How to Use a Virtual Assistant | The Better Than Rich Show Ep. 24

Reclaim Your Time

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Reclaim Your Time 〰️

How to Use a Virtual Assistant

Do you ever wish you could just clone & automate yourself - kinda like Michael Keaton in Multiplicity (preferably without all the haywire clones)?

I mean, you do wear a bunch of hats - especially at work.

At least 15 hours of your week is probably spent on JUST admin work - things like updating databases & CRMs, managing calendar appointments, and client communication. It’s enough to make your head spin sometimes!

Maybe you’ve heard of some of your friends or businesses using virtual assistants to help them get out of the never ending bog of admin work. Those people seem to really like their VA’s, and you’ve probably heard of some working with their VA’s for YEARS.

You think it’s time you hopped on the Virtual Assistant train, too - but you’re not sure what they could actually do for you, how to train them, or even where to find them!

…if you nodded along with this blog so far - this episode of the podcast is for YOU. We’re breaking down all things VA!

We’ll be sharing

about our VA’s
what work to delegate to them
our no-stress VA training system
how to NOT feel like you have to breathe down their necks (like how Mike has ONLY had 2 LIVE calls in 2 years with his VA)

Can’t wait to see you inside the episode!

And if you’re interested in working with our professional Virtual Assistant team, go ahead and fill out the application here.

Mike Abramowitz 0:00
It's just any of those digital tasks for me specifically that I want to make sure it gets done in an effective and efficient way without me having to do it. My VA is just an extension of me and she does and the VA team does everything that I would normally want to do in the digital climate or needed to get done, but they're just doing it for me to free up my time to so I can focus more on the creative space that they're not going to be able to do.

Welcome to the better than rich show with your host, Andrew Biggs and Mike Abramowitz. The better than rich show helps ambitious leaders who are on a mission to leave the world better than they found it changed their perspective on what's important, increase their income and impact and systemize their life and business. If you've ever struggled with finding your purpose, I felt disconnected or distracted or found yourself going through the motions. This show will remind you that what you do matters and will re inspire you to chase your highest dreams. It's time for you to become better than rich.

Andrew Biggs 1:14
What's going on everybody? Welcome to the better than rich Show. I'm your host Andrew Biggs. I'm here with my co host, Mike Abramowitz. Mike, how you doing today?

Mike Abramowitz 1:23
Doing great, Andrew, thanks for asking.

Andrew Biggs 1:26
Awesome,

Mike Abramowitz 1:26
awesome. As always,

Andrew Biggs 1:29
I see you're rocking the the Italy sweatshirt is that your is that your team or what?

Mike Abramowitz 1:35
This is actually my gym hoodie. I got I got it when I was in Italy years ago, and it doesn't have a zipper. So it's like a perfect hoodie for when I go to the gym. So

Andrew Biggs 1:47
awesome. Italy is one of my favorite countries to visit. If you are listening and you've not gone to Italy make that a priority. It is one of the most beautiful countries I've ever been to for sure. It really is. I agree. Well, hey guys, we are so excited to jump into today's topic, which is all about, you know how to leverage your time, specifically, using virtual assistants is something that, you know, Mike, you have a lot of experience. And it's something that we advise a lot of clients on. And it's even something that we've gotten into the business and recently, because it's just such a need in the marketplace. And we really feel like we have a system that works. And so we wanted to kind of create this episode to give you some best practices share kind of some of the most common concerns around virtual assistants and just help you understand if you ever were even remotely interested in having a virtual assistant, what do you need to be thinking about when you're starting to vet different opportunities or different individuals or different companies, and hopefully, this will be a really valuable resource for you. But you know, Mike, when you think about the power of virtual assistants and the power of leveraging your time, what does that mean to you, and then kick us off to get us started into this topic?

Mike Abramowitz 2:54
Well, I mean, I can tell you, I'm going into my third year having a virtual assistant and it was birds during 2020. Because there was a lot of digital tasks, a lot of upkeep, spreadsheets, data entry. And it was consuming a lot of time. And it was just it was very important to get done. But in the digital climate, it was just like, even more data tracking even more attention to detail with with just data entry. And I said gosh, there's there's got to be a better way to tracking everything. Instead of me doing it or my staff doing it. And then I that's when I got introduced to having a virtual assistant helps specifically just with data entry, data input, helping with spreadsheet management, helping with you know, that's that's kind of how it started at least. And then from there. I mean, I have had Hannah now she's going on my third year I and I couldn't imagine life without of my virtual assistant, I mean, and now having a whole team of virtual assistants to help with everything from social media, social media messaging, helping with even my wife has kept her blog, the journey of James Weston, and Lindsay types up the blog every day. And then Hannah takes that blog post and then backs it up onto a Google doc just in case blogger ever happens to go go away. We have it backed up so she copy and paste that and puts it on there uploading videos to YouTube for me, and recordings. I mean, the and I'll go into the specifics here during this episode of other things, but it's just any of those digital tasks for me specifically that I want to make sure it gets done in an effective and efficient way without me having to do it. My VA is just an extension of me. And she does and the VA team does everything that I will didn't normally want to do in the digital climate or needed to get done. But they're just doing it for me to free up my time, too. So I can focus more on the creative space that they're not going to be able to do.

Andrew Biggs 5:12
Yeah. Awesome. And so if we start big picture, you know, what is the virtual assistant? You know, how does this whole thing work? And then, you know, what are some of the biggest questions at the at the big picture? Perspective? Before we get into the specifics? Well, what would you say are like some of the biggest things that are on people's minds in relationship to virtual assistants?

Mike Abramowitz 5:33
virtual assistants, assistant to me is just an extension of me. It's somebody who's doing work as me just me not doing it. That's my interpretation, virtual assistant.

Andrew Biggs 5:44
It's funny, I had a client once. And he was like, I'm doing great. I'm doing it wasn't a client, it was a prospect. And he's like, I'm doing great. But I'm wondering like, do you the only thing I can imagine being better is if you could, like if I could clone myself, like, Do you know anything about that? And he really sounded sincere when he was asking the question, I was like, I don't think so. At least not right now. So unfortunately, it's probably not a fit, because I don't know how to clone you. But now that I know think about vas, you know, that really is the answer, right? Like, if you wanted to clone yourself and have one, you know, two of you, three of you, five of you doing work on your business at the same time. You might say, Okay, well, they aren't as good as me, right? Because we all like to think of ourselves as, as so irreplaceable. But hey, they probably are pretty damn good. And maybe they're 80 or 90%, as good as you or maybe they just are, are, you know, 150% as good as you at certain things, right. And we should at least get those off your plate. So these are just some interesting ways to think about it. Like literally cloning yourself in your business is so powerful. So keep going.

Mike Abramowitz 6:44
Yeah, I mean, it depending on what industry you're in, but a lot of industries do prospecting a lot of industries, do social media, messaging, a lot of industries do like CRM, upkeep, you know, data entry. I mean, these are, these are some of the things that I would normally need to do as a business owner. And as I was doing it, or as I was delegating it to my staff to do, like, well, if my staff is doing this, or if I'm doing this, then again, it's taking away from some of the creative work that we need to be doing. So the, that's where virtual assistant comes into play. For me, it's and now obviously, one of the things that we need to get into during this episode is how to properly train them to do it as effective as me and do it as me. So there's technologies that we use, such as loom and video recordings, and, you know, there's screen recordings that go into it, and certain communication parameters that go through it. And, you know, we could jam on all that. But that, in my opinion, is the easy part, the as long as, as long as someone is willing to let go of the control. That's really what it was, the hardest part for me was like, like what you said, no one's gonna be able to do it as good as me. So once I kind of was able to let go of some of that control, then lights out, it's been it's been a for liberating is, I would say free and free is not a strong enough word, it has been liberating for me to have someone do a lot of those repetitive tasks or data entry type of things.

Andrew Biggs 8:20
Yeah. And what would you say to someone, you know, like, like myself, for instance, who's just now gotten into the VA game? I have a VM loving it. And also, you know, partially that control is part of it, right? It's like, oh, man, I want to make sure that every little detail is correct. And if I'm not double checking, and triple checking every single thing that it's, you know, i How can I be certain that it's being done? Well, you know, I'm somewhat exaggerating for a fact here. But there's still a little part of me, like, in the back of my mind, that's like, Oh, are you sure she's got it? Are you sure? You know, it's gonna be done on time, you know, how do you how do you learn to condition that like, what would you what would you say is as a starting point?

Mike Abramowitz 9:01
Well, it is definitely earned. I mean, at first, it was I would give small tasks that weren't as weighted. So like I would give, I would give a task like, hey, I need this task done by this deadline. You know, if you could do it for me right now, that'd be great. But I just needed done by this day, or by this time, and it would be like a smaller task. And that's kind of it was like a ramp to build this trust. And by building that trust, and by her by my VA, just doing these things, these deadlines, for example, I just on boarded another VA to support with some social media. And she hurt her job is specifically just doing social media stuff for me. So I gave her a one hour parameter. I said in one hour, I just I don't I don't necessarily. I don't care how much you do. I just want to know what you did. And so if you can just give me an update in an hour. So what I was doing there was number one, I was testing the communication on how well she'll be able to communicate with me in an hour. And then number two, I am able to see how much work she's able to get done within that first hour. So just by giving a one hour timeframe and enforcing some of the communication, but oh my god the update in an hour. And then what did I do, I celebrated, thank you so much, as long as you can give me an update in an hour, and get work done during that timeframe. I mean, we're going to be best friends. So thank you so much, if you can continue and do the same thing for the next hour. And then the same thing next hour. So it's just this conditioning of earning my trust by being able to live within the parameter of one hour in this example, getting it done. And now I can work through efficiency. So then I could say, well, you only got this many out in that one hour timeframe. When I've done in the past, this is a more effective way or efficient way for me to do it. And I would create a screen recording just showing, hey, here's a little bit more of a potentially a more effective way or time, you know, time effective way to you do the same thing. Can you try it this way during this next hour and just see if it makes any change? Like that's an example. So, I don't know if I think I answered the question.

Andrew Biggs 11:08
Let's focus there for me, is this this age old question of, of micromanagement versus autonomy, you know, and one of the things that people people ask me a lot, right, you know, because I think nobody likes to be micromanaged. You know, we hear that a lot. And also, sometimes people need to be micromanaged. And, and so my answer is, it depends. Which is, you know, a common answer in in business, you got to know when to micromanage and when to give autonomy. And I like what what you just said there, Mike, which is trust is earned, right. And it's like, you know, when we're talking about somebody that we're just getting to know, and we're onboarding them, being a little bit more like the person over their shoulder is good to start, and then the trust is gained. And also, you know, like, let's not start the relationship off on the wrong foot, let's assume that they're going to be trustworthy to start. But you what you did there is you shorten the timeframe, right? So instead of saying, Get back to me at the end of the day, right, or even worse, get back to me at the end of the week, and let me know how this projects going. You say get back to me in an hour. Right? Now, again, this isn't needed, always. But when you're onboarding a new person, this is a really smart idea to kind of micromanage them a little bit when they're when they're new. And then they can slowly gain trust. And later you can say, okay, get back to me at the end of the day, right? And we can start to extend those timeframes out and I'm sure with with HANA, it's a little bit more like, get back to me at the end of the week, or, Hey, give me a monthly summary of all the things you did. So as someone builds trust, and someone's has been with you for three years at this point, you don't need to micromanage them. So it's just a good little lesson wrapped into this VA lesson here. Okay, cool. So relinquishing Luke relinquishing control is really important, what are some of the other things that are important when we think about, you know, the, the use of virtual assistants to leverage your time?

Mike Abramowitz 13:03
Well, the thing is, is forced me to simplify all of the things that I was doing. So it allowed me to question all the things that I was doing inside of my business. And also, now I don't really have to do a lot for my personal life yet. But there's probably going to be a point where my virtual assistants do Instacart grocery shop for me, like, I'm just getting into the rhythm because our groceries kind of change every week. But, you know, once I get into a rhythm of like, this is the grocery list of exactly what I want. And this is a good example. It's like, I need to get clear of exactly what my grocery shopping cart is, each week or every two weeks. I'm clear on exactly what that is. Then I can off shoot it to the virtual assistant to say all right, now it's it's said it, I said it and now I can forget about it. Because now it's delegated. And the the challenge that I've had previously and I think that some some of our clients have is they don't know exactly how to simplify or explain what they already are doing. So like for me to break down my grocery shopping. It's like, how do I break down my grocery shopping to be more simplistic? How can I you know, using this example because I think it's relatable. It's like, how can I make grocery shopping more simplistic? All these are the recipes I want to eat maybe maybe Taco Tuesday and, and pasta Thursday, protein Friday, you know, it's like, okay, cool if I have these themes, and then I can come up with these are the themes of what what it is for each of those days. These are the ingredients for those meals, I can have that set up and then boom, I can now offshoot that to somebody else to plug that in to the Instacart app and order my groceries for me. So therefore they just show up at my door. So all I had to worry about and all I had to do was use my creative space to simplify what does grocery shopping mean and how am I Do I want to eat? And how often what what are the items that need to be in that cart, and then I could offset ordering of the cart. So it just shows up in as delivered. So all I need to focus on now is I just get those deliverables, I don't have to worry about placing the order or doing the activity because I did the creative work one time. And that's the way VA works for me is I only have to do the creative work once. And if I do the creative work one time to simplify it, and I then I can scale it easily and delegate it and offset it and offered it to somebody else. That's a pretty on the spot off the dome analogy, but it feels pretty good.

Andrew Biggs 15:38
Yeah, it's great. And I mean, even if you wanted to change the order, right? Like you could, and this is where we can get into the the idea of systems and processes and go back to listen to episode seven as well around systems and processes and how to actually create those for your business. But you know, what you need is you can you can have like a repository right? Where all the orders live. And then it's just, you know, if you wanted to make an edit, okay, hey, here's the here's the standard purchase, but then, you know, you can go in and make a change, right, and it's like, Hey, by the way, this week, substitute, you know, Taco Tuesday for pizza night or whatever. So then then that pivot can be made really easily. And really, this is what this is the concept. We did this a lot when I was working in India, every project that we worked in, had basically what we call living documents. And living documents, if you're not familiar with the concept is shared documents that everyone has access to that needs access, that are up to date in the moment. So as soon as one person makes an edit, everyone else can see it. And this is why cloud computing is such all the rage, right? Because if you're editing an Excel, you're editing a Word doc, right? Then you save it, and you have to email it. There's all these sorts of different versions that someone else might be working on. But if you're using shared documents in the cloud, ie, Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Google Forms all for free. There's other tools too, you could use, but why not use the free ones. These allow you to have these these repositories of information, if you just make a quick edit, then you don't even even have to inform your VA that that that change was made, they can simply instantly, you know, use the use the change, you know, what other technologies do we you use Mike, to help you get the most out of your virtual assistants? How do we make sure that they're actually being used being used wisely, and that their time isn't being wasted.

Mike Abramowitz 17:36
So what I use is called screenshot monitor. And that's what they log in. So screenshot monitors what they use to login on their end. And so I had a created an account for screenshot monitor, and then they log in on their end for screenshot monitor. So that's one, that's one way for them to clock in, because that just tracks their screen time, how long, how long, they're after active on their screen. And then it also sends me a report of what was on their screen and what they were looking at and what they were doing during that timeframe of their shift. Another technology I use is Google form. So Google Form is a way for them to clock out of their shift. And what they do on that Google Form is how they put how many hours they worked. And also they put all the tasks that they got done. So they typed out every single task that they got done for that shift. So that's documented. Then I also use WhatsApp, which is another technology, which is to have them communicate to me that they're done with their shifts, so their clock out for that shift. So they'll also send the recap, even though they're filling out the sheet, I have them fill it up on WhatsApp, because I'm looking at the WhatsApp more so than the Google Sheet. So I'll have them send the same thing with the summary of what they did, and how many hours they worked. They also send a screenshot into WhatsApp with the screen, how many hours they worked on their screen time. And we use WhatsApp for clocking in as well. So they'll send a good morning when they're ready to work. So I know Hey, give them you know if they need some assignments for the day if they don't already have a to do list and well, I'll give him some assignments wants to clock in with a good morning text. So these are a couple of the systems that are in like setups and some of the technologies that we use. Then obviously we I have my CRM and that she could update and data input into we have texting base, our texting service that she will enter data into we use Calendly. So she will show essentially pull some people from Calendly their their information and input that into our CRM, just because the CRM, one of the CRMs I use is very obsolete, I would say it's very archaic. And, you know, so we have to kind of play with play with a little bit and maneuver around it because you know, just situations always the boss. But those are a couple of examples. Again, some of the technologies we use.

Andrew Biggs 20:08
Awesome, awesome, a couple others I'll just throw out there. Trello is a really good tool for, you know, assigning tasks, tracking tasks, you can see, you can create urgency, you can put due dates, you can, you can add files, you can communicate back and forth on Trello. So if you're not familiar with Trello, you can check it out. You know, with most of these technologies, there's like a free version and an upgraded version. So, you know, we're not really recommending anything that's going to cost you hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month or anything like that. And these tools are really, really powerful. You know, also, I would say one password is one that we've been playing around with, where basically it allows you to save all your passwords, which by the way, it's just useful for you personally, because how many times have you had to reset your password? I guess it's just the plight of the modern man or woman that these days, we have to remember, you know, 50,000 logins and 50,000 passwords. So this solves that problem because it stores all your passwords for you. But it also allows you to share those passwords with your your virtual assistants, and they don't even see them, right, they just see, like the little dots, if you will. So that's that's really cool. And then did you mention loom? Mike? We were talking

Mike Abramowitz 21:20
about? Oh, no, I mentioned Oh, no loom is you mentioned loom loom zoom. Yeah,

Andrew Biggs 21:25
you gotta get loom. So loom is basically like this little, you know, extension for Chrome that you get that you can install. And then it allows you to just really quickly shoot a quick video, and it captures your screen and it captures your, your camera as well. And it creates a link that allows them to download and or don't even download, just just stream and watch it right away. So again, that's that's completely free, up to five minute recordings. And so we highly recommend that one as well. We will go ahead and I know we just through like 10 or 12 technologies that you will go ahead and link to all these in the show notes. So that you have easy access to all of them. And you could just sign up for all of them. Again, it's most of them are free, or they offer free trials at the very least. But yeah, what's coming up for you?

Mike Abramowitz 22:10
Yeah, I'm glad you branch. I'm glad you mentioned loom I can, I can't imagine not having loom. What's nice about the loom is it also saves it in a library. So I encourage not to do the paid version, I do the paid version. But the paid version is good because you have more than five minutes. But that under five minutes is perfect. Because the attention span for most of your VAs are probably going to be under five minutes. Anyway, if you put it this way, if it takes you longer than five minutes to explain what you need to explain, you need to dumb it down more and make it that much more simplistic. So I like the under five minute loom feature for that reason so and that that's kind of what ties into what I mentioned before is you as the business owner, you want to figure out what are the strategies to make it even easier to to explain what you do and what you want to do and, and to be able to delegate and that's not just delegating to a virtual assistant that's just delegating to anyone? How can you make what you do? As simple as possible where someone can do it as effective, maybe 85 to 90% as effective as you or get, get it 85 to 95 90% done, all you need to do is do the final 10% or whatnot. So that's that's the way I want you to think and if you can get to that point where you're thinking in those terms, it's makes a world of a difference. It doesn't matter your industry is I mean, if you're in if you're in real estate, imagine having someone update your updated spreadsheet with all of the process like you might have MLS, you know that you have access to what if somebody was to go through the MLS and just pinpoint all the best ones out of the MLS and just put it on a spreadsheet for you. So all you have to do is explain to somebody, how do you search for the best properties on the MLS. And then if you can simplify that, you could teach that to a VA and the VA can just go find all the best ones from that list, put it on a spreadsheet for you. So you're only looking at a spreadsheet of the best ones versus having to scroll through an MLS as an example. Just to free your mental capacity of not having to scroll and you're not having to search, all you're doing is looking at an already pre searched list. Now that might take some training might take a little bit of a learning curve for them to get to exactly what you want. But imagine what life could look like for the for the next. I was just having a conversation with Justin Donald. And he's had the same VA for over 20 years. So it's like set we don't have to be so short sighted. It's like oh my god, they're only going to work with me for six months or two months. I got to teach him everything right now. I'm going into my third year with Hannah and I think about Justin who has had his same VAs for 20 plus years. This is a partnership. It's not To us, again, this is a partnership because it's an extension of me. And it's just me doing all the stuff that I know it needs to get done. But somebody else is doing it for me. And I love that analogy of just being cloned.

Andrew Biggs 25:12
Hmm, yeah. Awesome. So what you know, I love what you're saying around how to simplify things. And when you think about you know, what, why is McDonald's able to pay minimum wage, I've used this analogy before, right? It's really because they've thought through everything and made it so simple, they have a system that's so easy for anyone to execute, even a 14 year old kid, that that's how they're able to actually function. And so what you want to do is always simplify the whatever the task is, to its most basic form, right? If you are asking someone to be super creative, and you're asking someone to think outside the box, that's great, there's a room for that. And you know, in your, on your staff, and in your employees, we want to have people in our brain trust, who we can bounce ideas off. And we're bringing ideas to us and these sorts of things. But we also need people to execute, right? We need chiefs, and we need Indians, and we need people who are going to go out and actually do the work as well. And this is a little bit more of that latter category, where it's like, okay, what are we actually going to do? Who's clicking the button who's sending the report? Who's, you know, hitting send, what is it that actually needs to get done, and they're the worker bees of it. Now, again, I don't say that in a disparaging way. It really is. That's what their strengths are. And so we should, we should let people play to their strengths. I think that's another sort of under recognized fact, here. You know, and I worked overseas and five for five years running an outsourcing center. Okay, we had about 200 people, when we first started, when I first jumped on board, and then we scaled it up to, you know, 1300 people or more, you know, we were doing, you know, $30 million a year, it was a pretty large operation, working with, you know, mostly in the mobile gaming industry and handling almost all of their support, we had six of the top 10 highest grossing apps on the App Store at the time, as clients and we were serving them in a really high capacity. For some clients, we were getting a 40,000 emails a day coming in, that we were processing with a 24 hour turnaround time. So obviously, we had to have a lot of like, if then if then if then processes, and you have to create that, right. So when you create that, that's when you're able to bring somebody in. And now that work, where it's like, a little bit tedious, it's a little bit repetitive for a lot of entrepreneurs who are attracted to this show. And people who are want these, like freedom oriented, creative lifestyles, and they want to travel and they want to, you know, be adventurous, that maybe that's an appeal to you. And that's okay, but understand that it does appeal to someone else, right. And I've even told people in this in the past, because most of these virtual assistants are located overseas, you know, either in India, or the Philippines, or Indonesia or Bangladesh, or, you know, you they're all over the place, of course, but, you know, these are some common, some common countries understand that the education systems in these places are different than our education system. It's not better or worse, but what it is, is it's different. And most of the education is by rote, meaning it's very much like a memorization culture, it's very much a culture, these are cultures where attention to detail and getting it right and getting it exact, and precise, is highly valued. In America, our education system is a little bit more probably needs to be even more so in my opinion, but it's a little bit more geared towards, you know, hey, what were the major themes of the text? Right? You know, Can you can you understand the illusion that is referencing back to, you know, this other ancient story of Shakespeare or whatever, you know, okay, let's get together and let's do a class presentation, and use a visual aid and do public speaking, and think outside the box and try to come up with novel concepts. Our education system is totally different than others. And so we're actually not trained really well, to do these tedious tasks as well as others are. And I think we should just recognize that because, I mean, sometimes I've tried to give some of these tasks to, you know, people in America who are maybe just a little younger and getting started and maybe their college student or something, and they don't even want to do the tasks. Whereas the people in the Philippines that we're working with, they love doing the task, they're great at it and they're so eager and excited to work with us. I mean, it's just a win win win across the board. So I know I'm kind of mixing concepts here Mike but I ranted for a while but what what's coming up for you

Mike Abramowitz 29:41
It's spot on. I mean It's spot on the stuff that is repetitive that is obnoxious for some some of the people that listen to the show like you said is what they love to do. I mean, they just are fired up to do it I think about for an exhibit A perfect example is we just recently on boarded a client and you know She was really reluctant, we'll call it 202. She was really reluctant to have a VA. And she's like, No, I don't know if we could I don't know if this is good, or if we could do this and, and she works in the, like, the mental health space. And she's just like, I just don't know, if you know, how I can put this person to work or whatnot. So we had if I'm

Andrew Biggs 30:24
not mistaken, like she even had compliance concerns, right, she's in, she's in the healthcare, space, mental health, you know, HIPAA, and working with all these different compliance agencies and stuff. You know, there are some serious concerns there that you got to make sure you're dotting your I's and crossing your T's. Right. So that's interrupt for sure. Keep going.

Mike Abramowitz 30:41
Yeah, no, no, no, for sure. So so she had a lot of different concerns. And I was like, listen, all I know is, the VA is an extension of you. That's it. So it's just like you doing the work. It's just they're doing everything as you they're logging into your profiles, they're using your passwords, right? It's just like you're doing it, you know, you have to establish the trust. And that's why, you know, you're you're putting your trust in me. And and, and our team that we've vetted really good people. So we we arranged a zoom, we hopped on Zoom, and myself, Andrew, our onboarding manager, the client, the new VA, we're all there, we're just talking and having the conversation around, hey, what Va Va, this is what you're going to be doing. And the VA was super, super nice, super friendly. And one of the things that I think we do a really good job with, and we did a really good job with here is explaining the work that the VA is not necessarily the work the VA is doing. But the work that the VA is representing. So what Andrew was saying is that they're doing repetitive tasks. So, so a VA is doing these repetitive tasks, but they're representing a cause that is bigger than the repetitive task. So by the end of this conversation, when we're saying we're the end of the conversation, it was promoted and explained as you're doing the data entry for this. But the company that you're working for, this is Rob alum that that company solves in the marketplace, and you're playing a really big part in helping solve that problem. And the VA was fired up. And what we have is we have a private chat with just all of our VAs there's eight or nine or 10, or 1112 yeas in this private chat that we have right now. And every day, we're pumping gratitude in the chat, you're making a difference. Great work today, you know, your the the work that we're doing is helping humanity as a whole because all the entrepreneurs are in these different industries. And this is the work that they're doing. So I think that's kind of buys the partially plays into the part of it doesn't matter where they're raised. As far as the education system goes, everyone loves working for a greater cause and a greater good. And to Andrew's point, even if they're raised to be strong in the day to day repetitive type of work. They're creating that culture of being a part of something bigger than them is, is also really, really important to create. And that's, we've done a good job with, with with our VA team. So that was what kind of showed up for me.

Andrew Biggs 33:30
And if I'm not mistaken, you've been sent Hannah, like a care package from America to the Philippines. Right? Is that correct?

Mike Abramowitz 33:36
I did, I didn't realize the shipping was going to be 150 bucks, but but I did I sent I sent her a nice card and Cutco products because Coco didn't ship over there. And she was fired up. And, you know, that was it's just a beautiful gesture. But what's more important is I want her to know that she is again, the extension of me, she's a part of the family. And I'll give I'll give bonuses and gratitude and just low voice voice notes or videos just like expressing that gratitude and, and she is doing that now to some of the VAs that she's working with. And it's really cool to see this is and this is very important to also say within two years until recently, I only had one to live conversations with Hannah in two years. So one more time to make sure everyone thought that I only had two real time live conversations on zoom with Hannah in two years. Everything else was through voice memo and like just I'll send her a video or I'll send her a voice note. And it was never real time live communication within a two year period, which is just just in itself should speak to how how, how easy it is to work with someone who is Excited to work?

Andrew Biggs 35:02
Absolutely right. What would you you know, because this is a question we get a lot, too. It's like, Hey, man, you know, this all sounds good, but it also kind of sounds like, is it really fair, you know, to, for us to be paying somebody, you know, 678 dollars an hour or $5 Now or whatever, you know, in the Philippines to do this work like, Is that enough for them to get by on? Like, how did you wrap your head around that like, morally? Because I thought your answer was really good to this. And it's something that a lot of people don't understand. I can speak to it as well. But how did how did you help yourself understand that better?

Mike Abramowitz 35:38
So the cliffnotes of this is when I went to Ireland for the first time, and I took, it was the worst game ever. I went into the ATM machine. And I put my card in and I wanted to get out cash. And this is years ago. But I wanted to take out let's say it was $500. So I put $500 in and it gave me like 400 Euro, or something like that. And it was like, This is the worst game ever. You know, it was like what the hell I put I want $500 And it gives me 400 Euro. And this is when the you know, it was like 1.25 or 1.5 to one I think at the time, and the euro is more powerful. And then I went to there was a McDonald's there. And this is my way of knowing how, how is the currency? How is the currency, so I went to the McDonald's. And they didn't have $1 menu, they had a Euro menu. So the Euro menu is $1. It was one euro and I was like shit, the dollar is really weak. And this kind of sucks. It's the worst game ever. So I asked Hannah and I asked her I said, What is your dollar menu? You know? Like, what? If you go to like I said, Do you have McDonald's? Yes. How much is the dollar menu? Like, what is it considered there? And then she told me whatever it is in her currency. And I did the math to kind of get an idea of how much is that equal to, into to the American dollar. And essentially, it came down to where every, every two, or every $800 to her is equivalent to approximately 2000 to $2,200 in an American. So $800 to me, is equivalent to about 2200 $2,200. To her something along those lines, was the way I was able to do that conversion from our dollar like the dollar menu example.

Andrew Biggs 37:34
So that is looking at close to 3x. You know, so yeah, it's

Mike Abramowitz 37:38
about two, two and a half to 3x, somewhere in that range. So if she goes to $1 menu, they're in her currency. That's, that's that's the way I was able to, you know, see what it what it is,

Andrew Biggs 37:52
right. And so it's just important that everyone listening, you know, you think about purchasing power, right. So it really doesn't matter, you know, how much someone's earning what matters is how much purchasing power that person gains. And of course, this is, you know, super relevant with what's going on right now, if you're paying attention to the news and paying attention, if you filled up your gas tank in the last six months, because your purchasing power in America has gone down. So it doesn't matter if you get paid, you know more, because that that money is going right back out the door. So you want to think so what Mike is saying is essentially, if you're paying somebody $6 an hour in the Philippines is essentially the same as paying someone $18 Here, through, you know, currency arbitrage is kind of the technical term there. And so really, it's kind of like a, you know, is it? Are they? Are they making kind of like the equivalent of a six figure income or something? Probably not, but are they making kind of the equivalent of like, 3040 $50,000 a year? Yeah, they're making kind of like a middle class living in their terms. And so it's important for you to understand that you're providing a job to somebody who's, you know, in, like a middle class family, that someone's can really sustain, like a family on, I think Hannah has four kids, you know, in another country. Now, you might say, well, I want to provide jobs in here in America, and it's like, great, but sometimes the minimum wage is too high for you to really be able to do that. So if you want to do that in America, awesome, more power to you. i We have employees here in America, we have employees overseas, it's like just knowing which one, which ones you want to do for which tasks is really what I would suggest. Because ultimately, as a business owner, you have to be taking advantage of these of these different tools at your disposal. So great answer there, Mike. I really appreciate how you how you think about that. I want to circle back to one question. You said you were talking about this like MLS, you know, in in the real estate market, and we were kind of trying to think about okay, what what tasks should I delegate? How could someone begin thinking of all the tasks, what sort of tasks are we looking to get off our plates if we're a business owner, because sometimes people come to me and say, and it sounds great. Where do I even start, you know, Like what, what would be good tasks? And we're sort of going back a step here. But what how do you think about what tasks to actually delegate?

Mike Abramowitz 40:09
It's it's such a loaded question, because the tasks that I offsuit offshoot, they come up all the time, like, and it's hard for me to say, Oh, here's a list of every single task that you

Andrew Biggs 40:22
should do for your sounds like they've come up with a mindset, right? It's like, you know, it's you ask matches these criteria. So maybe it's anything repetitive, anything tedious, anything that drains my energy, like, what else? Is

Mike Abramowitz 40:37
there anything that like, yeah, data, data entry? For sure. You know, any, any, any data that is in one place? Let's say there's, let's say there's data in four different places. My VA, I want her to put all of that in one place.

Andrew Biggs 40:51
So that way, you know, from different sources. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Abramowitz 40:55
So that's a very important so that way, I only have to look at one, one place where all my data lives. So one report one data place. So that's one, any type of copy paste messaging, so any type of messaging or communication that needs to go out, that is for sure, a task that I don't want to do, that includes email that includes texts, WhatsApp, messages, anything like that, anytime we're onboarding someone new, and we need to, you know, update a profile for them. Any profile updating? That is for sure what what a VA does

Andrew Biggs 41:32
managing a CRM, right, or an ERP or whatever? Yeah.

Mike Abramowitz 41:36
Any any type of profile update is something that they'll do that a VA does any type of uploading videos to, or anything like that. Or yeah, so so like, I have a Thinkific course. So it's taking the videos to put it into the course, you know, so that way, it's something that I definitely don't want to do. There's progress reports. So the people that are taking the Thinkific course I want to see how they're progressing. So she will go take those reports and see how people are progressing, and then communicate to those people, letting them know how they're progressing. So it's putting it in front of them. Because there's not like an automatic, there's an email that goes out every week, but there's nothing that goes out each day. So I have it set where she could look at the progress report, and then message the individuals that are going through and saying, Hey, I saw you completed 40% or, you know, a version of that to be like our reminder sequence that, you know, is not existing in that, in that, that platform. Again, I'm just kind of spitballing here there's there's there's other but

Andrew Biggs 42:47
so it sounds like anything tedious, anything repetitive, anything data entry, anything that's going to drain your energy, I was talking with a client, the other day is like, yeah, the first week, the VA paid for themselves, because like they did 20 hours of work of the most the the work that I hate the most. And they loved every second. And I was like, yeah, exactly. So anything that like drains your energy even. So this is this is really good stuff. Transcription.

Mike Abramowitz 43:11
That was that was another one, I had a I'll send a video to one of my staff members. This is actually really fun. I sent a video to my staff member, I said, this is what I need you to use for your department. And she's like, so what do you want me to do just kind of type out notes. I said, I want I want you to take my voice note. And yes, I want you to create notes. And you could send this voice note to Hannah, and have Hannah do that for you. So she'll just transcribe it, and then give you the notes. So that way you have it. And she's like, are you serious? I said yes. So she sent it to Hannah, and with it by the end of the day, Hannah, she she I don't know if she sat there and typed it out. I don't know if she went and used a program like otter frankly, we don't care what she did. She transcribed it sent all the talking points to Alexis and Alexis response to me was, I need a Hannah for my personal life. I mean, she's. So this is a 20 year old student who is using my virtual assistant to get her work done and make her life easier. And that's one of the benefits of having a VA and my staff. So I have I have five assistants that work in my organization and my game changer office. So I have five assistants. And these five assistants have access to my VA team. And they their user experience is so much better because they have access to VAs as well. And this is what the coming back to that the mental health client. All of the work that her VA has been doing has been offsetting the work that three other team members used to do. So those team members no longer have to do that data entry stuff. And now the culture of her organization is now evolving because this client is now helping them see, hey, I want to do everything I can to make your job easier. But so you can focus your energy on generating more clients and not generating not using your energy to data entry and they're fired up about it. And she's she'll, she'll tell you, I'm not going to disclose but you know, she's she's pretty active and vocal about this, but, you know, her business is already increased, and just in her first month, her profits have gone up. And the culture has already increased dramatically, just in the first 30 days, it's been really great. So I preach about this i and see what it's done for me. And, you know, it's been fun.

Andrew Biggs 45:39
Well, this was fantastic. It's been a really cool and fruitful discussion. This is jam packed with, with details and content that I hope you the listener, you're enjoying, you know, I was talking with someone just today who just signed up for our services this morning. And he said, you know, at the end of the day, everyone I've spoken to around virtual assistants, he talked to three different companies and decided to go with ours. And he said, basically, everyone, what they say is, if you get the right person, it's everything, right? If you can find the right person. And so you know, one of the things that we've done through our relationships with my, you know, overseas experience managing, you know, you know, eight figure business in the outsourcing space and understanding how to interview and find talent in emerging markets. Mike, with your experience of personally, managing staff in the Philippines, you know, over the last three years, we've come up with a, you know, a process to find those, right people source them and make sure that they're all winners, obviously, we also have a backup plan in case they are. But so far, so good, right. And our clients are thrilled with that. And, and we take a lot of that legwork out of out of the process, right? And a lot of the risk out of that process. And we're even doing it at a really affordable in a really affordable way, especially since it's a new business vertical for us. So if you guys are interested, you want to hear more about what we actually offer with VA services, we want to encourage you to go to www dot better than rich.com, backslash V A. And there, you will find more details on all about what we're up to. In this program. We do have, you know, we are offering 50% off our onboarding fees for the current moment. But as we grow, these prices are only going to go up. So act now if you are interested in if you are even remotely interested, you can also schedule a time with us to chat. But Mike, what, um, what do you what would you like to say about what we're up to and, and why this matters to you.

Mike Abramowitz 47:39
If you're in a position where you're growing, or you just want to free up your time, or you just you want to spend that extra time at your family, you want to spend extra time with you in just the creative space. It's a no brainer. When I first onboarded Hannah, I had to pay a company it was $2,500 up front. And then that was it. And I never talked to the company ever again. And that was that was it they faded away, or I haven't talked I haven't talked to them in three years. And I realized that that I was lost. For the first several months of working with her. I didn't know how to work with her. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say I didn't know how to manager. And I was all figured out just from me doing it and from trial and error and testing things out in the busiest season of the year for me. And through that trial and error. I had the conversation with you, Andrew was like I learned and figured out a lot of things that can save a lot of people time and save them some money. What do you think about bringing this into some of our clients and that's kind of how this was birthed. And it's been awesome to have now eight, you know, eight clients that we've done this beta test with. And it's been going really great so far. And I'm really excited to see where it can go because I it's been life changing for me and I can't wait to help it be life changing for other people.

Andrew Biggs 48:59
Absolutely. And so far, we've gotten nothing but rave reviews on that. And I see nothing but that for the foreseeable future as well. So, hey, thank you so much for taking the time to learn today and to feed your mind and feed your heart and feed your soul. Hopefully you can run with this, whether it's with us or with another company. If you again are interested to learn more about what we're up to check us out better than rich.com backslash VA to learn more. Until next week, leave today better than you found it. We'll catch you later. Thanks again.

Mike Abramowitz 49:29
Bye thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the show, please share it with others post about it on social media or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest from us. You can follow us on Instagram at better than underscore rich and join our Facebook group at the better than rich show. Thanks again for listening. We look forward to seeing you next time and remember, leave today better than you found it