How To Hire A VA That Actually Helps You

Matthew: Yeah. And so what happened was they said, Okay, that’s great. We saved the business. That’ll be great another day, but you know, for now, what are we going to do? So why don’t we find the best possible people, the highest quality people in the Philippines and connect them with us competence, people just like her. And through that we started extend your team, we started in May, it we just hit 50 people, the end of the year, and with a goal of growing to the 150 by the end of 2021. Our sweet spot is we just find high quality better people to make a difference in your business today. They’re not the typical VA from the Philippines that are more entry level. But these are professionals that are that have 1520 1020 years experience and are successful own right there. You know, Joe there if you or I were in the Philippines, that’s we target to make a difference in entrepreneurs and business owners. Businesses.

Joe: Yeah, that’s, that’s really great. And again, this is something that really resonates with me, I actually have a virtual assistant from the Philippines. And she’s been really good. But this was my first endeavor hiring a virtual assistant. Right? I’m pretty bad at delegating. Because I think if I want to do something, right, I got to do it myself. Except for the case with my audio editor. Joel, you are great. Y’all, and a few other people, right, like I have a video editor now and a transcriber. But as far as like the research tasks and the kinds of things I was doing that I realized I don’t need to do. I thought a VA would be good for that. And so my process for that was kind of find a website. I used online jobs. That pH.

Matthew: Yeah, absolutely. Everyone starts there, including me, by the way, that’s where we were. I started hiring way back when.

Joe: Gotcha. Yeah. And so like, it was a little bit overwhelming, right? Because like I like found people I that I thought looked good, but I don’t I didn’t know. And then I posted a job and got literally thousands of applications. And so with that in mind, if we’re talking, let’s first talk to the person who’s hiring their first VA, right? What kind of research should they do? What kind of what should they look for? How do they know what to delegate? Just? What are the basics? 

Matthew: Sure, let’s, – let’s bifurcate that into two things. Right? What should you do? And then how do you figure out what to delegate? It’s two different things, right? So first step is divide your day or your week into two buckets. It’s really it’s actually very simple. It’s not that complicated. Strategic, not strategic, right. So strategic, tactical, essentially. And strategic is anything that requires Joe’s experience, his knowledge, his expertise, or makes Joe money, right, that is strategic, know what you have to be doing, because I can’t do what you do. Even if I came into work for you, I could not produce the podcast, right? You need to get on your great interviewer you interviewed the guests that makes you money. So great, everything that’s not that everything that’s tactical, not strategic, that gets outsourced right through that, then what you do is, you could call that a task audit, some people call that keep it simple, just divide it and write it on a piece of paper, two buckets. From that, develop a real job description, the number one thing that people make a mistake on. So the number one mistake that people make, is that they do not treat a virtual assistant hire like a regular hire– it without fail or cause you to fail. If you just do it on the fly, like, Oh, I just want someone to do everything, right. There’s no person on this planet that is going to step into a job with his with –no set of expectations and be able to meet expectations, right? If there are no expectations, then how do you meet them? How do you know what success looks like? So that’s the things that people should do from there.

Joe: Right. 

Matthew: So let’s assume you’re doing on your own, there are places you can go, such as online jobs, to act to go put it out there, right. And from that, you have to start filtering. And just be prepared. So when you do it on your own. So one of the there’s a reason you go for an agency reason you don’t, if you’re an experienced person, right, and you’ve hired a lot of VAs, you may be able to do it yourself. But I have a lot of experience, people are clients because they don’t want to deal with it. But if you’re you know, but if you’re not experienced, it’s your first time hiring a VA be prepared for I would say a 12 to 18 Month 18 month journey, to figure out how to manage a VA and how to find the right VA, it’s very easy. You can look it’s not hard to find someone, but to find someone that’s not require you to manage them 3040 hours a month, right and constantly give people feedback. And, you know, make sure that they are not just on task, but they don’t go down rabbit holes, that takes time and you’re going to have to hire and fire people. That now the advantages, you can do that without repercussions because it’s in their contractors. But don’t expect to hit it out of the ballpark with your first VA. It’s just very rare.

Joe: Gotcha. That’s, that is super interesting. Because I did I feel like I baby treated it more seriously than then. Most people I don’t know that I made a real job description. I was just like, I need research. And I need data entry. And I need like these are, these are the tasks that I don’t need to do. Right. So I didn’t make a list of that. But that’s, that’s really interesting about a 12 to 18 month journey. And I guess it’s just like, when you come on to a new job, right? It takes, you know, let’s say 6369 months to really be comfortable in that job because you are learning. You’re learning along the way right about how the company that you’ve been hired works and things like that. And I guess it’s the same for your VA, right? You’re trying to figure out what works for them and things like that.

Matthew: And it works for you. 

Joe: Right

Matthew:  So look at your look at your podcaster, right? Is it a couple 100 episodes, where you were How long did it take you? How many months? Did it take you to actually kind of to get into the rhythm to figure it out. See to find your groove. How long did that take?

Joe: Yeah, I mean, it took you know, really feeling comfortable. It took me I’m an entertainer, so it took me less time to be comfortable in front of the mic. But as far as getting all my processes down. It took I would probably say 18 months for me to know exactly how things worked. What I could automate. I’ve automated a lot of my podcasts at this point, and that’s what makes it like a viable thing for me. So you’re absolutely right. Like, I had to kind of look at what my processes are, and, and how they work and document so that I knew what I can automate, for example.

Matthew: Exactly. So it’s no different when you’re hiring your VA, because it’s very first of all, you’ll learn in two things, one, how to work with a remote worker. And you’re learning how to remote work with a Filipino remote worker, how I work with my engineer in the Ukraine is very from a ecommerce business is very different than I would work with a general virtual assistant or project manager manager out in the Philippines, different countries, different culture, and you just need to understand now add to that you’ve never hired a VA before. If you’re optimizing for cost, which is what I call it, the myth of the $5 an hour VA, meaning you’re gonna find someone for five bucks an hour that’s gonna change your life and run your business. It’s just not really the way it is. Right? They can be very successful at a narrow focus of tasks. But don’t expect them like minded like Angelica did for me to run a multimillion dollar business and start a company with 50 people. Like it’s not you’re not getting that level of talent, which is fine, just have to understand that. But you need to learn how to manage someone at that level. You need to learn how to hire someone that level and just recognize you’re going to make mistakes. I mean, I’ve fired and hired a lot of people before I figured it out. And then when I hired someone from the Philippines to actually do my hiring for me, Angelica, and now I have a recruiting team. But my– the quality goes up dramatically for the same price. Because it’s not an American talking to them. It’s the Filipino and they know how to sort through all the BS, they know what the market is, because they’re, they’re really thinking in pesos when we think in dollars. And so the market is they know if someone’s saying, oh, yeah, they’ll do it. They’re asking for twice the rate because you’re from America. And there’s some of that as well, right? I mean, good for people for trying. But there’s a market and you know, you just need to learn just learn in the market.

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Joe: One of the reasons I went with a Filipino VA is because I’ve heard good things about them with respect to the tasks that I needed. I at this point, I don’t think I can hire an American to do the things but also like it’s a lot of data entry and stuff like that. So and so what what is this is maybe a loaded question. But you know–

Matthew: Sure 

Joe: I–I saw I saw everyone’s like an hourly rates from like two American dollars an hour to seven American dollars an hour and certainly they’re different skill levels. But I you know, I feel I feel almost guilty, because I feel like I’m getting way more value out of my VA than I’m paying her every two weeks.

Matthew: Sure. So there’s no reason to feel guilty at all. So first of all, you’re providing them a work environment, that ideally unless you’re jerk is a very good work environment for them to you’re providing income to their family three, all you’re doing is playing salary arbitrage. That’s it. So there’s an arbitrage the Okay, a house in the Philippines does not cost the same as a house in San Francisco or Manila. Or, you know, or these other locations cavity or it doesn’t it’s not it’s not remotely the same, right? You can buy a house for 20,000 US dollars. And when you start looking at it like that they’re making just approved an equivalence in their country to lower costs are living food doesn’t cost as much vacations don’t cost as much all these things don’t cost the budget. Now, that being said, two to $4, $5, $6 is really entry level seven could be is really at an entry level. Right? It’s people maybe with a few years experience, who don’t have a broad scope of things, right. There’s no one on my team that makes two $3 an hour. I mean, that’s just you know, and it’s also even for the pill Philippines, by the way, that’s not a lot. 

Joe: Right. 

Matthew: So, you know, you have to recognize there still market wage, what you should pay, right. And as long as you’re paying market wage, there’s no reason to feel guilty. In my point of view you’re providing putting food on people’s table.

Joe: Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I did was, I looked at how much how many, how much in US dollars, it would do cost to spend a two week vacation in the Philippines. And it was like 1513 to 1500 bucks. And I’m like, geez, like my computer costs more than that. Like, actually, my computer I’m recording on right now costs way more than that. So, you know, that helped me feel a little bit better. But as you said, two to $5 now or is entry level? So let’s, I assume the tasks that I just mentioned, data entry, doing research, are fairly entry level tasks. How would you before we get into the real, the real nuts and bolts of this, I read that or I’ve been told that you need to be pretty explicit in your instruction. And that I’ve seen it happen a couple of times, again, my VA has been really good. But there were a couple of times where I left out something that I assumed was implicit. For example, I asked her to find virtual conferences for me to speak at. But she but each conference she listed didn’t have an open call for speakers. Right? It was like the speaker lineup was already set. And I assumed that that was like an implicit thing, but it wasn’t. And so I adjusted kind of my, my description. What’s the best way to think about to approach to finding tasks for let’s say these for entry level VAs?

Matthew: Sure, for an entry level VA, to make to define a task, you need what’s called standard operating procedures, SOPs is what you’ll hear everyone – everyone talk about, now, there’s you can actually buy their companies that just sell SOPs for bas. So you don’t actually even have to think about it right, just standard things for customer service for lead generation, just checklists will just tell you a checklist then, of many of these people have had bas themselves and been very successful. Another thing, but for you, let’s just say you’re it’s something different, right? Use a product called loom l o o m.com. And what it does is record your screen allows you to talk through it, I can take the take a video of you as well use that and walk through every single task, you need this person to get your entry level VA, this way they can actually watch it 100 times if they want or every time they do the task. And there’s really they don’t have to ask you any questions, right? You have to be very, very explicit. Using your example. You know, they may not realize they may just think that you want to find virtual conferences to speak at not necessarily now could be next year, right. So you also have to get you also have to work on the level of specificity, specificity for each person, right? It’s going to depend on who they are, how smart they are, and what their level of skill is. You also can take those recordings. And let’s say this is what I do for customer service. I’ll string a few together, and a Google Doc, where I provide some text explanation. So in my case, let’s say for my ecommerce business, we’re talking about corporate uploads. So we saw a lot of corporate I gift baskets. And these are this whole process for corporate ordering. I’ll do text afterwards video, I’ll do some text through and some video to give a full explanation of process. And other things or problems that need to happen. This way is together now I have a document that explains the entire corporate or upload process or corporate ordering process. And there are no questions. If there is a question. You answer it with a loom video, and you add that to the dock. Right? So there’s something you missed, you know, they said, Well, what how do I cancel? Let’s just give you an example. How do I cancel a single item? Great question, create a video, add it to the doc title, the video, how do I cancel part of a corporate order? And through that, over time, you’re gonna have a great set of documents where SOPs for people to follow.

Joe: Wow, that’s –that’s really great advice. I’m using air table to Kanban board manage tasks. And but it’s very similar right, I have the document, I’ve got loom videos. Well, I made a loom video to show her how to use air table and then I haven’t made one since. So yeah, I’ll definitely be more more generous about using Loom videos. Because yeah, that’s, I think you make a really great point there. Now, of course, in our –in our pre recorded conversation, or our pre recording, conversation, we, you mentioned a few things about the truth about hiring overseas how to but –but you also mentioned why you should not hire a VA, hire your next business leader instead. And I suspect that this is really where your service comes in, right? Because we talked about the entry level VA, but maybe there’s something better that we as small business owners can do.

Matthew: Sure, so in my opinion, virtual assistants that are entry level, do not help most businesses, unless you’re really have everything down and understand that portion of the of the hiring spectrum, it’s going to cause managerial overhead, simple thing that people need to remember, if someone is $5 an hour, you’re at 100 an hour, when you manage them, it’s 105 an hour for that given tasks. Now, if it’s 25 hours a month, and managerial overhead, let’s just assume that so how much you interact with them. Now you’re spending $2,500 For someone who’s $5 an hour, an alternative is you go up market, hire someone with 1020 years experience, who let’s just say was a project manager, elevate them to your chief of staff, and give them the ability to oversee your entire business for you. Whether that’s invoicing, manage other contractors, or just give you a report every single day of what’s going on with your business. Now you’ve elevated yourself, to focus on growth, to have a beer with your friends, go play with the kids. And you can actually now you know, let them run the day to day, right, they will run everything. And you just wake up in the morning and get a report as as to what’s going on the last few, what do you need, you know, here’s maybe a couple of things that they need from you. And then you go back to your day and focus on what you need to focus on to make more money, you let the day to day ops of their business, be run by someone else for 16 to 18 an hour.

Joe: Wow, that’s great. And so what we are going to talk about in the members only portion of the show is the psychological hurdle of letting go of the day to day, which I’m sure a lot of business owners struggle with. So if you’re a member, great, you’ll catch that conversation. If you’re not you can sign up over at buildsomething.club to get that conversation, which I’m really excited to talk to you about. But the managerial overhead part is something that it that weighs heavily on my mind, right? Because I don’t think I spend that much time managing my VA. But I also know that I could be getting better data. If I spent more time managing her which is like a kinda it’s a six and one half a dozen than the other as my old man says, right? It’s, uh, do I spend the time to get the good data? Or do I just let her do her thing? And then cherry pick the things that that do work for me, right? So I think that’s really interesting. Going up market essentially saves you money.

Matthew: So it saves you a ton of money and it saves you time and time is more valuable than money because you can always earn more money, you can earn more time. I mean, that’s if I didn’t make that up. It’s true. But think of it a little differently. Right, Joe? So in your business, let’s just say you spend six bucks for VA, right? The difference with the additional costs from six to 16 is $1,800 a month. If you cannot make more than $1,800 a month by getting a better person to offload almost everything, you have a fundamental problem in your business. Yeah, everyone’s like, Oh, but it’s 20,000 more a year. That’s not the way to think about, in my opinion, the way to think about it as no, I’m paying someone 1800 more a month now, in 3060 90 120 days, if I’m not growing, because in 120 days, if I’m not growing more because I’m focused on growth, then there’s a problem like you got to really think about actually your business and the VA is just is making you have a crutch right? If you got it hi love a great person, and you can grow by 20,000 a year. You gotta rethink your business.

Joe: Yeah, I that’s I mean, that’s absolutely correct. Right. And and I’ve certainly seen it with, again, my audio editor and my video editor, those are two things I can do. But they save me hours and 1000s of dollars a month, right? Because what they do is way more efficient than what I do. And they have more trained hands at it and, and I send them raw video, and then I get a raw audio and I get a finished product back. I think a little bit of a mental hurdle for me is like, how do I find a person I trust enough to let them into my invoicing system? Or let them into my email? Right. Like, that’s, there are some –some things there that, again, we’ll have this conversation later, but that you need to let go of a little bit.

Matthew: Yeah, we could talk about that. And offline, or and then the, the club. It’s, it’s, you know, there’s, there’s a lot, there’s a lot to unpack there. There’s a lot to unpack there. It’s you just have to do it. I mean, there’s there’s strategies we can talk about. Yeah. But it’s their, you know, at the end of the day, right, well, you have to realize is incentive to seal versus incentive to stay.

Joe: Gotcha. Gotcha. I like that. 

Matthew: Yeah. And…it’s –what’s people’s incentive? Yeah. Right. And if you treat people if you treat people, right, what’s their incentive?

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Joe: For now, let me ask you the title question, right? How did you build it it in this context will be? How do How did well, let’s talk about how you built your business a little bit. 

Matthew: Yeah

Joe: Because I think that will inform how I or one of the listeners, many of the listeners hopefully can figure out. Okay, how do I take the leap? How do I build a process to hire a partner instead of just an assistant?

Matthew: So how do you want to talk about how I build the business? Or how do I actually like build a process to hire?

Joe: Let’s do a little bit of both. Let’s let’s get some background more on your business first and then move into the process. Right because I think one will inform the other.

Matthew: Sure. So you know, there’s a quote by Steve Jobs where he says if you look hard enough, you’ll find that most overnight successes took a really long time and I think that’s really the truth. I was working and he caught my ecommerce business not a real long time five years till I figured it all out, and then made a pivot to start This company, right? And how I actually built the company was that I had an idea that I could get better people, that was my idea. Talk to my team, they said, We can do this. I talked to people I knew, and this is about product, you know, ideas, validation. This is what I want to do. If you need someone, let me know, I’d like to try to get them for you. And that one customer who was my accountants, I got him the bookkeeper is my first customer, then I shook the trees on my network for my first 10 people, I knew every single one of them well, and they all gave me a chance because they had this lead. And so I just kept on working at it. till finally, the scariest part is you go outside your network, and you get that first customer you don’t know, then to me, that’s real validation. But if 10 people, you know, we’re gonna buy the one person who you don’t know, there are many people who don’t buy, and then I just one foot in front of the other. Right? Boom, right? And so all of a sudden, it starts to gain momentum. The last week of the year, I was working one day, I had five new customers. The first week of the year, I was working, I was working all week, I guess. And I got another seven, right. And it’s about one foot and for the other, right. And now like I have to hire mine for more return people right now, right just to handle volume, because I just can see what’s coming. But it all starts with people, you know, so if you’ve never started a business, and you have all these ideas, that’s great. I mean, have these ideas. But if you go to all the people, you know, and not one person will buy, assuming you’re not starting like a nuclear power power plant, which is not going to die. But like if you have an idea that is, let’s say, a consumer product or a business, and you want to do this, and you can’t get one person, you know, to just say yes, even at a cut rate. I mean, I don’t do it for free, do it. I do it. And I did it. Obviously I started out at a cut rate, I just want to validate this, can I do this for you and add value? If you can’t get one person, you probably do not have a solid business idea. As much as you like it. I mean, I have a lot of ideas I like but you know, doesn’t mean they’re worth anything.

Joe: Right. Right. I love that. I love that idea. Because I mean, it’s true. I think that you know, with investments, right? They say you go to friends, family and fools first.

Matthew: The triple F round they call it Yeah,

Joe: Exactly. And not not that I would call anybody a fool. But the first people, the people who know like and trust, you are going to be your friends and family, right? And so they’re going to, if they can validate the idea and trust you to do it, then you you have some ammunition to go out and say to strangers, hey, I can do this.

Matthew: Exactly, exactly.

Joe:  I love that. And so, so you you built this business while working on your E commerce business. And then you decided to pivot? What does your ideal customer look like? Because, you know, it’s probably not the Freelancer who’s just starting out who doesn’t really know their processes, right? Is it like somebody who’s been in business for a year, two years, 10 years?

Matthew: I think it’s all about workload. So there comes a point in every entrepreneur or every team, where they’re, it’s holding you back the tactical tasks. So for solopreneurs, it’s at the point your tactical tasks are stopping you from making money, because you’re so focused on the busy work, or are you so focused on managing the projects or anything like that, that is for solopreneur, the prime time if you have a team so so that’s, that’s a solopreneur. If you have a team, where you have an agency, and you’re growing and you have all is or it’s so many things going on, you need someone to just orchestrate it all. You’re my ideal customer there too. And if you just need you need slot players, let’s say like a customer service person full time, because you have a growing ecommerce business, you need appointments, there’s full time, we can help you as well. So it’s really about workload and task load. Right? So if you have too many customer service is taking up your time. Let’s talk if you have you know you want and you have if you have too many tasks overall, you know, that’s taking up your time as an entrepreneur. Let’s talk.

Joe: Man, well, you you all listening can’t see the video, but if Matt saw my face there, he he saw a very pained look on my face. As he said, if you’re at some point that’s exactly I doubled over a little bit. If you’re at the point that your tactical tasks are preventing you from strategic –strategic work. I kid you not this morning, before my kids woke up before my wife woke up I was sitting at my dining room table just writing down all the things that I’m learning fall through the cracks because I’m focusing on minutia. And so like it hurt me a little bit when you said that.

Matthew: You know, think about this, though, you know, your your your typical, though, right? So you have a VA right now, instead of say, I’m going to get someone who can just do what they’re doing, plus all the other things, right. So we’re not talking about a high level, strategic like a, a more senior person is not going to do everything else, but bigger. And all the stuff that your VA can’t do. 

Joe: Right, Yeah. 

Matthew: So you are the ideal customer with your pain face? Who over? Here your list?

Joe: Yeah, amazing. So with that, let’s talk about I’m sure I’m not the only person who just heard that who’s listening who feels the same way as me. I know, from my friends, you’re listening to this, I know we’re in the same boat? How do we build a process to –to get to a better place where we can focus on the strategic work.

Matthew: So I think what everybody needs to do is go get Loom and for everything you do make a single recording of what you’re doing. Right? All these tactical tasks, non strategic, all of a sudden, within a week, really, I mean, it’s that quickly, I mean, a video, it sounds like it’s a big thing to make, you’re not producing, you know, a Hollywood motion picture, you’re just talking and recording– 

Joe: Right.

Matthew:  It takes seconds, 120 seconds, 30 seconds, all of a sudden, after a week, you’re gonna have a library, two weeks, you’re gonna have a catalogue of everything that needs to be done, just you know, title it, hire someone, have them do it. That’s it. The other thing you do need to do is start organizing yourself with a task manager like Asana, Monday, Trello, whatever works for you. You know, we our clients talk with all different things, and we help our clients implement this. It’s not very difficult. But you have to, you cannot expect people to prioritize. So you’re the boss, Philippine culture, Filipino culture is your on Boss, I’m God. Right? I but here’s the reality, you cannot like, that’s the culture they’re coming from. So you give them 15 things. You expect them to be able to prioritize. They can’t they don’t know what’s important. Yet, they will like my like Angelica, I have something that she just put to the bottom of the pile to implement a chatbot for me, app for the VA business and she has a lot more important things to do to staff up, it’s fine, she knows how to prioritize I’m not even upset, right? Even though I wanted to turn I’m not upset because all the other thing she’s prioritizing are exactly what she needs to prioritize until we staff up. So you once you do that is using your Trello whenever these things you can just easily prioritize by drag and drop. And then Away you go, then now you have your SOPs, you have your prioritization, you can also put a time monitoring software on the VAs computer, which we do for everybody. Not it’s you know, people think it’s because we want to be Big Brother, you know, make sure that working, kind of sorting out really, we’re really adds value is when there’s a problem. You that say okay, oh, you’re timing all your tasks. Well, why is this research on about open speaking positions, taking 15 hours to get to right? Now you can see, so Well, maybe they’re not working, right? That’s what you you go to instinctively. But know what actually happened? You start looking at recordings, you talk to people, you see what the timings are that the reason is there’s something broken the process and broken in the process, and they try to go around it, right. So when you build the SOPs, give us a task manager and record what they’re doing through that you can be very successful. And that’s how it goes.

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Joe: You mentioned time tracking for the VA. I suspect it’s probably also pretty important to time track for your Do you time track for yourself as well.

Matthew: No. I mean, should I know should I like it’s I should practice what I preach. I you know, I truthfully, like what I do for myself is I would now at this point, I just sit back every month. And I look at what I’m doing. And I just say, Okay, I need to hire that out. Right. 

Joe: Gotcha. 

Matthew: Yeah, you know, I just need that. That’s what I do. So the example is like managing my LinkedIn, a lot of outreach. Right? You know, we’re just we’re hiring someone next week to take over all of that for me plus a lot of other things I do for social and just manage it all as me. Any of the larger social media personalities are actually even smaller ones. They don’t do their show on social media, right? It’s like if you think Gary Vee is actually like posting everything knows his team post, right? He may be doing the video, right? But when it’s text that’s not like, maybe it is I don’t know. I mean, that guy’s a maniac. But any normal person, anyone besides Gary Vee, if you’re not Gary Vee, you’re not sure? Yeah, it’s just it’s just too hard.

Joe: Yeah. And I think that makes sense, right? Because we’ve already established right that it’s not necessarily how much time you’re spending on a task. It’s the type of task it’s through to teach strategic versus the tactical tasks. 

Matthew: Right.

Joe: So it doesn’t matter if you think you’re spending too much time on a tactical task. Because it’s tactical, it’s something that you should hire out.

Matthew: I don’t 100% And so I have this thing. I tell people, mindshare is timeshare. And what I mean by that is, if you’re thinking about it, it’s just it’s, it’s as much a problem as if you’re doing it. And it sucks up your time. Because you’re just you’re thinking about it in your head, once you free up that space. Wow, you have all this time to do other things. Once I freed up for myself, you know, 11 hours a day that I was working, when I first had Angelica, or 38 hours a week or 60 hours a week, whenever I freed up from what I was working to that, you know, to now, on the E commerce business, I’m able to start a new business, right? I don’t –I don’t think about that business for most of the week. I don’t have to write. So you’ll see all these other things that you’re able to do simply because you’re not thinking about the task anymore. It’s just getting done.

Joe: Yeah, that’s fantastic. I’m gonna remember that. Because if like, I work, you know, my basement. Yeah, kids are upstairs. If something happens, where it’s a problem I need to solve and my wife’s like, you can do it later. I tell her, I literally have to do it right now. Like, I will not think about anything else until I do it. Because it’s taken up, you know, it’s taken up the brain space, and I can’t. It would be faster for me to just do it in five minutes and think about it for like two hours and then do it right, because it’s distracting. Yeah–

Matthew: But it’s also collection of these things that everybody does. I joke that wife said to me the mic. It was something with billing. I’m like, it takes me five minutes. She goes, right, but it’s five minutes of this five minutes of this five minutes of that. Now you have 15 minutes. 

Joe: Yeah–

Matthew:  Guess what? Not a good use. 

Joe: Right. 

Matthew: And I don’t have to tell her to her face. She you know, she’s right. But yeah, she’s got leverage. 

Joe: Yeah– I totally understand. Of course, I’m pretty glad. So my wife probably just hears me.

So, so So this has been really great. As we kind of come to the end here. We covered a lot of ground. Let’s say the our listener has never hired a VA before. What are one or two tips you recommend for them to get started getting from never hiring to getting to the person who is a partner in your business? What’s like the first couple of steps they should take? I guess you kind of mentioned a few but to take 

Matthew: Yes sure. Yeah. The two takeaways Yeah, figure out what they’re supposed to do by dividing your game to strategic and tactical, right? Strategic Joe level tasks tactical, anything that doesn’t require your experience or your presence, right? Then second thing, write a job description from that, like, so. It’s, I’ll send it to you, Joe, you could send it to your listeners, if you would like and put it in the podcast as a link. Just here’s what the job description form looks like. Write it out, think through it, treat it as if it was $100,000 hire. 

Joe: Awesome–

Matthew: Put that level of attention. Those two things will make a world of difference and start you on the journey to a cracked fire.

Joe: That’s fantastic. So yeah, I will I will link to that and a few other things that loom and things that we mentioned in the show notes over at how I built it slash 208. Matthew, this has been great. I do need to ask you my favorite question, which is do you have any trade secrets for us?

Matthew: Trade secrets? I actually would have said write a job description. Because nobody does it. 

Joe: Right – perfect.

Matthew: Honestly. Nobody writes job descriptions, and nobody treats it like a real hire.

Joe: All right, love it. Well, that’s the third– oh yeah

Matthew: One thing, okay, not a trade secret. But I something that if you have never gone to this website, we’ll save you a ton of money. I don’t own it, because otherwise it would be a bazillionaire. App sumo.com. There, it’s it’s highly highly discounted software as a service tools that you’re it’s gonna blow you away what’s on there. You know, it’s a lot of companies that are just starting out. And what your listeners can do is go there and just buy a lifetime subscription of something for like 60 bucks, right? It’s an it may, it may be just like a competitor to us of a really popular tool. But my God, I probably save 510 1000 a year just using that site and spending, you know, 600 a year. I mean, it’s just incredible.

Joe: I keep a spreadsheet of lifetime deals I’ve gotten off of AppSumo is how much I paid versus how much it would be a year. I just picked up a Publer over Black Friday. 

Matthew: Publer. Yeah. 

Joe: Yeah – It’s so I pay bucks. I was paying $15 a month like so good. 

Matthew: It’s great. –I mean, it’s great. I picked up like an LMS over Black Friday learning management system. I mean, I picked up so much stuff. And I’m like this, my team is like, where are you getting this like absolute about? Anytime you need something, you want a tool, go there first, let’s monitor it, rather than go paying something for something. Because, you know, it adds up. Like, it’s, it’s amazing how quickly it adds up to real money.

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. So I have a theory. Well, I’ve always wondered why companies would do such thing. We’ll talk about that in the club thing in the club, too, though, because I think we both probably have answers for now. Matthew, thank you so much for your time. If people want to learn more, where can they find you?

Matthew: Sure. So you can do two things, you can go to extend your team.com/freedom. And you will get be redirected to an assessment that lets you know where you are on your outsourcing journey. And you can book a call with me after that. Or you can go to extend  your team.com and contact me through there and book a meeting. –So I highly recommend the assessment first.

Joe: Yeah, that sounds fantastic. I will link again to that in the show notes over at how I built.it/ 208 Matthew, thanks so much for joining us. They really appreciate it. 

Matthew:Thanks Joe been a lot of fun. 

Joe: And thank you to everybody listening thanks to our sponsors for this week. TextExpander, Research Content Pro and Mind Size. Until next time, get out there and build something.