Get my Free Virtual Assistant Jumpstart Kit<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nMistake #3: Paying the lowest possible wages<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The third mistake that I find people often make when it comes to hiring their virtual assistants is that they pay the lowest possible wages. I see this all the time when going through Upwork proposals for people that are seeking virtual assistance, they are consistently paying just pennies if even just a couple of dollars per hour. And what I would say is that if you’re in a situation where you can afford to pay a little bit more than you should, it’s not only beneficial for you, but it’s also beneficial for your virtual assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ultimately, I know where this mindset comes from because I, myself, years ago, didn’t have the budget to necessarily pay the highest rates out there. I had to pay lower rates. And if you’re in that situation, I can completely empathize with you as to why you would want to post that listing in that sort of way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what I would really encourage you to do is take a step back and think about what that is signaling as well in terms of the sort of virtual assistant that you’re attracting to your job listing too. Over time, what I realized as I hired hundreds of different virtual assistants is that the lowest wage ones often had the highest failure rates as well sometimes for some of the tasks that I had to be done. And the reason why is simply because they didn’t have the skill sets needed. And in order to get those skill sets, I needed to be willing to pay more and invest more in my virtual assistant team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so in the case where you’ve maybe been paying the lowest wages, and you’ve been finding yourself having to correct a ton of work that your VAs are doing, what I would ask you to do is just try to put a pit listing out there where you maybe double your budget, or even just increase it by 50% and see what talent pool comes into the door. And in the case where you don’t find any difference, then maybe you were right in your budget in the first place, but you’ll never really know if you don’t push that upper envelope in terms of your budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my personal experience, I’ve found over time that just paying a fair wage has been a big game changer in terms of making sure that my team is happy as well as that I’m getting the quality at level of work that I’m expecting of my team as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mistake #4: Profit over people<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The fourth mistake that I’d say that people often make when it comes to hiring virtual assistants is that they prioritize profit over people. This kind of feeds back from the third one that I just mentioned, but essentially what this is referring to is when you are given the opportunity to treat your virtual assistants well, you don’t take the opportunity to do so. In other words, the business owner is just taking all the profits or all the wins that the virtual assistant team might have worked really hard to help him or her achieve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that’s something that I think is a mistake. And over the years, this is something that I’m even still cultivating today in terms of just changing my mindset over time as my different side projects and businesses have become more successful. Some of the things that I like to do to treat my virtual assistant team is at random points in the year, whether that’s every quarter or every half year, I try to work in many bonuses for people that I know that have been working really hard for me or in the case where I know that they haven’t taken a few days off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I’ll do is I’ll tell them that I’d really like them to consider taking a few days off and then pay for their days off and treat them to a self-care day. By taking these sorts of initiatives, to just think about the other person that’s working for you in this situation, you build a whole new level of trust that really makes everybody want to work harder for you as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so, ultimately you win as the business owner as well because people know that you’ll take care of them and therefore they’re gonna take care of you too. It’s a very reciprocal nature of just human nature. When someone does something nice for us, we want to do something nice for them too. And so in the case where you are in a fortunate situation where maybe your business has been super successful lately, I would encourage you to take a step back and ask yourself if you’re taking care of your team as well as you possibly could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the past, I’ve talked about different ways that you can treat your team and whatnot, especially in the remote world case, but something that my own company does that I really appreciate is that whenever we hit a big milestone, essentially our company will send out some personalized gifts to everybody that, you know, really commemorate that milestone. And then we’ll all hop into a remote meeting together and celebrate that milestone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So think about the different ways that you could do this. It could be something like giving gift cards. It could be something like self-care days, paid time off, or just in general writing a nice note to your virtual system every now and then telling them exactly what they’ve done really well, that caught your attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mistake #5: They don’t really self-reflect on what is not working out<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
And then the fifth mistake that I find people make when it comes to hiring their virtual assistants is that they don’t really self-reflect on what is not working out. If you’re ever having a churn problem in your virtual assistant team, in which people are leaving you, it probably is because you’re kind of hard to work with, or there’s something that’s clearly not being met in terms of what virtual assistant want out of the work relationship with you that is causing people to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so what I often find is that people that come to me and ask me, like, why is it that my virtual assistants are always leaving me after a month or so? Well, it’s probably because you are a violator of one of the four things that I mentioned before this fifth one, or it’s something in which you’re just not reflecting on what you could be doing better yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Something that I think is really cool about entrepreneurship is that it’s a personal journey for everybody. It’s something in which your own experience is different than everybody else’s. My experience is going to be inherently different to your experience. And so what I would recommend you’d be doing is constantly self-reflect on where you’re at right now as an entrepreneur, as a leader, as a manager, as a business owner, and ask yourself whether or not you’ve been improving yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because in the case where you haven’t, then maybe that’s why you’re dealing with some of the issues that you are facing. Actively cultivating your mindset and the way that you’re approaching building your businesses is ultimately one of the hardest skills as an entrepreneur. And I can say that because I’ve been one for over a decade at this point. It’s something I still have to work on and actively work to master. It’s something which I turn to mentors and advisors to help me when I feel stuck. And it’s something that I would recommend you also do as well, especially in the context of virtual assistants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For me, once I find a virtual assistant I really like working with, I try to keep them as long as possible, just as a general benchmark reference for you on my team I have several virtual assistants that have worked for me for multiple years, some of them close to a decade at this point. And so it’s something in which they will actively want to work with you if you just take care of them. And if you actively are hearing about what their needs are and making sure that you can align your business needs with their personal needs as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you liked this article, be sure to check out my YouTube channel<\/a> to get new videos every single week. I’ll help take you from zero to self-starter as you grow your business, get more customers, and hone your business acumen. Also, feel free to share this with anybody that you think might benefit from learning the mistakes to avoid when hiring a virtual assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n