Not all Virtual Assistants are the Same

0:00 Hi, welcome to the podcast that explores virtual assistants, lump business owners to know, when they start asking themselves the question, hey, do I meet a VA? I'm Rachel Davila, and after 18 years as a virtual assistant going at a loan, I experienced the steep learning curve from the other side of the VA client relationship when I hired my own assistant. Joining me on this podcast is a group of friends and colleagues who all have their own take on what busy entrepreneurs need to know to find, hire, and work with a virtual assistant, and mindfully answer the question, hey, do I meet a VA? Let's get this episode started.

0:47 Hi, welcome to episode 4 of Hey, do I meet a VA? The podcast, with me again is land earnally, Sydney Hubbard and Bree BV, and I'm your host, Rachel Davila. And today we're going to talk about how not all virtual assistants are the same. What do I mean by that? So, last episode, we kind of talked about how the term VA has changed over the decades since we've been doing it. And so a lot of kind of specialty tasks get lumped in with virtual assistants, but there are roughly five types of support. So, I call them specialists, personal assistants, sometimes that could be a housekeeper or an Annie, and then with virtual assistants, there are employee minded VA's and business partner minded VA's, and then there's employees. So, those are kind of where I go with what kind of support you might need when I'm talking with potential clients. So, when I talk about specialists, those are people like web designers who specialize in the profession, bookkeepers, marketing specialists and strategists. If your tasks need to be done in

2:25 person or have a hands-on quality where they need to interact with you in person, that would be more of a personal assistant or a housekeeper or an Annie. But when we talk about virtual assistants, there's two kinds that I kind of differentiate, and those are employee minded VA's, which tend to do the doing. They are detail and task oriented, and they keep their focus on the task at hand without necessarily doing too much collaboration. Whereas a business partner minded VA is more collaborative. They kind of look at the whole picture, and they can kind of see the direction you want to go and handle the steps along the way. So, it still falls within that broad administrative scope of work and can be done virtually. In place, those are when you need somebody in-house to do just your work and they work just for you. So, when we talk about the different kinds of VA's, what is that bring up for you guys? Yeah, I agree. You call them doors. I usually refer to them as task-based virtual assistants. And to me, those are the ones that you tell them,

3:55 hey, I need this done, they go do it, they come back, and they wait for you to tell them the next thing to do, or it's directed mainly by you. Whereas that business partner or a team-based version, they like to kind of have that conversation and go back and forth. That's actually one of the things that my clients are like, they find a lot of value in the has having somebody who knows their business and being able to bounce ideas back and forth and see what comes up and be able to see some of those pieces if they want to do a challenge or launch something or whatever being able to talk about all the different pieces and kind of come up with a plan and then put that plan into action. So there's a lot more back and forth and then a lot more helping see all the pieces and maybe fill in the gaps in that version and being proactive versus having the client have to have all the thinking and putting it into place. And then, yeah, also with the specialized ones, we're being like, you know, people that just specialize in those certain areas that are rock stars at it, they can all speed pull in to help accent if that's a gap that is in between the partnership, that it's good to draw on those people as well even for part-time support or that kind of thing.

5:04 Yeah, I think I use the word online business managers more for the collaborative stuff. When I'm explaining what we do so that there's a more clear definition between a general VA who does task work and someone who's more collaborative helps them run the office, helps them run the back office. So online business manager for me is the more strategic partner versus a general admin who does basic stuff and then of course the specialty stuff which is more of a specific thing. So the bookkeeper or the graphics designer or the webmaster kind of concepts.

5:44 I will, I will point out because within the industries, there is a difference between kind of a high level VA and an online business manager the way you describe it absolutely, but there is actual online business managers as an industry and they tend to be more the client brings their team of VA's and the online business manager manages the teams. At least that's been the definition. I was given by someone who did the certification to become an online business manager.

6:27 So an OBM or an business manager tends to run teams of VA's. So they might be that center point of contact if you have multiple VA's that you work with. So that's just something to know as far as definition. Does any have anything? Yeah, I think something that I'm seeing is that there are these distinct categories, but these categories can also often overlap and be found within the same person. So in my experience, I'm mostly very task oriented, employee-minded, I am my own business, but if you give me a task to do, I will do it. However, I also very much enjoy brainstorming.

7:17 So if there's, if you want to brainstorm social media, if you want to brainstorm the flow of an event, I will certainly give my input. However, I think I feel less inclined if a task were given to me, I would feel a lot less inclined to critique it on behalf of that other person's business. And I think that's just for me, I have been owned a business for that long, so I don't feel as inclined to give other people critiques on how they run their business unless they're inviting that type of brainstorming. And so I think it can very much be a back and forth between business-minded employee-minded. I think it's kind of like a scale almost. And I also think that within virtual assistance there can be times when you receive a job that's a personal task.

8:16 So I received a job that was looking at someone's bank account and putting what they purchased into a spreadsheet. And that was a personal task for them. So a personal assistant type work, which is different than my business working with someone else's business. So yeah, I think it's interesting how they play with each other like that. And I do think that we as VEs can support our clients doing personal tasks. I mean, I help with personal tasks all the time. So I think that is something that can be a conversation or piece. I do think that the difference between detail and task oriented and collaboration is that kind of conversation. Do you want to be more collaborative or do you just want to focus on what's what I'm having you do? And I think that that collaboration piece does come with time and experience and comfort with a client and your VA. And I think that as you as the VA gets more comfortable in the business, if they want that additional level of interaction, that's a conversation to be had. So I don't necessarily think that it's the client pigeonholes the VA so much as the VA says, well, no, I just want to do this. I don't want to do that. And that's

9:53 kind of where those definitions kind of come into play. Because I mean, I know like, I need to talk it out and I definitely want because Sydney's my virtual assistant. And so, I didn't necessarily know what kind of VA was looking for until I was like, well, I need somebody who can talk it through with me and do all that. So I definitely think that there can be that conversation, especially where if you as the client comes in and you're like, well, I need somebody to do the things. And then you start going through, you're like, okay, and now I need to add this layer, then it's, are you comfortable adding that layer? And then this up to the VA to say, yes, I'm comfortable or no, that's not my thing. And one of the things that Breed brought up is that just because you hire one VA doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be able to do all the things that you need them to do. And so being able to incorporate the different kinds of support to match your needs is fully in line. I don't know if it was this episode or the last episode, but we talk about this collaboration element of working together. And so, you might find that your needs are, you need to start with a high level thinking VA to help you get

11:28 those processes and workflows and pieces figured out. But then you can bring on more of a do or task VA to handle those things that you put into place so that you're maybe the high level VA can then work on other aspects of your business. And so it can be a fluid business move where you work with different levels for different things. That's too clever, so for the collaboration part two, one thing to keep in mind is that that virtual assistant will also probably take a deeper dive, like they'll have to. They'll take a deeper dive into getting to know you and your business. There's a bigger investment in time as well, right, to have those conversations so that people can get to understand and have a deeper understanding and meaning and what you want your impact to be to be able to do a really good job in that place and to make sure that if you are looking to build out a team later, then that's something that you might want to consider when you're starting because you might want to make sure that the VA that you're working with is open to collaborating and working in a team with other VA's or looking at an agency or something that already has that in their back pocket, you start with one and maybe you expand as you go and just thinking of those options as you're getting into it or as you're progressing through, it could be something that comes up later but just keeping that in your mind. Yeah, what is something that you would suggest

12:58 to potential clients who may not know if they want a standalone VA or a team VA, if they're not short necessarily what kind of VA they're looking for when they come to you since you have a team. Yeah, so sometimes it's trial and error, right? Like sometimes we don't know what we want or what we're looking for until we start doing it and so some of it might be just a process of trying things on for size and see if it's a fit but collecting things you can along the way, like those processes you're amen and talking about, like try to capture those no matter which one you're starting with so you still have something to bring and build with and then the other piece would be I always tell a possible client or a potential collaborator that if you're wondering what kind of VA you're looking for, start capturing those things that you might want to hand off, the things that aren't bringing you joy in your business, the things that you might want to have somebody and maybe it's through looking at that collection of tasks that you want to hand off, that that piece might fall into places to which virtual assistant model might fit for you right now.

14:10 If it's a lot more admin things then maybe start with a task based one and get some of those admin things sorted and then after you get that going you want to do some of those higher level things or have that kind of view of it then maybe look into that if you want to start there and then work in the processes then that works too. It really depends on budget, it depends on your preference and what it is you're looking for but a good place to start is capturing those tasks and seeing what kind of task it is that you're wanting to share with or offload or if you're looking as you're going through those tasks, you know, hopefully that have somebody to talk this over with and bounce over ideas that could also be an indicator as to which one works for you. Yeah, yeah, it's what I tell them too. Yeah, knowing what you knowing what you want to hand off really is the starting place for helping you to figure out what kind of support you're looking for.

15:06 And also what your goals are, what you're procrastinating on, what you're tolerating in your business, those kinds of things too and kind of knowing where your goals are down the line. Sometimes you need to start where you are and get those things off your plate so that you have the time and the resources and energy to do those bigger things but kind of knowing where you're heading can help you kind of have that conversation because if you know down the road, you need that more collaborative picture thinking than when you're talking with a V8, is that a direction that you can see yourself going with because someone like Sydney who is task and detail oriented but also likes that collaboration and wants to grow in that direction, you know, having that conversation really can when you're looking, we end. You think to, I don't think you guys kind of covered it.

16:14 The biggest thing is knowing what you think you need and just get started, just get started with a V8 and try it out. I can completely agree. I think that in the end, I agree that it's very essential to know what you want to hand off to have an idea of what would be good for your business. And I also think that if you don't even have the slightest clue, then I would just look for a VA who matches your communication style because at the very least, they can communicate to you what they are seeing a need for in your business and a way that that you understand in a way that is right for you. So yeah. So one thing before we go, some businesses, some business models that get lumped in with virtual systems, but are actually more specialties are if you are looking for somebody to help with your podcast, there are podcast managers and that is a specialty, though some VA's do do that. So social media managers get lumped in sometimes with virtual systems. So if you're just looking for social media, that might be a specialist. We talked about bookkeepers, web designers and marketing. The marketing really is

17:44 kind of the strategy and like I don't do analytics and things like that. I can put a strategy into action, but I don't come up with the strategy. Though Bree, she's a great strategist in terms of social media and things like that. Though thumb VA do have those skill sets. If you're looking for just that specialty, there are they do tend to get lumped into virtual systems even though I was like, there was 11 of them. What are you talking about? And I didn't actually find the list, but it was like social media manager and podcast manager, marketing strategy, all those things I was like, oh, I guess we do kind of we can do those things, but if you're looking for like Facebook apps over my head, but yes, so when you're looking for a VA, it is helpful to know what you want to hand off and what kind of quality and support level you're looking for. Well, thank you so much for joining us today on this episode of Hey, do I need a VA the podcast? And we will see you next episode. You have any questions you can reach any one of us. We'll put the details in the show notes and we will see you next time. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hey,

19:14 do I need a VA the podcast? If you found this episode helpful, please leave a like, comment, or review. Until free to join our Facebook group, find hire and work with a VA for more tips and tools. If you have any questions, please email them to hey VA podcast at gmail.com. We'll see you next time.