This week’s Biz Hack: This week’s Biz Hack builds upon last week’s (offloading the tasks that can be easily delegated).
Last week I talked about listing out your daily and weekly tasks, but not just relying on memory to create this list, really tracking throughout the week everything you worked on. This is actually a key step every entrepreneur who may be thinking about hiring a virtual assistant (VA) should do prior to actually bringing one on to the team.
To take this a step deeper, Chris Ducker, one of the best-known experts on virtual staffing, has an exercise called “The Three Lists of Freedom.” In a nutshell, divide your tasks into three categories:
- The things you hate doing everyday
- The things you can’t do yourself
- The things you shouldn’t be doing
It’s truly an eye-opening exercise that will help you discover what you can be outsourcing. From there it’s a matter of staffing appropriately. Don’t expect your general VA to also be your video editor, content writer and SEO expert. If those are roles you need to fill, look for people with expertise in those areas. Chris actually recommends entrepreneurs have 6 types of VA’s 1) the general VA 2) an audio/video editor 3) content writer 4) SEO/web marketer 5) graphic/web designer 6) web developer. If you’re not ready for that many, start with a general VA and see how it goes.
So where do you find them and what common mistakes should you avoid?
For finding a VA there are a number of services out there, it just depends on what’s important to you. Chris operates Virtual Staff Finder with VA’s based in the Philippines, but if you prefer to keep things domestic or even in your hometown, you can use oDesk, eaHelp, Zirtual, Hire My Mom, and others.
Just finding a VA won’t solve all your problems though and can actually turn into a train wreck if you don’t have a good foundation. So be sure to create your tasks list, a description of the role and expectations, and how you will train this person. Don’t expect them to just be able to plug into your company without an on-boarding process. Just as if you were hiring someone in the flesh, your VA will need training. Document your processes, set up Skype calls or Google+ Hangouts, record screencasts of how you like things done. This is a critical step, but one many entrepreneurs overlook when hiring a VA. And again, don’t expect them to be a jack-of-all-trades. Fill your roles appropriately.
With all this in mind, what are some tasks a general VA can help you with?
- Managing email
- Managing your contact database – inputting contacts from business cards
- Answering customer service emails or requests
- Managing your calendar and scheduling
- Booking travel arrangements
- Organizing your digital files on Dropbox or Google Drive
- Creating presentations
- Moderate blog comments, adding tags and images to blog posts
- Conducting research
- Posting to social networks
- Collecting insights and analytics from your various networks and websites, and create reports
- Preparing newsletters
- Transcribe audio and video files
- Project management
- Sending thank you notes or holiday cards
- Basic bookkeeping
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