Scaling Success: How Virtual Assistant Teams Can Revolutionise Your Business

[00:00:00] I'll question for you in this age of AI is the VA DOA. I know, forgive me for all the acronyms or the TLA's. Too many years living in Singapore. I'm joined by a guest today in New York who has a company called Results Resources and

[00:00:21] for over a decade she's been working in the virtual assistant space. He's got a unique slot and angle on that. So Elizabeth Ice is joining me. We're going to talk about really the power of virtual assistants.

[00:00:33] We're also going to talk about how that's changing due to the impact of AI. And also she's going to show us a very interesting calculator that helps us to understand the real cost of not having a VA and trying to do the work ourselves.

[00:00:50] Elizabeth, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Jim. Great introduction. Thank you so much. Well, I had a second chance because Elizabeth and I actually were on the mic a couple of weeks ago and then we had trouble in fact turned out that her router was down.

[00:01:05] So she's back which is wonderful and a real person came and fixed it. No AI, no VA. So there's still a role, Elizabeth, and you serve real people who are entrepreneurs, don't you?

[00:01:18] So tell us a little bit about resource in the whole VA space and why entrepreneurs come to you to get their virtual assistant needs met. Well, at the bottom line I'm all about helping small businesses scale.

[00:01:38] In particular, solipreneurs as well as small businesses will say maybe less than 10 employees and it's the backbone of most economies. 99.9% of businesses in the US, for example, are solipreneurs or small businesses. So they're really what makes the economies tick.

[00:01:57] And so that's my particular focus is how do I help those entrepreneurs get noticed and have the impact that they want? And I really discovered over time that really by helping them have the resources, the talent

[00:02:12] they need to help them achieve their mission is the way to scale. And one of the best ways to really bring that talent on cost effectively is by hiring freelancers because they're skilled, they're available, they're flexible and they don't come with

[00:02:28] all the burdens of employment and the commitments of employment. So really the key is finding the good ones. And that's really what I've been focused on and that's what they come to me for is to find that and curate freelance talent for them, specifically virtual assistants.

[00:02:44] I was going to say because finding a VA on Upwork, for example or Fiverr, it's a bit of a lottery, isn't it? And if you post a job on there, you can get 101 applicants.

[00:02:55] I personally had a bit of a battle a little while ago with some people who look great in their portfolio. And I think it was just like a different person entirely actually doing the work, right?

[00:03:06] You put the money in a scroll and then they didn't turn up and they didn't do the work. Elizabeth, how does results resourcing save entrepreneurs like me going through what in the end was quite an expensive exercise in terms of time?

[00:03:20] I managed to battle and get my money back, but it was an unpleasant experience. So how do you help with that? Well, honestly, that was kind of my inspiration for creating results resourcing. I was hiring freelancers myself and I found the process frustrating because solopreneurs

[00:03:38] and small businesses, they talk to technology. Just what you described, you type keywords in and it's more than 100 profiles show up, thousands of profiles show up and you use whatever filters are available to sort through. And then you try to interview, do all this work to find out,

[00:03:54] try to find out if it's the right person and it is a crapshoot. And so my motivation was how do I use my background, which is I have a large corporation background running operations, very much an operations expert workflow expert.

[00:04:09] How do I make that simple, easy and quick for small businesses? So that's what results resourcing is. We want to resource results, which is why we named the company that. And we find that and curate virtual assistance. And in the early days, we actually curated individuals.

[00:04:27] But small businesses kept coming back to us saying, well, we liked that first individual because you interviewed them, you made sure they were a good fit for what we needed. Kind of like a staffing agency does but focused on contracting.

[00:04:41] And then we were also very efficient because we're a technology platform. But they came back and what they said to me is they wanted competent, reliable, nice and they wanted it right now. And I also noticed in the course of serving these clients that they would come to

[00:04:57] me with something on fire and that was what they needed. Put that fire out and we would help them do that. Then when that fire was out, they needed something else. But that first freelancer they hired to put the fire out wasn't

[00:05:10] the right person to fight the next fire or prevent the fire. And so what that really led us to do was to focus on matching people with teams of preformed teams, basically virtual assistant agencies. And what's powerful about that is that, hey, we prevent them.

[00:05:32] So we know their quality and many actually have done work for me. But essentially they have broad skills. So it's not just one person that could do something well because there's no such thing as a unicorn. But they have separate people that are really skillful.

[00:05:48] It might be bookkeeping, CRM specialist, copywriting, blog writer, SEO, WordPress web developer. They're all on virtual assistant teams. And so as a business owner comes in, they get matched with the right team. And as their needs shift, that team understands their business and can

[00:06:07] seamlessly make the change to a different freelancer that might be needed for a short-term project. And so it's just really a terrific way to get access to skill breath, skill depth. And what I haven't mentioned is capacity because if you hire an individual,

[00:06:25] that person wants to work a reasonable number of hours every week. And perhaps they have other clients. So if you need suddenly 10 or 15 hours for a project, they don't necessarily have it. They also get sick. They want to take vacation, you know, all kinds of things like that.

[00:06:40] And the team structure enables capacity and the flexibility of hours as you need them. So we've built a model around competent reliable nice. And now we can stand up these pre-vetted teams in 24 to 48 hours. Elizabeth, you hit on a number of different pain points for entrepreneurs like me.

[00:06:58] I've been working with the same entrepreneur or same VA who actually became an entrepreneur two years now. And she's wonderful. She's just taking maternity leave and she's hired a new person. And then there's been the training and the pain of that.

[00:07:14] And then if I want to scale, if I had my own company, I'd be hiring and training. And then those people would be training. So when my individual VA hires new people, that new person is actually kind of out of my control. The hiring process and the performance

[00:07:34] continuity is actually really a challenge, isn't it? I didn't realize that you can hire teams of VAs. And is that companies that have got a group of VAs? Or is it individuals and you're bringing them together, if you like, as a virtual team?

[00:07:55] If I can use that expression by picking a dream team and collating them. How does that work? Well, both are possible. But we have really focused on finding business owners that have those agencies. And the reason I've chosen that is because,

[00:08:14] you know, I personally don't want to get involved in the day-to-day operations, you know, of a client engagement. And I think it's more powerful to have a business owner, another entrepreneur that owns and runs the agency, the ownership, the common experience with the business owner they're supporting.

[00:08:33] That's really powerful. And to your point about, you know, your VA being out is part of what I vet is the leadership and management abilities of the leaders of these companies. So I understand their methodology, how they train people, how they, what their processes are.

[00:08:50] So I'm confident that when I match you to somebody, they're going to follow a familiar process that I have faith in. And so, you know, while I may not know all the team members, I know how the team members came about.

[00:09:05] And some of the team members are actual employees. But actually the vast majority are preferred contractor relationships. They have other freelancers of the quality that they expect. And that makes those teams really dynamic because a couple years ago, did anybody know about AI? No.

[00:09:27] But VAs are looking for future looking VAs that are anticipating what's coming into the market so they can help the small business navigate those changes. Well, Elizabeth, you have mentioned the dreaded word AI. And I think we have to talk about that because some people are thinking

[00:09:48] about replacing the VA, who's maybe in the Philippines or in Latin America, for example, in Africa with AI. I've got to get your view on the difference that AI is going to make to this sort of opportunity to outsource your work.

[00:10:09] Well, I would not use the word dreaded AI. I think it's using AI appropriately. So my view of the topic is this. First of all, I view virtual assistant as a professional service. It's not clerical work that's done over the internet,

[00:10:28] regardless of where in the world it's done. You know what you're looking for are professionals that you can have confidence and trust in to do your work because virtual assistants are great at backroom support. Operational, but if your operation doesn't work right

[00:10:44] or is unprofessional, it's going to affect your brand and your business. So it's very much a professional service. And I think that people need to expect more from the virtual assistants they hire. And if you hire a better quality virtual assistant,

[00:10:58] there's less management because they're going to have a sense for your brand, your process, your values, whatever it might be. So back to the AI question. I think about virtual assistants, you know, as a spectrum. And on the low end of the spectrum are task oriented work,

[00:11:17] you know, a workflow data entry, stuff like that. And that's a lot of work that's often been outsourced overseas because the labor is less expensive. And on the other end of the spectrum is outcomes based virtual assistants, which is really where I'm focused because that's the work

[00:11:35] that will help an entrepreneur to scale somebody that's creative, a critical thinker that will think outside the box, but still check in, you know, and do do work as requested. But it's very much there's a lot of ownership of the results and very professional.

[00:11:52] So back to AI, what I see happening, and in fact, as I believe I mentioned to you earlier, if you type in a chat GPT, what's a virtual assistant? They're going to tell you a digital virtual assistant and it's Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple.

[00:12:10] And people don't even think twice about Alexa or Cortana or Siri, but those are digital virtual assistants on people's phones or in speakers or whatever it might be. And it is a multi, multi billion dollar opportunity for these big companies.

[00:12:25] And they're the ones with the money to invest truly in AI and, you know, although the chips and the training that's required. Well, I think what's going to happen is those digital AIs are going to become more and more powerful

[00:12:39] and they're going to take over the lower end of the spectrum. The task oriented stuff, workflow, that's all stuff that computers are great at because at the end of the day, no matter how you personalize AI, it's a computer and it is following programming instructions

[00:12:57] and it's going to use the information it's trained on. And there's some interesting things happening in that arena. Well, but back to. I don't think human virtual assistants are dead on arrival because there's always going to be that frontier

[00:13:13] where you need a human to step in and fact check or frankly, even to ask the right questions of AI because you don't ask the right questions. You're not going to get the right answers.

[00:13:23] So I think there's a huge I think it's the power is in the two combined and it's knowing when to use AI for efficiency and to gather the broadest set of information to make decisions upon. But ultimately, I think that's the human sorting through all that

[00:13:39] and to hand it off to the to the entrepreneur to decide. Well, I think also, as you mentioned, you know, AI is great at doing tasks. But if you're growing a business, your management of those individual AI bots can actually become quite overwhelming

[00:13:56] and it's possible to take a huge amount of time to try and train these bots and other tools, isn't it? And still not get quite what you're looking for. Elizabeth, what about the opportunity cost? That you sometimes talk with entrepreneurs about because there is

[00:14:16] there is a strain in all of us. This is like, I just do it myself. I've got an extra couple of hours away or I could do it this weekend when no one's watching. But what do you do for entrepreneurs that are struggling

[00:14:28] with the concept of using VAs? And I think your concept of using teams is really good because it makes it seem less tactical and more structural in terms of how you want to build your business rather than just solve a particular task.

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[00:15:25] Well, I think one of the things I admire most about entrepreneurs is how scrappy they are, how resourceful they are. But at some point that is that skill is actually a liability because what I think entrepreneurs need to be focused on is what's their big idea?

[00:15:43] What is the value they're trying to bring to the world? And that's where they should be spending the bulk of their time. So we actually developed this little tool called the ROI of time calculator

[00:15:54] because it helps people to actually put a number to the value of their time because time is finite and you want to spend it in a number of different ways on your business, but also on your family or relaxing, whatever it might be.

[00:16:08] All those things are important to a healthy human being. And so with the ROI of time calculator, it's it'll be in the show notes. So welcome anybody to use it. But basically it starts with what's an hour of your time worth.

[00:16:22] And no one ever says ten dollars and the average actually is one hundred and sixty six US dollars. And after that we ask what what is it you deliver to your clients? And it's not that I particularly care, but I want that person

[00:16:37] to be focused on the value they deliver. And then we ask how many hours a week you work and then what percentage of that? How many hours a week do you work working with clients or delivering that value? And the average is forty three percent.

[00:16:51] So forty three percent of everyone that's ever taking this survey is spent on the core value of their business that develops revenue and delivers value. And it's fifty seven percent is on invoicing, customer service, blog writing, social media, researching AI tools, whatever it might be.

[00:17:08] And so my philosophy, basically, is if you can convert some of those hours that you're doing it yourself to an expert that will do it better for you. Whether it's researching AI tools, which high quality VAs are very good at

[00:17:25] or it's your bookkeeping or it's your blog writing or it's social media, whatever it is, you know, outsourced to somebody that loves to do that back room stuff that's actually a burden to you. Elizabeth. And it's a time and allows you to create more value.

[00:17:40] Yeah, that's a wonderful tool. And we've got it on the website. It's results resourcing dot net. And if anyone wants to see on the YouTube channel at Jimmy James, you can also see it. So I think that's brilliant.

[00:17:54] If it's forty three percent on average is spent actually delivering the value plainly, you can double your revenue for doing no extra hours. If you then outsource and presumably, Elizabeth, if the average value per hours, one hundred and sixty six, what would be the average VA cost?

[00:18:15] That's the missing bit of this equation. Yes. Well, for us, we specialize in U.S. and Canadian freelancers. And we've that's a choice we made because again, our clients came to us looking for people that understood grew up in the culture here,

[00:18:32] understood how business is done here, knew the difference between Arizona and Maine or Toronto and British Columbia. And it's not a matter of intelligence and tons of people speak and write English super well over the world. But it's just like I wouldn't be particularly effective in the Philippines

[00:18:51] or in Africa. I mean, it's just it's just the nature of the beast. And so that's so our focus is there and the talent is higher price. You know, our our basic virtual assistant rate for our our basic program is forty five dollars an hour.

[00:19:08] So it's more than, you know, offshore, but you get a different value proposition and outcomes oriented value proposition. But even at forty five dollars, if you compare that to one hundred and sixty six, that is the margin you can capture by converting more time.

[00:19:25] And that's how you afford a virtual assistant, because a lot of people do say to me, I don't think I can afford it. But they need to take that leap of faith that they can convert those DIY hours into delivering revenue.

[00:19:37] When I think also what you've identified there is a VA isn't necessarily a low cost replacement. It is a contractual replacement to hiring someone that you would maybe hire for your own business. But for maybe you haven't got the office space, maybe you haven't

[00:19:54] got the ambition to have overhead fixed because the revenue is not consistent. Right. So it's viewing virtual from the concept, from the context of not just out of sight and out of mind and therefore low cost, but rather more of a variable cost to your business.

[00:20:12] Isn't Elizabeth so it's a mind set shift in how we perceive that that support for you and looking at it as as I said before, it's a professional service that could help you really add to the value of your business.

[00:20:28] And another funny example, but I mean one thing that's important in terms of a business, especially if you ultimately want to sell it is documenting your process. That's a business asset, but most people will tell me I'm not process oriented.

[00:20:43] Well, a VA is, they will literally interview you to get your process ideas into some sort of a document. And then you've got it makes it easier then to choose tools to delegate. I mean, it's just to me, it's a perfect circle of how VA skills complement

[00:21:04] the entrepreneur that wants to focus on that unique value they deliver to the market. Yeah, that's wonderful. And you use VA's with a tool like Lume for example to record. Why don't we just think then about how an entrepreneur best manages the VA

[00:21:21] because it results in resourcing you help to find that VA individual or team. Are you then managing the workflow between the client and the agency? Or is the client needing to use a tool, whether it's a sauna or Zoho

[00:21:40] projects or something like that Monday, any one of these many platforms? Just tell us how does that work? Because I think for many people adding VA's sometimes can take as much time as not having them because you end up with more systems and you have to do

[00:21:57] more documentation and more meetings to train them. So George just tell us what makes an effective working relationship? What should be in place? Well, you know, those are all problems that crop up all the time.

[00:22:10] And to me, the secret is picking the right VA because if you pick the right VA, they will know the business skills that you need. They will know the tools that you have if you have a CRM system or don't

[00:22:24] a male male newsletter system and whatever systems you have and you don't need to have a Nassana, you know, to manage a VA. It can to me, it's humans. It's talking, it's meeting regularly. It's clearly articulating priorities. And frankly, the VA will onboard the client.

[00:22:46] They will they mean they support so many clients professionally. They've got processes for onboarding. So even if it's an entrepreneur's first time, they're working with an experienced virtual assistant team that does this all the time.

[00:23:00] And so there's a process that they follow to, you know, clearly get the work plan together to meet regularly, to send invoices that are clear. So there's line of sight between the work that was done to the invoicing that invoice that they get.

[00:23:16] I could go on and on, but at the heart of it, it's a communication. It's not a tool. And then you use tools to document and drive results. But it's not required to do all that.

[00:23:30] And but you do you do raise a really good point that in the DIY world, entrepreneurs will see ads for this, this, this, and it's a silver bullet for everything, but then you end up having 10 silver bullets. And which one did you use?

[00:23:46] And so, you know, a lot of times the good VA team will help you sort through that and even consolidate your tools. And many people come to us with, say, a CRM system, and they have it set up to the bare minimum.

[00:23:59] And what the VA team can do is help you optimize that. So now you're leveraging the contacts in that system. You're using, you've built workflows with the help of the VA team to send mailers out, to follow up with clients to all sorts of things

[00:24:15] these systems can do. So you necessarily need another new tool. You need to optimize the ones you already have or buy one that will really help set you up for success. And since VAs do this all the time, they're familiar with the tools

[00:24:29] that work the best and what the problems are and the insights for how to take them to that next level. I think also what you're identifying there really is that the VA can be a guide as much as the recipient of the work because

[00:24:42] of my experience of exporting work to Asia and the Middle East has been very much that I have to, in a way, have a junior member of staff. You know, and I used to run a company in Singapore, China and India

[00:24:56] and I had layers of management and I didn't really get involved in what the junior staff were doing after a few years you have people in between. And I found the frustration with the VA's that I found on Upwork, for example,

[00:25:07] was that I was back to managing what felt like very junior members of staff. And that's exactly what they are. And again, that's one of the reasons we've emphasized outcomes oriented professionals as well as US and Canadian for our market because it doesn't require that level of management.

[00:25:33] They know how to manage, they run a business themselves. They're entrepreneurs. So they in a sense are standing in that client's shoes and they're supporting multiple clients and they've got really this broad base of experience to draw upon. And the goal is to minimize that the nonproductive,

[00:25:52] non-revenue generating management time. So it's just more collaboration time and making sure that work's getting done the way the business owner wants. That's a really revelation, to be honest, Elizabeth, because VA for me had always been a bit of a slippery slope.

[00:26:10] And I'm sure for many people listening to the show, we've almost now got to the stage where I have where after my last experiences, I'm not going to hire a VA. I'm only going to use AI because I can find an AI tool somewhere

[00:26:24] that does 80 percent of what the VA was doing. But seeing it as a strategic partner that can take operational parts of the business away from me is an entirely different way of viewing the VA experience. Elizabeth, if there's a number one tip that you would give

[00:26:47] people entrepreneurs looking to use a VA and a VA team, importantly, with all your experience at results, resource and what would that advice be? Well, I think it goes back to the value of time and really taking a hard look at how you're spending your time

[00:27:05] and letting that be the driver of some of your decisions. Because if you want to skill your business, you can't do it yourself. Or if you've got one or two people, you've got to be able to grow that in a sustainable way, in a way that's got resources

[00:27:20] you can count on as you grow. And so I think doing that, they're going to come up with a cold heart fact that they're not spending enough time growing their business. They're doing all this other stuff because they technically can do it.

[00:27:33] And then it's frankly what you just described about the VAs that you've used, that to me is a defensive hiring decision. Well, I'm going to get somebody cheap because it's not going to work well. So I'm going to minimize my loss as opposed to, OK,

[00:27:52] I'm going to find somebody great that can make a difference to my business. And I'm willing to pay a little bit more for it, not ridiculously more for it, but pay a little bit more for it because that person is going to have my back

[00:28:05] and help me build my business and bring experiences that person has across industry over the years and as a fellow entrepreneur to help scale the business. And so I think that's the kind of the frame I put on it is valuing your time

[00:28:21] and stepping up and finding the right person to help you step up your business because it's there, there, you know, but it's being defensive is not going to get you where you want. I love that. A great advice from New York. We shall be more offensive.

[00:28:36] Sounds a bit sounds a bit wrong, but a bit more assertive probably is the word I'm looking for more assertive. Elizabeth, you're playing me someone who thinks a lot about, you know, all of these matters and others.

[00:28:47] If there's a book or a podcast that you'd recommend that you find stimulating, what would that be? Well, of course, you would be a podcast I would recommend. Oh, too kind. I didn't pay Elizabeth to say that. I didn't expect to say that, but I couldn't resist.

[00:29:05] But I would say the book that has been profoundly influencing to me is a book from 2016. And it's called Thank You for Being Late, an Optimist Guide to the Age of Acceleration. And it's by Thomas L. Friedman. And he's a New York Times columnist and he writes actually

[00:29:24] about politics in the Middle East. But he's also a really terrific writer and very interested in the world and technology. He also wrote the book Thank You for Being, The World is Flat. I was going to say he wrote The World is Flat, right?

[00:29:37] Yeah. So this is a later book. But there's two things about the book that I found so inspirational. The first is that he talks about the best entrepreneur that he knows of. And that's Mother Nature. And Mother Nature just adapts. Doesn't judge, just adapts.

[00:29:57] And whether we like the human impact on the planet or not, Mother Nature is not judging. Mother Nature is just adjusting. And I think that's a great lesson for entrepreneurs because the world is always changing. We don't control.

[00:30:11] And it's like, OK, if we want, if we're purposeful about whatever we do, how do we deliver on that purpose no matter what's happening around us? So that's lesson number one. The second really leads us back to the AI question because, again,

[00:30:25] bear in mind this book was written in 2016. But early in it, he talks about this interview with Astro Teller of Google at the time. I don't know if he's still there or not. And he basically put it on a napkin the age of acceleration and on the on.

[00:30:45] So the chart and the upward curve is what he called technology, which would equate to artificial intelligence, because it's all these things are artificial computer systems that produce results. Many on the on the lower axis was humans ability to adapt to technology.

[00:31:03] And it's not a flat line, but it it's not. It doesn't keep pace with the age of acceleration. And so what he talks about is if this Steve, you know, hockey curve is is artificial intelligence, then that delta between that and humans ability

[00:31:22] is what is the opposite intelligent assistance. And that's what I'm all about is I want to provide intelligent assistance, which only can be provided by flexible, creative, problem solving humans. Just to fill that gap.

[00:31:40] So that's that was one of the things that inspired me at the very beginning in 2016, I read that book. I started my company and launched my platform in 2017. So it was a fabulous book. Elizabeth, thank you for that.

[00:31:55] Well, and we were saying at the beginning about how to pronounce your surnames, ice, E I S S. And you are as cool as ice. Thank you for coming on the show. If you want to find out where can they get you?

[00:32:07] Obviously on results, resourcing net or dot com, it works both. And the easy way to remember that is because we resource results. That's why we named the company that I'm also on LinkedIn. Happy to see you there and would love to. We always start with a free console.

[00:32:25] So whether you choose to work with us or not, I love helping entrepreneurs figure out how to scale. So please connect and let's have a call. Elizabeth, thank you for connecting with me and coming on the show. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you.

[00:32:39] Well, we've been all the way to the big apple to talk to Elizabeth. Ice and wonderful as well. And for me, really a mindset shift about VAs not being a low cost, slightly anxiety ridden hiring process and really being the potential

[00:32:55] to being a variable contractual arrangement with professionals. And I think that's a great takeaway and that those people will be essential with AI or not AI because business will always need people to solve problems just like Elizabeth needed someone to come

[00:33:10] and fix her router for a couple of weeks ago. Right. Thank you for joining me, Jim James on this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. If you've enjoyed it, do please leave a review on your player and do share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur because we don't want

[00:33:23] to let any entrepreneur go unnoticed. And to meet again, keep on communicating.