The Master Your Business Podcast

78. The Secrets to Virtual Assistant Success for Your Service Business with Laura Weeden

June 25, 2024 Deirdre Martin
78. The Secrets to Virtual Assistant Success for Your Service Business with Laura Weeden
The Master Your Business Podcast
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The Master Your Business Podcast
78. The Secrets to Virtual Assistant Success for Your Service Business with Laura Weeden
Jun 25, 2024
Deirdre Martin

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Unlock business growth with virtual assistants! Expert Laura Weeden reveals tips to find, hire and maximise VAs for operations, productivity and sanity.

For more information, check out the show notes here.

Timestamps:
[02:24]
What is a Virtual Assistant?
[03:39] Where can I find a VA to hire?
[04:58] How do you determine who is right for your business?
[19:57] The key ingrediant to a successful VA/Client relationship





Show Notes Transcript

Send us a text

Unlock business growth with virtual assistants! Expert Laura Weeden reveals tips to find, hire and maximise VAs for operations, productivity and sanity.

For more information, check out the show notes here.

Timestamps:
[02:24]
What is a Virtual Assistant?
[03:39] Where can I find a VA to hire?
[04:58] How do you determine who is right for your business?
[19:57] The key ingrediant to a successful VA/Client relationship





78. Laura Weeden

So I would say it all comes down to what you mentioned about bringing your VAs in and treating them as a team member. It's a bit like, Bringing somebody into your household, like they're there, they're in it with you, the good times, the bad times. 

Are you drowning in admin? Are you feeling the sting of missed opportunities because you just can't keep up with everything on your own? Today is Your lucky day, my friend, because we're diving into the world of virtual assistance. These might be the very secret weapon that you need for streamline success in your business.

My fabulous guest, Laura Whedon of Q Virtue is a total guru when it comes to finding, hiring, and maximizing the power of VAs for your business. In this episode, I promise you she's dropping knowledge bombs left, right, and center. So grab a notebook. You're definitely going to want to take some notes. Get ready to learn exactly what a virtual assistant or a VA is and what superpowers they can potentially bring to your business.

How to find the perfect VA match. Think of it as a little bit like speed dating so that you can lessen your workload and the nitty gritty on pricing. Contracts and setting expectations so there's no nasty surprises down the road. And also you're going to get some top insider tips for building a rock solid dream team dynamic with your VA.

Folks, Laura really knows her stuff and get this, she's got an incredible checklist that she's given away for free. Which is the 10 things you need to know before hiring a VA. And that's all waiting for you in the show notes. So think of this as your shortcut to virtual assistant victory. Are you ready?

Laura, welcome to the Master Your Business podcast. It's such a pleasure having you on the show. Oh, thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here. So Laura, I'm going to dive straight into the questions today. Okay. I, you and I, we met on retreat in Lanzarote and I was blown away by you, your knowledge, your expertise, your energy, and so much more.

And your background, as I said in the intro, is that you're a virtual assistant, and you're also working on another thing there for other virtual assistants. 

And what I want you to help people understand is, first and foremost, what is a virtual assistant? Oh, great question. So I get asked this very, very frequently.

So a virtual assistant is, if you think back into sort of a corporate situation, a virtual assistant could be a version of a PA. So it's somebody who comes in and supports you in areas of your business, helps to keep you on track, keep you organized, and help to provide a service to your business. What that VA does and what that VA looks like can be a number of different things.

So VAs come in all different skill sets and different niches. So there is, it's a fast, support system and it depends on the business and the business needs. So a virtual assistant is somebody that comes into your business that supports you in an area that you require them to support you in.

They're not employed. They are self employed. They often have multiple clients. They have their own business. They understand business because they are running their own business. And they are working with it could be slightly different niches as well as different roles within other companies.

 And so if I was going to look for a virtual assistant, where might I look to find one? It completely depends on what it is that you're looking for support with. A lot of VAs, virtual assistants, I'll call them VAs just during this podcast, is that they are supportive from an administrative yeah, administrative place.

So they might come in to help you manage your diary, keep on top of your inbox, very basic admin. Roles. And for those types of people, you can find them everywhere. So they're on LinkedIn, they're on Instagram. You, once you know what you're looking for and what you need support with, you can very quickly find a pool of VAs that specialize in that area.

It's interesting because I work with a lot of other business owners who like me manage a business online and sometimes there's challenges and I've experienced this personally where I've hired people for less money and some countries thinking, Oh, this could be a really good way for me to spend my money and buy back time in my business, but even though they're English speaking, they're not as UK English speaking.

So some of the tasks that they helped me with meant that I had to go back and change them and edit them and stuff like that. So I suppose what in a roundabout way, I'm saying, do you get what you pay for?

 How do you know who to hire? How would how much you should pay for somebody like this?

Is it, can you give any guidance on that? I mean, I can give my opinion. And I think it's really important to embrace other regions with the workspace. And I think I have met over my time. I've been in business seven years. I have met VAs in the Philippines who have provided amazing support.

Now, what you need to be careful about is what, who's doing what in your business. So I think for some business people, they think that they can get Bring in a VA that's going to service all of their issues. Be like a master of everything. And I think it's really key that you pick your team just as you would if you were running a business and you had a team in front of you.

You need to make sure that you pick a va that matches the skillset and sorry, matches the skillset and delivers the work that you require them to. So if you do end up. Embracing a Philippine, no VA to come in and do some, perhaps some tech work or some podcast work, you might need a UK or, an English speaking VA that's going to then manage that team or help support you in a way that can then delegate and then project manage.

those tasks from other members and bring it all together. That makes sense. And like from a price range though, is there a price range? Is there a low to a high price range? What could people expect to pay for a virtual assistant? So the going rate for like an administrative VA, so somebody that's going to manage your diary and inbox and things like that, I think you'd be looking around the 25 an hour.

However, that goes up significantly up towards the 70s and 80s, dependent on like the skill set. So if you're bringing somebody in with an overview where they're managing a team, perhaps they're building some tech for you then you'd look to pay slightly like higher rates. Interesting. Okay. And why that's interesting is because it seems so different.

I've got seven people who I contract in to do different parts and things in my business. And I do pay them different rates based on the tasks that I'm asking them to action. And, I think with that though, the some of the revenue generating tasks are the ones where I feel more comfortable paying higher rates rather than the administrative tasks.

And is that your experience that that's the norm? For example, what I mean by this folks is revenue generating tasks might be. email copywriting, for example, or social media copywriting. I do on my own by the way, that's just what I'm talking about. So could you expect to pay a VA more who does those kind of revenue generating tasks?

I don't know. That's why I'm asking. Definitely. So I think it's all based on the business owner and where they value their time versus money. So for example if you take A day rate of somebody say they earn 2000 pounds in a day and they're doing these 10 tasks. So a VA could come in, for example, and take half of those tasks away.

And although they are a higher rate of pay and they're not generating revenue as such, they're allowing you to then use the rest of that time to focus on generating revenue. So just eliminating your time spent on those tasks and giving you that time back. In effect, they are. Achieving so much more. So I think it's really important to move away from the, I'm paying X amount of money for X service is what you get out of it.

What does it mean to you in your business? So if you've got somebody that's coming in and doing the copy for you or managing your socials, if that allows you to bring in. X amount in leads frees you up to then work, work on your one to one clients or work on another area of your business that role then isn't, you can't really say that's 25 pounds an hour because at the end of the day, that becomes priceless because it's growing and allowing your business to grow at quicker rate than it would ever grow.

Not having that support. That makes so much sense. That makes so much sense. And when I started hiring people, Laura, I have to say, I'm like, I had initially said in my business, I'm never going to hire anyone. And then it started out with my podcast manager. And then my podcast manager was like, dear, I don't really like doing this podcast stuff.

Could we maybe get somebody else to do this and I'll still help you over here. And I was like, okay, so now I have a kind of an admin VA and a podcast manager. I didn't want to let her go because she was great. But I really struggled to let go of some of those admin tasks.

And am I alone in that? Or like why? Absolutely not. So I think a lot of people end up getting told, or they get to the point, the breaking point, I call it where, so I would say that the business landscape is divided 50, 50, the people that are ready to let go and move on quite quickly and can put these, put measures in place to be able to onboard a team.

And then there's 50 percent of business owners that get to the point of where they're broken. They've gone beyond it. They know that they need help, but they've left it too late. So it's two very different types of people and there's different ways to deal with both of those. With type B, let's say type B and they're the ones that are really burnt out and they've gone beyond the breaking point and they know that they need help.

They are definitely more willing to let go of things because they're either their health's at risk or their business that they've run themselves into the ground and the businesses are performing in a way their hands almost forced so they are more open to handing over those tasks now type a who know that they need to scale and they're ready to bring in a team but they don't there's a trust issue there's they don't know what they want to hand over they don't know how it's going to work there's a vulnerability about letting somebody into your business and it's down to your VA at the end of the day to communicate with you about that whole process.

So you shouldn't have this conflict in feeling of vulnerability and almost like being scared to hand something over because you have fitted your VA. You have trained them properly in your procedures and your process, how you like to work, and therefore you're in safe hands. And and it's really important that you come to that role and bring that person on with a sense of willing.

So I understand it's scary and I understand that you feel incredibly vulnerable handing it over. But once you bring that person into your business, the rewards outweigh that, that initial fire. That makes sense. And would you say that there are. Common tasks that every business owner could hand over almost instantly to a VA the very first time they hired them, or what tasks do those might those be?

For me, Big one is onboarding and offboarding clients. So that's a really nice customer journey. That's really important for businesses. And that's something that a VA could really lean into. So they could bring in, so when you onboard your clients and you're sending back and forth contracts, you could be liaising about regular meetings, just that handholding process of bringing someone into your business, that's really important.

If you are busy still working in your business, sometimes you might not have the time to be able to do that. So a VA, bringing a VA in to manage that process is a really good call. And the same with off boarding as well, that, when a contract ends or you come to the end of a project, instead of sort of part in, Parting ways and being like, all the best, there's ways that you can like capture testimonials, off board them correctly, just keep the door open for an ongoing relationship.

And, I think a lot of the stuff around that is specifically with, if you've vetted somebody and trained them and they've, given them your procedures, your standard operating procedures, it's trusting, like you said, it's being open to trust them to do that stuff. And like some of that contracts or invoices and setting up meetings can feel scary for giving people access to things like your.

Passwords and stuff like that. What do you suggest that people could do, Laura, for, passwords and access to systems so that, okay, let me just backtrack here ever so slightly on this. I come from a banking background and there's this whole fear about your data and your passwords and your security and all that sort of stuff.

And there's a tool that I use to help with passwords, which is LastPass, but I don't know if that's what you'd recommend, but. As a business owner, like I'm really conscious about handing stuff over to people and I'm sure anybody who's listening probably feels the same. If I'm going to trust somebody to do this, I want to make sure that my client's information is secure and that My information is secure.

So what do you recommend is a good way to do this as you're building that relationship and trust with a new VA? So to start off, like right back to basics, any VA that you bring into your business will need a set of policies. So always make sure that your VA has data protection. It's only a small amount of money.

I think it's 35 pounds for the year. But every VA should be able to provide you with their certificate of data protection, public liability and business insurance. So that's three things that you always need to make sure that you see a copy of their valid insurance documents and documentation, because that's a really good key.

Because when when VA is set up there is a window of people. Industry that can come in and get started and not realize that this stuff is needed. It's really important that your VA provides you with that information so that you are in safe hands. Should anything ever go wrong?

That's never happened in my seven years. But we, I recommend it to all of my VAs on my team. We all use last pass. It's a great way to share and secure email. In the end. Password information. And no, no trained VA or no va that's, that comes into your business will come in without a contract, without possibly an NDA.

So any information that is shared you're covered. There's between the insurance policies LastPass your contract, your personal contract with that VA and a possible NDA, there's no information that can be shared. even having conversations with other VAs or anyone within their team about your clients or your business is not appropriate. Oh, that's good to know. I actually never would have thought of that. One of my VAs has sent me stuff through, but none of the others have I gotten anything like that from. So that's something now for me to go and do. So whoever's editing this podcast, know that I'm coming for you.

And okay, Laura, and let's say in terms of relationship breaking down with people, right? Because sometimes people are not going to be a good fit. Maybe the tasks aren't done on time. If it's an employee, it's very difficult to fire an employee, but what's the Yeah, I don't know. I don't wanna ask, but have you ever been fired or like how can somebody fire a VA if it's just not working out?

So have, going into a relationship with the VA is a mutual decision on both parts and there have been times over the years where you've got really excited about a client relationship and a few weeks in you find some red flags and things aren't going as planned. That's normally around. It's always a hundred percent around communication.

So whether a VA doesn't communicate with you or you don't communicate with your VA enough, that tends to be the biggest breakdown issue. But you have a contract with that VA. So some VAs might have a role in one month contract. They might have a three month contract. So that's down to you and your VA to agree on in the beginning.

Any normal or decent VA, I should say, will always have like a trial calling off period. So I always work with my clients for a month and then do a review, see what's working, what's not working, and then go forward. And that positions us both in a place that if after that month things aren't going the way either of us expect, it's almost printed on, that call is to part ways.

And although it's very easy to talk about, it is quite a hard situation to be in, but I think having those upfront conversations and during that onboarding process with your client, it's very important for me to make my clients feel very comfortable in the fact that, if this isn't working, you need to be very focal about it because if we go past that month period.

Then, I'm embedded in your business. I've got access to things. It becomes a little bit more complicated. So it's really important that you do have that initial period of a trial to make sure it all works. But the important thing is the whole onboarding process and those initial conversations, because I think when you.

Start talking to a VA. I think you can very quickly understand if their personality and their skillset is going to be a good fit for you and your business. That's really insightful actually. And it's interesting because when I interviewed Louisa Meehan from Woodview HRM about hiring your first employee, one of the things that she really said as well and focused in on was that if there Pay attention, don't let those red flags go unnoticed or undiscussed or bury your head in the sand, pay attention to those red flags.

But I also love actually, that's such a huge advantage to be able to do a month's trial with someone. Somebody rather than, if I was to hire an employee in my business, it's very difficult to do a month's trial with them, but it's a great way to work with somebody and see how you work together before you decide if you want to continue working together is to do that month's trial.

It's great. Yeah, it's, it's not for every VA, not everybody offers that in their contracts, but for me, it's proven brilliantly because there's been a few clients over the years who have come on and we've not, it's not, you get sold a very good picture, maybe on the onboarding call.

And then you start to get to see the back end of the business and maybe their objectives or their mission is slightly unaligned to what you perceived in the beginning. So it protects you as well. So you've got that scapegoat, yeah, I think that's important because at the end of the day, and I love VAs.

I love my VAs, everybody who's on my team. I call them part of my team, even though they run their own businesses. I see them as integral to my team now. And but I think sometimes they think that they're part of my team too, but I'm always like, I'm still your client. I'm like, I'm still your client.

You are part of my team. I love you. Please don't leave me, and that sort of stuff. But it's interesting. You talked about communication and that communication is one of the key things that Causes these relationships to dissolve. Isn't it the thing that makes most relationships do not dissolve?

Let's be real. That's exactly it's communication is absolutely key. So I think it's really important that when you bring in a VA and you're very honest and open about your expectations around communication. So if you are nervous, if you are incredibly vulnerable, if you do feel like all of this resistance to bring it in a VA.

Say to your VA this is really unusual for me. I've not worked with somebody remotely before. I don't know how this is going to work. I'm not sure, on the deliverables. So can you check in with me twice a week? Can you report back on a Friday and just let me know where you're up to with things?

Can just having those conversations in the beginning, just eliminate so much stress in the long run of, I've given my VA these five tasks, but I don't know, I don't know where she's at with them. I don't know what's going on. Like where. But you can't hand that over and then expect communication back if you've not had that conversation, I would every Friday for you just give me a quick rundown, whether it's a voice note on WhatsApp or a quick email summary.

I'm on this. I'm in the middle of this. This is going to plan. I'm going to need a bit more time on this. You've allocated me I don't know, like two hours on this research project. I'm going to need a little bit more time. It's just about having those Conversations, and if something's not going to be delivered on time, going back to the client and saying, I think I was a bit ambitious by thinking I could get this done this week.

It's going to take so much more time. And I found X, Y, and Z. And again, this leads onto something that's really important for me is don't ever come with a problem and no solutions. So if, for example, you are running late with a project, communicate that Tell the person that you're running late or that you've come up against something.

It could be, I don't know, a challenge. You could, maybe you found some really interesting information that's taking you down a bit of a rabbit hole somewhere else, but that information is vital for the client, for you to understand. So it's going back to that client and saying I'm going to need an extra hour, and this is why.

I'm going to spend more time on this. That's interesting, Laura. And actually it brings up a question as well. I think I probably know the answer because I have seven people now that work on my team, but for people who've never hired a VA or heard about VAs before can you just explain how it typically works in terms of contracts and hours, whereby if that person's coming back on a Friday with the check in and update explain, is it per task?

Do they work set amount of hours? Is it per project? And just maybe break that part down, if you wouldn't mind. Absolutely. So it depends on who you're bringing into your team and based on that VA. So every VA will have their own business structure. So for example, for myself, I have a retainer business.

So all of my clients are on a retained amount month. Now this works really well for me because it means that I can plan my month out. I know exactly what I'm working on when I'm working on it and I can deliver that amount of hours for each of my clients. So what I tend to do is I invoice the first of the month for X amount of hours.

And then that client knows that they've securely got me in their business for those hours. However, if for example, Someone's running an event or something's come up and they know that they're going to need more time. They just have a conversation. Like I'm going to need an extra five hours this month.

We've got some really big businesses to pitch for, or, we're working on something really exciting. I'm going to need some extra hours for you. And then again, that's communication and having that conversation. Any hours, for me, any hours that are unused roll over um, some VAs don't offer that it's retained.

And those hours are gone. But for me, if anything's unused, it rolls over to the following month. A lot of clients can, for example ad hoc. So they would have a timesheet system. So they'll keep a timesheet of what they're working on. And they might have a conversation with the client. They might have a call at the beginning of the month.

They go through the task list for the month, especially if it's not regular. Reoccurring tasks and then we'll have a conversation. Oh, that's going to take two hours. That's going to take three hours and then have a rough idea from that. But most VAs will run with a piece of software. There's a piece called toggle, which you can just switch on and switch off when you're working between clients.

So a lot of VAs use that to work and manage their time. If you are working on an ad hoc though, they do tend to obviously then invoice at the end of the month rather than at the beginning of the month. And it's it is a thing too, isn't it? Cause I, I've done this where I've hired people to help with design elements for graphics and stuff where you can just hire on for specific projects and they don't need to become part of your team, but they might just help you on a, on an ad hoc one off basis too, right?

 So I offer this service as well, so I do quite a lot of tech build, like funnel builds and things like that. So some clients will come to me, they've already got a team in place. They might already have a va or they don't need a VA and they just need one particular job done. They might be, they might have an event or a launch and they just need somebody to give you them a little bit of support and that's absolutely fine as well.

There's lots of VAs that will support just on a project basis as well. Yeah, that's really helpful to know because it doesn't necessarily have to be a long term commitment. It can be just one off stuff to get you out of a hole if you find yourself stuck in one, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes.

And what else would you say, Laura, from from the, let's say the client's perspective, from the business owner perspective, what else do they need to know about hiring a VA? I think it's as much skill as it is personality. I think that it's really important that you. Vet your VAs, make sure that they are capable in the skills that you need to bring them into your business for.

I do think it's sometimes it's really important to bring in people that have a higher knowledge in certain areas than you do yourself. And I think that's perfectly normal to ask a VA to come in and do something that maybe you are not particularly knowledgeable around. Especially like a social media VA or a podcast va, for example.

What should business owners look for when they're hiring a VA? What else should they do? They need to know or watch out for or be conscious of? Okay, so I think the business owner needs to be like fully aware of what skill set their VA has, what they can do, what their capabilities are.

It's really important that they match in terms of like energy, ethics, and personality. I think that's a really good, what you don't want to do is jump on a call with your VA and come off half an hour later, completely drained. You need somebody that's going to be around like fighting a corner and cheering you on at the same time.

So I just think, yeah, watch out for those red flags. I think instantly speaking to people, you get the vibe straight away. Don't you? If you're a good fit or not. So yeah, making sure that they've got the relative documentation and. insurance making sure that they've got the right personality and fit for your business.

Make sure that they've got strong communication skills and that they are able to do the job that you need them to do. I love that. And you talked about the vetting process. Is the vetting process for a VA similar to what you might do for an employee or what would you advise business owners to include in their vetting process?

Absolutely. If you're bringing someone into your business, especially if you're going into it for the long term, you need to think of it as you're investing in that person. So although they've got their own business, they aren't going to be employed by you. You want to give them the best fighting chance to deliver their best work.

And the only way that they're going to be able to do that is by you making the investment in them. And I don't mean in monetary terms. You need to make sure that they know your business and that you're Inside out, how things are run, how things, how the business is structured, who to report to all of that stuff takes time and energy, but it's really important that the business owner is willing to come to the table with that energy to help that VA start.

And it's like being anybody and you wouldn't just put them in a back office and say, Oh, crack on. If you're looking for a long term relationship, you're, you've got to be able to put in that time, that communication. Yeah, and I think it's the same when you hire an employee, whether it's your intention or not, there is a time suck at the start.

Yeah, and I think it's being prepared for that time suck because that time that you put in up front is going to pay so many rewards and dividends and in time, right? Absolutely. And again, this goes back to my type A, type B. This is why it's so important to think about your team. ahead of the time, because when you get to that point of breaking or you're you're completely burnt out and exhausted, you haven't got that time to dedicate to somebody and your hands like slightly forced, but pre planning and bringing in the team almost forward thinking allows that space and the energy to be used in the right ways.

Yeah, I love that. And I think, sometimes when people are hiring, it's. For me, I let it go too far. I was one of those people. I'm like, I can do it all myself until I couldn't because it was just too much. And then it was like, Oh, I don't want to let it go because I'm a control freak. But I'm so much better now.

Now it's my mentor is like, what are you actually doing in your business now? And no, not quite. I am still doing all the delivery, showing up for clients. But yeah, that's, and that's, what's important. But yeah. If a business owner is there and they're looking at, weighing up the cost of hiring a VA or not, what would you say to them if they're on the fence?

I think it goes back to the whole summary of how much money is it going to save you in terms of not to look at it as a 25 an hour, 40 an hour. It's, this is going to allow me to achieve X, Y and Z in my business, which is worth 10, 15. 30, 000. And I think that having that overview in what is it going to give you in terms of your time, your freedom, and sometimes that isn't monetary, like some clients have support in their personal lives.

It could be like juggling the family diary, things like that to give them the space to then once they finish. work to be able to go into family life and be completely present. So it's like putting a price tag on what that looks like for you and for everybody that's going to be different.

Ooh, that's a really good way to put it, Laura. I think putting a price tag on what that time looks like for you. There's no price on it, right? For certain things. Yeah, that's amazing. Laura what else would you say to business owners? What else should they know or be aware of or mindful of?

If they're going down the VA route. So one thing I would say that, that comes up time and time again is some sort of project management, tracking, task collecting platform. So whether it's a Trello, Asana ClickUp, there's, there's lots and lots of different things out there that you can use.

Notion is my favorite. Notion, of course, Notion. There's, there's so many different platforms that are available. available for you to be able to manage a team remotely. And they've been around for years and they work perfectly in corporate. And also in virtual businesses. So I just think having something like that in place where you can track projects, keep an eye on tasks, have communication.

A lot of VAs will be managing, three, four plus clients. So whenever you need to pick up the phone to them, they might not be available. And it's not because they're not invested in your business. It's just, they're currently working on something else. So if you need to be able to, communicate or check on something, it's really important that you've got a platform where you can go in and just be like okay, I can see this is happening.

This is happening, right? Okay. I know that's moving forward. That's on track and it just peace of mind when you can't communicate. I love that. And one other thing that I want to ask you about is retention of a VA. When you find a good one, how can you make sure that they stick with you and you can hold on to them?

Oh, I love this. Okay. So I would say it all comes down to what you mentioned about bringing your VAs in and treating them as a team member. It's a bit like, Bringing somebody into your household, like they're there, they're in it with you, the good times, the bad times. And I think it's about treating them as a team member.

And I think if you treat somebody not as a throw up, throw away piece of additional help and you're treating them as part of the team. So that means, when you start a phone call, when they ask you how you are, ask them how they are back, that, that mutual respect. I think that goes.

That goes a really long way. So I just think, yeah, treating your VA as part of your team, they would never want to leave. Ooh, hopefully I'm good enough at that because my people are great. I never want them to go. And yeah, they do feel like family now. It's amazing actually. We have such a great rapport, all of us.

It's lovely. And yeah, Laura, I, last question. Anything else that people should know, or be aware of, or steer clear of, like anything else. There isn't, I don't think there's anything you need to stay clear of. I think as long as you listen to your gut, you watch out for those red flags. If somebody isn't a good personality or a skillset fit, fit for you, have those conversations, this isn't great.

This isn't a good fit for me, or, I, I'm sorry, I've wasted your time on this call, but actually after speaking to you, I don't think you're the right fit for the business. I think just being brutally honest and open, and I think you can't go wrong if you're honest. Yeah, I love that. I love that.

Laura, thank you so much for joining the Master Your Business podcast. It's been such a pleasure having you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Whoa, so much amazing advice from Laura. I'm really feeling inspired and ready to level up my own business with all of my incredible VAs. What about you? Are you ready to maybe take the plunge and get some VAs on board? If so, make sure you download Laura's super helpful checklist from the show notes.

And Hey, if you love this episode, don't keep it a secret. Subscribe, leave a glowing review, share the episode to your social media. Tell all your business owning besties about the master your business podcast. And until next week, keep mastering your business.