#75. Virtual Assistants: What They Do, How They Help, and Why You Should Hire One

We're gonna dive into what it means to hire a VA , a virtual assistant for your team , and whether this is a brand new idea for you or a concept that you have experience with .

I think you're gonna find something here that you can use , because we're covering a lot of ground and I am sharing with you my favorite VA , who is so much more than that in the whole wide world . So stay tuned .

Hi , I'm Wendy Pitts Reeves and , with over two decades of experience in the private practice world , I've built my six-figure business while learning a lot of lessons the hard way . This is the first podcast that shows you how to apply the principles of energy alignment and strategy to build a practice that is profit-centered but people forward .

This is the Ideal Practice Podcast . Hey guys , this is Wendy , your host here at Ideal Practice . Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of this little podcast . I'm so glad you're here . I have been traveling for the last couple of weeks and I have so much I'm probably gonna share with you , I think , over the next few episodes .

I spent a couple of weeks touring around the Pacific Northwest and I have not been there before . I made one quick trip there many , many years ago , but I've never really spent any time up there and oh my gosh , what an experience that was . So I'll be sharing a story or two from that , I think , over the next couple of weeks , just because I want to .

But today I want to tell you about our guest today . Today you get to meet Queenie Verhoeven . Now Queenie is my personal executive assistant . She is the founder of your Business , ally , which is a VA services company . She has an entire team behind her as well .

We've been working together for several years now and I've actually been honored and pleased to see her growth as a business owner . I think we help each other actually that way , and that's exactly why I wanted to bring this conversation to you Rather than a sort of traditional interview .

I asked her just to join me and for the two of us to just process out loud for you what it means to hire a VA .

So we're going to talk about all kinds of things like what a VA actually is , how they can help you in your practice , what that actually looks like , how to think about bringing someone like this onto your team , the difference between hiring a VA and hiring an employee . They are very different .

These are two very different things , and I don't just mean from a legal or tax standpoint . It's a very different thing energetically as well . We're going to talk about all that .

We're going to talk about different areas of specialty , how adding someone like this to your team can really boost your bottom line , and we're also going to talk about some things about what to expect in terms of how you might pay someone and how all of that works . Who to hire first , what would you hire them for ?

We're going to cover all of that and so much more . So I really think you're going to love this . Queenie is not used to being out in front . She is very comfortable with being the behind the scenes magician that makes things happen .

But she was kind enough to do me the honor of joining me here and I think you're going to love her as much as I do , because I couldn't run my business without her . So Queenie is six hours ahead of me , she is in the Netherlands and there was a time back in the past , I've worked with several VAs .

I used to think that I wanted someone in the same time zone as me . Turns out that doesn't matter at all , actually , and we talked about that too . So without further ado , let's get in to the interview . All right , hello everyone . Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Ideal Practice Podcast . I am so excited .

As you have already heard in the intro , it is my deepest pleasure and highest honor to introduce you today to one of my favorite people on the planet , and she knows I'm not just saying that you get to meet my right hand , queenie Verhoeven . Queenie , say hi .

Tell everybody where you are and a little bit about who you help and how you help them . What do you do ?

I say I excel in providing online or you can call it remote or virtual services to my clients , who are mostly solo entrepreneurs in running or starting their business , and I have three core services . It's administrative , marketing . And what's the other three ? Oh , what is it ? Admin , marketing and tech support .

So those are the three services that I offer to my clients .

So for those of you guys , I'll tell you so Queenie and I have been working together now for how long , Queenie , I want to say your son was seven when we started working .

The concept of an online business manager when you start looking into VA's y'all , you'll see that that's a title that basically kind of means someone who handles your whole business in certain ways behind the scenes . Thank you , Right , Does it all ?

It's fairly recent that you started using the title Project Integrator , which I love , because I think one thing about the title of a VA and y'all we're going to get into exactly what a VA is . Sometimes I think that title doesn't even come close to doing justice to what this kind of role brings .

So to fill you guys in , so what Queenie and I are going to do today , we're just going to have a conversation back and forth about what a virtual assistant is , how they can help you , all the different ways that this kind of person can support you in your practice .

I'm going to share some of my own previous history and experience because I have worked with a lot of VA's over the years .

Queenie has an entire team that she has built in her business , so she has even a whole different perspective on this and we just want to kind of share both of us kind of what we know about this world , because it's a little bit foreign , I think , to a lot of people in private practice and it can be a huge , huge , huge benefit for you in your business .

So , queenie and I , if you get a little bit of a history Queenie is I've forgotten oh , I know the way I found you . Queenie was a mutual friend who is also a client of yours gave me your name right , and so the mastermind that I used to be in you guys have heard me talk about the coach I used to work with .

In that mastermind people were always going I need a VA , do you know somebody ? Do you know somebody , who do you know ? And it ended up that there's like how many of us ? I think four or five people that were in that mastermind now who work with you , I think . Is that true ? Three three is three now .

Okay , there's been others over time , I know so it was word of mouth that brought me to you to begin with , but before I got , before , I was with you . Back three or do you think of somebody else ? Those Michelle Janet , me Can't remember . Yes , she was she was yes , yeah , that's a really great thing , yeah .

So we were all like oh , do you know Queenie ? You need to know Queenie , and y'all I have to say I used to didn't want to tell people about Queenie because I didn't want them to Find out about her , because I don't want to share her . But I'm okay now because she has her own team , so it's okay . But I want to feel you guys in .

So in the past I hired my first VA Just in my counseling practice back in the early 2000s when I first wanted to start speaking , and I hired my very first coach this is way back To help me learn how to charge for speaking , because I had done a ton of free speaking I've been doing that for years and I wanted to start getting paid for and I had no idea

how to do that . So I hired a coach to help me with that and With her recommendation I ended up hiring a virtual assistant who was here in the States at the time Whose job was to set up speaking engagement .

So there was a whole sort of administrative process to that Reaching out to the venues , getting the contract signed , putting together the assets you would have , like any promotional materials , putting it back , then a checklist of literal , physical things that had to take with me to the talk , like that kind of stuff Mailing .

She would mail Like brochures to them ahead of time , that kind of stuff . So that was my very first VA and that went well for a while and then somewhere along the way that ended I've forgotten why now it's been a while and then I didn't have anybody and then y'all know I was running secret adventures .

Y'all remember that that was the , the business that I ran , where I was taking folks out on these experiential Adventures every month . That was an extremely time intensive business , took a lot of of energy from me and I loved it and I was having trouble keeping it going because it was really a lot and in that I thought I've got to hire some help .

I gotta get somebody to help me that time . So the first person I hired was basically purely administrative . She was really good at emails , sending Documents , tracking processes , that kind of stuff . And then the second person I hired was a program , a computer programmer who used to work for IBM and had left that and had started .

She called it a virtual assistance program , a business . But truth was she was Kind of like you Queenie , like a real expert in the tech side of stuff and it had a real systems Brain , like because she was in computers , right , I needed a system for planning those trips and getting all that parts of it , and she was .

I paid a lot and it was quite expensive to work with her but she had a real high level of expertise , which is what I needed . She was also in the States and I worked with her for two of the three years . I was running secret adventures then . Then my life changed and I moved into a different direction and I closed that down .

But golly , that was a huge help . So that's two people in the past . And then Queenie .

Then I had a little time , then I started my coaching practice and then I brought you on board and what I remember I want to tell people about how I've the very first thing I did with you and this is a great way To think of and I'm gonna I'm promise , I'm gonna let you talk in a second . Queenie . I just wanted to kind of tell this background .

When I first brought you on . So I had a council , I had a . Y'all know I was running a group counseling practice . This was pre-zoom , pre-pandemic . This is . This is several years ago and I had a system . I had gotten to the point where I required new clients to Pay for their session before I met them the first time . And did you remember that ?

and so there was this whole thing where I would schedule them . I needed them to bring a check or something like that , do the paperwork , get them sort of set up . Before I saw them because I I had changed the way I was doing that first visit it was a two-hour visit , it was more money , I could not risk people cancelling at the last .

I needed them to follow through . But I was literally physically having people drive by my office and drop off a check and I remember telling you I can't figure out any way to do this . How can I automate this ? How can I make this simple ? I literally see no way to do it and I hired you for kind of a test project .

Yeah , yeah , you and you offered that . I think that was something that way you were doing , yeah .

And you're like , well , we just need to set up an online schedule and we can make it where they can pay you online . Oh really , can I just do a pot ? Yeah , we can do all that . Okay , can you ? Can you do that ? And what ? You have emails that go out afterwards automatically . Really , how does that work , right ?

So you set that up for me and then I learned how to do it myself , and then , and then we just took off from there .

Yeah , that was my very , very first course . Huh , what a hoot . I've forgotten about that .

But what is a virtual assistant ? And , um , how is that different from all the other things that are out there ? How's that different from hiring an employee ? How's that different from paying somebody 50 bucks on fiverr to design a logo for you ? What is tell ? Talk to us about the whole concept of a VA .

Now , no employee thing . All the benefits , all the perks that an employee can get . You don't need to provide that .

If they're you know all that kind of stuff and if they are true in the US , what we would call a W-2 employee . You also have to pay Social Security , you have to pay Workman's Comp . There are all these various other fees that go and fall into the fee . When you hire a VA , queenie's Right is an independent contractor . They provide all their own stuff .

You may provide access to some software . That's the thing . If I'm using Dropbox , I may provide access to that and I'm paying for that on my end because I use it .

Fiverr is just one of many sites where you can go and find quick help to do something specific . You can get somebody to design a business card . You can get somebody to do almost anything you want there , but that is a like . Talk to me about the difference there .

Yeah , so with the VA you can hire VA actually from Fiverr or Upward . But if you really are thinking of having a long term relationship with the VA , that's when you hire outside this third party platforms , because that will be just between you and the VA , like there's no other party involved .

They get to know you , they get to know your quirks , your habits , your preferences . They get to know your business right and they can not just do things , but like not just because they're not just taskmasters , they're not just people you hand off a to-do list to , right ? I don't think so , tell me , let's talk about that a little bit .

Like how is a VA more than just somebody who sends out the email you told them to send out , whatever ? Yeah , do you know ? Oh , okay .

So you perform a role and you're not just simply filling in a task or completing a task .

That's a really great point , queenie . It is a role , it is a position in your business . So , like in my business , you have been the person who has been the . You have certain key . You have several key roles , but one of them is you're the person that helps me put a course into action .

Every time I come up with a new course , which happens fairly often One of the things I love about Queenie is I can throw her five curve balls at a time and she catches them . It's crazy . I don't know how she , I don't know why she hasn't fired me 10 times over at this point , but for some reason she hasn't . But I can go hey , queenie , guess what ?

I've got a new idea for a course . I'm going to launch it next week and know it doesn't even exist yet , but I'm going to send it to you because it's coming and she's like okay , and what you do for me . So courses is one big way you've helped me . Another one is even in my counseling practice . You help me onboard new clients and get that set up .

It's a very small role , but it's a role . Nevertheless , you help me when I have an ongoing course like Evolve that is going on now . That's my six month mastermind . You become the person that sort of helps me keep everybody in the loop . So you keep , you know , you interact with folks for me . You make sure they get what they need .

We do , I do a training , you capture all the assets , you set it all up in Kajabi like you're doing all the tech stuff , but you're also making sure my clients are well served . So there's a little bit of a customer service thing . There's kind of a big picture tech thing there that's hugely helpful .

There's a little bit of help with the counseling side of stuff . And then a lot is you just help me organize my brain , which is like going in so many different directions at one time . It's kind of scary . And no , I do not have ADHD , I am just an entrepreneur and this is how we think .

But you are often I'll be like Queenie , what do you think Could we do ? X ?

And you're like okay , if you want to do that , here's what you need to think about , and you will put together a list for me or you will say when do you need to consider this if you're going to do that , this is how we can make that work , and you are so good at helping me fill in the cracks and lay out the lines of , like , all the different pieces

that have to go into a project . That's what you do for me , right , like a project integrator .

Yeah , now you take care of , help me . You take care of , help me . You just take care of the processes in between , in between what I want , what I have now and what I want to deliver .

So if the client is very clear about that , or this is what I want to deliver , then a good VA should be able to figure out how she can help the client deliver what she wants to be delivered .

Queenie , tell us a little bit about , like , different types of clients you've worked with , different types of businesses you've worked with and what you've done for them . It's a pretty interesting variety , I think .

And so , basically , because my main services are categorized into three admin , marketing and tech support . So you say admin , so just taking care of their files , simply organizing for things like that . Also , customer service I put that under admin . Like responding to clients , to your clients .

That includes email marketing , like your newsletters , creating marketing materials like shores flyers anything that has to do with marketing . I also do marketing plans and social media . That's part of marketing . Social media , like helping you with , let's say , facebook advertising , instagram .

A problem with your websites or with your hosting provider , or if you have , if you need a tool that can , that you think will solve your problems , then I will help you figure that out and I will help you set it up .

actually talk to people right and who will schedule clients for you . You can get someone who will Set appointments , Set appointments who actually acts as if they were sitting in your office and being your receptionist , even though they're doing it remotely .

I , when I first started working with the VA's , I felt like I had to have somebody who was in my time zone . And so I was leery in the beginning with you because you're six hours ahead of me . So today y'all , my bookkeeper is six hours behind me and Queenie's six hours ahead of me , so I have a global business , which I really love .

But that has turned out not to be an issue at all , actually , because which is something to address because what I love is like I can send you something before I go to bed and I wake up the next morning and it's done , because you're so far ahead of me time wise .

Today I am on the middle of onboarding a new virtual assistant who's going to serve a different role , who is in the Philippines . She's 12 hours ahead of me , but if you have someone answering the phone , then , yeah , they probably do need to be somewhere close or in your time zone .

They also probably need to , you know , have really good English or have real good skills that fit with your particular audience . But you can hire someone . Live like that . You can hire someone to do this kind of administrative stuff . You can hire someone to do the tech stuff .

One of the things I want y'all to think about is that you're hiring somebody like there are certain things that you probably can do but should not be doing . Just because you can do , it doesn't mean you should .

So , right , because which is one of the problems for an entrepreneur we are kind of one-stop shops and we are the kind of people who are like you know what ? I can do this . I can figure this out Because we are . We are problem solvers and we kind of like to get in there and do it . In today's world , there are more and more tools .

There's more and more things online that you can find a tool for anything . Yes , I can also waste an inordinate amount of time figuring out which scheduling tool should I use . How do I make that communicate with my credit card processor ? How do I make that fit into my website ?

How do I make that fit into what I say to people on the phone and then what I do when something breaks ? You know and oh , I've kind of figured that Right , all that kind of stuff . What if I want to put a plug-in on my website ? Don't waste your time doing that . Hire somebody who knows how to , who already knows how to do that stuff .

And one of the things that you're good at , queenie , is figuring out which tool would work best in a specific situation . There's been more than once when I have said to you I'm kind of thinking about X . Is this the best one or what should we use for this ? And you'll be like let me look into that and we don't do this .

We did this a lot in the beginning . We were just getting started . You would research different platforms .

Okay , here you go . Yeah , yeah , yeah . So , in terms of how somebody can help you , you just said that you can actually design a website if you need to .

You can pay somebody $10,000 to do a website , and there are times when that is exactly what you should do , believe it or not , if it's a really complicated situation or your business is at a certain level .

But you I've seen you've done websites for me now several times and you've done it for several of my clients as well but you can fix a website , you can improve a website , you can set up a website , but you can also make all the parts play together . That's the tech side of what you do , yeah .

Y'all know that I have something I called the seven pillars of an ideal practice and the sixth one of those is about promotion , which is about the marketing side of your practice , and I did a whole training yesterday with the people in my mastermind about that and by the time we were done with that it was a comprehensive training and we were talking about all

the different parts of a client's journey , from where they first even become aware that you exist to when they're a little curious about you , to when they want to know more , to when they're ready to hire you in some way for even a small thing , to when they become a loyal fan and an ambassador for you in a way .

And we went through all those different steps of that process and what has to happen in each one of those . And there were all kinds of ways where you create content , connect with your clients in some way , deliver a service or a value in some way , and there's a lot to that .

As you're creating it , Once it's up and running it's not so bad , but as you're developing it it can be a lot , or tweaking it and what , Queenie , what a VA can do is help you . And they were asking me this yesterday . They were like how do I do this ? How do I plan content ? How do I put this stuff out there ?

How do I develop a tool , a worksheet , a quiz , a mini course on parenting for my clients ? How do I do all that ? And every time I'm like you figure out the content , what the meat of it is , and then hire a VA to help you put it together .

You cannot outsource that , but what it takes to implement it you can . So , like you're the visionary , like there's the what's the book ? Is it the book ? Is it Rocket Fuel ? Is the book that talks about this or Traction ? I think it's Rocket Fuel . One of those two books is either Rocket Fuel or Traction . We'll link to both of them .

But one of those talks about that there's a visionary and there is a implementer . In most businesses , like the number , the person who gets things off the ground is the one with the big idea , but there's always a number two who knows how to make that real . That's what a really good VA can be for you .

So there are two more things I want to talk about before we pull this episode to a close , and one of them is I want to talk about , like , where would somebody start if they if they've never done this before and they have some kind of a wellness based business ?

So there are therapists and counseling , there are yoga teacher , there are a reiki practitioner and energy healer what's and they've never hired help of any kind . What's a good place for someone to start the very first thing ? What would be a good kind of task or a good way to sort of tip toe into this world ? What would you recommend ?

If you do it weekly , then in a month that's , you're already losing one hour of your time which would be really you know , precious Like maybe people would pay 200 euro an hour for that one hour and then you're losing it because you are doing a blog posting which you actually just delegate to someone for a fraction of your hourly rate . Say for example right .

So , but I would recommend that you delegate tasks that you yourself is a little bit familiar with in the beginning , especially if you're hiring someone who is not that experienced yet . But if you're hiring someone and experience , for example , if you're , if you hire someone like me , then you know you could .

You could just delegate that without you knowing how to Meaning somebody who's experienced and has been in it for a while versus someone who's brand new right that's a really good point .

Your point about the first thing to do , guys , is what I would recommend you do is to spend about a week one whole week , maybe two where you make a list , like put a piece of paper on your desk and just capture all the things that you do in a day . Just notice how many times do you make phone calls ?

How many times are you scheduling something , looking up something for a client online , trying to figure out something , having to email something , trying to figure out some form that you've got to update in some way , sending off information to some board that you've got to report something to , whatever ?

If you just keep a notepad on your desk and for a week , if you do it at least a week you're going to capture almost everything you typically do in a day . You don't need to write down the details about what it was about , but just capture the different kinds of things that you do in a day that you don't even pay attention to .

Then , out of those , what are the things that ? They're easy . You do them all the time you don't really think anything about it . But , queenie , you're right that you know how to do so . Well , it's like why would I pay somebody to do that ? That's easy .

Oftentimes those are the things that are eating up a lot of your time , and your time is worth a lot . The benefit of starting there was something that you do all the time . That's really easy . You know how to do it . Hand that off first , because two things One , that's busy work that's going to .

You're going to be astonished at how it feels to get that off your plate . But two , you will know when it's done well by the person you hire , because you know what you're looking for . You know what to expect , right . So I would think of it this way I would start with what you already know how to do . That would be first .

My second thing I would look for is if there's a problem that you can't figure out how to solve , like I did with you when I couldn't figure out how to get people to make a deposit for that first visit . If there's some little thing like how do I make ? I've just , I want to do X , but I cannot for the life of me figure out a way to do that .

How would I do that ? That's the second way . And then , after you've got someone on board and you're kind of you're getting used to this idea of working in this way , then you can ask them to do things you don't know how to do .

We're going to get , we're going to get into the how to's in part two of this . Today , I just wanted to tell you a little bit more about what a VA is and how they can help you . Let's talk about money real quick , queenie , and then we'll wrap this one up . So , in terms of money and cost , you're fine .

As we're recording this , she's worrying about our videos being frozen , but it's okay , we don't have to worry about that . So , in terms of costs , what would you like

to say about that , queenie ? I've got my own take on that , but I'd like to hear from you in terms of what somebody should expect when it comes to paying for a virtual assistant .

What's typical , how many hours do most people pay for , or just any kind of an overview of how the pricing tends to work ?

But I think the cost of hiring a virtual assistant largely depend on factors like , say , the type of work that they do , because if you are hiring someone to post blogs for you , that virtual assistant may be less expensive than when you hire someone to help you launch a course right .

So most of the time if it's urgent , people charge you for more . Even if you hire people from Fiverr , for example , they have different rates for number of A rush job .

I think I'm not very sure , but that's , I think , the general idea that I don't know . Do you still pay $10 per hour for people in the US , Wendy ?

What I learned is that when you and actually I had a my tech the guy that used to help me with my taxes helped me understand this that when you hire a W2 employee , they you're paying all those extra government , you're paying for their social security , for workments , comp , all those things I said well ago .

So you may pay them $15 an hour , $18 an hour for an in-house person , but you're actually gonna it's actually gonna be costing you a dollar or two more . Now , y'all , I'm not an expert at this , so don't quote me on this , but this is what I've been told . If you're paying .

You hire somebody at $15 an hour in-house to do to just deal with it , talk to your clients and schedule appointments for you and send out paperwork , whatever . You may hire them at $15 , but you're actually gonna be paying more , like $17 , because of the extra things that you have to pay .

Right , if you hire a virtual assistant , you're gonna pay more per hour in a way , but you're not buying all the equipment . So I may pay somebody $15 or $18 , but I gotta buy them on computer , you know . But if you're hiring a virtual assistant , your per hour rate will be higher than it would be an employee usually .

But that's because they have to provide all their own insurance , their own supplies , their own software , their own right , all that and in my experience on the lower end of a VA in the US is gonna be around 25 per hour and it goes up . I've seen $75 or $100 an hour , like exactly like you said , depending upon your level of expertise .

That's a biggie y'all . Yeah , and in fact , the coach that I'm working with now I wanna speak to this too , the coach that I work with today . He has a staff of eight who are full-time employees in his company and I'm sure he pays them very well . They are US-based and they are professionals who have a very , a certain type of expertise .

That is not necessarily what you would do with a VA . So they are copywriters , right , social media managers , like the people who have to have a certain , like a very high , level of professional expertise . But they all have two or three VAs out of country that they pay less for but who help them do their jobs right .

It did require a level of organization , which is what I needed , and it was fine and I really appreciated it . But I didn't need her to know WordPress and I didn't need her to understand how WordPress and active campaign work together with Kajabi and with Stripe . Yeah .

That's a charge more for that , because with the package it's like there's also a guarantee that you're actually going to be working with me for a certain period of time and so I charge less in terms of per hour rate . But then if it's just you know , okay , I will just pay you per hour , not the package , then it's more .

So we've thrown a lot at you today .

I think , if I want to sort of tie this like , sort of bring all this home and sort of tie it up , what I want you to know is that a virtual assistant can help you with something as simple as getting your paper , your paper , your forms , designed for your practice , all the way up to managing your website and integrating it with your payment system and

helping you launch the course that you want to do , right . So all like , they can do the whole thing . You're still the brains behind it , but they can help you in any way you want and you will pay less or more depending upon the level of expertise . Urgency was a good point that you made , queenie .

And the last thing I want to say is , if you're just getting started with this , it is perfectly fine to hire somebody for five hours a month , like literally five hours a month , right , I have that package Five hours a month , which doesn't sound like much , but you know , if you're just getting started , sometimes that's all you need , right .

In our next episode we are part two of this we're gonna talk about where to find somebody , how to hire them . We're gonna go into the details about the how , but is there anything else around ? Just the concept of the role that I haven't thought to ask you , that you wanna say , or anything else you wanna share .

So , I think it's one of the most important things to consider when hiring a VA . Like maybe you make a plan , like let's just say a 30-day plan , on the things that we want to delegate immediately to a VA . And then you can think of the more long-term .

I need someone to help me figure out how to do that and I just want to handle that process . Or I want to put together some kind of a free offer on my website that people download , and I don't even how do I design that and how do I set that up .

I just want someone to smooth this out for me , yeah , yeah there you go .

All right , I'm going to pull this to a close with that , because I think we need I could talk all day long about this , and we actually are going to kind of talk all day long . We're going to wrap this one up .

I hope what you have learned today is giving you some really good sort of places to start thinking about how you can identify what your practice needs , how you can offload that into a role and add someone to your team who's going to serve that particular function , and how to start thinking about maybe some of the budgeting aspects of that .

All right , we'll talk a little bit more about that later as well , and with that , queenie

, thank you so much . How can people learn more about you ? What is your website ? You want to share that with them so they can find you .