Why You Need to Hire a Virtual Assistant (and How Not to Screw it Up) – A Review of Chris Ducker’s “Virtual Freedom” Book

A few years ago, I hired a part-time Virtual Assistant to help me with a few administrative tasks.

If you’re new to the idea of virtual assistants (VAs), they’re basically self-employed professionals who typically work offshore (usually in lower hourly-wage countries such as India or the Philippines) that help you out with a wide range of tasks.

Entrepreneurs hire VAs to do everything from web research to content development to even reading their kids bedtime stories over Skype.

I hired a VA partly as an experiment after I read the 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, to understand how to outsource all the administrative and repetitive stuff that I could easily hand over to someone else.

I don’t recall the exact service I used, but I remember quickly rushing through the whole process – I quickly signed up and started assigning tasks to the VA.

I didn’t do the proper due diligence on making sure I hire the right person or on making sure that they understood what I wanted them to do.

In short, I screwed the entire thing up – and because I didn’t do it the right way, I ended up spending more time on managing and following up with the assistant than on saving it.

Needless to say, I decided that I was much better off doing all the stuff on my own.

I never hired a personal VA since then (side note: I’ve been managing virtual teams for the past 10 years, so I do this for a living, but hiring a personal VA that you use for your own side business or for general administrative tasks is totally different dynamic than managing employees at large organizations).

However, after reading Chris Ducker’s Virtual Freedom book, which officially launches today, I’m considering changing my mind.

As a successful entrepreneur and owner of a virtual staffing company, Chris walks you through everything you need to know about hiring and managing your own virtual staff.

In the first section of the book, he starts out by explaining why you need a VA (or a team of VAs), and outlines the benefits you’d gain such as saving time, saving money, and getting access to talent without any geographic constraints.

He also discusses the different types of VAs, and how to find and hire them.

For example, he gives you an overview of the different types of VAs and how much they typically cost.

A General VA, who is used for general tasks such as researching keywords and managing your calendar, can cost you between $500 and $900 per month.

Whereas a Video Editor VA, who helps out with editing raw video footage, adding audio effects, and uploading to YouTube, can cost you between $800 to $2,000 per month.

Chris also gives you great guidelines on the elements of a good job description before you hire the VA (a crucial step that I missed), and a list of 10 questions that you need to ask during your interviews.

In the other sections of Virtual Freedom, Chris goes over how to train your virtual staff, and how to manage & build your virtual team so that it’s most effective.

He also goes over decision points such as whether it makes sense to hire someone who’s local to your geographic area or to go overseas.

What I liked most about Virtual Freedom is that it is packed with case studies of entrepreneurs who used a virtual staffing model, and they discuss the hurdles they faced, the best practices they used, and most helpful of all, the tools they used to make it work.

The book really an all-in-one guidebook on hiring, training, managing and a VA or a team of VAs, and I’m sure you’ll find it extremely helpful.

Cheers,

Hassan

P.S. – If you’re really serious about hiring a Virtual Assistant, then Virtual Freedom is the only comprehensive book you need. Pick up a copy of it by clicking here.