfecting this and, as I said, it’s not as easy to get it right as people think.

Barbara Turley: So focus on these five key areas and get out there and watch your business grow and it will result in the most dividends from this kind of work.

Barbara Turley: So guys, you know, go and download the ebook.

Barbara Turley: The link to it is in the show notes.

Barbara Turley: I’m sure you might have probably 1000 questions and be happy to answer questions for you.

Barbara Turley: If you jump on over now to the Stage One Startup Facebook page and post your question there and we’ll have a look at all the questions that come in and we might do some blog posts or some videos maybe later on some of your questions that come in.

Barbara Turley: So don’t be shy.

Barbara Turley: Pop your questions in there and I’ll answer them as best I can.

Barbara Turley: So thanks guys for having me on the show.

Barbara Turley: Fantastic.

Host: Barbara, it was an absolute pleasure having you on our show.

Host: Thank you for giving us that half hour lesson that was just full of actionable tips.

Host: I learned a lot from that.

Host: Yeah, me too, man.

Host: And it cleared up a lot of things to do with hiring VA’s and the best ways and the best practices.

Host: And I know if it helped us, it’s going to help our listeners.

Host: For sure.

Host: So guys, remember, as Barbara said, there’s a few giveaways here.

Host: Greg, what, what can people find?

Host: So we have actually managed to get you guys from Barbara herself.

Host: We’ve managed to get you the free ebook on Five Reasons People Fail With VA’s and How to Fix It.

Host: We’ve also managed to grab another free gift for you guys on what to actually outsource in your business.

Host: Brad, how can we get our listeners access to these goodies?

Host: So all you do is you head over to the show notes for this episode and within those show notes you’ll be able to get a kind of guide on what Barbara has just covered, but you’ll also get these goodies so you can actually take them away and put them into action.

Host: It’s almost like a cheat sheet that comes with it for anyone that’s out and about.

Host: There’ll be links within the show notes to download these exact copies that you can take away right now.

Host: And don’t forget, guys, if you do have any questions for us or Barbara, all you need to do is head on over to our private Facebook group, post it within the group there, and we will get Barbara to answer any of the questions that you might have.

Host: And for all you know, guys, if it’s something that you really want to dig deep on, then Barbara will be able to take it further and we could perhaps get something going.

Host: The discussion can be going on in the launch room, group links, again in the show notes, or just hit our Facebook page, post your comments, and we’ll take it from there.

Host: So that wraps everything up for this week’s lesson episode.

Host: Don’t forget that the main episode drops on a Monday.

Host: We are proud to bring you Brian Evans from Influenciv, an online publication that is absolutely killing it right now.

Host: That releases on Monday, so make sure you check that one out.

Host: But if not, we shall see you on next week’s Startup Lessons episode, where we can’t wait to share more valuable tips on what you should be doing as a startup right now.

Host: Thanks for listening guys, see you next week.