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We explore the telltale signs that it’s time to get some assistance in your entrepreneurial journey. Are you already thinking about whether you should hire a VA? Not exactly sure what you’d have them do? This episode’s for you.
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Links mentioned in this episode:
• Have us hire a VA for you.
• Get Kate Toon’s book Six Figures in School Hours.
Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie’s Links:
• Get 1:1 Meta Ads Coaching from Kwadwo
• Say hi to Kwadwo on Instagram
• Subscribe to The Art of Online Business’s YouTube Channel
Jamie Sampany-Kessie’s Links:
• Say hi to Jamie on Instagram
Speaker 1:
Welcome back to the Art of Online Business, and we’re going to be talking about we, as in me and my wife, jamie. Hi, we’re going to be talking about hello there signs that it’s time for you to get some help in your business. And, if you don’t know, my wife is the co-host of the podcast. She’d been running Facebook ads now behind the scenes for almost half a year and you came up in a different school of ads management than me. Right, you had a different teacher. Yes, I’ve been coaching her behind the scenes, but she enrolled in a course and has been getting good results for clients and brings a fresh perspective to ads management and online business in general. So thanks for being here, jamie.
Speaker 2:
Thanks for having me. You’re welcome. You’re welcome.
Speaker 1:
So we’re gonna talk about because my wife does hiring projects. So if you’re listening right now and you’re like do I need a team member.
Speaker 2:
Am I overwhelmed.
Speaker 1:
Well, like my wife does VA hiring projects, you know where she looks for the right kind of people to get on a team and take some responsibilities off of the owner’s plate, and you just are wrapping up on a project right now. Right, Right, Cool. So in the next episode we’re going to talk about how not to hire a dud, or at least to reduce the risk of hiring somebody who is not the right fit for your business. But before we do all that, let’s just talk about signs.
Speaker 2:
How do you know that you are ready to hire a VA?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, well, overwhelmed might be an indicator. Here’s the trick, here’s the trick, a mistake that people make is they just go and hire somebody without really having a plan and knowing what they’re hiring that person into, and they don’t have SOPs, standard operating procedures. They don’t have a system or systems in place. And so that new person wants to help the business owner and they really do, but they really can’t. Even if they’re talented, their talent is wasted.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
So a sign could be that you’re overwhelmed.
Speaker 2:
Right, right. So a sign could be that you’re overwhelmed, right, right. I mean it can be scary, probably going from the solopreneur to starting to think about hiring a team member, right, even if you’re used to doing all the things yourself. But one thing that I was just reading in Six Figures in School Hours, which has been a really good book. I highly recommend it, kate Toon. We’ll put it in the show notes below the link to the book book I highly recommend it, kate Toon.
Speaker 1:
We’ll put it in the show notes, below the link to the book.
Speaker 2:
Right. But she was talking about how that initial investment like we usually have the okay, I can just do it myself more quickly, right, sure, easier if I just do it myself. But then you’re just going to stay in this perpetual state of overwhelm, of working too many hours, taking time away from your family or the other things that you really want to do. And it’s an investment, right? Same thing like with our kids, for example, just this morning, like my son is five and he’s like wanting to do things by himself, and he’s like I want to put the almond butter on my pancake by myself, you know. And it’s like, okay, you know, and is he going to do it a little more messy? Is he going to do it exactly the way that I want it to be done?
Speaker 2:
Initially, no, but you got to let him do it, you got to let him try. And same thing in your business. You got to, you know, teach people. And it’s that time investment upfront, but later it’s going to pay off. Later You’re going to have more freedom that that you desire, so that you can do those bigger picture things that only you, as the CEO of your business, can do. So how, other than overwhelmed? What are some other signs that you might be ready to hire a VA?
Speaker 1:
Well, to see these signs, it’s important and I’ve done this myself, it’s important that you, the listener, would do a time audit. That means for a whole week and a regular week, right, Not while you’re on vacation or something is going on that’s irregular in your business, but for a whole week, either down to 30 minutes or in 15 minute blocks.
Speaker 1:
Record what you are doing and just be faithful to do that process, and then what you’ll see are some signs. The concept here is that not every task or responsibility is created equal. There are things that we would call, let’s say, $10 an hour tasks. That that’s what they’re worth. There’s $100 an hour tasks and there’s $1,000 an hour or even $10,000 an hour tasks.
Speaker 1:
Right, and think of this you have three months to make $100,000, okay, you cannot work overtime, you can only work 40 hours a week. So how are you going to get to a hundred thousand dollars? 40 hours a week is 160 hours a month, right, and so 160 hours a month multiplied by math is 480 hours. So if you’re only doing $10 an hour tasks, the most you can make is $4,800.
Speaker 2:
Right, you’re not going to get there by responding to all those customer service inquiries, right.
Speaker 1:
So if you did like $1,000 an hour tasks, you know and each of those hours was voted. That then okay, in this, in this hypothetical, very clean, without you know any sort of any variables that are predictable.
Speaker 1:
You can make $480,000, right. And so here’s the $10 an hour task that you want to avoid once you see. So here’s a sign If you are spending lots of time on $10 an hour tasks, that could be why you feel overwhelmed, why you feel like you’re not getting traction, why you feel like you’re kind of just maintaining your business rather than expanding your business. So one of them is you’re the one updating your website. You’re the one actually uploading your blog, publishing your blog, if you will. You’re spending time on social media, which is okay, but you notice that you’re spending a lot of time there. Maybe there’s some doom scrolling, be honest, right. Or maybe you’re quote unquote doing outreach, but that you’re spending a lot of time there. Maybe there’s some doom scrolling, be honest, right. Or maybe you’re quote unquote doing outreach, but actually you’re just aimlessly looking at accounts but not being purposeful about that. Where are some other ones, some other $10 an hour tasks?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, just that basic customer service. For example, the project that I’m finishing right now is for just email inbox sorting and I mean that alone can take time right Figuring out which ones are the emails that you know the CEO actually needs to respond to that only that person can respond to. What are some you know, if you have a membership, hey, I got locked out or I need to reset my password or I need this and that, like those kinds of things can definitely be responded to by a VA and sorted and spam and other.
Speaker 1:
You’re hiring a VA to do this right now, exactly For another person. Yeah, and it’s only.
Speaker 2:
It’s only email inbox cleanup, basically.
Speaker 1:
A little bit of a segue, but where are you finding your VA, Like, how are you?
Speaker 2:
Gotcha A little bit of a segue, but where are you finding your?
Speaker 2:
you know YouTube videos on online jobs, ph or anything but, but um, but one, they usually have a very high level of of English. Number two they’re just really kind, faithful, polite, courteous people in general, like most people that we’ve worked with, have just been really really nice to work with. Could be almost all actually. Yeah, I think all of them have been Just like culturally they’re just they wanna please, they wanna serve and they’re just a pleasure to work with. And three, they’re very hardworking and also the pay that you can pay them is it allows you to pay someone from the Philippines in a salary that is great for them and also makes sense for your business.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
Especially if you haven’t quite hit that, say, $150,000 revenue mark in your business.
Speaker 1:
yet you know, like are you going to go hire, like, a VA for your business from, let’s say, the States and pay them $35 an hour? Like your business can’t support that, so why not do it in a way that’s a blessing for somebody and a blessing for you? So here’s another thing that you could be spending time on editing your own videos or creating your own graphics. Are you up in Canva making your graphics and you know you could feel like you’re good at it and you probably are good at it. But here’s the thing your business needs you to do, the things that only a business owner and a ceo can do, because usually it’s those things that are going to move the needle in your business and grow your business.
Speaker 1:
For example, I bet you’re already listening right now and thinking dang it, corey, joe and Jamie. There’s like this thing of my mind that I’ve been wanting to do it for my business, but it keeps getting pushed to the back burner or it gets to the end of the day. I’m preaching to the choir right now and I just don’t have time to do it because I’m in my email inbox so long, you know. Or I’m making good designs in Canva or God forbid I’m editing my own videos and I hear you like no condemnation here. I love video editing actually.
Speaker 1:
If I could just do one thing, it would be video editing, because I love it. You know I did it for my previous YouTube channel, but those things don’t move the business. Here’s some things that really do move the business Funnel strategy right. Going out there and finding strategic partners, delivering webinars, for example. What about getting out in front of other groups and speaking to them on your subject of expertise? You know groups that contain people that would be, that could be your client. Like making connections. These are things that like if we CEOs and owners could just do all the time, we would have so many clients and customers we wouldn’t know what to do with.
Speaker 1:
So those are some signs. When you do your time audit and you realize that, especially, you’re spending lots of time on repetitive tasks, tasks where you’re doing like basically the same exact thing day in and day out to keep the business just going, that is an indicator that you could hire that out.
Speaker 2:
Right, and I want to encourage you with two things, because I can already hear some people saying a time audit. I don’t have time to do a time audit, but it’s one of those necessary evil kind of things. You’ve got to figure out where your time is going if you want to move forward. And the second thing is to start small. If you do want to hire someone, it doesn’t have to be like 20, 30 hours a week. It doesn’t have to be, you know, a full-time employee. You can start with someone at 10 hours a week. The project I’m working on right now is literally it’s 10 hours a week, it’s two hours a day, monday to Friday, and it’s email cleanup. What else could you do with that 10 hours a week? And that email, all the email stuff just taken off of your plate.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
I mean, that would just like automatically free up so much mental space, right.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and if you need help hiring somebody, jamie does the hiring projects. There’s a link in the show notes below and you can set up a call with her to see what kind of role needs to be hired in your business and then how she can go about that and all the details involved. It’s quite affordable. I’ll leave it at that. I think the last thing I want to say is there’s this mindset issue that I’ve encountered before, because I coached established online course creators for probably the first three-ish years of like my online business career right, and I heard it again and again which is one like they can’t do it as well as me, all right. So we’ve already talked about that. If somebody can do it 70%, 80% as good as you, that’s more than good enough.
Speaker 2:
That’s. I’m just going to say you got to let it go, yeah.
Speaker 1:
You got to let it go. But what about? What about? Oh well, if I’m hiring somebody, like they have to be full-time.
Speaker 1:
Well, jamie, you just said that you can hire somebody part-time, right, right, right. Here’s the other thing. What if there’s somebody to hire who can do it better than you? Oh, okay, so now you’re stressing yourself out, you’re spending your time on these tasks, oh, but what if I hire this out and it’s just boring to somebody? Well, we all have different personality types. Mm-hmm, what if there was somebody to hire who it’s a delight for them to be in the spreadsheets, it’s a delight for them to collect, you know, customer survey data and put it into a useful format?
Speaker 2:
so you can improve your marketing.
Speaker 1:
You know it’s a delight for them to respond to emails, Right? What if Right?
Speaker 2:
Because I can guarantee you, there is.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, what if?
Speaker 2:
Because I can guarantee you there is yeah, which kind of blows my mind, because for most of us there’s always those things in our business that we just don’t want to do, right, but other people actually enjoy it and they love that administration, organization kind of details, yeah.
Speaker 1:
I mean, I’m sure you didn’t start your business to be spinning your wheels or to be super stressed about certain things that you just don’t like doing. And we’re human. You’re human Like not everything in the business is enjoyable.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
But if you want that business, your business, to grow like you intended it to grow while you still enjoy your life, then it’s time to hire, hire out.
Speaker 2:
Right, yeah, still enjoy your life. Then it’s time to hire, hire out, right. I think that what you said is really good, that sometimes we don’t even think of the concept that there could be someone who’s actually better at this than me, because most of the time we think I can have my hands in all these pots and I can do everything really well. No one can do it as well as me. But actually there’s people who can do it better than you, and hire them, and that’s what makes a great team and that’s what’s going to grow your business.
Speaker 1:
We should probably, in another episode, also talk about some systems that need to be in place to help your team succeed. But for now we’re going to say goodbye SOPs, sops, right. You know I used to work in a Chinese factory and we had S O P’s and it was. It was fun times. For now, though, thanks for listening, thanks for talking, jamie, and until the next time we see you or you hear from us, be blessed, take care.
Speaker 2:
Bye, we’ll see you in the next one. Talk soon, bye.
