Choosing The Right VA For Clients

Choosing The Right VA For Clients

Sean: Next question from George. This is specifically for you, Ms. Le-an. How do you find the right virtual assistant for your clients? There you go.

Le-an: I have a whole YouTube video on that. Anyway, so the main one is actually the values, that’s the biggest one is I do kind of have all of the questions that I have the interview questions when I’m interviewing the potential assistant is based on those five values that we have. And then the other one is before I even hop on the interview, is actually give them a skill test so I can see where their skills are actually at on the tasks that their client would need them to be able to do. One of our policies is that once someone’s in they’re in like once they’re accepted inside of our company, we take care of them the best way that we can. And even though later on our paths change, they shifted or they’re doing this, we still try to part as friends.

Le-an: So we kind of have that as going in your taking care of and going out, you’re also taking care of having that cycle, having that good – everyone knows that this is how it’s been. We kind of get to have the right people right away. It’s easier to filter when people see like, ‘Oh, this is not just another. I don’t even think of us as a corporate job, this is not just another job that you’re getting. You’re getting into a company that will take care of you, in the best way that we can. And at the same time, you have to show up in the best way that you can, because then that’s the only way that the relationship can work. So basically, it’s just a mix of values, skill, and then also taking care on the way in and on the way out.

Sean: And that sounds pretty sweet for people who are going to be applying. And there’s a follow-up question about that, how do you know if they’re going to be responsible and able to manage their tasks?

Le-an: It’s an interesting one because, for me, one of the things that I had to learn really fast, working online, being a remote leader, I just have to trust people like that was the first thing I had to give them. So if they’re not being able to manage their tasks, I know that they’ll tell me if there’s something wrong – I can also tell that’s the other side of it. Like, one of the things that we have inside of our company is there – even the assistants that are for our clients, they need to send me a daily report every day. Because of that, I am able to catch like, ‘Oh, something wrong? Or They weren’t able to manage this,’ and I check in on them.

Le-an: So it’s just the mix of trust and also having the systems that even if you trust them 100%, there’s still some sort of feedback that you receive that you’re able to see like, oh, someone’s not being able to do as well as they can. And then I go ahead and schedule a coaching call with them. So it’s making sure that you do the feedback as fast as you can. This is the fastest way someone can grow and then just giving trust out front, because no one is supposed to really earn your trust, especially as an employee, because you are literally trusting them, at least for me, to another client who’s paying us to take care of them. So that’s kind of my logic of like I just trust them right away. If I can see any red flags and give them the feedback and usually nine out of ten, like 9.5 out of ten, it works out every time.

Sean: That’s an amazing stat. How do you do that? That’s like magic to me. For us in SEO-Hacker, we do a whole long process of screening our people. And it’s not that we don’t trust them. We actually do. But it is tough for us to like. Of course, see if they’re really going to be responsible. And even though the long process of our hiring, we still make mistakes like we still hire the wrong people.

Le-an: Oh yeah

Sean: And it’s frustrating for us, you know, so nine out of ten, that’s an amazing stat. That’s an amazing stat. Props to you.

Le-an: It’s just like multiple times in my career as a leader, I have gotten to the point where I actually had the fire groups of people because they became toxic and I was like, ‘Okay, no that’s it.’ It usually takes me a while to get to that point. But now with my own company, with 2XYou I make sure that not that it doesn’t happen because it probably happened. Fingers crossed. It never does.

Le-an: But like I know how – basically I’ve gotten just that toxicity detection at this point. Like I know if someone’s going to be bad or someone’s going to work out, even if someone is bad, if I catch it early enough, then I know a lot of the toxicity that I’ve noticed before with the previous employees that we’ve had. It’s literally just a lack of clarity. That’s it. They become this way because either they didn’t know that it was wrong or they were crossing a boundary. Or that they had an assumption that we never, me as a leader, take responsibility. I never cleared out. So then they kind of spiraled into their own and kind of made their own group or whatever. And then it ended to the point where there was just a tiny misunderstanding that blew up. And then, of course, we like I said, I do. It takes me a while to get to that point where I do actually let people go.

Le-an: But it’s knowing also that people just want to be taking care of people just want clarity whether they love their job or hate their job. Moving forward, you like an employer who knows or it gives you the clarity to know what to do next. You hate employer who says, Oh, we’ll just figure that out. You hate that. So the way that I treat my employees is how I want to be treated as an employee myself. So that’s kind of just my thought process basically on that.

Sean: It’s amazing. And yeah, toxicity. That’s something that you really got to take care of. And I love it when toxic people just weed themselves out.

Sean: Yeah, yeah. Weeds them out. We got a follow-up question, do you think that a career of being a VA is sustainable?

Le-an: So it depends, honestly. So for me, I’ve only been a virtual assistant, an actual virtual assistant for like a month. Most of my career has been writing, editing, graphic design, website design, marketing, and then, of course, I became CEO. But I see virtual assistant as something that you can slowly really turn later on as something that it’s just part of your work. If you are not inclined, I always say this to people, not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. Some of them do just want to have a job that they work on for long periods of time. They might do a little bit of career hopping, but if it works for you, then it works for you. Like if you really want to have this kind of world, this kind of job where you’re supporting entrepreneurs, you’re literally their backbone. Then you continue doing it. If not, then you switch. That’s how you learn what you like, what you don’t like. You switch, you find something else. But on sustainability, it really is up to you. Like, I can’t say, Yep, George, this is sustainable. You can do this forever and ever. You might change your mind later on, and that’s fine too.

Sean: Yeah, that’s a good answer. That’s a good answer. And I think this is her last question. What are your tips when shifting careers from a day job to being a VA?

Le-an: Depends also on your risk level, basically, that’s the biggest one is – I sometimes I advise, ‘Okay, are you comfortable with leaving your job right now? Do you have enough savings? Just jump right into it.’ For some, I say just find a bunch of clients who are always looking for just a three-hour-a-day virtual assistant. You can try applying for those for just part-time because then you can see again if this is something that you want or not. For a lot of people, they can’t handle having too much freedom of their time and I’ve hired some of them sadly, and I had to help them out. For some people, they jump right in and fall in love. So you have to kind of see and gauge, is this something that I really want to do but try to get out by doing a three hour a day being a virtual assistant, you just clean someone else’s calendar or email or you jump right into like, ‘okay, I’m going to work 40 hours a week for this person. Let’s just do this.’

Le-an: So on shifting risk level, what you’re comfortable with, what you’re financially also comfortable with, don’t just jump into it and expect that you get the job right away and just find and see what you like.

Sean: That’s good. That’s really good. And we have a question from Ron, what do the VA’s do?

Le-an: And I literally just did a TikTok video as I posted about 2 hours ago, what do VA’s do.

Sean: Definitely follow Le-an’s TikTok run. Put the answer there. You might want to check that out.

Le-an: Yeah. So I remember what I said in my TikTok video. Five things that are just a general overview, like a VA. I always believe that there are two types, there’s the general VA and there’s the specific VA. So specific VA is like you’re a graphic artist, but you also support them or your social media manager and you also support them. General VA is the one that usually people know about is where the first thing is you organize the chaos. That’s how I describe it is you organize their calendar, their email usually.

Le-an: And you’ll probably agree with me, Sean. When you’re starting a business or growing a business, there’s going to be chaos. So your support as the VA for someone is to help them organize that chaos. Two is I just call this writing. So when you are a VA, you help document processes, you help document meetings, and you help document reports. So that’s one of the major tasks of a VA. The third one is – that I am trying to remember exactly what I put in the Tiktok video. I think I said basically managing social media. So that could be posting, that could be commenting, that basically is helping your client keep up with the social media to make sure that they’ve seen. If branding is their focus, then it’s helping them in that way. Fourth is research. A lot of what you’ll do as a virtual assistant is you basically have to say that Google is my best friend because you need to find the right data, you need to find the right information for your client, especially if they’re trying something new in their business.

Le-an: And the fifth one, and it’s honestly my favorite part is when you’re a virtual assistant, you become literally a mini entrepreneur without having to take the risk of being an entrepreneur. You get to learn and watch how a business grows or fails – sometimes it does fail, and how someone can actually get back again. So that’s kind of the interesting thing that I love why I wanted to start to 2XYou in the first place is because it’s so interesting seeing how different people do their businesses, even though they’re in the same industry. And as a virtual assistant, you get to see, you get to come along for the ride because you’re literally being paid to come along for the ride as well.

Sean: That’s amazing. And he has a clarification question. What’s the difference between VA and a secretary?

Le-an: VA, you work from home, secretary in the office, that’s basically it. With the secretary. That’s usually ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ where you’re just running around, getting coffee, getting errands around the city. With VA, they’re just kind of working from home there, working remotely. If you want to ask them to get your coffee. They’ll probably just have it delivered to your house. That’s mostly it.

Sean: Right? Very clear. Very good answer.