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Hired a VA for 10 hours a week and got back 15 hours of my life
I started working with a virtual assistant from the Philippines about 3 months ago. I pay her $8 an hour to handle email sorting, calendar stuff, and research. In the first month, I ended up spending more time teaching her than I saved. But by month two, she knew my systems and I got back around 15 hours per week. That let me take on two extra small jobs this month worth about $1,200 total. Has anyone else tried hiring help and seen a real gain after the training phase?
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brooke_murray12d ago
Wait, did you track the time you spent training her? That's the part most people skip. I hired someone for basically the same thing, a VA from the Philippines too actually, and I kept a simple time log for the first month. It felt like I was losing my mind at first because I spent like 6 hours total that first week just showing her my folders and email rules. But by week 4 she was saving me about 12 hours a week and I stopped logging because it was obviously working. The real gain for me came when I stopped treating her like a robot and just gave her a checklist of my daily tasks to follow. Now she handles all my client scheduling and research for blog posts and I've been able to pick up two more freelance jobs in my down time. Just stick with it through the rough first couple weeks, it pays off.
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angela72812d ago
Did you ever run into issues with her making judgment calls on your behalf, or do you still review everything before it goes out? I keep second-guessing whether my VA will miss something important, like a client deadline or a weird email request. The checklist idea sounds solid but I worry about the stuff that falls outside of it, you know?
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