The Virtual Success Show

Want the transcript? Download it here.

01:02 – Right people, right seats, right time

02:14 – Right people

04:24 – Skilled people vs training people

05:58 – Right seats

07:15 – Which seats you need to fill and when

13:00 – Right time 16:13 – It’s easy to do and easy NOT to do

20:18 – Wrapping things up

Matt:  Hey everyone. Welcome back to another show of the Virtual Success Show. I’m joined today by my co-host, Barbara Turley. Hey, Barb.

Barbara:  Hey, Matt! How’s it going? Good to do another show with you.

Matt:  It certainly is, yeah. It’s such a beautiful winter’s day here in Sydney today.

Barbara:  It is.

Matt:  It’s clear blue skies and can you believe, 23 degrees in the middle of July, or beginning of July.

Barbara:  I have to admit, I love… The Australian blue skies are just to die for. You get blue skies all the time, pretty much all the time here. It’s very rare that it’s not blue skies. I just love that.

Matt:  Certainly is. And it’s a really exciting day to be doing this topic as well, titled ‘Right People, Right Seats, Right Time,’ and this is a follow-on show from the last show we did where we talked about VAs or project managers or ops manager, which should you choose? And it was really interesting conversation that Barbara and I were having as we were preparing for these shows, and this topic sort of just popped out for us, because what we’ve been finding is so many of our respective clients have the mindset that they need to put people in their businesses to help them grow, but they’re not taking enough time to number one, choose the right people for what they need done.

Secondly, putting them into the right roles or seats in the business, but also then it’s about the timing of all this, and that’s what we wanted to talk to you today. So, let me get started. Barb, right people. What’s your experience as far as right people in your business and some of the challenges you’ve had over the time?

Barbara:  Yeah. So, look, a lot of the things that I share on this podcast I learned myself through the hard way and not having anyone really to sort of advise me on it, but I guess a lot of these things you do learn by experience. So, in terms of the right people, I think… Look, with VAs, I felt it was a bit easier for me, because I was very clear on that boundary of what a VA does and what a VA doesn’t do.

Barbara: When I tried to… I had some VAs though that were very, very good and I realised I needed, sort of, project management help and I thought, “Well, they can do it. I mean, they’re really good. They’re great VAs and they’re on it,” and what I found was when I put them into that project manager type role, it was a bit frustrating for me and it was a bit scary for them, because all of a sudden, the expectation went to a whole other level.

Barbara:  Their expectation of themselves, my expectation of them, and my expectation of the result I was going to get, and the truth is, I didn’t really get that result, because I realised they needed a lot more mentorship from me to make the transition and the problem… The funny problem was, is that I gave some of the people I made project managers, I gave them VAs to work under them, but what I found was they found it really hard to break out of the doing mindset of a VA, because a project manager’s not going to do all the doing and the grunt work, they’re supposed to be delegating.   I then had to teach my VAs how to delegate and they found it quite difficult. So it was actually a… It was a hard transition there.

Matt:  Absolutely, and what I find around this topic of right people also is as your business starts to grow and you start to move a lot faster, you tend to need a different level of skill in order to keep up, and to your point Barb, having the time to actually train these people. So sometimes in the infancy of your business, this sort of falls into that timing piece a little bit, which is in the infancy of your business, you tend to have a little bit more time and you can spend more time training, creating systems, and the like.

Matt:  As your business starts to ramp up and you start to really get some great results through your marketing and selling functions, what happens is, we then want to throw more to these people or we bring new people on that we want to throw more to and then we don’t have the time to train them. So, we actually under the right people piece, need to consider, do we need to be bringing in more skilled people who have the experience and actually buy that experience into our company, versus having to train them?

Barbara:  Yeah. I just want to add there as well, it’s really important to also remember, if you’re at a point in business where… Sometimes when you’re growing really fast, people think you’re making a killing and you realise you’re actually not, because the costs are growing, it’s eating your profit and all that stuff. I went through this kind of phase and I realised that while it would be lovely to hire a project manager who had all those skills, I was in a situation when I first did this where I couldn’t really do that actually, and I realised that the best thing I could do was actually take some of my own time and make the people who I knew could do it, but they just needed a bit more of my time. And I just had to invest my time, because I certainly didn’t have the money at the time.

So, sometimes you got two resources, you got money and time. Sometimes maybe investing, if you’re good at this, some of your own time, means that you can get the results, but you have to realise that at some point, you have to invest something. It’s either going to be money or time, or both.

Matt:  Correct. Correct. So then, I guess, in talking to the right seats, this is a really, I guess, undervalued piece in business, I believe, and it’s a very, very simple tool. I was saying to Barb just before the show, it’s actually a piece of advice I think I’d give out at least once a week now, which is, creating an organisational chart for your business, not where it’s at now, but for where you want it to go.

Matt:  So for instance, if you’ve got goals or targets you’re trying to hit in the next one year, two years, five years, for arguments sake, you need to create an organisational chart for what the business… the team looks like, assuming you’ve hit your one-year goal, assuming you’ve hit your two-year target, assuming you’ve hit your five-year targets. So that you have clarity on the business and the team you need to grow into versus constantly being reactive, and it’s the reactive business owners that tend to put the wrong people in the wrong seats.

And so, this very, very simple tool being the organisational chart, done properly helps you future pace the… or understanding which seats you’re going to need and when you’re going to need them.

Barbara:  I’m just laughing listening to you say that Matt, because I know, and just for the listeners, Matt gave me that advice a few years ago when I was… The business was a lot smaller and he doesn’t remember specifically giving me that advice, but I have actually talked about this on other podcasts where I have been interviewed and said that it was one of the most pivotal pieces of business advice that changed a lot for me, personally.

When I actually sat down and I think Matt, I think I remember you saying to me, “Barb, why don’t you do an org chart of what your business looks like at 100 people.” And at the time, I think I had 15 people and I couldn’t even get my head around that, but when I did it, I look at it now and we’re sort of at that 100 people place, and the people I was thinking of hiring when I was at 15 people were actually, in hindsight, going to be the wrong people had I not done this particular exercise.

Barbara:  And the people I was thinking of hiring at 15 people, I haven’t even hired yet, because I don’t actually need those yet and it made it very clear to me what I actually needed, which in my case were things like project managers, trainers, strong team leaders. That’s the sort of thing I really needed and I’m now doing the org chart of what does the business look like at 500 people? Which is actually exciting now, whereas the first time I did it, it was a bit scary. So, massive piece of advice for anyone listening. Don’t be scared of it and just do it. Have a look at it.

Matt:  Absolutely, which sort of takes us back to the last show where we talked about VA or project manager or ops manager, and when you create this organisational chart and you’re clear on what each role needs to be doing and how it all fits together, then you can start to make decisions about, “Well, who am I going to put and in which seat am I going to put them?” And this, again, it doesn’t take a lot of time and it’s not about getting this perfect.

As you grow within your business, the organisational structure will evolve as well. Like Barb was saying, who she thought she needed didn’t end up turning out to be who it was, but without that structure and that plan and that visual, it would’ve been a lot harder.

Barbara:  Yeah. You just panic and you hire, you think, “I need an HR manager. I need this and I need that,” and you actually don’t. In time as the business grows, you will need all of these functions, but you know, Matt, as you were talking, I was just thinking about the stages of business and this concept of what is the right time, because people have often asked me, “When’s the right time to get a VA? When’s the right time to get a project manager?”

Barbara:  And I think in the very, very, very early stages of the business, when you still haven’t even figured out the product to market fit and all that kind of thing, I think at that point of a business where it’s very much start-up and you’re still trying to get a product that people are going to buy, I think you could possibly think about a VA at that point, but I don’t… I even think that’s too early. I think at that point, you’re in the hustle, where you’re out there talking to the market and you’re going to figure out this product to market fit and whether your business has got legs. Would you agree with that, Matt?

Matt:  I agree—

Barbara:  It’s hustle time where it’s really you. It’s all you.

Matt:  It is. Where I see a VA being able to support a business owner at that point is in the lower level, low value, admin things that tend to take up a lot of our time. And so, even… I’ve made the recommendation for a lot of business owners in that infancy phase is get a part-time person so that you don’t ever get involved in all of those… It’s all those simple, little tasks that need to get done, but can easily be handed over and done by somebody else, because it just gives you more time out there to market and sell, which is, in that early phase while you’re really in that, I guess we call it start-up or sort of ramping up phase, it’s all about marketing and sales, so the more time you can have marketing and selling, the quicker your business will grow.

Barbara:  Absolutely, and then I think, just thinking about my own journey, I know it was like that initially. I had a VA and I was doing all that stuff myself. My VA was doing things like… They’re not low value, but they’re not revenue generating, so things like your social media and just keeping… making your business look bigger than it probably is at that point. You want to make yourself look like ‘we,’ instead of just ‘me.’

Barbara:  But then when you’ve got a product that’s selling, so you start to realise that you’ve got a service or a product that people are buying and things start to take off a bit, I think that’s really the point where you start bringing VAs in quite a lot, when you start developing your processes and getting the engine churning. You figure out what the recurring tasks are, what is required to keep the engine of this thing now running so that you can continue to stay out there and keep flying the flag.

Barbara:  At some point then, I think it’s when you’re a bit bigger that you… For me, the project manager thing is more when you realise you’ve got… You’re trying to manage too many things, there’s too many… Okay, the engine thing is going in the recurring task list, but there’s so many things that you… projects in order to drive the business forward that you’re getting caught up project managing yourself, and I think that’s the point at which you may need a project manager to help you navigate that, whereas the operations manager thing, I’m interested to know your thoughts, Matt, on whether that’s when the business is a little bit bigger? You’ve sort of gone through that start-up and early growth phase, but you’ve come into more… you’re now in this for the long term.

Matt:  Absolutely. You’re certainly well into a good, consistent revenue and profitability because I think—

Barbara:  There’s no going back, kind of thing. There’s no way you’re shutting this down. This is now the business. This is a fully alive dynamic entity that is growing.

Matt:  Correct, but also too, I see a lot of business owners wanting to put an ops manager in too soon and they don’t have enough free cashflow to invest in the right person. So what they tend to do, and this comes back to obviously right people in the right seats, so they put a person in, asking them to be an operations manager, often because they’ve been with them the longest or there is potential there, but they’re not quite sure, but they need that seat filled. So they put that person—

Barbara:  Or they have a VA who’s really good and they think, “Well, I’ll just make them the ops sort of person.”  

Matt:  Correct. 100%.

Barbara:  Now, I will give a little tip on this. Of course in business, cashflow is hard and we’re all hustling and we’re all trying to… Not everyone can go out and spend $100,000 on an amazing ops manager to walk in and just run the whole thing for you. I did actually go the route of my first ever VA became my ops manager, but the… I took a very painful route because I’m good at coaching people and mentoring and I also am good at operations myself.   So, I built her up into that, but it was a process that took about two years. For me, it was very rewarding, but it took a lot of my time. So if you’re prepared to do that, you can, but it is definitely the harder route and you want to be very good at it.

Matt:  Yes. It is a “harder route,” however, if you do that exercise we talked to earlier with the organisational chart, you may actually know that in two years’ time, our intention is to have an operations manager. We’re going to employ someone with the right attitude and values that align with our business now and then—

Barbara:  Grow them into that.

Matt: …Find someone who actually has a career aspiration to go into a management role as well and then groom them over the next two years, and when you can dangle that carrot to the right person, they’ll step up as much as you have to step up in your training and ability with them.

Barbara:  You know Matt, I’ve realised in your saying that, I didn’t realise this, but that’s exactly what I’ve done, and because of that org chart little exercise that I did way back when, I know the roles that are coming in two years’ time and I’m already looking at my… I’m even doing it these days. I’m going, “Well, X… such and such over there is really showing skills that could be developed up into what I need in 12 months’ time.” And I—

Matt:  Absolutely.

Barbara:  …using it and… Like I said, I enjoy doing it, though, but for me, it’s been a really cost-effective way to get the team that I want and what I find as well, from a people management perspective, when you find somebody that wants to do that as well, just their career development is so important to them that they don’t leave you. The loyalty is massive.

Matt:  Correct.

Barbara:  Not all the time, but the loyalty’s huge, because they’ve grown up with you.

Matt:  That’s right. That’s exactly right. Now, a little warning I want to give to everyone here, which is, everything that Barb and I are talking to today is easy to do and it’s easy not to do, and it’s so… The reality is, to do an organisational chart, you need a piece of paper and a sharpie marker and away you go, or a whiteboard, and it is very, very simple.

Matt:  And I don’t want to play it down, but if you think about the silos of your business being, say, marketing and sales and operations and finance and admin and you were just to think about the various teams you need to build under that over the next one, two, five years, I guarantee within an hour, you could create those three organisational charts, but as I said, it’s easy to do, but it’s also easy not to do it. It’s easy to just put it on a list and go, “Oh, I’ll get to that later. I don’t need to worry about that right now because of where I’m at.” But as Barb mentioned for her and her business, it’s that simple sitting down, visualising it, having it there, that’s enabled her, and many businesses that I’ve consulted and coached over the years, to grow really fast, because you have a clear roadmap and path to know who do I need and when do I need them?

Barbara:  Well, I think as well, it was eye-opening for me because when I did the org chart, I realised that what I thought I needed and what I then realised I needed were two very different things. So I would’ve gone, instead of right people, right seat, right time, I would’ve ended up at maybe right people, wrong seat, wrong time, so I was thinking at the time, how it came up for me, Matt, as I was saying to you at the time, “Oh my god, I desperately need an HR manager,” because we were having a lot of HR issues at the time, but now that I… I realise now that the HR manager I would’ve hired then would’ve been expensive, they would’ve been… nobody was going to join a company that small. The person I need is actually an HR manager. I’m looking now at I want to hire the HR manager that’s going to take our company to 500 people, instead of hiring someone that was only going to be able to cope with 20 people.

So I’m already thinking ahead now and going, “Well, no point in hiring an HR manager for 100 people that’s only ever done that. I need to try and inspire somebody to come in now, work with us, and take it to 500 people.” So it’s a totally different thinking.

Matt:  100%, but it’s only that you created the, I guess, the plan, the people plan, that sits around that, that you can now be thinking that way. Very inspiring.

Barbara:  Well, I think the other thing I realised, just in remembering back then, I was like, “But if I have 100 people, oh my god, I need 6 team leaders, and then I’m going to need someone for them to report to, because I can’t have 6 team leaders reporting to me.” So I realised then, “Well, maybe my first team leader might be interested in developing herself into a team manager where she manages the team leaders,” and luckily enough, she was really keen to do that, but we were able to build her up into that over time.

So now we have sort of five team leaders and she manages them, but it wasn’t like one day she came to work, and I was like, “Right. Now you’re the team manager,” and she never really had any time to develop into that. We slowly developed that up.

Matt:  Yeah. I’m going to… Just one thing to correct for everyone, it wasn’t luck that that happened to Barb, it was very intentional, but putting it out there and being clear on this, her business has grown into that.

Barbara:  Yes. So I’m doing the org chart now for 500 people.

Matt:  That’s great.

Barbara:  Wow. That’s big, but it’s very helpful. So I’m definitely the test case of… Any of you guys listening, I would really urge you, like Matt’s saying it, I did it. He gave me the advice, I did it and it was one of the most pivotal things, really, for me so far in my own business journey. So it’s definitely worthwhile.

Matt:  Excellent. So, I guess in just wrapping up there, the theme of today was right people, right seats, and right time, and it’s understanding that firstly, you’ve got to get clear on who is it that we want to bring in and invite into our companies, and then which seats are they best suited to and which seats do we need filled right now to continue along the journey of growth? And then what’s the right time to bring these people in and what’s the organisational chart that we’re growing into?

Because when you combine each three of those in the right balance, you’ll really be able to grow your company fast and also, too, you start to reduce the burden and stress of people, which is a big… It’s one of the, I think, biggest challenges for most entrepreneurs, is people, but when you look at it through this lens, it makes it that little bit easier.

Barbara:  I think as well, just to add to that as well, I think what I see people doing a lot, I’m sure you see this too, is let’s say you’ve got a good cultural fit, you’ve got somebody who’s great, but they’re in the wrong seat, the tendency is to just get rid of them and to try and hire the right person for that seat. I would encourage people, always think, “Well, maybe we’re just not playing to that person’s strengths and there could be another seat that we don’t know we need yet that potentially that person could be awesome at,” because churning through people in your business is very expensive, very tiring, and it’s just not worth it.

Barbara:  Sometimes you’ve got the right people in the wrong seats and it’s about rejigging the seats potentially, and you can just blow something wide open. All of a sudden, somebody comes alive in the right role.

Matt:  Absolutely. Absolutely. Well—

Barbara:  So—

Matt:  Yeah, sorry. You go, Barb.

Barbara:  Yeah, so I was just thinking, our next show, guys, we’re going to do is we’re going to delve more into this operations manager piece in the next show. So make sure that you look out for that, stay tuned. It is an area that a lot of businesses are struggling to get right and it’ll hold you back. It holds back the growth when the internal workings of the business are not functioning properly, because you’re putting out fires all day, so we’re going to talk deeply about that and possibly we’ll be interviewing somebody who’s going to give you some help and guidance in that area.

Matt:  Absolutely.

Barbara:  So, Matt, thanks again for today. Guys, make sure you give us a rating on iTunes if you can and a review, that would be great, because it helps us to get the show out to more people and we can help more people on this topic.

Matt:  Excellent. Thank you, Barb. It was really good and thanks for being so open and sharing your story with everyone, too.

Barbara  Oh, yeah. I hold nothing back. I’m never going to pretend it’s easier than it is.

Matt:  Absolutely. Well, thanks everybody and we will look forward to joining you in our next show.

Barbara:  Thanks.

(This episode is the second part of a 3-part series. You can listen more to this discussion by going to Part 3: The Stepping Stone to Hiring an Operations Director with Sarah Noked, OBM.)

Matt Malouf is a passionate business coach, speaker, author and entrepreneur on a mission to help entrepreneurs around the world break the shackles of mediocrity and reach new levels of personal and business success.

Barbara Turley is the Founder & CEO of The Virtual Hub, a company that specializes in recruiting, training and managing superstar ‘Virtual Assistants’ in the social media, digital marketing and systems automation space.

Want the transcript? Download it here.

00:45 – Do I need a Virtual Assistant, Project Manager or Operations Manager?

02:49 – What is a Virtual Assistant (VA)?

04:38 – Common VA tasks

04:56 – VAs managing social media content

05:38 – VAs and content management

06:18 – General VA tasks

08:07 – The role of a Project Manager

10:33 – When should I bring in a Project Manager?

12:34 – Confusing the role of a Project Manager with a VA

13:46 – The role of an Operations Manager

17:39 – Part-time or full-time roles?

19:25 – Investment vs expense

20:20 – In our next couple of shows…

21:05 – In summary…

22:45 – Wrapping things up

The Stop Doing List

Barbara: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Virtual Success Show, where I’m joined today by my co-host, Matt Malouf. How’s it going, Matt?

Matt: Very good, Barb. How are you going?

Barbara: I’m great. Excited to be getting back into these shows and producing some more epic content for our listeners.

Matt: 100%. 100%.

Barbara: So guys, look, today, Matt and I wanted to delve into a topic that we’ve been… we’ve sort of been hashing out this topic for a long time, because we think there’s a lot of value in defining parts of roles that you need in your business. Today, what we’re going to be talking about is, do you need a Virtual Assistant, a Project Manager or an Operations Manager, and when is it time to have all three? It’s really important that we define each of these roles, because what we’re finding is sometimes, clients, there’s blurred lines between each of these roles, which is okay initially, but it can lead to problems when we’re not clear about what the roles are and how to progress to the next one. So Matt, I’m sure you see this in your coaching businesses all the time as well.

Matt: I do. I’m really excited about this topic, Barb, because so many of the clients I work with need help and like the idea of a Virtual Assistant but they get very confused very quickly, I think, with being able to clearly delineate roles, so I think this is going to be really, really helpful for our listeners today.

Barbara: Yeah, and we often talk about expectations management. I know we did a full show on this. What I find is where people sometimes get disappointed is when they get a Virtual Assistant, but they don’t realise that possibly what they were looking for or what they need might be more of a Project Manager or, dare I say, an Operations Manager, which is a whole other thing. And when you try and make a Virtual Assistant do certain things that really fall outside of where their skillset lies, it causes a lot of problems around expectations.

Matt: Absolutely, and that could be related to any role that you’re employing in your business. What I see then happens, and I’m sure you see this too, Barb, is then people go, “VAs don’t work for me, or my business, or my industry,” which is not the truth. It’s just that you’ve probably married up the wrong solution for the problem that you’re trying to solve.

Barbara: Absolutely. Absolutely. To kick off, I think it’s really important if we… Let’s have a look at each of these roles. Matt, you and I can define how we see each of these roles. So, starting off with a Virtual Assistant, of course, this is where I specialise in. For me, really, a Virtual Assistant is a very broad term, but if I was to break it down into what exactly this role looks like, it is somebody who is going to implement processes that have already been built and settled, and they are then trained on how to implement a process. Matt, what about you? Where does Virtual Assistant fall for you?

Matt: It’s in that, but it’s also, for me, it’s administrative type tasks, unless they’re a specialised VA. Often, it is calendar management. It is setting up webinars. It’s managing and posting maybe blogs that you’ve written. It’s process driven tasks that tend to be in an administrative type role. That’s what my experience has been.

Barbara: Absolutely, yes. And while I think with a lot of Virtual Assistants, you can get some really good ones who are happy to… they come up with great ideas and all that, but it’s not really… if your expectation is that somebody’s going to come in and tell you how to run the business better or come up with new solutions for you, you’re probably going a little bit outside of… your expectations may be a little bit too far outside the Virtual Assistant type boundaries. Let’s call them boundaries.

Matt: Yes. And I guess if we were to sort of outline a few common tasks or processes, Barb, that Virtual Assistants are doing, what would be the five most common tasks VAs at the Virtual Hub you’re providing, are doing?

Barbara: Yes. The biggest one that we find our VAs are doing is social media content management. It is a classic recurring task and there is quite a bit of work needs to be done on a weekly, monthly, constantly recurring basis, and it’s a real VA task, because as a business owner or as a Project Manager or even an Operations Manager, you’re not going to be tinkering around in Canva putting up quotes or finding quotes and tips and things like that, finding content to share. Really, that’s a VAs job, and because we have a very solid process that we train VAs in, clients love to take that process and just get their VA doing it.

The other thing we find people doing a lot of, which is in the same area, is content management on your WordPress website. It’s one thing to write a blog post or to have a writer or somebody produce content for you, but it’s a lot of work to actually get it up onto WordPress looking nicely, spaced out properly, with a couple of images attached. Making sure that it’s optimised properly for the right keywords and things like that. Again, there’s a very strict process around how you do that and VAs are great at rolling out that process and following it every week and making sure it’s done all the time.

Then there’s things, obviously, like calendar management. I think sometimes, those ones can be a little bit more vague because it depends on the business. It’s like inbox management, as well as another one, researching a topic. You might say to a VA, “Can you just get me the list of top 10 hotels in this area in this particular city, with the price ranges?” or something like that. That’s all VA work. It’s grunt work, is what I tend to call it.

Matt: I’ve had VAs now for the last, probably, eight, nine years, and all of those tasks that you mentioned are the key tasks that our VAs do. Booking travel, researching, calendar management. And everything that we’re talking to here has a system or process that this person can follow.

Barbara: Absolutely, yeah. That’s a really clear boundary for me, is that when you have a process. Now, another one you could get a VA to do is that if you have a process – you’ve developed your own so you’ve got the process or somebody has developed something, but it might be in your head and you may be doing it yourself. It’s okay to create a video of you doing it and then to potentially ask a VA to sit down and look at the video and try to separate out each of the steps, but don’t expect them to come back with something perfect, because you’re going to have to lead that. But a VA can do the… Again, it’s grunt work. It’s like just helping you out with all the to-do’s that you need to do, and VAs are great at all of that stuff.

Matt: I agree. I agree. So, if we flick into Project Manager…

Barbara: Yes. I’m keen to know… Look, I’ve got a view, Project Manager is a funny one, because I think a lot of people mix up Project Manager with Operations Manager, and they are two very, very different roles. So, my definition of Project Manager… a Project Manager is somebody who you say, “Look, I’ve got X, I want to achieve this particular project.” It could be rolling out processes. It could be anything. And a Project Manager’s job is to create the milestones, the deadlines, get all the team together and get everybody executing, and to project manage all the people coming back, but they don’t do any of the doing and they don’t develop any of the processes. They literally manage the execution and all the people involved and all the deliverables, making sure everyone comes back on time to a deadline. So Matt, what’s your view on this and where are the boundaries for you?

Matt: It’s a good question. As you were talking then, it just recalled the show we did with Taki Moore. In that show, he talked about his 4 x 100 metre sprint with his VAs, which was make it up, make a plan, make it happen, make it recur. When he was on that show, he mentioned how the business owner makes it up, hands that over to a Project Manager, who then makes the plan. So exactly what you’re talking to there, Barb, which is, “Okay, what does this look like? Who do we need? Is there a budget associated with it? What’s the time frames? What’s the milestone check-in points?”

Then make it happen, so then that person is the key driver of that project and reporting back to you at those agreed milestones check-ins, etc. And then that person is the key person to then create the system that gets implemented within the business to make it recur. They’re not necessarily the person who then manages it ongoing. I think that’s a really important distinction for people there. It could be that the Project Manager makes it happen, makes it recur and hands it over to a VA to manage.

Barbara: Absolutely, and I think actually a point to make there, I was just thinking about my own experience of coming up against the brick walls in business where you realise you need another person. The classic case of when you need to bring in a Project Manager is when you have too many people reporting you, and all of a sudden, you want to have one person reporting to you and they’re managing all the other people reporting up to them. So it kind of clears that road block for you. A Project Manager’s great in that instance, I think, of clearing the clutter of too many people reporting to you.

Matt: That’s right.

Barbara: You may have delegated loads of tasks, but now all of a sudden, you find yourself all day managing people and managing projects.

Matt: Yes, and I think another thing too to add to that, Barb, is that a Project Manager may not be involved operationally in the day-to-day of your business, but they’re running the project. For instance, in our business at the moment, we’ve just gone through a rebrand and we’re building a new website. So we’ve assigned one of our team as a Project Manager, and her role is to manage the new website build. We’ve had a name change, rebrand, new website, new email addresses. Her role was to create the plan for that and then manage the rollout of all of that.

Now, that’s in addition to the day-to-day operations of our business. We have a weekly… it’s a 15-minute meeting, which is just a check in each week, and we only talk to that project. We don’t talk about anything else operational that’s going on. It’s purely a meeting to talk to that project. I think that’s important with your Project Managers. You want to keep them focused. You want to keep them working on the key projects. They may have operational aspects they’re involved with as well, but their key role is the projects.

Barbara: Absolutely. A problem I see happening, not too much these days, because we’re very clear about this, but I think it happens in the market, is that sometimes, clients, they can confuse Project Manager and VA, and they think, “Well, my VA can project manage this for me.” Lots of VAs can, but it is a very different skillset, because you’re pushing to deadlines and you’re managing, typically, a lot of deliverables. Those deliverables could be suppliers sending you stuff, VAs doing work. There’s lots of people along the channel to manage. And I think that’s kind of a step too far to expect a VA to be able to, and to be fully accountable for all of that. I think you’ve got to be clear that that’s now a Project Manager that you need.

Matt: Absolutely. Absolutely. So we’ve got a VA focusing on key tasks that have a process. We’ve got a Project Manager who is now focusing on key projects, creating the plan for those projects and then checking in and managing the execution of those projects. Let’s now talk to an Operations Manager.

Barbara: Yes. Operations, I think again, a lot of people getting … I’ve always said a very big jump is one solopreneur, one VA. That’s a hard jump to get through and people who make it through that jump can find it quite painful but very rewarding. Then what you find is you go from that to maybe having five VAs, and then you realise, “Oh, my God, I’ve got five or seven people reporting to me. Potentially, I need a Project Manager to help me to navigate that.”

Depending on the business, though, what you may actually need there is an Operations Manager, as opposed to a Project Manager, because a lot of it could be the day-to-day running of things. Process development as well, I feel sort of falls into this Operations Manager role, where you want somebody to liaise with you on developing out processes that are then going to be delegated out to VAs. Some of them could be projects, but typically it could be VAs or other people in the business.

Matt: And I think to give a clear picture on this, if we think of delivering your products or services as being front stage, your Operations Manager’s really taking care of all of the backstage, metaphorically speaking, backstage of your business. So ensuring that key people are doing what they need to at the right times, identifying who we need in the team, as well, in order to ensure the business can continue to run efficiently and support the growth that you’re after.

Barbara: Yeah, because if road blocks… you’re right, actually. Let’s say there’s an area where there’s a massive roadblock occurring. It’s really the Operations Manager’s job to be navigating that and reporting back to you on where they see the issues, maybe even coming down the tracks. Like we’re starting to see a lot of customer tickets coming through, we may need another… our customer support’s under pressure, the process is breaking down. That sort of thing, I think, is really operations.

Matt: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that person needs to have good management skills. Understanding how to manage a team, how to delegate work, how to hold people accountable, how to put appropriate reporting in place to ensure that as the team grows, that it runs really well and efficiently.

Barbara: Absolutely, yeah. And I think an area that I typically see a lot of problems coming in is people come in to get VAs and they’re all excited about it, and then they realise that they don’t have the SOPs, the standard operating procedures that you really need in order to get a lot of success with VAs. They try and work with the VA on putting that in, but actually, it might be worth, sometimes, looking at … I know you can get virtual business managers, is what they’re called. This is also a virtual role, that you can actually hire this, not on a full-time basis but somebody to come in and actually help with that kind of thing.

I think for a small business, some people might be overwhelmed here with what we’re talking about, because all of a sudden it’s a lot of people, but I think in the early days of a business, you either need to be able to do it yourself … I was quite lucky in that I was able to be my own Project Manager and my own Operations Manager in the early days, to get things up and running. I was able to really capitalise then on my VA team, because I was performing those functions myself. So you either need to learn to do it yourself or you need to explore if these are the roles that you need and be clear on what they are and knowing that you can actually outsource this, as well. You can find people in the virtual environment that actually will work these roles for you, and they don’t have to be full-time.

Matt: Correct. And this is where I think it’s important to get clear on where should this person be located? Should they be located locally but working virtually, or overseas? Because time zones, I think, come into this. I think the other thing in defining between part-time and full-time, is a case of if you are going to employ at part-time Operations Manager and they’re going to work for somebody else also, and your business is growing quickly, you may be better off making… it might be a slightly bigger investment in the short term, however, you don’t want to miss the opportunity to have that person full-time in six or 12 months because they’ve got another role.

Barbara: 100%. Or the other client committing before you do and swiping your person, because your person is like, “Look…” I can even tell you VAs will come to me and they find that working for two different clients is okay, three different clients is a disaster. It’s very difficult to shift your energy like that. I think as business owners, I think we always talk about this, it is a marathon, not a sprint, and you’ve got to think the long game, and all that stuff. Sometimes, investing in just early and saying to yourself, “I’m committed to this and I know I need to make this work,” …I’m always a fan of just go for it. Just go full-time and put all your energy into it, if you can, knowing that you may want that person full-time down the track. If you’re going to spend this much energy and even this much money on the part-time person, then either set it up so that you could slot a new one in or commit early.

Matt: Correct, and that comes down to one of the other shows we’ve done, Barb, which is around investment versus expense. The right person is always an investment and I think that, again, you’ve got to back yourself, I think. We’ve got to look at the commercial realities of it, but sometimes it’s about backing yourself and understanding that if I invest in the right person to take… whether it’s the right VA, the right Project Manager or the right Operations Manager, sometimes it actually puts a good amount of “pressure” on you to stretch out of your comfort zone and kick your business to the next level. The other thing too is having the right person staying with you is a lot easier than having to chop and change all the time.

Barbara: And it’s a lot more cost effective. Chopping and changing, people don’t realise the cost of that, because it ties up your time a lot.

Guys, we’re going to be doing a few parts to this particular conversation. In our next show, we’re going to be talking about that whole concept of the right people in the right positions… what is it? Right people—

Matt: At the right time.

Barbara: …at the right time. So really helping you to navigate, how do I know when is the right time to put the right people in the right positions? So that’s going to be our next show, and then we’re also going to do a show on this whole operations piece. How do you find somebody who is a virtual operations person and if that is the right role for your business or whether they need to be local? So, we’re going to be delving into this in the next couple of shows, so make sure that you stay tuned for that.

Matt, any final points on this particular topic?

Matt: No, the only thing I’d say is take the time to actually get clarity on the tasks or what specifically you want this person you’re inviting into your business to do. And then make that assessment on, is it a Virtual Assistant, a Project Manager or an Operations Manager? It’s in that slowing down that’ll help you speed up, and also gain clarity so that you can make the right decision. Don’t try and push a square peg through a round hole. Don’t think, “I’ve got this really great VA who I believe would make a great Project Manager,” but unless they want that for themselves, it’ll always be so much harder for you. So, it’s really about just ensuring that you are clear on is it a VA, is it a Project Manager or is it an ops Manager that I need?

Barbara: I think as well, just to add to that as a final point, I went that journey myself. Actually, Matt, as you know, I had some great VAs that were working with me for a long time that I did eventually elevate up into Project Manager roles. What I found was, they were great, but they needed training. So just don’t underestimate that even if they’re a great VA, the jump to Project Manager is a totally different role and the jump to operations is again a totally different role. You will need to train the person and spend time with them or figure it out together. And it can be done, but just be realistic about your expectations there, even if they want to do it. Sometimes, it’s a new skillset completely.

Matt: Absolutely.

Barbara: Matt, I also think in your Stop Doing book, and on your website, stopdoing.com.au, I think that exercise of the stop doing list and really delving into that will also help people not just to figure out what they’re going to delegate to a VA, but to figure out whether they need a Project Manager as well or an Operations Manager.

Matt: Absolutely. And the tool that you can download on that site helps… One of the key questions in helping you delineate there is, does the person need specialised skills or training? As soon as you start to see that for a lot of these roles or tasks that they need specialised skills or training, you’ll understand which one of these three that we’ve described today that they fit into.

Barbara: So, you can get that tool at stopdoing.com.au, yeah?

Matt: Correct.

Barbara: Yep, great. Okay, guys. I think that’s been a really … I know that’ll be a really helpful show for a lot of the guys listening, because we both hear it all the time in our businesses of people getting frustrated with this different… and not understanding those boundaries. And I know for myself, once I got really clear on those boundaries and started accepting those boundaries, my business actually started doing a lot better because I really put the right people in.

We’ll see you all for the next show, and look, if you’re loving these shows, I know we’ve had feedback that so many people are loving these shows, give us a rating on iTunes and make sure that you leave a review because it helps us to get the show out to more people and to really help other people to benefit from this. And also if there’s a show you want us to cover, a topic, you just let us know. There’s a Facebook group. Look up Virtual Success Show on Facebook and you can hit us up in there, let us know about a show.

Matt: Absolutely.

Barbara: Thanks, Matt. Thanks, everyone. We’ll see you on the next show.

Matt: Thank you, everyone. See you, Barb.

(This episode is part of a series. You can listen more to this discussion by going to Part 2: Right People, Right Seats, Right Time.)

Matt Malouf is a passionate business coach, speaker, author and entrepreneur on a mission to help entrepreneurs around the world break the shackles of mediocrity and reach new levels of personal and business success.

Barbara Turley is the Founder & CEO of The Virtual Hub, a company that specializes in recruiting, training and managing superstar ‘Virtual Assistants’ in the social media, digital marketing and systems automation space.

Want the transcript? Download it here.

01:16 – When should I fire my VA?

02:26 – The Churn & Burn

03:08 – Flawed task lists

03:40 – Effective communication

05:53 – Setting your VA up to win

07:09 – Holding your VA accountable

08:04 – Meeting rhythms

09:41 – Making the decision to fire a VA

10:40 – Getting clear on your standards

13:06 – What are your ‘non-negotiables’?

16:53 – Wrapping things up

Resources mentioned in this show:

Asana

Matt:  Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of the Virtual Success Show, where I’m joined by my co-host, Barbara Turley. Good afternoon Barb.

Barbara:  Hey Matt, how are you?

Matt:  I’m excellent. How are you?

Barbara:  Good thanks, good thanks.

Matt:  Good. I’m really really excited about today’s show, and the reason I’m excited about it is because I think it’s one of those topic areas where a lot of people avoid the conversation, and the conversation we want to be having with you all today is understanding when to fire your VA. When is it time to let them go? And I’m excited about this only because it’s one of those areas that often is not discussed until it’s too late.

Barbara:  Absolutely yep, and I see that happen a lot within our business, you know, for clients it’s a difficult area … And also there’s sort of two things I want to touch on with this topic. There’s when to fire your VA. Sometimes people fire them too early as in you sort of get into this churn and burn cycle of they’re not good enough, get a new one, they’re not good enough, get a new one. And then other people we find, try really hard and probably allow things to go on way too long until the point in which they’re getting railroaded by someone. So, sometimes, I mean obviously by the nature of my business, I’m very pro-VAs on these podcasts, but I’m also very aware that sometimes you have done all the right things, you’ve followed all the things that we talk about, and you actually just have a person who’s not either good enough for the role, or who is actually doing the wrong thing by you as an employer. And that’s a tricky thing to face.

Matt:  Which one are we going to start with Barb? Let’s start with the churn and burn.

Barbara:  Yeah, because this is a common problem. So, when … Often we see people hiring someone and they just decide very quickly after two weeks, oh they’re not good enough, it’s just not going to work out? And really I think there are boxes to tick before you make the decision to fire someone. There’s actually a lot of boxes to tick. Sometimes … I mean there’s so many shows we’ve done on this, sometimes it’s people who you’re … You’ve no processes in your business or you’ve no systems and you’ve tried to kind of just offload a task list on someone and they don’t even know how to find your files or navigate your business. So that’s the kind of … The most basics of major problem.

Other times we do see people, and you’ll see this as well Matt, people who have got processes, or task lists, but they’re too vague. So there’s a lot of holes in them, which is a major problem. And what happens is, is that you delegate that to somebody, they take it on, and it’s full of mistakes, and you can’t understand why, and you want to blame them. But you probably have a good person, it’s just that there are holes in the processthat … You can’t see and they don’t understand, basically from the process problem.

And the final one I guess, and we’ve done a three part series on this, is communication, and understanding the learning style of your person that is working with you, how you communicate effectively with them for win-win situations, how to give effective feedback, and I would encourage anyone listening to this, that we’ve done shows on all of the things that I’ve just talked about so, I guess you’ve got to take those boxes first before you get into the when to fire someone. Matt would you agree, or what do you think about … ?

Matt:  I do and I think that if in the first two weeks, you’re thinking you want to get rid of your virtual assistant, then you’ve really got to sit down and go okay, let’s dissect this. What specifically aren’t they doing, that I thought they would be doing? Have I communicated my expectations clearly enough? As Barbara was just talking, is it the system? And so you’ve always got to come back and go, this person may be trained in this particular tool, is it the way we’ve documented or the way we do it, that’s different, and they’ve got to learn?

One little thing I get people to do in coaching sessions, which I think highlights this for a lot of people is, if you were to get a pen in your non-writing hand and I ask you to write your name, you would have to really focus, and you know how to write, you know how to spell, but you’re not used to writing with your non-writing hand, versus when you put the pen back in your writing hand, and you write your name and you can probably do it with your eyes shut, would be neater than with your non-writing hand. And when you’re bringing somebody in, initially, you’ve got to understand that for them coming to your business, it’s like writing with their non-writing hand, and your you, particularly if it’s your first time using a virtual assistant, it’s like you writing with your non-writing hand also. So, often there’s not enough energy that goes in to make it work. There’s too much assumption that, oh well, this person presented an amazing resume, and they’ve got this experience, they will just know what to do.

I repeat this often in this show, whether it’s locally or overseas, in your office, virtual remote, it’s the same. You’ve got to make sure you set people up to win. And I think that too often in business is people are moving so fast, there’s so many things happening, and they’re juggling so many balls, that they sort of throw a ball to someone and expect them to know what to do with it.

Barbara:  And you know what this is for people who are experienced as well. I’m just thinking of roles I’ve brought into my business, that are not just in the Philippines, and I’ve had to allow time for sales people to pick up the script, and to get it right and to fail at a few sales calls before we nail it. And it would be very easy to just say, oh they’re useless, get rid of them, and then to get the next person in and churn through that person and … I think sometimes if you’ve churned through more than two to three people, then it’s time to start looking back in the mirror, rather than blaming everyone else potentially, at that point. If it continues to fail for you.

Matt:  Because the common person in all three scenarios there is you.

Barbara:  Yeah, so let’s move on now to … There are times when, let’s be honest, you either have a person who is slippery, that’s the word I use. In a virtual environment, people can be slippery, right? And what I mean by that is they can say they’re there and they’re not and they can say they’re doing work and it’s not done, and really the way to unearth this is to have a process in place that unearths it for you. Now, what do I mean by that? So, I’ll be open I’ve fallen into this trap myself a few times, where I’ve been … I’ve had slippery people on the team, or I didn’t have the oversight process nailed enough in order for me to be able to pick it up without being emotional.

So, what I’m saying here is that … And we’ve talked about shows … We did a recent show about meeting rhythms and how often should you talk to your team and all that sort of thing. And one of the things that I found in my business that unearths this is if you have … We have a weekly huddle with the entire team. And we have rules during the week around … Everybody has their processes and their task lists laid out and what the expectation is. And one of my expectations in my business is that everybody collaborates inside of Asana, which is the project management tool that we use, so that everybody is speaking to the necessary people within the task comments. So, you have to update everyone there. And then on the weekly huddle, you need to come to the huddle prepared, and you need to update the entire team on where you’re at, where your roadblocks are, and what’s stopping you moving forward.

And then a final piece of that whole puzzle, is I do actually … Everybody has to file things on our company G-Drive within certain folders, now this is a fairly new thing I’ve brought in, because there was too much sharing of files and people saving stuff all over the place where you couldn’t actually find the damn thing, and you couldn’t see whether it was actually done. So, and they have to drop the links to those folders in the comments section of Asana so that people can quickly, and me as the owner, can quickly scan the comments and then I can click into something and actually see the work. So I can have a level of oversight. Now in that environment, it is very difficult for somebody to hide. And it’s very apparent if work isn’t being done.

So I have had a situation quite recently where it was very apparent that a couple of people on the team just were not actually, they basically weren’t doing the work and it was very easy to see it. And I think in that situation, we had addressed it in other ways, initially, to try to mentor them and try to see was there a deeper problem with them emotionally or were they feeling like disconnected from the team, or the culture? And it actually got to a point where those…it just became very obvious that they were slippery. They were not doing what they said they were doing and, for all the wrong reasons. And we moved to remove those people from our team. So, I think in a situation like that it is time to stop the excuses, because excuses will come, and it’s time to make a business decision that is unemotional about the fact that for whatever reason, that person is not able to deliver and is not delivering.

Matt:  And just to add another example on this, I remember a few years ago, we hired someone to come in and do some marketing for us, and they were actually in The States, so in the interviews we had negotiated ‘ok, given the time differences, this is our start time, this is your finish time’, that we both agreed on. And we agreed that you login to Slack, and make everyone aware that you’re…just say good morning, basically.

Barbara:  Yeah, yeah.

Matt:  Morning one, nothing happened. I reached out after about an hour and a half after they were supposed to start, ‘oh yeah yeah yeah I’m here, I’m sorry I forgot to write it’. No worries.

Morning two, same thing. No message. And I made it very clear that being on time and making everyone aware that you’ve started, is really important.

Morning three, happens again, and I was like, you know what, I don’t think this is going to work, and kindly, we ended it there.

I think what you’ve got to get clear on is what’s non-negotiable for you. And, in certain roles we have in our business, start and finish time is not an issue. You can do the work whenever, as long as you hit the deadline. But in other roles, when you’re working with others, knowing that they’re there, and they’re on, and we’re all able to start work at a certain time, and that’s the agreeable standard, is really important. And in that particular role, that was the agreeable standard. And you know what, I think if in the early parts of a job, you’re not going to meet the standard, then it’s probably not likely to happen at all through the job. And so, we cut it off real quick.

And I just wanted to give that other example where you’ve just got to get clear on your standards, and I think it’s … Yeah we could have … Yeah this was a classic case of on paper this person was outstanding. Right! Credentials through the roof, experience through the roof, but they weren’t respecting the standards that we had in our business. And your standards or values are critically important. And if you don’t uphold it then nobody will actually stick to it. And so we made that decision, and we made it real quick cause it was really important I think, in that instance, to do that and make that kind of decision quickly because it sends the message to the whole team, this is what’s acceptable and this is what’s not acceptable, and these are the rewards and these are the consequences.

Barbara:  Yeah, and you know, thinking my non-negotiables, I let a lot of things … There’s a lot of things I don’t mind. I’m not a big fan of flexitime, even though I always thought I would be, because I think it’s human nature. What I have found is that when I allow certain people, it depends, but in general with my team, anytime we’ve tried flexitime, I’ve noticed tasks getting done at 2 o’clock in the morning, and for me that’s not acceptable because mistakes are happening. And sometimes deadlines are being, you know…it’s too close to deadlines for my comfort level. So I’ve actually stopped all flexitime with my team, we have agreed times that we are working, and we can move it around if they need to, but we have to agree what they are, what the hours are.

And the other thing that is non-negotiable for me is the team communication. So within Asana, I just, I’m like, even if we talked about it on the call, you have to update the task, so that the team … And it fosters this sense of team collaboration, because we need team players in our team. So if somebody is not going to those levels for me, we’re moving towards a bad cultural fit even if they’ve got the skills. They’re not understanding the expectations of our culture and why we’re successful as a team, and that for me is when we move to have the conversation, ‘Is it going to work? Are you going to be able to deliver?’ We try again one more time and then if it doesn’t work, we’re out. That’s what we do from now on.

Yeah, so it’s a tricky one but I have noticed a few clients as well … And I feel sorry for the clients that fall into this trap and I know there’ll be people listening on the call, that’ve done this, where they try and they feel bad for the person and the person spins a story as to why, you know, the personal issues and whatever they’ve got going on. You know what? Reality check, we all have personal issues doesn’t matter if we’re in the Philippines or Australia or in the UK, or wherever we are, life is life and we have things that happen. And you can listen to the sob stories or the excuses, and you can continue to be frustrated, or you can create some expectations and non-negotiables and parameters around what it is that you require, and then if the person isn’t meeting those things, it’s move on.

Matt:  Absolutely.

Barbara:  And just be business-like about it and not emotional.

Matt:  Yeah, and you know, as long as you set the expectation clearly from the start, then you’re only holding them to what they’ve agreed to. Often, if somebody doesn’t know something, you may sit there and give them that second chance, and take responsibility, but all in all, people will…if they’re the wrong cultural fit, then it might mean they need to go, they need to go fast.

Barbara:  Yeah, and look if anyone’s listening and thinking yeah, I’m going to implement this now with my team, I will warn you that you will ruffle feathers, and it’s a good thing.

So recently, I sort of up leveled, Matt and I were talking about this off air. I’ve had this massive up leveling in my business that’s been a good thing, in terms of the structure and our organisational structure. And it opened Pandora’s box, in that we had a few…it unearthed some risks and some issues that we didn’t even know we had with certain people. Although those people are now gone, it actually was a good thing, because we have moved to another level of expectation and professionalism, and I think it was a really good thing, but it was a difficult period. So, if you’re about to do this, the current people that you have may run a mile, and usually if they run a mile, it’s because there’s something hiding, that you don’t know about.

Matt:  Absolutely.

Barbara:  So yeah, tricky one, but just be aware that there are times when you need to fire someone and it’s better to rip the band-aid off and move on, but providing that you have a good structure, for really truly unearthing whether that is a problem. The problem is that person or the problem is your business. That’s the tricky bit.

Matt:  Yeah, and I think … Always come from a place of being fair, but if you find yourself … If the same conversation is going on in your head, time and time again, that you know, Should I keep this person? Should I keep … He’s the golden question. If they resigned today, would you feel relieved, or would you feel like you’re losing someone valuable.

Barbara:  That’s a great one, yeah.

Matt:  And anytime you answer relieved, you know what you need to do. And so my advice is, rather than disempowering yourself and waiting for them to resign, empower yourself and make the decision to calmly ask them to move on. And you know what, you’re doing them a favour as much as you’re doing you and your business a favour.

Barbara:  Oh and I will openly admit to everybody listening to this, that I’m only learning that lesson now. Like, I have fallen into that trap of waiting, of just taking bad behaviour for way too long, and then the person resigning anyway, and me being relieved, and thinking, oh my god, I actually paid them for probably six months longer than I should have a got zero output, like close to zero. So, we’re all guilty of it.

Matt:  We’ve all made that mistake, myself included, but you learn to build that muscle up and it really does … The people you want to keep on the team, will be so appreciative when you move the wrong person out, because their lives become easier and they’re having to even work harder and pick up the slack, just to ensure that the wrong person’s not on the team anymore.

Barbara:  Well they feel more respected as well, because when you’re keeping someone on the team, that everyone else on your teams knows is a basically a non-performer and doing the wrong thing by you, it makes them angry because they’re doing the right thing.

Matt:  Absolutely.

Barbara:  Yeah, so yeah guys, I hope that’s been helpful, a tricky topic that we really wanted to address, and look, if you’ve got any other questions like this that you want us to address, quite specific things, please let us know. We’ve got a Facebook group called Virtual Success on Facebook, you can join the conversation there.

We’d also love you to leave us a review and a rating on iTunes if you can and on Stitcher where we also have the podcast now, so that we can get this show out to more people, and address more of these questions that honestly, so many people out there are having with virtual teams.

So Matt, thanks very much. Thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll join you on our next show.

Matt:  Thanks everyone.

Matt Malouf is a passionate business coach, speaker, author and entrepreneur on a mission to help entrepreneurs around the world break the shackles of mediocrity and reach new levels of personal and business success.

Barbara Turley is the Founder & CEO of The Virtual Hub, a company that specializes in recruiting, training and managing superstar ‘Virtual Assistants’ in the social media, digital marketing and systems automation space.

Want the transcript? Download it here.

01:24 – How often should I talk to my VA?

01:52 – Barriers to communication

04:03 – Establishing communication protocols

05:43 – Setting a meeting rhythm

09:22 – Matt’s ‘Bat Signal’

12:35 – Re-evaluate your communication style and frequency on an ongoing basis

15:23 – There is no such thing as ‘over communicating’

17:28 – Wrapping things up

Asana

Barbara: Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Virtual Success Show where I am joined by my co-host Matt Malouf. Hey Matt, how are you?

Matt: Hi, I am well Barb, and yourself?

Barbara: I’m good, thank you. Good, thank you. Enjoying all these shows always and learning all the time from everything we talk about on the shows.

Matt: Absolutely, absolutely. And I must say also I’m also I’m loving the warmer weather we’re having here in Sydney at the moment.

Barbara: Yeah, that helps. Winter has finished.

Matt: It has.

Barbara: We are now into summer. For those in the northern hemisphere you’re heading into your winter now, we don’t envy you. So look guys, today’s show we’ve been getting a lot of questions actually, which is great, from a couple listeners and some of our clients that actually listen to the show about stuff that they’d really like us to address on the show. So, today one of the biggest questions that I get asked and Matt gets asked a lot is how often should I talk to my VA?

Now, it sounds like a simple question but like I said, we get this one a lot and people actually are quite confused about it and even when they figure out how often should I talk to my VA, how should I do it, and how should I make it effective?

So, Matt, I know with your coaching and in your Stop Doing book and in all the stuff that you teach you’ve got this concept of a meeting rhythm, which I thought would be really good for us to delve into today to address this question.

Matt: Absolutely, and just as a preface before we get into meeting rhythm. I think one of the most important things with communicating with your virtual teams, your virtual assistant, etc., is to try and act as if it’s no different than if they were sitting next to you in the office. Now, you want to be mindful of that because it’s not that you want to be picking up Skype and the like every five seconds to ask a question. But I think too often we have this separation in this, they’re over there and I’m over here, maybe I’ll just message them rather than talking to them etc. We create these barriers of communication, and I think it’s really really important to have rules around communication. And for me, this is whether you’re in an office working with people or in a remote kind of environment. It’s knowing when to communicate and in what form to communicate, I think, is critically important.

Barbara: You know what struck me as you were saying that, I don’t know but people who have…and you would know the answer to this because it’s probably more of the clients that you would talk to. Clients of yours that have physical offices with other team members that are beside them, would they ever ask you the question: how often should I talk to my employees?

Matt: No they wouldn’t, but what they find is that often their teams are coming to them constantly.

Barbara: Yeah, so it’s the opposite problem.

Matt: It’s the opposite problem, yeah. And it’s knowing then when to get them to write a question down, or when is the appropriate time to come. Whereas, what I find when working with remote teams is that it is often the opposite. So, there is more written communication as opposed to jumping on a Skype call and quickly conversing with another person.

Barbara: Yeah. That’s interesting. So it is actually a problem on both sides, but it’s actually what we are going to talk about today on this podcast is the solution to both problems, funnily enough, but we are obviously addressing it in terms of virtual teams right now.

Matt: Exactly. So, I think the first thing to establish with this is some communication protocols. And what I mean by that is when is it appropriate to have written communication, when is it appropriate to have verbal communication, when is it appropriate to maybe create a little video to communicate, also. Because what I find with virtual teams is that too often it falls into either Skype or Slack messenger conversations, or if you don’t have those two tools, a lot of people engage in these email to and fros.

Barbara: Oh, yeah.

Matt: And the challenge with email is that email or written communication, for that matter, is always read in somebody elses voice and tone. So, if I was to write to Barbara, Barbara is reading Matt’s communication, but in her voice and tone and vice versa coming back. And this is often where misinterpretations or miscommunications occur. Keeping in mind that often your virtual teams, English is their second language.

Barbara: You know what is funny. I was thinking you’re also reading it in your voice and tone and also in the mood that you are having on that day. So, how often have we read something slightly wrong, because we might have been having a tough day or a negative day ourselves, and you read something with a difference belief or different tone based on your own mood.

Matt: Absolutely.

Barbara: So it can happen, yeah.

Matt: When we talk about meeting rhythm, you want to think of meetings as the pulse of the business. So it is a combination of whether it is daily, weekly, and/or monthly, type meetings. I think depending on the roles and the size of your team, a daily huddle can be very very powerful. Where you can get a small group, you wouldn’t want any more than eight to ten, on a daily huddle type of meeting. And really what you are asking is three key questions which is: Did you achieve what you set out to achieve yesterday? Yes or no. What’s your main focus for today? And do you need help or are you stuck? And it’s a really quick meeting, and what it does is it brings number one, the team together, and number two, it enables you to understand where everyone is focused for the day, and number three, it encourages collaboration and supporting one another. And on that third question is where am I stuck or where do I need help. So, a daily huddle is one form of communication rhythm on how often you should talk to your VA.

Barbara: Actually, on that Matt, I actually took that advice, probably about six months ago now, I think you mentioned something on this daily huddle thing and we were talking about it. And I have to say that it has been an absolute game changer in my business. It solved a lot of communication problems that we had. It solved a lot of mistakes that were happening, that were nobody’s faults, really, it was that we weren’t coming together as a team. Now, just for anyone listening, just for my own experience, what happened with this was: I started it out in exactly the format that you’re talking about here, and it was a huddle in that way, but we quickly actually realise that that wasn’t totally effective for what we were talking about because the problems that we would suffer in The Virtual Hub in my business are what we call the pipelines. So, matching up the supply and demand of clients needing X, Y and Z VA’s with these skills and actually matching everything up. So, we just modified it a bit, and it works really well. It’s still a fifteen minute meeting. There are six or seven people on the meeting and each one of us has to update the other on where the pipeline is at on their side and where the challenges are and it just has solved a lot of problems for us and we have a lot less road blocks actually. Things get moved forward much faster.

Matt: Absolutely, absolutely, and I guess that’s a really good point I think you’ve got to take the theory of this and adapt it to your business and your situation. Secondly is, you can do a daily huddle with as little as two people.

Barbara: Yeah.

Matt: It can be really quick and really really simple. I think as far as how often should you communicate with your VA, it really comes down to their role. So Vanessa, who is my personal assistant that resides in the Philippines, we communicate daily. Because in her role, and in how she supports me, that’s what’s necessary and we do that, I’d say the majority of the time, verbally by Skype because it’s quicker, it’s easier, we can make sure that the understanding of everything is there and it works for us.

Now when I say the majority of the time, given the nature of what I do, often I can be on the road and I could be presenting for six, seven, eight, ten hours, so on those days Vanessa will send me a daily report and I’ll know what’s going on there, but if something is urgent, we have what I call the Bat Signal, where Vanessa will text me and in my break I will quickly jump on Skype and have a conversation with her.  There’s some rules around using the Bat Signal. She’s really got to ask how important is it that it gets done then and there. Again there’s only a few things that happen there, but it enables her to feel supported and to know that she’s not bothering me.

Barbara: I was going to say that because I have said to a lot of my teams members, for X, Y and Z, you can bother me. Like it doesn’t matter what I’m doing, I want you to bother me for certain types of situations they’re never to feel like they can’t bother me. Because people, particularly in the Philippines, will feel, oh you’re busy, I didn’t want to bother you, unless you actually give the parameters around which that is expected.

Matt: Absolutely, absolutely. And from there, I think you just need to work out, again, the appropriate communication with them in certain roles. I know one of our other teams, with The Fortune Institute, Samantha and her role, we have a formal meeting once a week, because that’s what supports that role and then if we need to converse in between, we set it up and do that. But what we find is because Sam is our Event Coordinator, as we are coming into an event, our communication frequency increases. Straight after an event it sort of drops off, and so, it’s getting clarity around people’s roles and responsibilities and what you need from them, and what they need from you, and making that happen.

I think the last time I have to say on this topic is, don’t be too rigid with it, because we have good parameters and rhythms etc. but all in all, you’re dealing with people. If someone needs you, and this is what you were just saying Barb, we have the same, if you need me or whoever it is in our company, just call them. What we do, is we just have a really little simple, where we will ping somebody beforehand and just go: are you free? You know what I mean? Because sometimes you could be in the middle of doing something, and someone just calls. Again, it’s emulating if someone was sitting next to me in the office, I wouldn’t just walk up to them and start talking to them.

Barbara: Yeah, you would say: have you got a second? Yeah.

Matt: So, we extend that same courtesy in a virtual environment also.

Barbara: Look I love that you brought up the rigidity thing, because as you were talking, I was thinking, in my experience and sometimes clients or VA’s might say “we do the meeting and it’s not really working” and I think well, in the beginning of a relationship with a virtual assistant or virtual team, I still think having, in the very, very beginning, having a ten minute daily huddle with that person, particularly if it is just you and a VA, is so powerful and then over time you’ll find that you might go to twice a week together. But if you’re finding that in between the communication is elevating again or the mistakes are elevating, then go back to the ten-minute huddle every day. Go right back to that, and then see where eventually you will discover an easy rhythm together that works really well.

And another thing that I brought in as well, so I have the ten-minute daily huddle, and there are some days where we think, well, there isn’t much to really talk about today, but we still do it. It is a non-negotiable. And for me as the leader of the business, I make sure that it doesn’t matter what is happening in my day. Ninety percent of the time I will be on that huddle, because I have made the commitment to the team that I’m going to be there and I’ve put it at the time that I know is going work for me every day. That’s not going to be possible for everyone listening to this, but for me it is.

But the other thing I introduced is the thirty minute, once a week, full team huddle. Now this is quite an interesting one because we’ve got about fifteen people on that call, and it’s thirty minutes and everybody has three minutes of the floor, pretty much. So, there’s a bit of chitchat and what I find about that meeting, sometimes were updating each other on stuff that we’ve already kind of updated some of us on, but it brings the whole team together, and there’s always people on that call that haven’t yet heard the bit that somebody else is working on. And it serves two purposes for me. It works really well to create culture within the team and bring people together, and number two, it makes it very apparent if somebody isn’t at the level the rest of team are at, and they feel it deeply, and that is if somebody isn’t pulling their weight or isn’t doing what they say they are doing, it becomes very apparent on that call. And it kind of creates a bit of friendly competition, that people are like ‘ah they’re doing very well, I should up my game’. So it serves a bit of a KPI purpose as well.

Matt: Absolutely, absolutely. And I love that, I love how what you were just talking about then, each person gets time on the floor, because I think too often in meetings, the same people can be talking all the time.

Barbara: All the time, yeah.

Matt: Whereas this provides an equal opportunity for everybody, and you know, those who aren’t as confident, overtime become more confident.

Barbara: Yeah they do, yeah.

Matt: And that’s really really good.  I think the long and short of it here is particularly with virtual teams, over communicate. I think too often where I see it breaking down is there is this under communication, there’s not enough communication, there’s too much written communication and not enough just jumping on and having quick verbal chats or meetings and the like, and in actual fact it makes life so much easier. So, my advice in this is, if you’re asking how often should I talk to my VA? Then, the answer is probably more than you currently are.

Barbara: Yes, absolutely. Look, if I could leave the listeners with one more tip from me, I was just thinking, I have a rule, and some people would think this is overkill, but again, it has worked really well for us in removing problems. We have a little rule that even when we have a meeting and we discuss something, because we use Asana so heavily, so that person still has to go in and comment on the task, because there are other people that may not have been in that meeting that need to be aware. So, it’ll be something like: as discussed, X, Y and Z. And it also shows me that that person has fully understood. There’s no holes or confusion around what was said on the call, and there’s no ‘Do you not remember I told you that on the call’. Now, that’s just in the nature of our business that we have to have that kind of level of communication, I guess, and rhythm and oversight for me, it won’t work for everyone, but I do find it solves a lot of problems for us.

Matt: Absolutely.

Barbara: Miscommunications.

Matt: Yeah, and for those listeners that aren’t aware of Asana. Asana is a project management tool, which in many instances is the glue between you and your virtual teams.

Barbara: And it’s free for most people. We are still on the free one. Hope Asana is not listening. Probably should go to the paid one now.

Yeah so guys, how often should I talk to my VA? As I said, it’s a question we get all the time, Matt gets it all the time, so it is something that is out there and as Matt said, if you’re actually asking that question, then start to communicate more. Particularly just do it, and do it more effectively for a while and you will get your own rhythm. You will discover what works for you and your team.

Matt: Absolutely. Well, Barb and to those listeners, thank you once again for an amazing show. Please, we would love to hear your comments, or feedback, or thoughts on this show, and would love your review also to be able to start spreading the word of Virtual Success out to many, many more listeners out there. Until next time, Barb you have a wonderful week, and we will chat soon.

Barbara: Yeah great, thanks!

Matt Malouf is a passionate business coach, speaker, author and entrepreneur on a mission to help entrepreneurs around the world break the shackles of mediocrity and reach new levels of personal and business success.

Barbara Turley is the Founder & CEO of The Virtual Hub, a company that specializes in recruiting, training and managing superstar ‘Virtual Assistants’ in the social media, digital marketing and systems automation space.

Want the transcript? Download it here.

Simple Creative Marketing

Trello

Podio

Google Drive

Google Docs

Upwork

In this episode:

02:15 – About Anfernee Chansamooth

05:13 – Getting started

06:32 – The challenges of building a virtual team

09:25 – Making sure you have the right people in your team

12:30 – A global team

14:16 – Tools for communication

15:33 – Team collaboration

18:09 – Shifting your mindset

18:35 – Constantly refine your processes

21:40 – Building a Virtual Team isn’t easy…but it’s worth it

22:50 – Advice from Anfernee…

26:18 – Key takeaways…

29:11 – Wrapping things up

Barbara: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show, where I’m joined by my co-host, Matt Malouf. Hey Matt how is it going?

Matt: Excellent Barb, how are you going?

Barbara: I’m good, I’m good. We’ve been punching out these shows recently. We’ve got a whole bank of amazing content up on the site virtualsuccessshow.com these days. So, I’m excited to keep going with this.

Matt: Absolutely, very exciting for the community.

Barbara: Yeah. So today’s topic is quite a good one because I know that we’re going to be interviewing a very good friend of mine who runs a business, who delivers content for people looking to do content marketingonline or any business looking to build content. And we all know that actually it’s quite a big job to get content up. Writing blogs and doing this sort of thing. And a lot of people really don’t enjoy it. But it’s a really important part of your marketing strategy.

So today we’re going to be talking to Anfernee Chansamooth who is the Chief Marketing Officer at Simple Creative Marketing. He also has a podcast called Authentic Influence, which is a fantastic podcast, that I myself was on the other day. So, check that one out also. So, Anfernee, welcome to the show.

Anfernee: Thanks for having me Barb and Matt.

Matt: Welcome

Barbara: So Anf, just to kick off, just give us the quick background of how you ended up… I love the offer that you have around people can sign up for a monthly offer basically to have your team, which is all a virtual team of writers, create their content strategy and deliver the blog strategy for them. What’s the back story to how you actually ended up delivering that offer?

Anfernee: Well, we go back about four years, I was the Marketing Manager at one of Australia’s largest co-working communities. And so I was actually writing a lot of the content for the company at the time. And then what we realised was we had a distributed team of about 12 people across Australia. And we struggled, even with a team of that size, we struggled to get content out consistently. And so, what I saw was, for that organisation but also for our clients who were a lot of small business owners, they were just struggling. People, they knew they had to produce content, they knew that it was a good way to access SEO benefits and build their credibility and really shed expertise online. But they just didn’t have the system behind it to be able to produce it well, right. Or they had tried it before and they weren’t getting results so they gave up.

What I realised was well, if we were an organisation of 12 people and we still struggled and our clients were struggling, then there is a space for this. And so I basically was involved with a group online at the time, which was called The 7 Day Start-up Community, run by a guy called Dan Norris who actually wrote the book on content marketing, you should give it a read some time. And he challenged us all to launch a business within seven days. And so, he said, take a concept, throw it out there and see if you can get clients. And that’s what I did, I just said okay who needs help with content, I’m going to produce that for you. And I put it out there, 100 bucks or whatever it was at the time. And I got two buyers straight off the bat. And then just went okay, maybe there’s something here.

And then so I continued with that and then realised okay, the real benefit of having someone else view your content for you is you can actually free up a lot of your time as a business owner trying to write, especially like you said Barb, people don’t like writing. So that’s not your jam, you don’t love doing that stuff. Why are you struggling and trying to make it happen. And a lot of businesses drop the ball on that. They know, the challenge of content as you would both know, is it’s not a quick win type of scenario. It’s actually a longer, long term journey-

Barbara: It’s the long game yeah, you have to play-

Anfernee: Yeah

Barbara: The long game with that but it’s an important part of the marathon of business I think in marketing. And actually, we’ve had Dan Norris on the show. So guys check out his episode, he has also a big virtual team. So he talked quite heavily about how he does that and his books are great too. I have a whole list of questions there. The offer went out, and were you initially the one doing the writing? Or how did the virtual part of this theme start?

Anfernee: Yeah. It started, I was one man flying solo person team.

Barbara: And then you realised the folly of that.

Anfernee: Absolutely right, because I thought, look, I’m leaving a full time job scenario and I had the space to freelance and I wanted to develop my writing ability. I write for the Huffington Post and for different publications. And I just went okay, let me give this a go, and then I realised, okay, look it’s taking me four hours anything up to eight hours on certain posts depending on the amount of research required and then really understanding the client. And then I just thought okay, I got to capacity and then just said, alright, I need a team to do this because I’m not able to deliver to multiple clients in the way I want to and to build that business. So that’s when I started looking for other writers. And I tried different platforms, Upwork and other writing platforms out there and copywriters and what not.  I just went through the whole challenge of trying to find quality writing at a price point that would work that’s not $1,500 per piece or whatever it is. Some writers are charging, if you are hiring an Aussie, easy they’ll charge you $200, $400 for one piece, right. So it just depends.

And so I went through the challenge of trying to build a virtual team around this and I could see that other business owners, they were trying to find writers and they were struggling. So that led to me saying, well you know what, if I have a team and I’m able to source those people and ensure quality in what we’re delivering then we’ve got something that people want. And that’s how Simple Creative became what it is today.

Barbara: Okay, great, ’cause I know writers are very hard to find, well no, writers are not hard to find online, good writers are very hard to find online, as you know. So talk to me about, on Virtual Angel Hub we get asked all the time, can my VA write content? And we just say, absolutely no. And then the next question is, well can I get a writer from the Philippines? Now, I actually have gotten a couple of people who can write but talk to me about the hit rate with that and where your strategy went in terms of trying to get the cost efficiencies of going offshore. And how did you end up coming to the place you’re at now where you’ve got only western writers, I think, isn’t it?

Anfernee: It’s not only western, I’ve got predominantly south, so I’ve got a couple from South Africa. I had just fired the one I had from the Philippines because just reliability was an issue. And I had two from the US and one from the UK, right. What it looked like in the last year I’ve been doing this, we’ve been through 30 different writers to get to five core writers, right.

Barbara: It sounds like our business, we go through like 100 VAs to get two, yeah. It’s that hard.

Anfernee: Yeah, yeah.

Barbara: To fire and find people.

Anfernee: That’s it, and it’s a trial and error, it’s getting them familiarised with our systems. A couple of writers were just not on because they were very traditional old school, didn’t know how to use Google Drive. And we’re saying, we’re an online business, online team. If you can’t use Google Drive or Google Doc to share your writing, and they were sending me Word documents, and I was saying, that’s not going to work for our team. We need to have it very systemized, as you would understand. And we need to be able to deliver our system, and our processes in a way that works nicely with what our clients are expecting. Not only timelines but just reviewing content and having them come back and forth with feedback and things like this. And that’s been, yeah the journey has been first of all, finding people who could write at a good quality or a good enough quality that the clients would feel like, hey this is actually a valuable experience, right. And then, have them say to us, oh there’s something wrong with their English or their grammar is not quite right or there’s an issue with …

The biggest objection if you will, around hiring or outsourcing your writing or your content is tone and voice. Okay, so how can I reliably give my content to someone else and make sure that they still are able to produce content that is in line with our brand and our brand vision of voice and message and it’s seamless. So people who are reading our content, they can’t tell the difference, Dan would have spoken about that. And that’s what I’ve worked really hard on was, okay really, for me it’s been, our onboarding process is quite deep. So we spend a good chunk of time at the beginning when we engage with our clients to understand what the business is, who their avatars are, all the branding stuff to understand. Okay, well what’s the message and how do you communicate, what’s your tone of voice, are you funny are you humorous, are you professional, whatever it may be. That’s why we have a two-step process, we have a writer and then we have an editor who goes back through what the writer has written. And then they edit to actually nail the tone and voice. So we actually take them through the writers, the editors when they come onboard. We take them through an onboarding process if you will, where we’re actually training them on how to actually be able to study, research and understand and communicate like they’re the client.

Barbara: There’s so many nuggets and I know Matt, you and I have talked about, not only building virtual teams. So there’s a whole piece Anf, that you’ve just gone through there about your experience. So forgetting the business model for a second, you had this whole experience of having to get the building of a virtual team right. So it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, that’s a struggle and that’s a real challenge. And then also you’ve talked about the onboarding process of clients. And the onboarding process of your virtual team, which are topics that Matt and I have talked about on this podcast in the past. So Matt, which one will we tackle first?

Matt: Yeah, well just to add to that, I think that what the listeners need to really tune into, that Anfernee talked about processes and systems multiple times just then. And we can’t reiterate that point enough. Unless, and I think it was Dan Norris that said, as the entrepreneur and business owner, your sole responsibility is to build the business system, the business machine. And so it’s really, really important to hear that and understand that if you don’t get that piece right, it is always going to be a struggle. And using virtual teams without systems and processes is 10 times harder.

Barbara: Committing entrepreneurship suicide.

Anfernee: Yes, yes, absolutely.

Matt: 100%, 100%. Curious question from me is, where are your team geographically located?

Anfernee: So myself and my CFO, COO, right now we’re in Sydney. And then we’ve got the LVAs in the Philippines. So, VAs through Virtual Angel Hub and we’re loving, May is amazing. We’ve got two of our writers in South Africa, we’ve got two in the US and we’ve just brought someone on from the UK.

Matt: Was the geographic selection based upon candidate and them being the right candidate? Or you were actually looking to strategically have people in different time zones?

Anfernee: I wish I had that much foresight, no. It was more around trying to… we initially started with Philippines and India because of the price, it’s the price point really. And then we just realised the quality wasn’t there. And we really struggled to find writers who could deliver what our clients were looking for. We have our own vetting system and own process. And if I’m not happy with the writers being what’s right for our own business, there’s no way I’m giving them to my clients, right so and that’s always the first test. I would say, look go write a three blog post for me and I want to see what you can do, right. Then we started to pick up really in the last two months, we’ve got now clients in Singapore and clients in the US. So now the time zone thing is becoming relevant to the business. And so it actually just worked out that we have these people in these three different geographical locations.

Matt: And what are some of the systems or tools that you employ your business to communicate with your team?

Anfernee: So when we started, we started with Trello, was the primary tool for systemizing the processes and engagement with the writers and editors. And then say about four months ago, we switched over to Podio. And so that’s the driving tool right now for communication so, that’s for assignment of task jobs and review. And just checking all the jobs as they move through and all the clients. And then for collaboration in terms of the actual writing work, that’s all done through Google Drive, Google Docs and that’s the two main tools that we’re using with our writers and our editors at the moment.

Barbara: I love the way you don’t have lots and lots of systems because although I’m a big fan of systems and automation, and I’ve been asked this a few times on a couple of different podcasts, in fact I think you might have asked me this the other day when I was on your podcast. What are the systems we use? And I always say to people, while you may love systems but try and keep them, don’t have loads and loads of systems. You’ve got to try and find systems that do a lot of things and that can potentially talk to each other. We run Virtual Angel Hub with four or five key systems and that works really well for us and it doesn’t overwhelm your team.

Anfernee: That’s right.

Barbara: So, that’s another little tip in terms of running virtual teams. I’m keen, Anf, to talk about, you’ve got people in different time zones. So let’s talk for a second about how as a team, do you run video like huddles or is it a bit different in your business because they’re all writing for different, there’s different project they are on. Or how do you guys come together as a team? Or do you?

Anfernee: With the writers we don’t have ongoing meetings and that kind of structural rhythm with them. Because they are assigned per client, that’s the way we’ve got it structured right now. We try to do it where we could assign any task or any job to any writer but it didn’t work. We just found that was quite challenging. And what we realised were, each writer has their core strength and ability and writing style. And they would suit specific clients, right. So then we ended up working that way, where we do have a regular rhythm is with our VA. We’ve got our Monday meeting and then we’ve got our daily check in. And we’ve got our reporting mechanisms and what not. And she’s really driving the allocation of tasks with the writers. The writers rarely engage with me directly, but I am doing a second pass edit on all the work before it goes to the clients. I will give them feedback but that usually goes through our VA to get to the writers.

Barbara: Oh, that’s great, music to my ears of course because you have a VA with us. I like that structure works well, yeah and you can always refine that. Now look the question I really have here and it’s probably more of a comment as well. I love the fact that you’ve been through a period of this not working, right. You had writers in the Philippines and India, it wasn’t working. Then you had other writers around the world, wasn’t working. Then your process etc wasn’t working. There’s bits and pieces that didn’t work and you could have easily thrown the towel in and said, this just doesn’t work. But I love the commitment that you’ve made to realising that the problem is there and the solution is there. But, it’s not that easy to match things together, especially with virtual teams. But you’ve been hustling hard and refining processes as you go to make this a well-oiled machine that’s really working now. So can you talk to me a bit about, were there moments when you thought what am I doing here, this virtual thing is just not going to work. And how did you get through that?

Anfernee: At least once a month.

Barbara: (Laughs)

Anfernee: The first major shift was my mindset around me being a freelancer to me building a team. Okay so, because all the processes as both of you would know, were sitting in my head, right. And they were things I could do, I could pick up and edit things, and I’d been doing this for years. This has been my career and so now-

Barbara: You would have had the mindset coming in, you would have had to fight the mindset of, God it’s just easier to do it myself.

Anfernee: Yeah, yeah, and there’s still times when I’m resisting that now. It’s like, oh I could just jump in and spend 20 minutes on it every day. It’s never 20 minutes by the way, it always takes up an hour or so. And I’ve resisted that and the last month has really been training my COO and getting her up to speed to make sure that she can manage the team effectively, right. And that involves making sure that we, I think you mentioned video earlier, I’ve started to do Loom video training, so whenever there’s feedback, I’ll just record it as a Loom video. And I’ll shoot that through to our VA who then passes it to all the writers, right. And then just say, hey look, here’s some things that we’re seeing, common threads or mistakes people are making. Please review this and then make the adjustments.

That’s an ongoing process and I’ve had to put that hat on where it’s like, okay my responsibility as you say, is to build the system and to train the team correctly to make sure they’re clear on the processes. I’m all over the tools, I’m always looking at new tools and ways to make things more effective or cut costs where we can or wherever may be. But I have to make sure that when there’s timely information getting to the writers and editors to make sure that the engine keeps moving, right.

One thing that we’ve strongly focused on in the last couple of months, since we’ve brought on our on VA, is customer service and making sure that we’re keeping our clients up to date on where jobs are. Because we’ve had situations where, back to your question about have I had moments where I wanted to throw the hat in or whatever it may be. There were moments where we lost the client because they had signed on for a job and it was 10 days later and they still hadn’t received their content yet, right. And so-

Barbara: Poor or no communication

Anfernee: Yeah, exactly. And that was it, there wasn’t timely communication so then the client … And I was really embarrassed and I said, that makes me feel like crap because at the least our client should know where their jobs are at. And if there’s a delay, why, right. I’ve been working hard on that side of things in the last month or so.

Barbara: Matt, and you would see a lot of this with your clients in terms of the feedback loops between virtual teams, the owner, and then the client onboarding and things like that wouldn’t you in your coaching?

Matt: Absolutely and I think it’s two reasons there and I know we’ve spoken about it on this show. Number one is everyone’s moving so fast and in order to set up the successes and not slowing down, in order to speed up. But I think secondly is, it’s around that expectation of understanding. It’s getting that clarity around that, that really will ensure that your virtual team works.

Barbara: Look, Anf, one of the things I really love that you’re sharing today is that, again, I’m coming back to this concept of building virtual teams and I would be, Matt and I talk about this a lot and we try and get all the listeners to realise this. The dividends that it pays to your business of getting this right, are explosively good. But it’s not easy, it’s simple, but not easy. And you have to make a commitment to making this work and it’s a bit of hustle along the way. And it’s looking at the mistakes that are happening and asking yourself, Is it a process problem? Is it a team problem? Is it a person problem? Is it a ‘me’ problem? And you’ve done all of those things and these are the things that we have to do. I’m still doing this every day in my business. We still have things that will go wrong or it’s a tough thing when you’re managing virtual teams. But it’s so worth it to get it right. So, have you any advice to share for people who are maybe just dipping the toe with a VA or starting out trying to build. There could be virtual bookkeepers, there could be virtual anything really. What advice would you give to people starting out?

Anfernee: I think the main decision points that I’ve gone through over the last 12 months of building this have really been just getting clear as to what my role is as a CEO or the founder or the director or whatever you want to call it. But it’s an old analogy, are you the foot soldier or are you the general? And so you need to understand your place in the business that you’re trying to build. And the freelancer mindset is quite different to the business owner mindset, right. And I started as a freelancer so the freelancer, it’s your practise, like it’s your art. You are the one who writes, paints, draws, sings and does all that stuff. But when you become the business owner, yes you have those skills but your role … My role now is actually to find writers who are better than me at writing, right so-

Barbara: But you become the conductor.

Anfernee: Yes.

Barbara: Yeah, the business owner is the conductor.

Anfernee: Correct. Yeah and then also there’s this whole thing about getting overwhelmed over all the tools that are out there to use in building this thing, right. Fortunately enough for me, I really lent on my mentor. I got myself a mentor and worked with him, a business coach to work through that as well. And he was good at reminding me, look you’re not here to get the Rolls-Royce, don’t jump to InfusionSoft straight away. That’s overkill for your business, right. Understand the processes that are at play here, map it all out and for me it’s pen and paper or post it notes on my window before I moved it to Trello, before I moved it to any of the systems that we’re using now because I needed to really understand. I like flowcharts, I like to flowchart things out and go, okay, step by step this is actually what is happening, right. And sometimes when you are the practitioner you do things so intuitively that it’s hard to decode that. You actually have to sit down and work it out, or have someone work with you to actually understand, actually these are the steps that are actually happening.

Things like onboarding, right. For me to systemise onboarding, I had to understand what is it I’m actually doing with the clients. What information do I need to extract from them in order to, and then how do I push that information to the relevant systems. Like our CRM, our email marketing tool, what needs to get to Trelloor to Podio or to the writers. My key takeaway would be, start with what is the core service that you are delivering and then start to decode that and pull that apart first.

The mistake I made a few years ago, if I can give you a bit of a back story. I had another business, maybe six years ago with another guy. Two of us, we had a Facebook agency. We started to go down this path of building a team. But we made the mistake of getting a VA first, right. And even though that was great and the VA helped us, we were still in the role, working 60 hour weeks. What I’ve learned since then is, if you’re going to grow a business, what you need is someone to help you with the delivery and servicing of the clients. And so that’s why I focus on hiring writers first before I brought on the VA.

Barbara: What I love there as well. These are really valuable tips and thank you for sharing that because what I love about that is none of what you’ve said focused on, going out and finding the right person. A lot of it is, what clients I think, what I find sometimes clients don’t realise is there’s an awful lot of work for you to do as a business owner before you start to look at building a team. Whether that’s a VA, or a writer or anything. You really have to get, I know I’m singing from your hymn sheet Matt, but all of it hinges really, the success of virtual teams actually hinges on the work that’s done before the virtual team arrives. That’s what I think.

Matt: Absolutely and the other thing, just thinking about what Anfernee just said, which I just, is so awesome, I’m going to say, you got to go analogue before you go digital. And that was the piece I remember whether it’s a post it note or a flowchart or unpacking something on paper first and getting absolute clarity. That will speed you up massively but so many people won’t do that because we’re busy or, the biggest mistake I see a lot of people make, is they want to jump to technology first thinking that will solve the problem. But what will actually ensure that you chose the right technology is getting clarity on what is it that I need the technology to do. And inevitably the technology is going to drive your system. So once you unpack your system then you can appropriately dissect and understand the best technology to give you the result you’re after. Love that, love the post it notes.

Barbara: And then to add to that from my end, people often think that I would go VA first. I always say, no, no, no. You go system first, then you automate as much of it as you can and then you delegate. So-

Anfernee: Yes.

Barbara: Like you say, unpack your system then pick the appropriate technology and figure out where you’re going to automate and then you figure out, what seats do I need on the bus now for all the stuff that’s left. What role am I playing as conductor, what things are stopping me from being the conductor. That’s the other thing, Anfernee, that you’ve really brought up.

Fantastic insights there just on building virtual teams. And of course, like people say, people could do all this themselves of course. But if you’re a business owner listening to this and you’re loving the idea of having a consistency of quality content coming onto your blog without you having to do pretty much anything only liaise with maybe Anf’s team. Where can they go Anf, to connect with you the business and maybe get started? Because your offer is fantastic.

Anfernee: Just head along to www.simplecreativemarketing.com and that’s where we can connect.

Barbara: Brilliant, great. So guys, continue the conversation if you can, over on the Facebook group. We’ve got a Facebook Group called Virtual Success, where we post a lot of these shows and we go back over tips from the shows. And get the conversation going over there. And also you can pop in there and let us know if there’s a show that you would like us to cover a topic. We’re always looking for new and interesting topics on the show. And finally, we’d love if you’re listening on Stitcher or iTunes, can you give us a rating and a review. We’d love to hear from you, hear what you think about the show. And the more ratings and reviews we get, the more people get to listen to the show and the advice gets out to the community.

So Anf, Matt, thanks so much for today. And we’ll see everyone on the next show.

Matt Malouf is a passionate business coach, speaker, author and entrepreneur on a mission to help entrepreneurs around the world break the shackles of mediocrity and reach new levels of personal and business success.

Barbara Turley is the Founder & CEO of The Virtual Hub, a company that specializes in recruiting, training and managing superstar ‘Virtual Assistants’ in the social media, digital marketing and systems automation space.