Get Your Very Own Virtual Personal Assistant (Part 1: How Your Assistant Will Change Your Life Forever)

Next to generating the cash as you travel the world, having your very own personal virtual assistant manage your email, calendar and even the ENTIRE business is the next best thing.

A MASSIVE trap that is easy to fall into is doing all the work yourself (not very freedom business like eh?).

The thing is when you start building your business up, making good income and having things go well, you don’t want to lose control and have everything crash.

There is a fear issue here that I personally had to get over. Handing over some of your business processes to someone in a country that is worlds away from you is really scary.

Here’s the thing though… Putting on assistants and outsourcers to do the actual work has been the single best thing I’ve done to turn a business that’s really just a created job into the REAL Freedom Business.

In this series of blog posts, i’m going to show you how to get your very own personal virtual assistant from the Philippines.

A personal virtual assistant should be the cornerstone of your Freedom Business setup.

Boracay Island, Philippines

I’ve found the Philippines to be fantastic for a number of reasons:

1. The majority of people looking for virtual assistant roles speak really good American english and sound great on the phone

2. They are extremely friendly and loyal

3. They are highly skilled (most have a university degree) and even more productive and efficient than a lot of workers/people I know here in Australia

4. Average MONTHLY salary is from $250-$450USD. Yes that’s correct. You can have your very own PA for less than $500 per month.

Here’s just some of the cool things that your own personal assistant can do for you:

1. Manage Your Email (huge).

Email is like a crack addiction. Well, i’ve never had a crack addiction but I imagine my old relationship with email to be something similar.

The problem is: If you are on email, you are not doing things that are important. You’re being REACTIVE as opposed to PROACTIVELY productive.

I personally try to limit my email to 1 hard hour from 2pm-3pm. The rest of the day I either want to be PRODUCING (business stuff, secret society mastermind stuff) or COOL STUFF (travelling, hanging with friends, reading, listening or making music).

How many days have you had where all you did was answer every email as it came in, WHEN it came in?

VERY bad news.

Some silly people nowadays expect email responses within the hour of sending. That’s just ridiculous.

Email is also switched off on my iPhone.

The solution: Batch process email (wait until they all build up and nail at 1 or 2 points in the day)

The mega solution: Batch process AND have an assistant handle SOME emails (repetitive admin stuff).

You can have your assistant literally be you if you want and learn how to respond as you but I personally just have Jennifer (my assistant) chime in on emails that she can solve or knows the answers to.

I also have Jennifer send me a txt message if there is anything very (VERY) urgent that comes into the email inbox.

2. Manage Your Calendar

I use google calendar which makes things easy to share and update. This is shared with Jennifer.

If I happen to decide to make an appointment, i’ll txt message Jennifer the name, phone number, place and time of the meeting and wether or not I want her to call the person to confirm.

Very cool and impresses people you are meeting with that you are so organised.

Jennifer will even send meeting requests via email that automatically sync and put the times in peoples calendar.

3. Make Phone Calls

Jennifer has a Skype account with credit I’ve loaded in to make phone calls on my behalf.

She uses this at the end of every work day to call me and give me an update on what she has done. If I don’t answer she leaves a voicemail detailing her day, what she has completed and what she needs help with (more on this later).

These are the top 3. The truth is your assistant can pretty much do ANYTHING that is repeatable in your business.

I would go as far as to say at least 80% of what you currently do in your business (or job) can be outsourced to the Philippines.

The best part about it all really is you actually have an ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNER.

I get text messages from Jennifer saying “Don’t forget to record that video today” or “I hope your meeting with Craig goes well in 5mins”.

It can get lonely running a Freedom Business by yourself, so having a cool assistant who cares about you and the business is just awesome.

Here’s a sneak peek interview as to what Jennifer sounds like:

 

And a couple of snapshots of our conversations on Skype:

When you get an assistant, you have to get used to being called “Sir” and “Boss”. It’s customary and quite nice I think.

Stay tuned for the next post in the series on “how to get your own personal virtual assistant.”

Please ask questions or anything you would like covered in this topic below!

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