Lessons
Class Introduction
02:21 2It’s Time to Optimize, Automate & Outsource Your Work
04:03 3The Difference Between Outsourcing and Delegating
01:57 4Identifying Your Unique Abilities
08:44 5Password Management Tools
05:54 6The Phases of Your To Do List
06:23 7The Language of Outsourcing
11:15 8Pick the Right Type of VA Service
08:09Lesson Info
Pick the Right Type of VA Service
So, now what I wanna talk about in this lesson is the different types of virtual assistants. We're gonna get down to the brass tacks of who you're actually gonna hire to do this stuff. So, there's basically three different kinds of virtual assistants in the market. And I wanna go through each one of them. I'm gonna give you the pros and cons. I'm also gonna tell you how our company works and then, in the end, you can do some research and decide which is gonna be the best for you. Because there are pros and cons to both, quite honestly. So, one of the first ones is virtual employees. So, with a virtual employee, some houses refer to it as a dedicated assistant. So, what that means is you're gonna get the same person every time. So, Chelsea is gonna get to really know how you like to thank people in your company. How you like to send them gifts. Your kids birthdays, your logins, all these kind of things. You can just call up and say, "Hey, I need this done." And they know how to do it. A...
nd that's great because there's continuity there. And the truth is, is that there are certain people, that that is the only way that they will ever be able to outsource. It's the most effective form for them and that's fine. If that works for them, that's great. And it's important to understand that. The con to having a dedicated assistant, is that there's a limited amount of time and skill set that that one person could ever have, obviously. That person also could move on from the company. They could get promoted. They could quit. They could be sick. It's a bit of a liability for certain processes in that place. So, the one caveat that I would put there, is that if a virtual employee is gonna be the one for you, then make sure that your processes have gone through OAO. You have them well-documented and that means that if you have to replace that person, the transition cost will be a lot less. Now a really good company to provide virtual employees would be something like Zirtual. Zirtual.com. Which is all US-based assistants. So, you get one person that gets to know you. If you wanted to go outside the country for that, to get it cheaper, keeping in mind that you get what you pay for, then 123Employee would be one of the ones I recommend and they have Filipino-based assistants there. Which is a really great alternative. There's no language barrier. There's no culture barrier either, honestly. And there's a ton of talent that will service those companies. So, the next one would be task-based virtual assistants. So, these are, this is a different animal. So, with task-based virtual assistants, you are getting access to a pool of hundreds or even thousands of assistants that can do smaller tasks. So, you're not gonna go to a task-based virtual assistant to build your website or create your marketing strategy or run your call center, whatever it might be. It's gonna be smaller things. Things that might be 20 minutes or less. That's typically the benchmark for a task-based virtual assistant. The benefit, the big benefit, is that there's no bandwidth issues. You can issue 100 tasks in the next 10 minutes and 100 different people will start working on it right away. Those hundred or thousands of people might have every skill set you could possibly think of. You may have somebody who used to work in a window shade store and you need somebody to research window shades. Then that's perfect. The con is that there's very, very bad quality control because there's such large numbers and there's a lot of turnover. You are limited to those smaller tasks. And they can only access certain information. So, you're not necessarily gonna share passwords with somebody who you may only have 20 minutes of time with and you'll never talk to them again. So, the best services for those are something like Fancy Hands, which is one of the original sort of, American-based virtual assistant services and they have thousands. And also the other benefit, by the way, is that they're much cheaper typically. The other one would be something like Magic. Which, quite honestly, is very, very good. Magic is a great service and they're not limited to 20 minute tasks but again, it is more task-based. So, Magic would be great for finding and researching something or maybe doing some data entry. But they're not necessarily gonna build a website for you. The third kind is project-based virtual assistants. So, this is more where you're going to one of the larger outsourcing marketplaces, like Upwork or freelancer.com, for example. Or guru.com is another one. Where you are putting in a project, a big project, that you need done. So, the benefit here is that it's a competitive marketplace, so those providers will bid on it and you'll hopefully get the best price but again, reminding that you get what you pay for. You'll get somebody who's got a lot of track record in doing that thing. Somebody who may be really, really specialized in doing whatever you need. Whether it's a copywriter or a graphic designer, doesn't matter. And you'll be able to work with them one-on-one and actually maybe even have a relationship and talk to them however you want in Skype or email, whatever you need. Whatever works for your relationship. The con is that contrary to popular belief, a lot of these marketplace services do not actually provide any quality control or guarantee of the work. If the person does a bad job, you're kind've on your own, really. And even if somebody has a really, a five-star rating, hundred times doing this kind of project, it still doesn't necessarily mean that for your specific kind of project, you're gonna be able to determine who's got the right talent. And where that balance is between low price and good quality. 'Cause there is a balance there. The other con is that, in essence, you are making yourself into a project manager. Which many people who do this kind of thing and want to have this stuff done are not skilled project managers. They don't know the questions to ask. They don't know what to look for. They don't know what appropriate timelines might be. And they end up micromanaging somebody that they don't really know. So, I mentioned Upwork and Freelancer for those. Now, our company is sort of a hybrid of all of them. So, what Leverage is, is we're a team of about people with pretty much every skill set you can think of from graphic design to copywriting. We have a couple paralegals on the team even. And because it's a small enough team, we really take our member services to heart and we provide as much of a personalized experience as we can. But we also work on marketplace system. So, the right person with the right skill set is gonna be the one that is matched to the particular task that's put in there. We can do long-term projects and above all, we guarantee the work and we provide quality control. Not only for the specific projects, but for the people that will work on those for you. Now, again, there's pluses and minuses to all those. One of the things, again, with ours, is you're not getting a dedicated assistant. And so you may be working with different people each time. Not guaranteed but you just can't be expecting to have the same person every time as with a virtual employee. And for some people's personalities, it just doesn't work. So, at the end of the day, you're gonna have to do your own research to figure out what makes the most sense for you and that's what I want you to do here is, looking at the tasks and projects that you've put together and the ones that you maybe put into the buckets of the six different levels of delegation, decide what kind of service is going to be best for you. Which price points makes the most sense for your budget? And you may need a combination of two of them. You may want one service to do sort of the little stuff and you may want a different service to do those sort of bigger, long-term projects. Which is an important segway so once you do decide that you should go sign up because in our next lesson, we're gonna actually talk about some of those small tasks, medium-sized tasks and then the really, really big tasks that you should be giving to your new outsourcing provider.
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
'Layers of Delegation' was really insightful part of this course, never thought about it as that