How did you go from, you know, trying to find somebody
to help to virtual and then and and obviously you hit it out of the park.
It's really funny, isn't it, how like little things happen
and they trigger, you know, for example, when you meet your spouse, you think back
to all of the sliding doors moments that made that happen.
And if those things haven't happened, then you may never have met.
It is literally the same with this.
Years ago, like ten years ago, I read The Four Hour Workweek by Tim
Ferriss, and in that he refers to virtual assistants.
And I.
I don't know how it came about.
I think I was networking with another Amazon seller
and they talked about virtual assistants and they talked very much about
the theory was great, but
they also had struggled with the reality of finding good virtual assistants.
And I'm you know, I'm stubborn and entrepreneurs I like.
I'm a visionary.
I have huge visions, huge goals, huge aspirations.
So once there's an idea, but I think can help me achieve that,
something like I need to find a way to make it work.
So that was really why I went in with the virtual assistant.
It just seemed like if we could get it to work, it would be
it would be perfect for us.
And we looked at the Philippines because we needed the cost effectiveness.
So in the Philippines, but the National Living
National Living wage is really low, like significantly lower
than here and over there, but the cost of living is also lower.
So that means that we're able to pay less than they would pay here.
One of the things that results worldwide, we're really hot versus
some people that literally will pay $2, $3 an hour for us.
We don't do that.
We pay a minimum of double, at least the National Living Wage.
We also pay things like health insurance, we do bonuses, we get benefits
and all of that just attracts a really good quality of candidate.
But it's still super cost effective for us in the UK, you guys interstate.
So that was really appealing to me
primarily, you know, like as a business owner, my bottom line,
something I'm looking at and focused on and that's what's going to drive it.
And then the other thing
that I was looking at was the standard of work
and you guys obviously were certain the standard of works just exceptional,
you know, like in, in the Philippines, when you get the right people
that they're so committed and so excited to have the opportunity to work
alongside you, that they will show up or deliver.
They'll overdelivered many times.
And I mean, I haven't had a massive experience
of employing people in the UK yet to be able to have a comparison that.
But my experience of working with these guys
is that their attitude is incredible, their work ethic is incredible
and my skill sets incredible when you find the right ones.
What are some of the first things people need to ask?
You know, like, wow, how do you what do you do?
Do you take assessment of everything you do in a week and break it down?
Yeah.
And what's the right way to approach this?
So it varies, right?
So we can just have a we can have a two different levels.
I just wanted to cover something
off that you spoke about because it's very, very relevant
to a lot of conversations
I've had quite literally in the last two weeks,
and some of the pivots we're making in our business at the moment.
But something that's happening worldwide is
there's a lot of executive burnout in the UK.
There's a lot of companies
starting to trial, four day workweeks, there are a lot of companies competing.
It's very much a candidate driven market at the moment.
As you guys, you know,
you just said you're finding as well, recruiting is is challenging.
So what we're looking to do other than just the kind
of your smaller business, get some virtual assistants in to support you.
We're actually starting to work with some of the more established businesses
now with much larger work forces to provide fractional support for them.
So it means they've got their core executives
and instead of those executives ever doing any of the lower level tasks that got
virtual assistants to support them, to do the lower level tasks
which what it means not replacing your workforce, it's
kind of giving a virtual staff option, which is much more cost effective.
So then you as a company
have more money to reinvest back into your core staff base.
Maybe look at things like four day work week, give extra bonus, give,
give incentives
and make sure they're not
getting at risk of burnout because you do have the capacity
with the extra staff, it's just they're working virtually.
So that's one element to the larger companies.
For the smaller companies who are kind of,
you know, where I was when I started up my journey,
the first thing you have to do is identify how you're actually spending your time.
Because as again as an entrepreneur, it's likely that you're
probably also a visionary.
And if you're finding
you're getting demotivated, if you're finding that you're procrastinating,
you're probably in a cycle where you're doing things
that don't give you a ton of energy, right?
You're doing things which aren't exciting.
And case in point, it's 11 p.m.. Hear me.
You have a nine month old who hasn't figured out how to sleep yet.
So I've been up since like 5 a.m.
and I'm so energized right now doing this review.
I've had an amazing day of meetings, I've had lots of exciting things happen,
and I'm buzzing
because I'm getting to talk to you guys about something I'm so passionate about.
But my energy levels are high because I've had a team of ten people
working in the Philippines today behind the scenes to do
all of the nuts and bolts and the day to day of the business.
So the first thing to do is just to observe how you actually feel
about what you're doing in your business.
And if you don't feel amazing about it,
start thinking about why, how are you actually spending your time, right?
So just take a pen and paper
and for the next three days make a note of all the tasks that you're doing.
So it could be emails, it could be things, it could be contacting
us, sending out email drops, whatever it might be.
Make a big list of all of the things that you're doing next to it.
Go through and write down how long it's taken and be really honest
because some people are like, Oh, I've spent 15 minutes
checking my emails and then I do this
and they realize, Oh, I spent 15 minutes six times a day checking my email.
So suddenly I spent like 90 minutes checking my emails, right?
And then when you finished doing that, I get a highlighter out
and highlight and to your point hit the nail when you're like,
No one can do it as well as I can.
That is like what runs through everyone's mind.
I know, just like in looking at the industry, because I think
this industry is ripe for whether it's short term
Airbnbs, whether it's long term or property management.
The majority of the real
estate industry does not use virtual assistants
and you must be looking at it now very differently.
Having been in that business and now doing it successfully,
what are some of the things that you see now looking, you know, from from the
virtual assistant, inward or outward, I should say, at the real estate business.
What could people be doing?
And I think what you just said about mindset is super important.
But just to add to that, I completely agree with you.
Another one is that businesses that make you grow like business it
I see business as an opportunity for constant growth,
evolution, personal development, right?
So if a challenge comes up like, oh my gosh, I'm spending
all of my time doing this now, I'm not growing the business.
If you can get that mentality to look at it as
This is going to be fun, how am I going to solve it?
What's going to be the solution?
Put a date on it.
You know, within 30 days I want to make sure that I have found
a software for automates and does all of this
or I have found a person that does and it automates all this.
Just make it fun.
You know, like I feel like people get really frustrated
and really down and it's so like and when you get into a dark place
and I've definitely, definitely been, you know, that conversation.
My husband, when he came home, I was crying
and it was like, I can't do this in my dreams of God.
You know, when you do get yourself into that place,
it just try and turn it like it's just a challenge.
You're going to grow through it.
What do you need?
Who do you need?
There's an amazing book I'm reading at the moment by Dan Sullivan.
I highly recommend it to everyone called to not have.
I don't know if you've read that that yeah the question is always about
who do I need to help me achieve what I want to achieve as opposed to
how do I go about achieving what I want to achieve?
And business is so much about connections and working with other people
irrelevant of what industry is.
So the more people that you can find
to help you achieve your goals and in turn help them achieve their goals
at the same time, the more fun you're going to have running the business.
So that's just a byproduct of working with a virtual assistant.
It's a lot more fun and a lot less
isolating when you start to build a team out
and you have the accountability to them and they have that accountable
to you as well, then specifically to the industry?
Well, again, what we're seeing here in the UK,
especially with serviced accommodation, you guys have got a ton of this
as well, right? Serviced accommodation.
So that is that's no longer like just going finding a house, doing it
up, selling it, you know, like the old school investing or a single.
That's what my parents,
my grandparents had a huge portfolio of like a 400 single that properties
that my great granddad built himself like every single one of them.
Now people have moved much more into Airbnb serviced accommodation.
So what does that require?
Well, it's a much higher return on your investment,
but it requires a much bigger time investment, right?
So you've got all of customer service, you've got the people that were locked out
2 a.m.
So you have to find a way if you're scale.
You just said if your friend cleaning it,
it's not scalable if you don't get comfortable with outsourcing.
And if they would hire a virtual assistant to do some of this stuff and they could,
you know, carve it out of their budget, then that virtual assistant
could be getting them red hot leads that are like ready to go
considering, you know, wholesaling the property.
So then they just have to make time to meet with those people
and then they actually are able to get started
because I think that's the big thing.
A lot of people,
we talk to people a lot, oh, I want to wholesale, I want to do this,
but they just never do it. We're all busy.
And so, like you said, to piece out a carve out a little bit of a budget
for somebody else to take that time and do the work for you.
And then you just have to follow up.
I think that that's another way where assistance can be valuable.
Yeah.
And I think that we the product, something like
like that is people will definitely go, but how could a virtual assistant
do that for me?
Like especially someone overseas, how are we going to know how our market works?
So like an area or whatever it might be and this is so important
the way that you make it work is you do simple basic training
and you have some basic project management things in place.
So anyone that has a virtual assistant,
all you need to do to your virtual assistant up to scratch.
If you don't have a single system or practice in your business
right now, it literally doesn't
matter if you have a business, you're just thinking about it.
So let's say let's take that, for example, right
where people are doing phone call outreach to homeowners
and they want to see if they're looking to sell that house in a particular area
if you just set up a system of how you do that.
So like this is how I find them.
This is what I say on the phone.
This is what I say with this over turn and just do some live recordings.
But as you're doing it all, you're at screen recording as well.
So talking it through screen recording, you're doing it anyway.
It's not taking you any more time.
You're not having to do training like
like this on Zoom with your virtual assistant.
You're literally creating
training documents whilst you're doing it yourself anyway.
So then when you hire by you have like a whole drive full of training materials.
So it's not actually going to take you any additional time
to train your virtual assistant, but it's going to free you up significantly.