Virtual Assistants are very popular these days. But having a successful experience with a VA has much to do with you as it does with your VA.

We have brought on Samantha Prestidge today who has established a US based VA business now for a number of years.

Join us as Samantha shares not only key benefits of hiring a VA but how to make them useful and profitable for you in your business.

It’s not just another employee. Think of a VA as a laser focused expert to help you do all those things in your business you either don’t like to do, don’t have time to do, or don’t know how to do.

In this episode:

Advantages of working with a VA service

1. They will screen applicants before you even meet with them
2. Get the volume of work that is right for you. You don’t need to keep them busy for 40 hours.
3. Get help where you need it most.

Levels of Virtual Assistants

1. SM manager or bookkeeper
2. Entry level administrative assistant – Keep you on track
3. Executive assistant – Higher skills to brainstorm and plan with you if needed

Questions to ask to decide how a VA can benefit you.

1. What do you want to be responsible for?
2. What do you do today?
3. Whatever the difference is, pass on to a VA

Get into and stay in your zone of genius and let someone else help you with the rest of your business.

Redeem Your Business Today by the Following:

How Can We Honor God In Our Business?

               We are salt and light in this world. Attract others with the core values you live by. How would Jesus serve in your position?

One Challenge from Today:

Ask the questions and start moving.

1. What do you want to be doing in your business?
2. What do you want your job description to be?
3. Start working on a way to delegate the rest of your tasks.

More About Samantha Prestidge

What to Delegate Guide: auxosvs.com/delegate

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthacordero-auxosvs/

More About David Schmidt

Subscribe to Redeeming Business Today Podcast Newsletter

Website redeemingbusinesstoday.com

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Mentioned in this episode:

Step Up Referrals

Ever wished you had all your business information in one place? With Step Up Referrals, you can! It’s the ultimate digital referral card that makes sharing your business and showcasing who you’re connected with easier than ever. Step Up Referrals helps you stand out from the crowd, build relationships, and grow your network. Follow the link below and get started today.

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David:

[0:00] So virtual assistants have been around for a long time and definitions have changed. Many think of a VA as someone in another country who can help an administrative task at a substantially lower pay point. There's a lot of misconceptions about VAs in the industry and why they do or do not utilize a VA. And so I brought on Samantha Prestige today, who operates a U.S.-based virtual assistant company, to help explain and demystify what that is and to help. People decide if that's a good fit for your business. So, Samantha, welcome to the podcast. And to start off, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in the virtual assistant business.

Samantha:

David:

[1:34] Very good. Yep. Someone once said necessity is the mother of learning or the mother of invention. Yeah. And it's the same way with entrepreneurs today. You have a need and you just create it and go. Very good.

Samantha:

[1:48] Yeah. It was really understanding what was going to work for the skills that I wanted to provide, the family structure I wanted and the time I wanted with my kids and what people actually needed in their business.

David:

[2:02] Sure. And all works together. Yeah. Great. Well, Samantha, this is a Christian podcast. And so we like to inspire listeners to be salt and light in this world and therefore inspire them with ideas.

David:

[2:14] So what is one way you think we can honor that you have found that we can honor God in our business.

Samantha:

[2:20] Oh, so many ways. So many ways. I was just listening. I was watching a reel of someone making a joke of they're asking God, should I be an accountant or should I go on a missionary? And the guy's like, well, why do you think the only option to be a good Christian is going, you know, on mission trips? Like God gave you a gift with numbers, go do this and shine his light as an accountant. So I think for me, there's, there are several things. One, when it comes to how I interact with my clients, that's a driving force. You know, you can see something on someone's core values on their website of how they have integrity, how they're a good person and all those things. And you don't really know that until you test it, right? And I think for me, knowing that I try my best to lead with that light and that salt and that wonderfulness and what would Jesus do, that's how I show up for my clients. If something goes wrong, I'm not going to say, okay, how can I make sure this works for me? How could I invoice the most out of the situation?

David:

[3:19] Invoice the most, yeah.

Samantha:

[3:20] Yeah, it's what's the right way to do this? And, you know, really, if I was showing my faith, how would I handle the situation? So I think that's the driving force. And of course, there's always, you can network, you can connect with different people and bring up those conversations in a way that maybe they have been introduced to, Christians that drive people away from their faith, right? Maybe they have been introduced to that, that very judgmental side of religion in their lives and to be able to show up in an unsuspecting place in business and just be like, hey, I'm a decent human being. I get you. Let's just have a conversation. I think that a lot of people appreciate that.

David:

[4:03] Yep, absolutely. Honesty, integrity, transparency, it all goes in. Yeah, people talk about, oh, you have to have all these things and like, that's like being a Christian. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

Samantha:

[4:18] Yeah.

David:

[4:20] So virtual assistants, it should be obvious, but what is it and why would, why would I hire a virtual assistant for me?

Samantha:

[4:28] Yeah. You know, you teed this up in the introduction of a lot of people think VAs, they think international. I think also with the rise of AI tools out there, some software has said, oh, this is the virtual assistant and it's a chat bot. It is not a real person. And so there's a lot of misconceptions. And so I would reframe it for our listeners as this is a remote fractional supporter. This is a fractional administrative assistant or office manager or executive assistant. And really what you're leveraging their support for is so that you can focus on high value tasks in your business, especially in those small businesses. If you're a solopreneur where you have a team, maybe under 10 employees, you're wearing a lot of different hats as the leader. And that's okay. You're supposed to be in all the different things as a small business owner, right? Your marketing meeting one hour and then the next minute you're in some operations meeting. That's okay. But a lot of your work is then working in the business instead of on it. You're not owning that CEO role. Maybe you don't have the budget to bring on a full-time office manager. That's okay. Let's bring someone in part-time who's going to have your back, who will be that behind the scenes supporter. So how each client leverages their VA or their fractional admin is a little bit different depending on the industry and what they want to hold on as far as like what they're responsible for. But that's the gist of it is get it off your plate so you can focus on what you like to do and what you should be doing in your business.

David:

[5:54] Okay. I know what it means because I've asked this question before, but fractional. When you say fractional person, what do you mean by that word?

Samantha:

[6:03] Yeah, a fractional person is someone who is not like a full-time person in your business. So they're coming in in some kind of part-time, sometimes temporary capacity. For our VAs, we do work with our clients long-term. We've got some clients that are like, hey, I just got a project for three to six months. Other clients, they're with us three or four years. That's cool. But yeah, fractional is going to be they're only there as a part-time person. So you'll hear this term a lot with fractional CFOs or fractional CMOs, those chief marketing officers. So they are invested in your business. They want to see you succeed. They're going to bring all their knowledge and all their skill sets to you as if they were your employee, but they're only there on a part-time basis.

David:

[6:46] Yeah, no, that makes sense. And very good. So what would be the advantage then or disadvantage of hiring somebody remotely to you versus me going on career builder or indeed and trying to hire somebody that way?

Samantha:

[7:01] Yeah, so when it comes to like interviewing people on Indeed, and you're going to get a whole bunch of people. When we post for virtual assistants, we'll get an average of 300 to 400 applicants per job post, which is not uncommon for administrative or executive assistant positions. So if you want to trust maybe whatever AI filters you have on Indeed or the job board platform, maybe you're able to filter through those resumes a little bit easier. But then you're also saying that someone has to have an awesome resume to work with you. If their resume is not up to date, then they don't get an opportunity.

Samantha:

[7:35] Right. So our team can help really filter through that and get to know these candidates and make sure that we've we can vet them on a personal scale as well. So we know, hey, they have the technical expertise, even if their resume isn't up to date. And they're also someone that we trust with certain characteristics and like they're a decent human being, they're trustworthy and all those things. We can help filter for that. And we do that for our virtual assistant team, as well as for the in-person roles that we recruit and staff for. So the biggest thing is going to be that time advantage. And also a lot of people don't know or just haven't really been trained on how to read a resume, how to interview, really how to hire and find that right fit. So sometimes then you end up hiring on your gut feeling, which if you pray a lot, maybe your gut instincts are good. So that's awesome. Maybe God is leading the right candidate to you. But a lot of times those gut instincts can maybe be swayed by a candidate that smiles a lot or happens to be from the same hometown. So you connect on one thing, but you miss all these other red flags. And so we really help to draw out those red flags and make sure you're bringing on the best person for this role.

David:

[8:44] So it'd be true to say that one of the advantages to hiring through you a virtual assistant is that you are screening people before you even say, here's three people to look at. You've already screened that all three of these would probably be a good fit for you.

Samantha:

[8:59] Yeah. We're not just saying, oh, hey, here's some people that applied and they had the best looking resume and I really liked their name and their LinkedIn. We're saying like, hey, these are people that have already been through our vetting process. Now let's have you vet them. Also, we'll help you understand how to vet them. We'll say, hey, here are some of the questions you can ask them. Let's facilitate this so you're finding the right fit. A lot of times, Our clients that we've worked with, they've hired people before that have just not worked out.

David:

[9:26] And the reason

Samantha:

[9:26] For that is because they didn't know what their expectations were until the expectations weren't met. We need to change that story and figure out what are the expectations from the beginning so we can find the right person and that you're both set up for success. So that is a huge advantage in having us as part of your hiring team.

David:

[9:44] Sure. You had mentioned earlier there's different levels of virtual assistants. What are those different levels that we can hire somebody in for?

Samantha:

[9:55] So a lot of times when you're just starting out, you're probably going to be looking for a social media manager or a bookkeeper. Sometimes people want a generalist assistant who's going to do all the things. Those are different skills for someone that's going to be expensive or categorizing your expenses and doing some of your bank reconciliations in QuickBooks versus the person that's going to be posting on your LinkedIn or engaging with your followers on Instagram. Those are different skill sets, but those are usually what you're first hiring for. And then we go a step above. We say, okay, these types of skills are really for that entry-level administrative assistant, and you don't need to be paying a high-level executive assistant for these types of tasks. So let's assign some of these tasks to just admin, office manager. These are the people that They have some great potential as far as those critical thinking and soft skills, but they don't have all of the technical expertise quite yet. They're still learning, but they can still handle all those basic admin data entry tasks that you have. Then we go into that next level of executive assistant. This is the person that's going to have that higher level critical thinking. They're strategic with you. They're really going to start to anticipate your needs. They're going to say, hey, two months ago, you said you wanted to do this. I haven't seen it on your calendar. Do you want me to block time off so you can focus on this? Right. So you have those admins and those executives and then you have the generalist that can kind of do everything kind of in between those levels. You know, I rambled a little bit with all those different examples.

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