Virtual Assistant
Based on the response to a recent Instagram poll regarding virtual assistants I thought I’d write a quick article to share what I’m up to…
Some background first, I’ve dabbled with hiring off shore (Non NZ Based labour) over the years. With the travel business in Canada, with ALT. In NZ and potentially even before that when it was a new ish concept.
If you’re not aware the premise is that labour in developing / third world countries is lower than Western countries eg NZ. 50% less at an uneducated guess.
Historically the technology has lagged making it challenging. Now though it’s a well defined market / strategy that’s implemented by both smaller businesses as well as corporates both here in NZ and in other markets like the US.
There’s still hurdles:
Timezone (could be a pro or a con)
Language barriers
Cultural differences (again could be a pro or a con)
Difficulty getting any face to face time
Technology has come a long way but it’s still a consideration from a platform and infrastructure perspective
Trust / security
I’ve had mixed success, with some win’s and a lot of losses, mostly in terms of time & energy consumed and frustration.
This time around though I’m excited and feel that it’s going to be different (it might not and could be another “educational experience”).
My challenge at the moment is that I’ve got a gazillion ideas and brands I’m attempting to execute on but between my full time role and other life responsibilities I’m maxing out. Not in a bad way just in a way that I want to leverage my time more effectively / ensure that I’m progressing each of my projects forward and not stagnating, the time pressure is on with the $10 million in 10 years challenge and I see that the sooner I can build and grow a Team of people working for me the better.
There’s several job sites and platforms to post jobs on for off shore labour, I’ve used Upwork before so figured why not start there and see what happens.
My plan is to hire someone part time to start with and then ideally convert them to a full time employee in 3-6 months at which time I’ll ideally be able to get them doing a combination of my tasks and also potentially billing some of their time out and making a margin on them. TBD. It could be a optimistic thinking.
If you’re interested in watching how this goes let me know and I’ll create more content on it.
And or if you’re keen to hire my Virtual Assistant / Marketing coordinator at an attractive rate let me know also ;)