The primary focus of this episode is the transformative impact of employing virtual assistants in leadership and business operations. Our esteemed guest, Anna Brambilla, elucidates how her mission is to assist coaches, consultants, and executives in reclaiming their time and enhancing their business efficacy through strategic outsourcing. Anna shares her profound insights into the art of leveraging virtual assistants, a practice she has mastered to scale her operations and concentrate on revenue-generating activities. Throughout the discourse, we explore the various tiers of virtual assistance, from general administrative tasks to specialized executive support, emphasizing the pivotal role of effective delegation in fostering productivity. This episode serves as an invaluable resource for leaders seeking to optimize their workflows and rediscover their passion for their enterprises.

The Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast features a compelling dialogue between host Jaclyn Strominger and guest Anna Brambilla, an expert in the utilization of virtual assistants to enhance business operations. Anna's expertise lies in empowering coaches and consultants to reclaim their time by outsourcing essential tasks, thereby allowing leaders to concentrate on their core competencies and revenue-generating activities. Throughout the episode, Anna shares her personal journey, illustrating how the strategic hiring of virtual assistants has not only increased her productivity but has also resulted in a substantial increase in her revenue.

The discussion delves into the various levels of virtual assistance, ranging from general administrative support to specialized executive assistance, emphasizing the broad array of tasks that virtual assistants can undertake. Anna elaborates on the unique advantages of sourcing virtual assistants from the Philippines, a region noted for its proficient English-speaking workforce and cultural compatibility with Western business practices. This episode serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of leveraging external support to optimize workflow and achieve greater success in leadership roles, encouraging listeners to reevaluate their operational strategies in light of these insights.

Takeaways:

• The podcast emphasizes the importance of delegating tasks to virtual assistants to enhance productivity and focus on core leadership responsibilities.
• Anna Brambilla shares her journey of using virtual assistants to reclaim time, stating that it significantly improved her revenue and business operations.
• She advocates for identifying tasks that only leaders can perform and outsourcing the rest to optimize efficiency and effectiveness in leadership roles.
• The discussion highlights the growing trend of using virtual assistants from countries like the Philippines, emphasizing their strong work ethic and language proficiency.

Links referenced in this episode:

• virtuallyaligned.com
• maxyourtime.com
• linkedin.com/in/anabramvilla

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Virtually Aligned
• Time Maximizers
• University of Denver
• Simmons College
• Marriott
• Hilton

Mentioned in this episode:

Thank you for listening

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Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight - Welcome

Welcome to the podcast

Well, hello everybody and welcome to another amazing episode of the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast where we hear from amazing leaders and get their game changing insights on how to be better leaders and make a greater impact in the world today. And I am your host, Jaclyn Strominger. Today I had the absolute pleasure of bringing on our amazing guest.

It's Anna Brambilla and she is fantastic. And she's smiling because I have my mouth is the Boston mouth and like, words don't come out. So I'm like, how do I get your name right?

Because names are so important. So I'm like, yay. Did I did it right?

You did a great job. Beautiful. Thank you. Yes.

So let me give you a little information about our guest, Anna.

So Anna's mission is to show coaches and consultants how they can reclaim their time and CEOs and executives and grow their businesses by outsourcing the right support. And that's really key because there's a key component to leadership.

And so as a business owner, Anna has mastered the art of leveraging virtual assistants to kill her to scale her operations and focus on what matters most. And that is what has inspired her to launch her business.

So, absolutely.

To the podcast. So glad to have you here.

I'm so glad to be here. I'm so honored. Thank you so, yeah.

So I always like to share and ask.

So if you're thinking about, you know, you know, what your business is and, and reclaiming time, if you could give our leaders one, like right off the bat, running start tip, what would it be?

Do what only you can do. Whatever that is, right? If it's revenue producing, do that. If it's operations, do that. If it's whatever technology, do that.

Find what only you can do and that you love doing. That's the other caveat, right? We all have things that we're really good at but don't want to do anymore.

But do find what you love doing and can do and only you can do. Outsource the rest. There's tons of people out there who love to do the stuff that you might hate or that you don't want to do anymore.

That's how I found the power of virtual assistants. It was a game changer.

I actually tripled my revenue when I found virtual assistants because it's like, oh my gosh, I can do the stuff that I want to do, which is coaching and it's talking to people and working with to do revenue generating activities that I loved doing. And I found people in the Philippines that love doing the admin and were so good at it and they wanted to do that work.

They didn't want to do the work that I was doing. And it's like, well, why should you do anything you don't want to? I mean obviously we have to pay our taxes. There's things we all have to do.

That we don't want to do.

But you know, do what you love.

Right. So Anna, you know, so I worked with some virtual assistants. So first of all, I guess I want to ask the question, why the Philippines?

How does that become the hotbed?

In a lot of ways it's fascinating. It's fascinating. I am just starting virtually aligned. We've been around actually for about nine months already.

What it is, it's a company that helps people who know they desperately want and need a virtual assistant but don't know where to start or had a bad experience in the past and are looking for that virtual assistant. So my company is a direct placement company.

It's not a cert managed services where you're paying somebody, you interview, hire and manage that person directly. That person becomes a member of your staff and so we help you with all that. And I can go into the process.

I love talking about the process, but we can go in the process later. I find the Philippines and there's lots of great countries out there.

I mean a lot of friends have virtual assistants from Latin America and they're phenomenal. Or you know, South Africa seems to be coming up lately.

And what I like about the Philippines is that it's a culture that really supports that kind of virtual assistant work. There's a lot of people who want that.

A lot of people, really a lot of the virtual assistants that we have on our team are looking for that flexible work style and work time. I love it.

I love that I get my work done, pass all the things off and while I'm sleeping they're getting everything done and then when and they give me my list of things that I have to do. Of course.

Right, right. Yeah.

Their English written writing speaking is phenomenal. I think they do a better job writing than I do and I'm a native English speaker so that's wonderful. And the price point is good too.

There's a lot of, you know, we're not talking the US based VAs who are looking for 30, 40, $50 an hour and they're wonderful and they serve a specific niche.

But if you're looking for an admin person who's going to do, who's going to do whatever you need anywhere from about six to seven dollars an hour, all the way up to 15 or $20 an hour depending on the skill set and everything else like that. But I've now also never seen a harder working community. They really take pride in their work and want to do a good job.

Yeah.

And so I've just been thrilled. I've just been thrilled.

So that's really great. So you know, a lot of times people will say, well what do you have the virtual assistant do? So tell us, like what do you have virtual?

Or what should or could they do for your business?

That's a great question. One that I get all, all the time. So we found in our business virtually aligned, we have three different levels of placement.

So we have the general va and I'll certainly explain what those different things are.

But there's a general VA who's going to do the more administrative tasks, the email management, the calendar management, the CRM, following up with clients, things like that. For me, I had them do a lot of client management emails, following up on past clients, reaching out to potential new clients.

They did a lot of outreach on LinkedIn to get me new clients. You can have them do a lot of generalist admin, what we call general VA work, general virtual assistant work is what we have.

Then there's sort of a higher level of skills that could be SEO, it could be graphic design, it could be photo editing, it could be something specific to real estate.

I also have a lot of people who are doing it around franchises because I'm transitioning out of doing franchise consulting and into owning my own company now. And so there's a lot of skill sets around that. That's a higher level. It's not going to be a general admin.

You have to pay them more because you're getting higher skills, but you have to pay them and they require different, different skill sets. And then there's what's called the executive assistant, the EA level.

So that's somebody who has the drive and the experience to really be your right hand person who can be that, really challenge you and really get you thinking, have you thought about this? But you said this over here, so you need to do this over there. So there's three different levels and it really depends on what you're looking for.

And we work with our clients to really identify the tasks that need to be done. What I found from my own experience with hiring my very first VA is that I had them do it was a woman. Most of the VAs in our team are women.

That's just the way it works out. But she had, she did some basic stuff.

She did some email, she did some, you know, didn't require a lot of thought, which is fine because that's, you know, I wanted to sort of gradually ease her into that. And then as she started to grow and develop and I realized, oh wait, she can do more than that and she can like manage my inbox. Oh my God.

Well, that was a game changer. I don't know about you, but how many emails do you get in a day? Oh my God, what a nightmare. So she can manage my email.

She started to be more proactive, so I started to go into LinkedIn and actively look for clients on LinkedIn. Give her a general sense. This is kind of what I'm looking for.

Because she by that time knew me well enough and knew what my icp, my, my ideal client profile was.

And she started to be more proactive and reach out and say, and use her own messaging and sometimes if she had questions she would use mine or would run it by me. But she was able to do that.

Then I hired another VA to do some graphics for me and they did a phenomenal job of the graphics and really, you know, just created some amazing stuff.

As I'm transitioning out of the franchise world and into starting virtually aligned my new company, then I've got my EA and she's my right hand person and she's doing all the operations and she's thinking strategically and she's thinking. I just was on a call with her earlier today and she's like, okay, now this is what we need to think about pricing.

This is what we need to think about packaging. This is what we need to think about our CRM.

And I'm going to do the research and I'm going to find the one that's right and we're going to find a billing system. So really runs the gamut and it really depends on the, on the coach or the consultant or the, or the entrepreneur, what they're looking for.

And so are you finding that you're working more with, with, with that group, the coaches, the consultants and the entrepreneurs versus the people that are in, you.

Know, corporate right now? Yes, right now, yes. You know, the temptation when you start a new company is you can be everything to everybody. Right.

And that I'm not going to fall down that trap, as tempting as it is.

Right.

And so I am right now focusing on the solopreneur, the coach, the consultant, small companies, you know, two to five people, perhaps Is that the big. Because that's what I do really well is finding one or two people to support the key leaders. We're increasingly.

We just got a call yesterday from somebody who wants us to build a team for them, which of course we'll do, but that's less our skill set. Certainly my experience has been.

In the number of years that I've been in corporate world, my experience has been that the leaders of a larger company typically have staff in house.

It might outsource a key portion of what they're doing, but most of my experience has been that they're looking for somebody in house to do it for them.

You know, it just gave me the idea really of somebody who. Of, you know, on the leadership side of it, hiring. Hiring a VA to actually handle this. Your personal stuff.

Yeah, yeah. That happens increasingly.

Right. You know, I mean, how many times, you know, I mean, I don't have that kind of money per se, like a. Or a social calendar like that per se.

I guess you could say more than that. But. But I think about that. It's such a.

That would be such a great idea, like a great use of somebody else's time to like, plan your family calendar and make sure everybody in the family is all squared away and has all the right stuff. Or you're planning vacation and you've got like, you need. All of those bits and pieces correspond, you know? You know?

Yeah, yeah.

But like, you know, if you're gonna be time saving.

Exactly, exactly. And that's not something you as an entrepreneur or leader should be doing. It's not a good use of your time.

Now, if you love doing it, okay, that's fine. But if you have to think about it, I was just plan. Thinking about planning my next trip. And you have to think about the flights.

And you have to think about the flights not only for you, but for your family. And then you have to think about the hotel.

And it's fine if you're landing in one place and staying there, but if you're going around, you have to think about all the different hotels. You have to think about, do you rent a car, do you get trained? You have to think about passports and do you have the right visas? And, you know, the.

Just the list of things is endless. And some people love that. And that's phenomenal. And I'm great and always grateful to find those people.

And I don't really, you know, I can do the basics.

Travel agent comes in. Right.

That's what comes in.

I didn't hear agent.

Exactly. Exactly. But you can hire a VA too.

Right, Right.

You know, if, you know, generally, hey, I want to stay at this hotel or I like whatever the chain is, you know, Marriott, Hilton, whatever it is, find me a Hilton.

Definitely hire a VA to do that for you. And actually, in some ways you could actually say to them, you actually tell them, research, research itineraries and find the best one and give me.

This is what I'm looking. You could actually have them do that research for you so that it's not something that you're wasting. That you're not wasting. But it's not your.

No, but time value. Money.

Yeah. Well. And what's interesting, just to give you a quick idea, I. Everyone's talking about AI and don't get me wrong, I love AI.

I'm using it for everybody. Everything. Right. It's wonderful. And I was going on a college planning trip with my son and some friends a couple of back last year.

And so I typed into AI these are the schools we want to see. This is. You know what, give me a schedule. When can I see them? These are, you know, these are the times that they have the tours.

Where should I fly in and out of. It gave me such awful. Told me to fly into one to one airport and fly out of another one. Neither one were close.

It kept telling me I could see all five schools, but then had me tour the same place on completely different sides. This is down in la and completely side. Different sides of LA within half an hour of each other.

Well, anybody who knows LA knows that you can't get there from here in half an hour. I mean, you can't even get down the street in half an hour.

Right.

So that's why you need somebody who's going to give a critical eye. And that's. Right. Really good. VA can come in.

Okay, so now I just have to ask. Where's your. Where's he at school?

He's going. Well, he's gonna. This was. He's a junior now, but fingers crossed. He really loves the University of Denver. And so that's what we're doing.

Yeah, I'm hopeful.

Yeah. Yeah. Now my son's a junior too, so that's what I was like.

Oh, you know, where's he going? What's he looking at?

East. East coast schools. East Coast.

Anyway, if you're a woman, I'd suggest Simmons College because it was a great women's college. But no, he's not.

Not the right demographics. Not a woman. And he doesn't identify as one either. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. You can tell we're in California, right?

But, yeah, so it's, but it's, it's fascinating to me, you know, you know, it's. This is a, a growing industry.

Very much so. Very much so.

Really, It's a growing industry. And so again, you know, I, I'm going to ask the question, you know, what, what made you.

And obviously I know you shared culturally and ethic like, and how they operate, but how are you picking and finding the VAs that you have and would you ever go to other countries other than the Philippines?

Great question. I started in the Philippines by accident. Colleague of mine said, because I mentioned that I didn't want to do this admin shit anymore.

And she's like, oh, go check out the Philippines. So I did and found a phenomenal team and loved them.

Just to give you an idea, the VAs that we give to our clients to interview go through a very rigorous, thorough, 20 step process where we're checking for things like motivation and energy and personality and skill set and language and writing. And we check references.

We also check little things that I never would have thought to think about because I have the team over there, they're like, well, we know all the islands and all the different locations. We know that this part of the country often loses electricity. You wouldn't have thought, I never would have thought of that. Right.

You know, it's like, oh, hello. So it's nice that we have the team there that will tell you that, you know, and, and go take those people through that. I love the Philippines.

I love the culture, I love the people I love, you know, everything that the price point is awfully, often very good. We are considering expanding South Africa, as I mentioned, you know, offline is becoming a popular place and that might be an option for us.

Certainly Latin and South America, just, you know, all of Latin America, you know, Central and South America are just doing some phenomenal stuff. You have to be more careful. The language skills are not as good necessarily. I mean, you can find them. Absolutely.

But you have, you know, my personal experience is that language is something you have to screen for more carefully. We're, we're still looking. Right now we're focusing on the Philippines.

It seems to be that really nice mixture of culture and prices pricing now as more and more people discover the Philippines and say, oh, wow, that's great, like everything else, prices will go up. But right now we're focused on the Philippines because that's where the team is.

Yeah. And so I'm curious, how did You. So you. How did you find your first team?

So I found my first team because. And this is a fun story. I love this story. So I was like, I said I was looking for a va and friend of mine said, oh, check out this company.

They'll help you find a va. And the company was fine, but they helped me find some really good VAs.

Then I started to grow my team to offer the same services to other coaches who were doing the exact same kind of franchise consulting that I was doing. And so I said, oh, I need a manager in place to manage all the people. So I, through networking and, and found this incredible person.

And actually she was my, she was my account manager when I hired my first two or three for the virtual assistants for that company. And she's like, hey, I'm interested. I would like to take role. I'm like, whole, sold, gone. You know, you're. You're mine. You're amazing.

She's wonderful. So it's, it's interesting to find that, that one person and then get you in.

We now have a team of, for just that small company, those consulting, you know, people who are doing franchise brokers and franchise consulting. We already have a team of 15 virtual assistants who are supporting almost 70 coaches in that program.

And it's all started small, like everything else, and just grew.

And it's 15 supporting 70.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So they're doing phenomenal work. And it's. And that's why I got the idea.

It's like, you know, franchise consulting has been a lot of fun and I've really enjoyed it. But let's take, let's expand my influence, right? Let's expand the power of a va. As you can tell, I'm very passionate about it. But no, it's great.

You know, I mean, I tripled my revenue when I heard my first VA again, because all I had to do was focus on the things that I wanted to do that were revenue generating. And the end of the day I can come home and see my son and my husband. Such concept, right?

You know, and what a concept, right?

Yeah, My son always says, such concept. And so now I've adopted that. But yes, what, What a concept, right?

No, it's true. It's.

It's being able to have the time, you know, to be able to have that, that, that free time to be able to go ahead and do that and know that it's, it's, you know, not going to bog you down and you've got somebody else that's got your back.

One of our, one of our taglines is fall in love with your business again. And I love that.

Right. You know, it's true. You need to fall in love with the business again and being able to, to do the things of.

And I talk, I talk to a lot of people about, you know, working on their calendar and looking at what are those income producing activities that you are doing that only you really can do?

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

Important. That's really important. Well, well, Anna, I just love what you're doing.

I am so happy that you also are passionate about it because it's, it's very important to find the right people to do this work. So that's really, really important. So you shared the, you know, it's virtually aligned.

Is that the best way for people to find you and connect with you at your website?

Yes, yes, absolutely. So virtually aligned.com works. We also are in the process of rebranding. We started our, our life as a company called Time Maximizers.

So the website maxyourtime.com also works. But virtually aligned.com is the best way to find us.

Well, that's fantastic. I could talk to you for hours about this because I think it's so important and I think what you're doing is truly amazing.

So listeners, if you have been struggling at all with finding some extra time in your life, really take a minute to think about how you could bring a virtual assistant into your world. It's truly a game changer. And so I want you to think about that and then you need to connect with Anna.

So please do, please do. And check me out on LinkedIn. Ana Brambula, you know the LinkedIn.in. whatever. You know, the Ana Bramville.

I'm the only one there and would love, even if you have some questions, how do I get started? What does that look like? We're here for you. I'm an educator at heart and just love to help people learn about what's possible.

Oh, well, that's awesome. Well, thank you so much, listeners.

If you have gotten something from this podcast, which I'm sure you have, because it is great information, please do me the favor of hit subscribe and then also give us a review. We would love that because it also just helps our amazing guests.

And please do reach out to Anna on LinkedIn and go to her website and, you know, make sure you make those connections, you know, with her. This is the unstoppable leadership spotlight. I'm your host and I thank you for listening and thank you for being an amazing guest thank you so much.

I loved it.