Don't make the same mistakes that it's taken me many years to learn: I want you to start further along this amazing business path then I was able to.
(1) Never Be The First To Name a Price
| The most important thing I’ve learned in my years of hiring someone else to run my business is to never ever ever be the first to name a price for the services. My strategy is to fully explain the job position to the applicant, let them ask any questions regarding the job position, and then ask them “how much are you expecting to make hourly for this job position?”.
I learned this when hiring my first assistant...I was ready to pay the applicant around $10-$15/hour simply because he was qualified and I was wanting him to be able to fully run my business operations. Upon asking him what he wanted to make hourly, he responded that he believed $3/hour was fair for the work to be completed!!! Needless to say, I fully agreed and have never paid a team member more then $4/hour since that time! If I had named my price first, the applicant would have gladly accepted and I would have been paying way more than I could have paid for the same great services.
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For more information regarding the specific costs of a Virtual Assistant, please read this article (click here)
(2) Start by Working With an Assistant Company 
| In my book, “How To Hire Someone To Run Your Business for $3/Hour”, I recommend a range of different ways to find an Assistant. While I now hire independent providers due to the hugely discounted pricing available compared to working with a firm that provides Assistants, I would recommend working with a Assistant company for your first few months. This will help you to learn the ropes of working with an Assistant. Once you’ve learned how to work successfully with this Assistant, you’ll then be able to start working with independent providers that will come at a much lower price than the firms that provide Assistants. |
For my personal recommendations of companies and individual people that I've actually worked with click here
(3) Define Exactly What You Want to Be Done 
| The key to having a successful Assistant is to provide them with enough information to know exactly what they should be doing each day: if you don’t provide great instructions, how can you expect them to be great at performing the tasks? In my book, “How To Hire Someone To Run Your Business for $3/Hour”, I describe exactly how to go about defining what it is that you want your new team member to do. I’ve broken down every single aspect of my business into a detailed instructional manual that is used by my team to run my business. Since I’ve taken the time to provide instructions for any and all aspects of my business, I now do not need to focus on any of those aspects of my business since they’re completing all of those task.
I’m free to travel the world while my team runs my entire business and makes me money! |
To learn exactly how to write your instructional manual, click here for a full free article on the topic.
(4) Setup A Task Tracking System That Is  | Not Time Consuming
What good is it to hire an Assistant if you have to spend tons of time focusing on what he or she has been spending their time on. In my book, “How To Hire Someone To Run Your Business for $3/Hour”, I suggest creating a task email each evening that describes all tasks that you want your Assistant to complete the next day. What I personally do is sit down at 9pm each evening and brainstorm exactly the things that need to be done tomorrow to make me some cash. I list all the tasks that the Assistant will be working on, as well as any instructions or details that he may need to complete these, and then I send him this email. He calls me with any questions throughout the day, although there are rarely any questions: by reading my book, you’ll realize that it’s easy to provide enough information to your Assistant that will enable them to complete all the tasks that you ask of them without any questions.
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Click Here For more information about how to track your team's time. MyHours.com time tracking service allows your team to track time spent on company work, client projects, etc. (5) Let Go Of Your Business or Task Responsibility 
| Once you hire someone to complete tasks for you, you need to be sure not to micromanage them: if they’re completing tasks successfully and correctly then there should be no need for your input. This is one of the key principles of my book, “How To Hire Someone To Run Your Business for $3/Hour”: give your Assistant the freedom to complete tasks successfully, encourage them to make decisions that will benefit the business and ultimately make you money, and then sit back and let this Assistant do their work on their own. Since hiring my Assistant, I’ve been able to hear from him once a day via email describing what he has done for the day and what he will be doing the next day...all of these tasks make me money while I sit back and let him make decisions and complete tasks. There is no need to micromanage an Assistant that is working successfully.
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To learn how I've coped with letting go of my business, please read my personal blog by click here (coming soon)
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