Episode 274 transcript
Last week, I had a chat with a prospect who was talking about all the different Vas he had hired, and they just hadn’t worked out. And if you’ve had similar experience, then this week’s episode is exactly for you. Hello, and welcome to episode 274 of Mi TV. My name is Emma Mills. I run a company called Mi PA, and I help business owners get out of their own way. I help them go from solopreneur through to thriving team, if that’s what they want, and how to use an exec PA. And this episode is all about VA’s because I was talking to a client, well, a prospect who said he’d hired lots of different vas, differing like rates, different places in the world, they were in different kinds of size business, and none of them had worked out. And the conversation I had with him I thought might be really useful for you.
So let’s dive in. In my opinion, none of us ever started a business just to stay stuck or to be an admin slave, because that’s like, that’s what’s happened to so many of us. And I just want to start my story by the most beautiful quote that I read the other day in Grace Beverley’s book. Grace Beverley is the founder of Tala, also a productivity queen, and she has the most amazing quote, which says that on working smart in your business and enjoying it, if you find the few activities that matter the most, going to get you the biggest results. And if you go in all in on these to create the best possible results, you get the best possible outcome for every hour you work. If you just like, if you really think about that, if you find the few activities that matter the most, go all in on them to create the best possible results, you will get the greatest outcome for every hour you work. And I think that quote, if you are one of those people that’s working till ten in the evening, working weekends, getting up really early, like that mantra should be our mantra for life, that I need to find the most important things, work on them really well, and get the best possible outcome. And what many of us do is we stay stuck.
So then we go, okay, well, I need to get some support. And if getting a self. Getting an employed person is, like, not first on the list, and it wasn’t for me either, my first member of the team wasn’t employed. It was an. It was a self employed virtual pa, then getting somebody to support you in the things you don’t enjoy and the things that you are not best at must become the most important outcome strategy goal for you in your business if you are stuck in any way. And this was the conversation that I was having with a prospect the other week and he says, yeah, but Emma, but I’ve like hired loads of different VAs and it just never ever works out. And you know, it can be personalities, it can be many different things. But here are my top couple of things for me of why working with a VA never works out.
And I want you to be aware of them as well because hopefully it saves you some pain. Because we’ve already got enough pain in our business. What we want is a superhero to come in and take all of our problems away. So here are my top reasons on why working with a VA wouldn’t work out. So number one, you think that getting a VA means you have got an all encompassing superhero in your business. And believe me, that VAs have differing skills and specialties, especially if you are going to work with a self employed individual VA. But they will have something that is their absolute specialty, where they are best at. And when business owners hire a VA and think that one person is going to solve all, that is where it goes wrong.
And so for you, as the business owner, you must get hyper clear on what the things are you need support with first, whether that’s customer service, whether it’s inbox, whether it’s creating processes, because somebody that’s doing all those three isn’t necessarily the same person. And at Mi PA, one of the things we do is our clients work with a team, so they have different skill sets in there as well to harness and use. But if you are not clear on what you are need, then this is definitely a surefire way for this to go wrong because you can just expect this person to be an absolute mind reader and they won’t be. And at Mi PA, one of the things we will always work with a client on is like the top two or three most important tasks. Work on those first. Get them rolling, get them implemented, make sure we have the skill sets to deliver them. And I would highly recommend whoever you choose to work with to have the same approach, to have two or three things that are the most impactful for you and they must definitely have the skill set or expertise to help you with. Number two, in my opinion, most business owners love new things, learning new things, implementing new things.
That’s why businesses can become boring for a lot of people, because they just don’t want to finish what they’ve started. They want somebody else to take over and do that. And the same comes for systemising your business. And unless your specific skill set as a business owner is systems and operations, and you absolutely love it. For me, most business, most business owners hate systemizing and they get unstuck because they think a VA is just going to come in and solve all of that for them. And some of them will. But you must be super clear on that because a lot of virtual assistants will just want to be given the task, how they do it. At Mi PA, we can help you create those systems, build those processes, take out of your head and create them into a mini operations manual of how to win your business.
But a lot of VAs, if you pick the wrong one or aren’t clear about your outcomes that you need, they will be asking you, you for the how to. Now that is my worst nightmare, to have to create processes on everything I want somebody else to do. I want somebody kick ass to come in and go, yep, got it. I know what you need. Let me create the processes. And that is why I built this business that I did, because I’m in a really unusual position that I know how great an exec PA is when they, because I was one and I know what a business owner needs. And for me, I just want somebody to go, I want to go. This is what I kind of need.
Please, can you take it over? And that’s what we do here at Mi PA. But not being clear on that in the beginning of systemization of processes can lead you down a tricky path if the person you’re working with wants you to give them exactly the how to of how a task is done. So make sure if you need someone to help with systems and processes that you’re using a VA or company that can help you create them for them and aren’t expecting to be given everything drip fed to them. And number three, the biggest reason why most clients of ours that have worked with the vas, it doesn’t work out is because they haven’t anticipated what happens if their VA is sick or goes on holiday or away. And I really just urge you just to ask that question. It might be that nothing happens and you have no service, and maybe that’s fine for you, but definitely be be ready in anticipation of what’s going to happen. So our thing at Mi PA is that you have a dedicated PA, but you also work with a team, so there is no break in the service. And that team is there with different skill sets to support you alongside your main PA.
And I know that for some of our clients, they haven’t anticipated that with other vas that they have worked with. So definitely my third one is just asking the question of, okay, well, I need this work doing. So what happens when you’re sick, when you’re on holiday, when you need to do something urgently and you’re not available? Just understanding what those SLA’s are, what that robustness is, is going to save a lot of pain on who you pick, who you choose, and who is the right person for you. So those are my top three tips on how it can easily not work out with a VA. And what you absolutely want is for the relationship to be a dream, seamless, and you to love it. So just thinking about those three things in advance of who you pick, I think will save you a lot of pain in the future. Because we aren’t meant to be slaves to our business. We are meant to get people who love to do the things we don’t like.
And there are lots of fantastic options for that. We’ll just think about these things first. I hope today’s episode of Mi TV helped you tremendously, and I will see you next week for episode 275. See you then. Bye.
