Dave Braun
00:00:01
Welcome to the HireMyVA Team and Business Building Podcast, where we help you to reclaim your freedom through hiring and thriving with virtual assistants without breaking the bank. I’m Dave Braun and I’m here with my great friend, business partner. Larry Broughton. Hey Larry, how are you doing?
Larry Broughton
00:00:16
Man, your sultry voice gets me every time, Dave. I’m doing great. Thanks.
Dave Braun
00:00:23
Alright, Well today’s topic. We’re going to talk about doesn’t hiring someone cost too much. What do you think Larry?
Larry Broughton
00:00:31
Oh my gosh. You know, we talk about this pretty frequently in these masterminds that we do Dave, and I think that is an error in thinking, it’s really more of an error in math. I think because I think it’s solo preneurs as startup entrepreneurs. I think the way we often think about this as gosh, if it costs me 10 hours of my time, every month to do a task, and then you think let’s, let’s use a CPA for instance, let’s say you need some CPA services that are going to cost you what, $50 an hour, $75 an hour or something like that. And it costs, it takes me 10 hours to do my, you know, getting ready for the taxes and doing my closing on my books. The math that we do in our head is 10 hours, times $50 an hour. That’s the wrong math, Dave.
Larry Broughton
00:01:24
For a couple of reasons. One is somebody who’s professional and what they do. It takes them a third of the time, half of the time, 25% of the time. So that’s one thing. So let’s say that you hire somebody here in the U S at 50 bucks an hour, and we think it’s going to cost us. Well, that means it’s gonna cost us $500 a month for this. Well, no, it’s probably more likely, something much less than that. It might take them five hours. So it might be half of that $250. But the great thing about what we’re doing here in at hireMyVA is when you outsource this to a virtual assistant, the hourly rate is much less than the $50 an hour. So anyway, it’s an error in thinking, it’s an error in math.
Dave Braun
00:02:12
Absolutely.
Larry Broughton
00:02:14
We’ve got tons of experience, obviously hiring VA’s. So what are your thoughts on this? I don’t think we’d probably be here if we, if we thought, yeah, you’re right. You can’t afford this.
Dave Braun
00:02:23
Well yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, you think about, you can hide it, there’s no reason why you can’t hire a virtual assistant from the United States. They’re just, We have, and it’s just, they’re just more expensive. We have abdicate, what did I say? Abdicate?
Larry Broughton
00:02:41
You said advocate. We don’t abdicate anything.
Dave Braun
00:02:46
We advocate for going to the Philippines, especially for first timers, because it’s a great way to get started. You don’t have to allocate that much money and you can hire somebody full time, you know, say around it’s about dollars an hour. Communication barrier Isn’t really there. I mean, it’s a great experience. And typically it’s about a 10th of the cost of what you might pay here per hour. If you had an employee or a team member from the U S and if you have them in the Philippines, it’s about a 10th of the cost.
Larry Broughton
00:03:20
Well, Dave, I can hear people think with five bucks an hour, what kind of quality person am I going to get a quality worker or skills am I gonna get for five bucks an hour?
Dave Braun
00:03:28
That’s a great question. But the thing is, is five bucks an hour there is like $50 an hour here. The economies are so different.
Larry Broughton
00:03:38
Well, what we learned over the years from doing that, we’ve been doing this for years now, Is that you can generally speaking, this is total, generally speaking, five bucks an hour is like a postgraduate degree there, right? Highly skilled person. Now of course the language you’ve mentioned language, you know, in the Philippines, what we have to keep in mind is that just like any country, even here in the U S you’ve got the language skills is it’s on a continuum. And so we have ways to actually help folks, higher quality, great English-speaking people, and who have great writing skills as well.
Dave Braun
00:04:22
Yeah. That’s part of our hiring process and how to do that. In fact, what I find with working with VA’s over the years, it’s not as much about the language itself. It’s more about the person. There are people that just don’t communicate very well at all. In any language is part of their personality. So you have to uncover that when you’re hiring somebody.
Larry Broughton
00:04:44
Yeah. You know, one of the things I think that might be interesting day for us to kind of go through, like, what are some possible positions that people would be hiring that they think, oh, I can’t afford these positions. I know I need to be doing cold calling. I know I need an administrative assistant. I know I need a graphics person. I know I need help in graphics. I know I needed an accountant. And you know, like when you go to glass door, I think it’s glassdoor.com. You know, that that measures or reports on wages for thousands and thousands of thousands of different positions is like a cold caller might cost here in the U S between depending where you are in the country, $13 to $27 an hour and administrative assistant, according to glass doors, between $15 and $32 an hour, depending where in the country and what kind of experience graphic designers from $15 to $34 bookkeepers from 17 to $23 accountants from $19, $36 an hour. It’s a far cry from what we’re talking about, right?
Dave Braun
00:05:47
Oh yeah. I mean, we, we just kind of go with the basic math to make it easy for people is just to start thinking about, you know, $5 an hour, because, and that’s the one thing you don’t want do is you don’t want to shortchange yourself and you want to make sure you get somebody who’s really good. And then they cost you an extra dollar an hour or something like that.
Larry Broughton
00:06:05
Right. Well, that does a couple of things. Doesn’t it? When you pay someone more, they’re gonna be a little bit more loyal to you. Money really does mean it’s, it’s got more value there than here. I mean, you think about the waste that we just have here in the U S and our mind, you don’t get that same thing culturally there. So I think that’s important, but I, I can’t, I don’t think stress enough, the air in the thinking on this, because it costs you who might be an okay graphics person. It might take you five hours to do a logo or a, an ad set up somebody who’s an expert at this they can crank that thing out quickly. I mean, I’m blown away at how quickly Daphne turns stuff around for us. Daphne is one of like, we have VA’s we have VA’s from the Philippines, I’m blown away at the quality of stuff that she presents provides and how quickly she does it.
Dave Braun
00:07:00
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean,
Larry Broughton
00:07:02
You and I have tried doing this on our own.
Dave Braun
00:07:04
Yeah. And see, and what happens is that, I mean, we talk about reclaiming your freedom. And part of your freedom is enjoying what you’re doing, right? This allows you, when you hire somebody, it allows you to shift what you do to more of what you love and less of what you hate. Right. And just, let me give you an example. Just this last week, I have a developer, I do web development and have a developer on my team. And there’s an issue, a couple of issues with some sites that we’re designing and I’m like, I can do this, but man, I just don’t feel like it right now. Do it, Adrian. You do it. Okay. No problem. And it’s in his wheelhouse. And then I go on and doing things that I’m in, that’s more on my strengths, you know?
Larry Broughton
00:07:49
And you know, what else I think is just a great side benefit for us is that we’re providing jobs for people and we’re providing real economic impact on families. And there’s real, real reward in that. Yes, the freedom is really important for us working in our strengths. And oftentimes when we work on our strengths and stuff that we enjoy and love, like you were saying, but just the flipping freedom that comes from it opens up your mind to creativity and better problem solving. And most of us are in business because our business, whether it’s a service or a product is solving problems for somebody. But when we get stuck in the weeds of doing things that we aren’t great at or spending, you know, every minute that I’m spending on a task and I could be outsourcing in the minute is a minute. I’m not spending on something that I’m going to be really good at, or that’s really changing the trajectory for my business or frankly, even my, my life.
Dave Braun
00:08:53
Yeah. We talk, we talked in the course about shifting your thinking from more from tactical to more strategic thinking is which, I mean, that’s what we have to do as business owners are solopreneurs. Because if we don’t, then we’re going to get so much business and you guys listening may be at this point now, but you guys listening, you are may be just stuck putting out fires. Yeah. And you’re so busy. And then pretty soon you’re not spending time on figuring out how are you going to take your business to a new level? How are you going to adjust to a change in the environment that that happens? Whether or not it’s a pandemic, whether or not it’s a family member getting sick or whatever, right? You have to be able to be in the strategic mode as, as leader of your business.
Larry Broughton
00:09:42
Yeah. And interestingly, when we measured this two years ago among all of our coaching clients, do you remember what the stats were? I think that we got people thinking more strategically, they ended up working a third less time in their business or making 67% more revenue in that one year. Of getting intentional and working strategically in your business and learning how to outsource things. And one of the tools that we go through this as, you know, learning, what should I be outsourcing? Because if, once you get in your head that actually I can afford this, then, what should I be actually outsourcing? What should I be hiring a VA to do for me to make my time to exponentially grow my time and talents, I guess.
Dave Braun
01:10:30
No. Yeah, absolutely. So, so I think it’s important for us to be thinking along the lines of not how much is it going to cost me to hire somebody, but what is it going to cost me not to hire somebody. Right? It’s it, it can cost a lot more not to hire somebody to get some of those tasks that either you’re not good enough at, or you’re not that good at, or you don’t enjoy getting those things off your plate.
Larry Broughton
01:10:55
Well, again, it’s all about the mind shift and it really thinking needs to be, it’s an investment It’s an investment and my time is an investment in my organization. I’m going to be up leveling all of my productivity.
Dave Braun
01:11:10
Yeah. And we’re investing all the time in our business. And you said, try to Up level your productivity. You were investing in different tools as well. That’s this human resources is one of the systems that helps us grow and drive our businesses. And we have to invest in that as well from time to time.
Larry Broughton
01:11:28
Absolutely. That’s good.
Dave Braun
01:11:30
Yeah. All right. Well, that’s all I got right now. So that’s the, one of the key takeaway is you don’t have to spend a lot of money. You can dip your toe in the water and try this out. And it’s amazing. The change that’ll happen in your life and your business when you do it right. And that’s why we put this course together.
Larry Broughton
01:11:50
That’s right. Go get them!
Dave Braun
01:11:54
All right. Well, that’s it for today. If you want to reclaim your freedom, change your life dramatically. You’ve got to build a team we’re here to help you. That’s what we’re doing. So just go to hiremyva.com for more information on our course in community. And even without experience that you’ve got, you can learn how to prepare yourself, hire and thrive with virtual assistants. Larry and I we’ve coached what thousands of entrepreneurs altogether, and we’ve helped them overcome hurdles to be successful. We can help you too. So again, just go to hiremyva.com and you get all the information there. All right. Talk to you guys later. Bye.
