The Takeover with Tim and Cindy

Hiring An Overseas Contractor (Don't Do These 5 Things)

• Tim and Cindy Dodd • Episode 48

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It’s part 5 of our Virtual Assistant series, and we're diving into the crucial topic of what NOT to do when hiring VAs. Now that we’ve talked about all the ways you can leverage a virtual assistant and supercharge your business, let’s get into the DON’Ts. 

It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of delegating tasks and expanding your team, but overlooking these key pitfalls can lead to costly mistakes. 

Let’s uncover the top missteps entrepreneurs make when bringing VAs on board, and how to avoid them for a smoother, more productive working relationship.

  • 02:55: Why you shouldn't set up unlimited hours for your VA
  • 05:20: Some tools you can use to keep your VAs accountable 
  • 08:07: Why you should set your metrics and KPIs
  • 10:44: Examples of metrics we track 
  • 13:26: How do you keep your VAs engaged?
  • 19:50: Tips on how you can build a connection with your VA
  • 21:15: Securing your accounts and access 


If you haven't already, be sure to listen to the previous parts to catch up on all the invaluable insights we shared.

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About The Hosts:

  • Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy: Instagram

About PEMA.io:

  • PEMA.io is a Inc 5000 Outbound Marketing Agency specializing in Enterprise Sales & Appointment Setting. With over 7-years and 1,000+ clients served in the industry, PEMA is the leading agency for cold outreach appointments & systems. Learn more about PEMA.io here: www.pema.io/discover

Cindy (00:03):

If you can sign clients over video calls and need sales meetings, we'll set you up with the same ad free outreach strategy that we use to get an extra 100 meetings a month. And a loan has contributed multiple seven figures to our revenue. Look, I can't promise you that you'll get those exact same results. There's a lot of over promise, over hypey guarantees out on the internet today that rarely work and always have a catch. But the reality is, ladies and gents, how you operate your business, you market environment, your offer and how well you implement the strategy may be different from ours. What I can say is that if you need sales meetings, this will work. You'll be able to use this to get meetings a month over month and you'll know exactly what to do to scale up your volume of meetings as needed.

Cindy (00:57):

This is not a fly by night strategy. We've been using ad free outreach for the last five plus years. So if you're looking for something that is proven reliable and has stood the test of time, this is it. If you want to see how this can work for you, click the link in the show notes. You can learn more about this ad free outreach strategy and if it makes sense, book a call with our team. Welcome back to the Takeover with Tim and Cindy. In today's episode, we want to walk you through five things you absolutely should not do when hiring virtual assistants or VAs. So we've been hiring VAs for the last four to five years now and we have our fair share of successes, but also our fair share of horror stories and lessons learned. So our goal in this episode is to walk you through and to give you some advice on five things that you should not be doing when hiring VAs to ensure you are successful with this process.

Cindy (02:01):

Now, if you are just jumping in to this five part series, we're talking all about virtual assistants. And when we say VA simply means a virtual assistant. It's essentially a remote or online freelancer, usually from another country. We recruit a lot from the Philippines, but your VA can be from South America, can be from India, all sorts of different places. And essentially they are a contractor for your company. At Pima, we hire VAs specifically for lead generation, for outreach appointment setting, and even for social media. And as I mentioned, we've done our fair share of hiring virtual assistants and we want to dispel some myths, but more so shed light on some things that you should avoid doing to ensure you see success with your VAs. So Tim, let's walk our listeners through five things they should not be doing when hiring VAs.

Tim (02:55):

Yeah. Number one is do not give your VA unlimited work hours. Be the Peros principle talks about how work expands to fill the time available. Because if you say unlimited, then they're going to take an unlimited amount of time to get the job done. Yes. If you have it very specific about, you know, if you know this is a 40 hour project a week, then you say, Hey, you have 40 hours every week to get the project done. You don't give unlimited because if you take a 40 hour project and you give 'em unlimited, they're gonna be putting in overtime over the weekends and really charging the clock. They're gonna do 50, 60 hours. So you gotta be very, very intentional about how much is this project really gonna take every week? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And you give them that, whether it's 20 hours, 30 hours, 40 hours.

Cindy (03:38):

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's knowing, as you mentioned, how long the project is going to take. So if this is a new role for you where you're having a VA jump in and take over, put it a cap or set time on it, right? So maybe you say, okay, for 10 hours a week you're gonna review my emails. Maybe it's based on your budgets, uh, or what you can afford, what you think, how long you think it's gonna take to do your emails. Save two hours a day, five days a week, put a time block on it, give that to your va, and then just make sure that you have communication with your va. So if you find that they aren't able to complete it in that 10 hour time slot that's allocated, have the conversation and you potentially wanna increase the hours, or maybe you find that there are inefficiencies in your process that are actually making your VA spend longer doing a task than it should.

Cindy (04:27):

Right? So this is gonna allow you to one, be more efficient when you allocate a time block or certain amount of time for that role, it's gonna allow your VA to be more efficient. It's gonna allow you all to hold each other accountable to the output being done. And of course, you don't have somebody just running the clock and doing all sorts of work just because you've allocated them unlimited hours of work. Yeah. Every week. So this is from experience ladies and gents, we do not want you to have to go through the challenge of having somebody charge you for 80 hours a week when the role was really, yes. 50, 40 hours,

Tim (05:01):

Which has happened more multiple times, <laugh> more than once. Like it's just don't expect everybody to walk in perfect integrity at all times. You have to set the boundaries. Yes. And you have to keep it super clear. And I think that kind of moves us into the second part of make sure you're reviewing the time trackers and the screenshots. So like we use a different tool to manage people's new, when they punch in, they punch out, it'll do a randomized screenshot, say every 10 minutes, give or take. So it allows us to not just watch their time, but it allows us to see what were they doing. And I'm gonna give a couple stories. One of the stories was we saw one person where it sh said that their keystroke activity was hype was active, you know, oh, this person was 80% active all day.

Tim (05:42):

But then when you wanna look, which is, you know, part of what the, the tool does, it shows how active is their computer and their mouse and their, their typing. But then it also gives you screenshots. And this person somehow had hacked the system to show that they were active all day, but there was big chunks of time for hours where they, they were just, they weren't doing any work and it was just on the same one screen. Yeah. And so that's one thing is that the people understand even with the time tracking, that they can hack it and they can make their thing look active. It's not gonna be always, but I'm gonna share a couple things that happened to us, just to assure you the importance of avoiding it. So that happened. Do you have two? 'cause I was thinking about the one person that we had, and it was like a, this guy, we, he wasn't doing very much.

Tim (06:19):

He wasn't doing very good. He, it was like, oh, I'm trying, I'm working hard and it's taking me longer than I thought. And we went in and we looked at his account, uh, the screenshots. He was essentially <laugh> working for two people at the same time. So he was on on probably, uh, you know, on on one platform charging us and then on another platform charging somebody else. We even saw him like lying to his other customer about like, Hey, I can't work today because my grandmother died, but he was working for us that day. Just like, yeah. All there's, there is things that happen in that freelance culture where they get charged per hour where some of them are dishonest and and per percentage of them are dishonest and they're trying to hack the system and, and double charge. I mean, that's the big thing is you gotta check that. And if you see a discrepancy, don't assume Mm-Hmm. That they're being evil and, and trying to to steal from you. But definitely communicate, Hey, I noticed this happened. What's going on there?

Cindy (07:10):

Yes.

Tim (07:10):

And you actually wanna do that just the moment you spot something because you want the teammate to know like, oh, somebody's actually watching

Cindy (07:18):

For sure. Absolutely. It's important to at least once a week, make sure that you are having a look at the screenshots or the screen grabs on the different time trackers that you're using. So on Upwork and online jobs and different places that you hire freelancers, it's embedded when you activate the contract that it's automatically gonna take the screenshots every few minutes. There are some other tools like Time Doctor and some other free tools that you can utilize to have a time tracker and to ensure we're taking the screenshots, but it's gonna hold your VA accountable. Yeah. But you have to make sure that you are actually checking them. So one of the things you should not do is not review these time trackers and screenshots. Very important. 'cause you have to hold your VA accountable. And of course, open communication, as Tim was mentioning. What is the third thing that we do not want to do, Tim, when hiring a va? So

Tim (08:07):

The third part is ignoring KPIs and metrics for the role. Too often people have a very, Hey, I need you to do lead generation for me, but there's no clear, hey, we need you to do a thousand reach outs a a week. And those need to translate into 10 meetings a week, whatever the roles are, whether it's managing your email, whether it's doing your social media, put whatever those are. There needs to be clear specific numbers. And this goes for really hiring anybody of what does it look like to be successful in this role, day to day, week to week, month to month. What are those numbers? Those can be both input numbers, meaning activities that they do. They've reached out to a thousand people. And those can be output numbers from those thousand reach outs. We got an outcome of 10 meeting. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Right. So you would have, I'd say three, maybe five at the most. If they're part-time, I'd say three. If they're full-time, you could have up to five, but three to five specific KPIs numbers for the role that you wanna see accomplished. And like, this is what it looks like to win. Those. Could be, like I said, input numbers, activities are doing, but they also should be at least one outcome number.

Cindy (09:13):

Yes, for sure. I see so many people hire VAs and not assign metrics or KPIs and ignoring KPIs when hiring is just setting you up for failure because you essentially don't know what success looks like. You don't know if your VA's doing a good job or not. You don't know if there's slacking. So as the owner, as the person that is hiring, make sure that this is something that you are doing upfront. Review the work. Maybe you have to do it first upfront. Maybe it's a role that you were doing and you already know what the outputs or the outcomes should be in that role. Write those out. And if you don't have those KPIs, do the work, set the KPIs, and then have your VA take over. But not having KPIs or ignoring KPIs or metrics for a role because you like someone or you think the VA's awesome and they're a great team player, but they're not delivering, is not setting you up for success and it's not setting your VA up for success as well. So yeah, do not fall into that pitfall of ignoring KPIs and metrics for the role.

Tim (10:15):

And people perform better when they know what it looks like to win. If you were to go to a, a sporting event and they're like, what's the score? <laugh>? I don't know. They don't keep the score up anymore. We're just here to have fun and kick the ball. People wanna know what the score is. Yeah. People wanna know what it looks like to win. People want to beat their own record. Hey, I got 10 meetings out of a hundred reach outs last week. I'm gonna try to get 11 this week. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> by doing 110 hour reach. People wanna know what it looks like to win. And people love keeping score. And so that's very, very important. Yeah,

Cindy (10:44):

Absolutely. Let's talk about what are some examples of, of KPIs and metrics that people can track and just maybe the areas that we've utilized VAs in our company. Let's talk about some of those metrics that we track.

Tim (10:55):

So number of reach outs, number of leads, people that say yes to a call and the number of book calls. Those are three super important numbers to track. And so we can judge, uh, that person's performance based off those three things. And we can make adjustments for, let's say if we're going like a sales coordinator, we have all of our sales admin, our, our sales team doesn't do admin. And when we hire salespeople that are like, oh my gosh, we don't have to do admin, we don't have to update the CRM, we don't have to do our show rate, none of that. And because we found that we actually get way higher performance having a VA doing it than trying to have a closer doing it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and sonu. A number for the admin could be Okay. Number of, uh, fits, percentage of fits meaning like they're qualifying every meeting before it gets to a closer and that needs to be over 90% minimum and ideally higher.

Tim (11:41):

And we have show rates, you know, our internal show rates, uh, and when the industry right now is about 40, 50% show rates, our show rates are over 80% month to month because we have the process dialed in and we have a VA doing the show rates. We have a team of VAs doing the show rates for our team. So that rolls, number of fits, number of live calls. And then the third one is gonna be deals closed. And so remember we have two things that they have full control over. And then one thing that is an out outcome of how much money did they help generate for the team. Yeah. And then they also get a, a, a bonus on that if they hit all those metrics.

Cindy (12:16):

Yes, yes. Some other examples, um, we have a VA do like our accounts receivables and making sure that they're charging clients and that payments are coming through. So our accounts receivable admin has metrics on percentage of on-time payments for the month has to be over 90% total accounts collected. Total receivables for the month needs to be above 90% as well. We have so many KPIs that we're tracking and this allows us not only to see performance, but it allows our VAs to know if they are on track with their metrics and their performance as well. So make sure that you are tracking KPIs

Tim (12:55):

And teammates like it, like people like that, they like knowing what their metrics are for their role so they can know, Hey, I did a good job today or I didn't do a good job today, this week, this month, whatever.

Cindy (13:05):

Absolutely. What is the fourth thing we should not do in hiring a va? If you're loving what you are hearing, subscribing is the best way to ensure you never miss an episode. You can also follow us on all our social media channels@timandcindy.to get the latest updates on new and upcoming episodes.

Tim (13:26):

A big mistake that people make is they actually just, they, this is gonna sound so weird the way I say it, but it's, people are funny man. They, they will, it's like they almost see a va, like it's not a or person. It's like it's a robot or a machine somewhere that's going to just do some activity perfectly at all times and doesn't have human emotions. And you know, it's like no, there are real people that you need to integrate with your team. Yes. At at least one meeting a week. We do daily meetings and that's our culture. Some people do twice a week meetings, but at least have your VAs on one team meeting with your company at least one month so they can feel one once a week, not once a month <laugh>. So they can feel like they're part of the team.

Tim (14:09):

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So they can, they can feel, they can get to know Bob and Sally and Sue and and everybody else, and Bob and Sally and Sue can get to know the va. Like, so you're actually integrating them with the culture of your team and that makes a huge difference for their morale. It makes a huge difference for their commitment level to the company. They, if you're just some remote punch and punch out, you never see any face and you're just there to move some dials and twist and twist, you're not gonna be very invested. But once you start to get to know other people Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you start to like other people, you start to have an emotional bond with other people. You're just gonna be way more committed to the role. And I think a big mistake is people for some reason, they don't understand how important that is. Yes. I would say it's even more so important when you're, you, when you have somebody overseas that's a part of a different culture.

Cindy (14:50):

Absolutely. Wow. Wow. How big of a difference it has made for our team and the VAs that we've recruited and hired and trained. And it's made such a big difference to how they show up the output production. Yes. And the commitment and loyalty to the company. Right. 'cause remember their freelancers, they can go from one contract to another, one client to another. And how you actually get people bought in, engaged and loyal to your team as a contractor is by having them engaged, actually caring about the human behind the screen, as Tim is mentioning. Not only that, but you get the loyalty and increase outputs, increase morale just by integrating them. Even just that one zoom call with you, the founder every week, or with the person that's gonna be managing and overseeing them. Um, it makes such a massive difference. And take this from us who's been doing this for the last five years and we've hired hundreds of VAs and why our VAs produce so well, why they're committed and loyal and they show up and they're invested in the success of their role is because they're engaged, they're integrated as part of our team.

Cindy (15:52):

And of course people will say, oh, well they're not my employee, they're a contractor. Like, it doesn't matter. No, it doesn't not Contractors are still an extension of your team. They're an extension of your company. So you can find ways to engage and integrate them so that you can achieve the output that you want.

Tim (16:07):

Yeah. And I would even say this go, that goes for any contractor in, in your business. Okay. Like, let's just say you're one of their four clients that they're helping out. Well, if everybody else is just having them turn the dials and twist the twist, but you're having them do the work and you're integrating with them with the team, guess what? That freelancer, that VA is gonna have a better connection with you. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So you're actually gonna have, you're gonna be their favorite client. Yeah. And that's, that's what you always want. If you can find a great VA and they do great work, you want to be their favorite clients, that's what really gives you preference. If, if you're working with a VA that does have multiple projects they're working on For sure.

Cindy (16:44):

Yes. So, good. And this is just a side note, this is like really off topic, but we recently had this happen with, I'm not gonna say who, but be kind to your vendors too. Like how you treat people that interact with your company from contractors to employees to vendors. Yeah. Any person that has an interaction with your company is delivering a service or you're receiving a service from Be Kind. Yes. I just think it's so funny that people will act one way towards their team and want their clients to behave one way. But when they deal with vendors and people that they're paying, they just treat them in a completely different light. And that's really a side note. So I have <laugh>, I just wanna mention that and put that out there because it's so important how you treat people on every level. On every level. And especially, I mean, your, your VAs be kind, be kind to them. Yeah.

Tim (17:26):

It is always funny when you have, uh, uh, this has happened now more than, more than once, where you have somebody that's like, their expertise is in how do you create like good leadership or good culture or like, like make sure your team is great and then you see them interact with you and they're like, they're just horrible people. Like, they're just nasty to people. They're nasty to their teammates, they're nasty to you. Like, how are you a leadership coach, happiness coach? How are you a happiness coach? And you're like, you are a jerk behind the scenes to your team and to us. And you know, when you treat people well, they realize that when you treat people nasty, they, they recognize that too. I mean, we've, having been in businesses long as we have, and we've been around for a long time, people notice that we're very kind to them.

Tim (18:10):

Even as somebody that doesn't seem important in, in a company. We're so kind to them that we've had, we had people reach out, you know, a year or two years later like, Hey, you know, you, you were so kind. You were so kind. I got a connection. I just got a job with a new boss and I wanna introduce you to my new boss. Or Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, Hey, I left my last role. I want to come work for you guys. Yes. Like we, we just, when you're kind to people, you, you attract a lot of people and you don't just retain people. You actually start attracting more people into the company. Yes. So I think that that's just a rule. Just be great and kind, like

Cindy (18:41):

Be kind. I mean, let's talk about that. There's one example of a VA specifically that was working with a client of ours. Okay. And we were doing managed service for this client and we were doing monthly appointment setting for them. So every week or every biweekly, we'd jump on a call with their team. And the VA was always on that call. And I guess to mention, we're so kind to everybody that we interact with from the CEO down to the VAs, we're kind to everyone. And every time we'd show up on the Zoom, we'd say hello to the va, we'd say hello to the whole team and we'd just, we'd serve, we'd show up, we'd be kind, we'd serve. A few years later the VA didn't work out with that company and they actually jumped on board with our team. They reached out to us. We're like, Hey, I remember we used to show up on those calls. You guys were so great. Like you have, we know you have an amazing company. I'd love to come and work for your team. And now this VA is such a critical part of what we do now. They're literally our sales coordinator. Yeah. Which is crazy. It's not even a, you know, a VA role position we had before. But they add so much value to our team now they

Tim (19:40):

Innovated the process that has 83% sharp show rates when the industry average right now is like 40, 50%. Like

Cindy (19:46):

Yes. Yes.

Tim (19:48):

It's so crazy. So it pays to be kind to people <laugh>,

Cindy (19:50):

It pays to be kind. Now this person's like such a critical part of our team. So we wanted to share that story with you all. Just side note, be kind to people, but also integrate your VA is part of the team. And we have biweekly calls with our VAs and we do one-on-ones where we're learning about their goals, their personal Yeah. Professional financial goals. We're assigning KPIs to the role so that they can achieve bonuses and get paid more. And it's just such an amazing thing that you can do to just build that morale and get people hundred percent engaged as part of your team.

Tim (20:18):

I love that. And we'll, we'll jump to the final thing here in a sec, but I just wanna say one thing on that is that ask what their goals are. Hmm. Ask about their family. Ask these, like these little things. Hey, hey, how, how are you? How are you going? What, what would you like to do? What is your, what are your goals? Personal, professional, financial over the next two, three years. Because if you understand what their goals are and then you see how the job that you're giving them can help them with that, it's very, very easy to create a connection for that VA between like, Hey, like I would love to see you hit those goals in your life. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. You know, so the best way you could do that in our role is by hitting this KPI to get that bonus. And that helps get you to your money goal faster. And so you can really attach the role. And we talk about this in other episodes, you can attach the role to the goal. Yes.

Tim (21:04):

The role to goal. I like that. I, I I just made that you can attach their role to their goal and it works really well. So let's go ahead and move in. Number five. We kind of went on a tangent there, but I hope you got some value from it. Uh, number five is you gotta make sure you have good online security. I'm gonna give a quick story of I hear a scream in the other room. <laugh>. Sydnee. Oh my gosh. My account was hacked. Like her entire YouTube account was hacked. I mean like hundreds of videos deleted, like freaking out. Like, and then there's like some like spammer doing a live feed, stewing some scam on her YouTube. So wild. And we're talking about Cindy's like, I've built years building this <laugh>. I did this and then all my videos are deleted. And what ended up happening? What, how did somebody hack into it?

Cindy (21:56):

Yeah. So crazy. So I had been running my YouTube since 2019. 15,400 subscribers. Love my subscribers by the way. And so what happened was, I am the main user on my account and I have assistants, virtual assistants that have edit access on my account that they can post for me because we, as we've mentioned in one of the previous episodes on having your social media assistance or admins post. So they can post for me, they can post shorts, they can respond to comments, just do the engagement and things that I don't wanna do on my account. So I will do the batch recording and then I'll have my team post. So one of the users on my account, their Google account got hacked. Hmm. And because they had access to my YouTube account through their Google, it gave that person access to my YouTube. So crazy. Thank God they actually didn't delete my videos 'cause I was the only person on my account that has delete access.

Tim (22:50):

But it looked like they deleted

Cindy (22:51):

Your heard videos. Looked, they did what they had done that had gone in and put my, all my videos on private. So it looked like I had no videos on my channel. They updated my name, my profile picture, my banner just looked like a brand new account or well looked like a new account with 15,400 subscribers that they were running this live feed off of. So what I did is I went back in, I removed that email Gmail, which was my social media admins, uh, Gmail. I removed that from my account, I updated my passwords of course and all of that and I was able to recover my videos and get my account back up. But the big thing is if I had not only given them edit access on my YouTube account and had given them delete access or my videos would be gone, like I wouldn't have my channel today. So

Tim (23:34):

Savage <laugh>,

Cindy (23:35):

The key here is as much as possible give people user access to your accounts Yes. Versus giving them admin access as the main person that can upload, delete, all of that stuff. So you have to just have really good online security measures on your social media, on your tools. Any tool that you're having your VA have access to. They may not be the ones that are hacking in, but if one of their accounts gets hacked Yes. It leaves your tools and all of your good stuff vulnerable, right? Yeah. So you wanna make sure that you have really good online security measures to prevent stuff like that from

Tim (24:11):

Happening. Yeah. And so, so we switched over, we gave this specific person, uh, and this is just do this from the beginning, is give them an at, you know, we gave 'em an at Pima or whatever your company name is, make sure all of the email accounts and the user logins for your company are two factor authentication to fa. 'cause you wanna make sure that you, it's not just like email password to login and you've gotta have two factor authentication as well as if any of your teammates are not working from home, meaning they're going to work on any public wifis. They have to be using A-A-V-P-N Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> because public wifis, I had my Facebook account hacked. Yes. A couple years ago. They spent

Cindy (24:50):

Thousands

Tim (24:50):

Of dollars in ads ad accounts. Yeah. They, they spent like 15 K in ads on my account. 15 K in ads on Cindy's account. 'cause I was admin on her account. I never got that back. By the way. I had to start all new fresh Facebook account. This was a couple years ago because I was dumb. And I logged into my Facebook at an airport. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then that was a Saturday. By the time Monday came, you know, $15,000 was spent on your account, 15,000 on my account, everything crushed. And we got the money back, but we didn't get the accounts back. So everything has to be two fa, make sure we force require everybody two FA and make sure if you're ever on a public wifi, that you use A VPN. Yes. Don't use the free VPNs, use a paid high security VPN if you're ever on public wifi and require your teammates to do that. Hey, if you're not at home on your personal wifi and you're on a public wifi, you have to use a paid VPN. Yes. Like make these requirements very, very stringent.

Cindy (25:41):

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things you should not do is have put online security measures. LastPass is a great tool. Yeah. So you're sharing passwords through tools like LastPass, that's L-A-S-T-P-A-S s.com. So it allows you to share passwords without people seeing what the actual password is. And then a rule of thumb is give people user access to an account. So if I have a social media VA and they're managing my YouTube, I'm gonna make them a user under my account and not give them access to my full YouTube account. Right. So limit the access as much as possible. Yes. If people have posting access on your social media, limit the access as much as possible. We also have a rule of thumb in our company every six months we update passwords every six months. We've actually, since some recent stuff happened, we've actually updated that to every quarter. So every three months, yes, we're updating passwords that just keeps things fresh and new to make sure that you have really good online security measures. We're by no means like cybersecurity experts, but these small things have really helped us. So there's really lessons learned <laugh> on the backend, but it helps us keep all of our stuff in check. Yeah.

Tim (26:44):

Big time. If you do this, you're gonna save so much headaches. I promise you these five things that we went over today will absolutely happen. Yes. Every one of these things has affected us more than once. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Okay. So to recap the five things is do not give your VA unlimited work hours. Give it time allocation for the project so that they're not just working 80 hours to do a 20 hour job. Number two is make sure you're reviewing the time trackers and screenshots on a regular basis, because I promise you, you're gonna find some discrepancies. And if nothing else, it's good for people and your freelancers to know that you're holding them accountable. And Big Brother is watching <laugh> <laugh>. Number three is making sure you are giving clear KPIs and metrics for the role. And you are keeping them accountable and rewarding them when they hit the KPIs.

Tim (27:36):

Like we all want to, we all love bonuses and rewards. Number four is integrating them with your team, making sure that you are their favorite client. If they're working for multiple companies, you are their favorite client because they love you and your team and your culture. And then number five, make sure you have good online security. My gosh, I don't know if I think I've never had a heart attack, but if I was close, it was when your stuff gets hacked. Yes. Like that's the closest I've ever come to a heart attack is when stuff gets hacked. So make sure you're doing all five of these measures and all five of these things. If you start getting into the va, in the freelance world, every single one of these we've dealt with multiple times. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And if you just start doing it right from the get go, you don't have to experience the pitfalls that that we've ran into. So do these five things and you're gonna do super well. You did so well. Yeah. So well.

Cindy (28:29):

Awesome. So those are the five things not to do when hiring a va. Hope that you got value from this episode. This has been a five part series on hiring virtual assistants for your team. Now Pima, what we specifically do is recruit and train virtual assistants to get you sales meetings with your ideal client. If you are a coach, a consultant, a marketing agency, or you can sell your clients over Zoom calls and you need more sales meetings, our team can help. At Pima, we've helped over 900 companies with lead generation and appointment settings. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna build you a fully custom end-to-end appointment setting system that's gonna allow you to get meetings with your ideal client week over week and month over month. We build the system, we recruit and train a virtual assistant to take over the system so that your time investment every week is minimal and you can focus on your highest leverage activities.

Cindy (29:29):

We are not a fit for everyone, but if it is a fit, this is gonna be a game changer for your business. So we wanna meet you, click the link below this episode in the show notes, schedule a call with our team, we'll build you out a custom strategy and help you take your business to the next level. Again, we're not a fit for everyone, but we're excited to see if we're a fit and we look forward to meeting you Again. This was a takeover with Tim and Cindy. Remember, domination is not a destination, it's a way of life. Stay winning.