How good would it be to have someone who you could delegate the tasks that you don’t like doing or don’t know how to do? Whether it’s blogging, social media, or finding a personal assistant to help you with the daily tasks.
Let’s get to the details on where to find a virtual assistant, how to pick the right candidate, and how to work with the person.
In this episode, Liam Martin shares how to find the right virtual assistant to outsource part of your work.
Liam is the co-founder and CMO of TimeDoctor.com and Staff.com. After graduating with a masters in Sociology from McGill University, Liam opened a small tutoring company which grew to over 100 employees, and looked to solve a problem with remote employees not reporting accurate work data which turned into Staff.com. He consults on outsourcing and process design and is passionate about how to gain insights into the inner workings of how people work.
In this episode, we will cover:
- [00:22] About the episode and Liam Martin
- [02:03] Liam shares how he wanted to become a professor, which didn’t work out, but he turned to the tutoring business
- [04:21] As he was looking for a way to track the remote workers that time he started a few online services
- [05:45] If you want to hire a virtual assistant, look for one who will be able to make the right decisions without much of your control
- [06:06] An example of how to test a graphic designer before you hire him or her
- [09:27] The tasks that are done by one of Liam’s assistants as an example of what to look for in a right personal virtual assistant
- [11:43] What to pay attention to when you delegate the tasks to a virtual assistant
- [14:06] Where to find the right virtual assistant
- [16:23] Liam has a rule in a team to have a minimum of 100 virtual assistant applicants before they pick a candidate for a position
- [17:53] A virtual assistant with passion but fewer skills at the beginning can be better at work later than one who has a fantastic resume
- [20:05] Make sure that people understand the work they need to do before you hire them. Liam focuses on getting people to quit before he hires someone
- [24:09] An example of Liam’s team workflow for blogging and content marketing, which you would want to get if you want to delegate blogging
- [29:47] An order of which virtual assistant to hire if you don’t want to hire a big team for content marketing right now, starting with the SEO manager
- [32:54] Liam has the contract and NDA with every virtual assistant
- [33:23] How much to pay a good virtual assistant
- [36:44] Get one regular virtual assistant and then hire someone amazing at what he does for a few hours, so the first assistant can learn from the pro
- [37:58] How to set up a workflow with a virtual assistant
- [39:24] Sometimes you should delegate even the work you like doing when it isn’t worth your time
4 Steps to Delegate Your Work to a Virtual Assistant
- Step 1: Delegate your top three time sucks of the day
- Step 2: More likely at the beginning, your virtual assistant will fail with those tasks. Figure out why and adjust the workflow to make it better
- Step 3: Once the first three tasks are set, find more time sucks in your day and delegate them too
- Step 4: Repeat the process until you work only on the tasks that you are passionate about
Pin these quotes to your Pinterest board:
- Learn more about Liam Martin on timedoctor.com, stuff.com
- The places where you can look for the virtual assistant remote.co, upwork.com, flexjobs.com, weworkremotely.com
- Look for a web designer on 99designs.com
- Search for the sites that would be interested in linking back to your blog post at ahrefs.com
- Check the tool for social media outreach buzzstream.com
- Participate in the Running Remote conference
Ep. 65
