There are millions of examples where Virtual Assistant have saved businesses and ordinary people countless hours, energy and money. Unmeasurable success.
Two years ago on a trip to Australia I caught up with my cousin Andrew we spoke to him about Outsourcing. He was interested and had open ears so we had a great couple of hours of discussion about where and how to start. Soon after, Andrew began hiring. This a superb example I take great pleasure in sharing with you.
Here’s how my cousin saved $16,000 (AUD) by Hiring a Virtual Assistant:
Andrew started with a Virtual Assistant. Well, Andrew actually started with mine and Tim Ferris’s advice. But then he started by hiring a simple VA from Odesk.
At first, he made errors and wasted time; however, it wasn’t a complete waste as as he learnt from his mistakes. Andrew had his research (I hadn’t written these articles at that point) and started his Odesk advertisements smartly like he would in a newspaper. Lots of people replied. Too many he says, far too many. So he cancelled the job and re-posted with significantly more information. Like our VA Article. He proceeded with testing, interviewing, and hiring multiple VA’s for short periods of time keeping the best ones until he had just 2 good ones left. Andrew says, “What we need is the right people, not the right skills.”
“The personalities are most important to me. I can train them or even leave them to learn the required skills. But I can’t teach them to be motivated and diligent.”
Andrew learnt how to hire and manage his VAs effectively. With these VAs, he began using them to outsource more and more. Andrew and his VA together created guidelines, roles, responsibilities, and procedures which laid the path for effective Virtual Staff Management.
Nine months later Andrew had put on 18 full time Virtual Staff from the Philippines and India. Andrew is saving his company $16,000 AUD per month. And that was just nine months after starting. These figures are still rising.
Andrew has since been featured in the Australian Papers as an upcoming business success star. However, it is still not widely known that a large part of his business success comes from hiring Virtual Assistant. His competitors haven’t caught on yet and it remains one of his business secrets. For this reason, I keep all details of Andrew’s company confidential.
For a lot of people, hiring, delegating, and managing are totally new skill sets to discover and to master. Doing this online can make things both easier and harder. If you learn from your mistakes, it will get easier and easier. It’s when you don’t learn from you mistakes that you have a problem. So give it a go—make errors, learn, make system, and develop. Simply don’t let your lessons become too expensive.
