MBA2325 Guest Teacher - John McKenna - How to leverage a virtual assistant to scale your business

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show because a better you is a better business. That's why we deliver our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an innovative software company I started back in 2014. And today's episode is a guest teacher episode. On our guest teacher episodes, we bring on an expert to teach their area of expertise. Today, we have John McKenna, the CEO of Peachtree VA. And he'll be teaching you how to use a virtual assistant to scale your business. I wanted to bring on John McKenna on the podcast because many people ask me, what are the first steps when it comes to hiring a VA?

0:50Or even, what are the first steps of making your first hire? I've always said that your first hire should be a virtual assistant, somebody that can take off your plate. A lot of time-consuming tasks that don't bring in all the money. You need to focus on your secret sauce, the thing that's going to help you grow your business. So today, John is going to give you a crash course, the 101 of how to hire a VA. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Before you hire a VA, one of the big questions people have is, what do I get them to do? Well, that's really an important step. Knowing what you want to offload, knowing what you want to hire for, so they can hit the ground running and start freeing you up, so that you can spend more time on what matters and what helps bring in cash, so that you can scale your business.

1:34In today's guest teacher lesson with John McKenna, he's going to walk you through it. I'm going to pass that on to him right now, but I'll be back to wrap up today's episode and give a few of my own insights. But for now, take it away, John. Hey, everybody. My name is John McKenna, and I am the CEO of Peachtree VA. I appreciate you joining me today. Today, I'll be teaching how to leverage a virtual assistant to scale and build your business. Let's get down to business here. A virtual assistant can be instrumental to help you delegate responsibilities. Business owners and leaders wear a ton of hats from accounting to sales to admin to operations manager.

2:14And anyone who has ever started a business can surely attest to this. I can tell you firsthand that when I started my first business, I was doing a little bit of everything. And I did not have a good virtual assistant, unfortunately, that could help me with the administrative tasks and would let me focus on true revenue generating activities that I really needed to do in order to get that business off the ground. So delegation is extremely important. And I guess get asked all the time, why delegate? Well, you as an entrepreneur, you build your business, as I said, by doing it all. But then at some point, inevitably, we see every great business owner become a bottleneck for their business.

2:54You really need to make sure that your time is being put to its best use. Leaders need to focus on revenue-generating tasks, high-level strategy, and vision for the business. A good virtual assistant is going to be so much more proficient at administrative tasks, and it will inevitably make your business run at a much more efficient level. It also gives you, as the owner, mental space to continue to work on the business and not in the business. Let me say that again, because it's incredibly important. As an owner and leader, working on the business and not in the business is very important. Now, there's a lot of ways to find a virtual assistant.

3:36I'm going to touch on a little bit about outsourcing that to a virtual assistant staffing firm like Peachtree VA, because it's a great way for businesses to find virtual assistants. First off, when you outsource that and work with a virtual assistant staffing firm, you are getting highly vetted and qualified talents. I can speak on our talent is all U.S.-based virtual assistants, college educated, so you know you're working with the best of the best. We have an intentional method matching process, and matching you with the proper VA is incredibly important. We match, I can tell you, based on skills, personality, and company culture.

4:21Another benefit of working with a virtual assistant staffing firm is you can start small. Many of our clients that we work with have not used a VA before. So you want to start small. And when you do that, you are able to see what works with the VA and what doesn't work with the VA. So it's a scalable model. So as your business grows, we are there to kind of grow along with you and you can up your hours and delegate more to your virtual assistant. It really is a great model as you build and scale your business for us to do that right alongside of you. Another benefit of working with a virtual assistant is that it's extremely efficient.

5:01There's not any wasted time. We all know that sometimes when you have employees, you're paying for them to go to lunch or you're paying for them to check Instagram when there's downtime. This is not that. Virtual assistants are clocking in when they start your job and they are clocking out when that job is finished so there are no wasted hours. Also, flexibility with weekly hours is huge. Our virtual assistants, I can tell you are working nine to five in your time zone, but you are able to kind of work with them to make sure that their work for you is on the timeframe that works for everybody.

5:42And once you get to know each other and your working styles, that flexibility becomes incredibly key. Also, since you're not hiring a W-2 employee as an admin, if you will, kind of old school, you are bringing out a 1099 contractor. So there's no employee payroll burden. And as we all know, that can go a long way. It can be some big savings just right there. The question I guess get asked all the time is, where do I start looking for a virtual assistant? And I can tell you that was a big thing for me. I didn't know what I would need a virtual assistant to do when I was starting a new business.

6:26And that's the common question for most of our clients that we have our initial conversations with. I think the best thing you can do is to do a true time study. Take a look at your calendar over the past week, two weeks, a month, and really list out what you are spending your time on throughout the day. This is an incredible exercise for you to do as a business owner, no matter if you're going to work with a virtual assistant or not. But it really sheds some light on, you know, where your time is being used. You can look kind of through the lens of, can I do this? And obviously, if you've been doing things, you can certainly do that task.

7:02But the better question is, where is my time better spent? So you want to keep a list of what do I want to do more of and what do I want to do less of. Anything that's on that less of list, those are tasks that can be delegated. And the more that you can delegate to a virtual assistant, the less you are in the weeds in your business. And therefore, you're focusing on that higher level strategy and revenue generating tasks, which, as we all know, is what pays the bills. So any virtual assistant firm out there will certainly let you schedule a free consultation with them so you can brainstorm and go over all the ways that a virtual assistant can be a good option for your business.

7:46So I would certainly take advantage of that. Another common question I get about virtual assistants is what should I delegate? And delegation is not something that you can just be great at overnight. It's like anything else. You have to work at it and you need to really look in the mirror, see what is best to delegate and what is best to keep on your plate. And what you're going to delegate totally depends on your business and what your pain points are. But I know there are some common threads where VAs can help all entrepreneurs and business owners and leaders. Some of the common ones are email management.

8:21I know a lot of business owners who have virtual assistants that are in their email and creating folders in there to make sure that they're not missing any important emails. Because as we know, the inbox can get clouded and sometimes you're missing some emails that you really need to be seen. And if you have a virtual assistant that's in there and separating them by certain codes, if you will, you're going to make sure that you're with the best use of your email inbox because that can be a struggle for any business leader. Calendar management is another big thing. I can tell you that my VA is in my calendar all the time making sure that I am set up for success in that day and week, and that goes a long way.

9:11Document preparation, CRM updates. I mean, we're all using CRMs out there. Virtual assistants are specialists at helping you go through the CRM and do updates in there and make sure that it's done properly. Because if your CRM is not being used properly, then it's pretty worthless for you, quite frankly. Client support and meeting preparation. I think that's a huge thing, especially anybody that's in sales. my virtual assistant is helping me prep for all my candidate meet or all my client meetings and making sure that I am informed of what my client is, is doing and how we think we can best help them.

9:51And then on the flip side of that, after I have a conversation with a potential client, they, the virtual assistant is able to set follow-up tasks and agendas, PowerPoints, action items. And that goes a long way. I mean, that, that is, I think that's huge for anybody that's meeting with potential clients, a virtual assistant. Let them help you with preparation and follow-up action items. External and internal communication, any company research that you need done, travel planning, those are all tasks that VAs are well-versed in and can certainly help you with. Social media is a big thing for business owners.

10:31Chances are that most business owners out there are not. social media experts, but they really know that it's important that you have to have a presence on social media, especially these days. A good virtual assistant can repurpose content. They can post on your social media, engage with other users on all the social media platforms that you're using. They can help you with newsletters, email blasts. They can post events that your company is engaged in, as well as engage and speak with other leaders in your space. I think that goes a long way. The more you can get connected with good leaders in the space, the better off you are going to be.

11:13So also, bookkeeping, light bookkeeping. These virtual assistants generally are not accountants by nature, but there are a lot of things that they can do that I know owners get bogged down in, like invoicing, expense tracking, credit card reconciliation, and just general data entry. So those are all good tasks to delegate to your VA. Personally, as well, when you have a virtual assistant, they are there to help you in your business and in your personal life. Things like birthday reminders, gift buying, doctor appointments for you and the family, and vacation planning are all good things that VAs excel in.

11:50And quite frankly, they're generally a lot more proficient at it than you as a business owner, because that is their career. And they've done it for a long time, and they're there to help you with it. So make sure you utilize that. But Peach Tree VA has been around since 2015, and we're one of the top virtual assistant staffing firms in the industry. My name is John McKenna. I am the CEO of the business. If you want to continue to learn about scaling your business by leveraging a virtual assistant, you can certainly check us out online at www.peachtreeva.com. And I really appreciate you joining me today.

12:28And now we will throw it back to Omar. What a solid beginner's lesson on how to hire a VA. Now, whether you go with John McKenna's company to hire VA, peachtreeva.com or another resource, one of the things that John touched on is really important, is making a list of all the things that you work on. And the exercise I love to do is I like to assign a dollar value to all the tasks that I do. And those dollar values are$10 tasks,$100 tasks,$1 ,000 tasks, and$10 ,000 tasks. You should definitely offload all your$10 tasks. $10 tasks are things that anybody can do, anybody can be trained to do, whether it's answering customer service emails, managing your schedule, publishing blog posts for you, or managing your website on WordPress, doing some data entry, bookkeeping, anything anybody can be trained on.

13:20These are$10 tasks. Why do I say$10? Well, it doesn't actually bring in money to the business. It actually just keeps the business going. And that's why it's low value. But I shouldn't be spending my time doing that. I need to be spending my time doing$1 ,000 and$10 ,000 tasks. So the low-hanging fruit that you can give your VA are all your$10 tasks. And eventually, you can start giving them$100 tasks Sue. Well, there you have it, guys. Thank you so much for listening to The$100 MBA Show. If you want to support the show, the best thing you could do is subscribe to the show and share it with your friends.

13:50Go ahead and share it on social media and send them over to 100mba.net so they can subscribe to the show themselves. We're on every single podcast app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, Himalaya, you name it, we're on it. Just go ahead and hit subscribe. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I find the first hire you make in your business ever is the hardest hire because you're not really sure how to delegate. You're not really sure how to hand over the things. You know how to do things. Things are kind of running right now in your business because you're doing everything and you're a little bit worried about delegating.

14:22My advice to you is to see yourself as a teacher, as a coach. Teach somebody, coach them how to do something in your business. I know it might feel like it takes more time to show them than for you to just do it yourself, but once you show them once, they'll be able to do it over and over and over. Think of the long term. Think about not just today. Think about next week, next month, next year. in the next years to come. And think about all the things you could do with all that extra time. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Wednesday's episode, Q &A Wednesday. I'll see you then.

14:49Take care.

15:10Thank you.