How to Delegate (Outsource) Your $15 Per Hour Tasks in the Next 48 Hours!

If you are like me you have a very long to do list each day and you feel accomplished as you check off things on your list. Some productivity coaches say to start with your most time consuming projects, and most important projects first and then move down the list to the least important tasks. Some time management coaches say if you feel better when you check items off your list, start with the small items to check off a lot of things, which motivates you to continue through your list and get things done. 

Be careful about your to do list getting too long as that can create overwhelm. When I get overwhelmed, I freeze up. Nothing gets done. 

Prioritizing your tasks is one way in which you can gain some control over your list. There are SO many things we as marketers, business professionals, small business owners and entrepreneurs need to do each day. The list is endless. Accept this fact...

Then within each of  my departments, I create the checklists of what needs to be done.  This is when I get ready to delegate! Yes, there is no way that I can do all of this by myself and believe me, I have tried! There is no such thing as cloning myself ( yet). 

Do you have a list looking like this? Departments consisting of many of these areas of work and tasks?

When I first started working with virtual assistants I knew that I did not want a general va. A general va is not specialized in any specific skill set and is what I consider to be mediocre in even general skills. 

Allowing each virtual assistant to shine in their passions, gain the necessary training within the specialized areas he or she wants to work in, is the blueprint for success with virtual assistants and outsourcing. 

For instance, we have a virtual assistant on our team who loves Pinterest. She is very good at Pinterest graphics. This is all she does each day at work. We love this because she gets better month after month. 

We have a virtual assistant who loves to create and edit videos and is actually very skilled so this is the department in the company he works in. This allows him to shine as well as our clients. 

Writers are very hard to find in other countries. We have some of the best content writers, who know how to research, put the article together, and add the SEO and graphics.  Our writers are college educated with journalism and teaching degrees and one has his own radio show. 

Continuous learning, training, and growing is key to the success of clients and the team members in the company.  The vas pride themselves in seeking out new knowledge, techniques, and improving their talents and skills. 

Most virtual assistant companies do not have project based and skill based workers. Many companies only supply you with a general va or an admin. It is not very common for a general VA to have the creative mind and imagination it takes to create killer graphics for social media or to write an in-depth pillar post, or to do compelling ad copy for Facebook ads, etc. 

Virtual assistant companies have different ways to onboard their clients. Since outsourcing companies are mostly in other countries and away from where you are, it is important to understand the way they onboard you as a client. What are their procedures?

Check out my video on how we handle our client tasks with Trello, an uber project management system every business should be leveraging and it is FREE:

Getting clear on your goals and expectations is very important.  You have to know where your business is at right now and where you want it to be at the end of this year, in 3 years, in 5 years. What does your business look like at each one of those points in time? 

When you start outsourcing your tasks to a virtual assistant, your va needs to know what that looks like too. If you are hiring a general va who you will be finding, interviewing and training, that person needs to be able to understand your goals and expectations. 

This is true, whether you hire a general va, a va company, or project based virtual assistants because within each of your projects and tasks, there needs to be goals and tactics, systems and steps. Don't let this keep you from delegating your tasks. It is not that hard to get started, I promise. And once you are over the initial hump, you will wonder how you ever ran your business without virtual assistants. 

So what kind of goals are we talking about?

Financial goals, internet marketing presence goals, branding goals, lead generation goals, to name a few.

What are you doing right now on your website to drive traffic to your website? Are you actively engaged with SEO ( Search Engine Optimization) in order to get some of the organic traffic available to you on the internet, like on Google?

Are you promoting your brand on your business Facebook page? Are you working on tweets that will send signals to Google that your website is relevant? What about the other social media platforms? Do you know which ones resonate with your avatar? Your ideal customer?  And do you have a plan to reach those perfect audiences on those correct platforms. 

If you happen to be stuck in this area... we can walk you through this and help you come up with concrete goals and tactics.

One of the biggest reasons that people quit using virtual assistants or feel that outsourcing is too hard is because they don't understand the virtual assistant culture.

There are the cultures of where virtual assistants live geographically. But the culture I am referring to is the culture of virtual assistants. Understanding how the va culture works, helps you to communicate efficiently and it helps avoid misunderstandings. 

All of our team members are in the Philippines. So whenever I onboard a new client I make sure the client understands somewhat about the Filipino culture, nuances, and expectations. 

The first thing which is also very important: I am on eastern time but all of our va team members are 12 hours ahead of us. So when it is 12 noon here in Florida, it is 12 a.m. in the Philippines. I start working at around 3 p.m. each day until about 3 a.m. the next morning so that I am available to our clients in the U.S. and Canada, and also available to my va team members when they are awake and working and also for our clients in Europe. 

The next thing that is very important is the weather. The Philippines is a tropical country. You can relate it somewhat to our weather here in South Florida. Power outages and loss of internet happen in the Philippines however I have noticed over the years that we have more power outages and loss of internet connections during our hurricane season here in South Florida than my team members have in the Philippines. The good news is that power is restored quite quickly in the Philippines and internet connections come back in good time too. Also, our vas can go to an internet cafe' to work if need be. 

What happens after you tell your va what you need to get done? How do you know what is being done for you? How do you find out when your tasks are completed? Make sure there is a follow up system in place. Make sure there is a project management system in place. And you also want to make sure that you are not having to spend a lot of your va hours on the project management systems where it imbalances the amount of time to do your tasks.

A good rule of thumb is about 2 hours for every 10 hours of tasks should be allowed to managing your projects, allocating tasks, and other administrative documentation. Of course if you have a lot of emails going back and forth between you and your va, your va needs to get paid for the time it takes her or him to address your emails and answer them, file them, etc.

The more streamlined the processes are, the more you are going to save time and money. In most instances, when I review the work being done for clients,  I find the clients who do not participate in our Trello project management system end up having a lot more hours being spent on managing their tasks because they are sending them to us in ways that are outside of our streamlined and time saving systems. 

A lot of people like to use spreadsheets. Those are really worthwhile in specific tasks and systems but overall they are the most time consuming way to run projects. We do them for tasks like running a spreadsheet on all the backlinks we are getting for our clients, where the domain is we are getting the backlink from, the date, etc.  

We also use spreadsheets to track our social media verifications of postings. But ALL of our social media tasks are done and tasked inside of Trello. This saves a lot of time and you get to see the output links to your work, and you also get to see the graphics as we upload the graphics to your Trello board. 

You want to be able to see the work that is being done for you. The biggest pet peeve I had working with other va companies was there was no way for me to tell, day to day, what was being accomplished and if what I asked for was being done.

We use the Trello card system where the va that does that specific task gets tagged, then that va has the pay period in which that task is delegated to her, to get that task done. She then marks the card blue, signaling the task is completed. She then goes back into the Trello card and adds her proof she did the task, such as screenshots and links to the output. 

We also apply benchmarks except for certain tasks where the time is unknown, such as getting rid of a hacker or hostile takeover of your website. In most cases, we know how long the tasks take. 

Typically, I do the task myself.  I check how long it takes me to do the task, I add on extra time for the va to do the task because they will not be as fast as I am. We then assign that benchmark to the task.

If say for instance, we have a task where my benchmark is 30 minutes, and the va takes 45 minutes to do the task, the va will only get paid for 30 minutes. If the va is really efficient and fast, and does the task in 20 minutes, you will still pay the va for the 30 minutes. We will not "punish" vas who do their work faster, they get rewarded, just as we do not want to promote slowness and laziness, so we do not allow more than the benchmark. This keeps the vas striving to get their tasks accomplished within the time allowed for the benchmark. 

Communication is the key to making sure you are on the same page as your virtual assistant.  Ask the company how will the va team or your dedicated va be communicating with you? Will it be via just email, or will it be via skype? Or texting? What forms of communication are set up with the company?

How often do they communicate with you? And what types of matters do they communicate with you on? Is there a regular protocol such as a weekly meeting that gets scheduled with you? 

One of the biggest complaints we hear in the industry from clients is a lack of communication. When you ask a question and you do not hear an answer for at least a week; this indicates either a breakdown in communication or lack thereof. 

However, the company may be trying to reach you and you may be the one not responding. I see this happen quite often.  The company emails may be ending up inside of your spam filters and even when you check your spam you may not see the emails. So if email is a part of the process for communicating with you, make sure your email and their email are connected and accepting the emails into your inbox. You can white list the company's email too. 

Make sure you find out what the communication process is, how often the company's va communicates with you up front. This will reduce your frustrations a lot. 

In our company we have some virtual assistants who are awake when you are awake.  However, many of our virtual team members work either when their children are in school or work while their children are sleeping.

For most of our tasks like graphics, video, social media and blogging, these can be scheduled right inside of your WordPress blog and in your Facebook publishing center. The virtual assistants are allowed to work during the schedule of their choice unless they are working in a position where they are a dedicated va for you or they do lead calls. 

I am just a text away for our clients. Even though I may not be able to help with every single request, I do return my texts. If I believe the request needs a phone call, I will call you. If I believe that Daisy, our Chief of Operations is better equipped to answer your questions, she will email you or tag you in Trello. If that does not work, or the request needs further clarification or it is best served through a phone call, she will call you from our Google Voice number.