Dave Braun
00:00:00
Hey, everybody. 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, without breaking your bank. And I’m Dave Braun and I’m here with my partner, great friend, partner in crime, I guess in trouble, whatever, Larry Broughton!
Larry Broughton
00:00:17
Crowd goes wild! I like how I said on of our programs the other day that you’re the yin to my yang, the peas to my carrots. The peanut butter to my jelly.
Dave Braun
00:00:34
And then I’m like, that’s enough.
Larry Broughton
00:00:40
Oh, I love you, David. Thanks for being my friend!
Dave Braun
00:00:42
Too much fun. Well, see guys, you got to get a good partner and just have some fun with this stuff, man. It’s fun. We’re having a good time! All right, well enough about having a good time. Let’s get serious!
Larry Broughton
00:00:58
Serious. Make money!
Dave Braun
00:00:59
No more smiles. Alright. Here’s our question for this episode? How do I determine how much I should pay my virtual assistant?
Larry Broughton
00:01:07
Can I jump on this first? It depends!
Dave Braun
00:01:13
Of course. Yeah!
Larry Broughton
00:01:14
It depends. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be like, start out with that kind of attitude. But that’s true. It really depends on a lot of things. It depends on what you’re asking them to do. It depends on is this a long-term gig or a short-term gig? Is it project based or is it ongoing, what country are you hiring your VA from. Now that I said that we can shallow this thing down. Dave, the VAs that we have found the most success with are those that are based in the Philippines. That’s not necessarily true. The ones that we have ongoing long-term relationships are based in the Philippines. And that’s where we are recommending. If you are an American for a bunch of reasons that we talk about inside the program, right? But listen, there are VAs here in the US that are a hundred dollars an hour, right, depending upon what they are doing.
Larry Broughton
00:02:04
I know that you have kind of a rule of thumb and you can expand on it in a bit. But I would think, like for us in the Philippines, we use them from everything from general VAs to graphic designers, to web developers, to researchers, and pay anywhere from $4 to $9 an hour. Generally, I think it’s a fifth to a 10th of what we would pay here for a similar role. And I know some of you are gasping at that, but you have to know the cost of living is a lot different in the Philippines than here. And why the wide range? And I know folks who pay $3 an hour in the Philippines. It depends on where does the person live in the Philippines? It’s like, am I hiring someone from Louisiana or from San Francisco? Cost of living is completely different in the two spaces, in the two places. So I would think for the Philippines, in the four to $9 an hour range, and frankly, you get college graduates in the $4 range. You get master’s level in the five to $7 range probably, don’t you Dave?
Dave Braun
00:03:20
I think it’s important to narrow down the country. Cause the exchange rate is different. If you’re hiring a virtual assistant in Australia, it’s going to be as much or more than here, right? And then of course, you’ve got to narrow down the type of job. If it’s someone who’s more general administrative, data entry type, they’re going to be at the lower end of the range. If it’s somebody who’s a lot more specialized, especially from a technical perspective, they’re going to be higher, and maybe in a little bit shorter supply. So it kind of depends. And yeah, like you said I think you hit it spot on is that it does depend, you just have to narrow down where you’re at. The other thing too is, you can hire a virtual assistant yourself and have them work for you or with you directly, but you can also have services where you are hiring, almost like on a job basis where you deal with somebody who manages somebody else and they farm it out to, maybe different people. So that might be a little bit more expensive there.
Larry Broughton
00:04:31
There’s got to be margin in there. And the more layers you add in the more margin you got to build in. But you also want to consider too, like if you’re dealing with confidential information. It’s just like here in the US, you’re going to pay a little bit of a premium for that. So you gotta keep that in mind, but how do you find out what you pay? So if you’re doing this for the first time, ask around. Join the forum here, ask the questions in this forum. We have virtual assistants that are on our team that are in our forum. But you know, there are job boards for virtual assistants for virtually every country that that’s out there. Look at what the position is that you’re trying to hire for and see what other people are paying, or look at the applicants and find out what are they asking to be paid. So then you just gotta do a little bit of intel, research.
Dave Braun
00:05:25
Now there’s a lot of little subtleties that we go into, in the program about how much you really should pay based upon what they say they want, et cetera. People can look at, say, you do a posting of your position profile at some job board. They could look at it and see that you’re not paying enough and they could, they could pass by. So then they could also see that you’re paying too much. And then you get every Tom ,Dick, and Harry to apply. So there’s some subtleties. And we talk a lot about that in our program.
Larry Broughton
00:06:04
Another thing to consider, is what country are you in? Because some countries have what we call a merchant mentality, where it’s all about the negotiation. They know that if they want to make a certain dollar amount, they’re going to ask for a lot more and they’re going to negotiate. And they’re almost offended if you don’t negotiate with them. Whereas others have more of a laid back, and it’s a yes, sir, no sir, kind of thing. And so if you say I’m going to pay $5 an hour, that’s what they expect. They’re not going to expect to negotiate with you. So I’m sorry to be vague on this. I’m not trying to be difficult, but this really depends. Which is why you should really have somebody help guide you through the process. This is why so many people flounder and fail and then give up, and they try it, and they make mistakes and say it’s not even worth it. So go with somebody who’s already shallowed the learning curve for you? Like, like maybe HireMyVA!
Dave Braun
00:07:04
You think that’s a good idea? You have to choose wisely, my son, on some of this stuff, and it’s important to get some guide guidelines from folks because yeah, you could make a mistake and either pay way too much or not enough and not get the right applicants or overpay and stuff. I think we’ve done both. So we we’ve got some good guidelines here.
Larry Broughton
00:07:34
The reason you’re hiring a virtual assistant is to gain more freedom in your life. And that’s both time margin and money margin. So I’m not encouraging people to overpay for anything. I don’t want you to overpay, but if you underpay, you’re going to have a revolving door of poor candidates who aren’t meeting your expectations. Plus, your heightened level of frustration, plus low productivity. The key here is you want to hire people where it increases the amount of productivity in your organization. So you got to find that sweet spot. You got to find the sweet spot, and it might take a couple of hires before you actually find the right one. It’s like anything in life and business. It’s rare that you’re going to get it right the first time. But I think that’s the great thing about our prepare module in HireMyVA is that we help guide you to take out a lot of the guesswork on the front end.
Dave Braun
00:08:35
Absolutely. It’s pretty exciting to see some of the folks in our community and what’s going on.
Larry Broughton
00:08:40
Oh yeah. the progress that they’re making and the successes that they’re having. It’s awesome!
Dave Braun
00:08:51
One of our ACE students, we got several, but one of our students, it’s just changing his life and business right now. Awesome. Anything else, sir?
Larry Broughton
00:08:59
No, I will just encourage people go to the community. If you are a member of HireMyVA, remember that form and that community is so powerful. It’s one of the most powerful parts I think of the program. If you’re not a member of HireMyVA then go to hiremyva.com and see what it’s all about. Cause you can find, it’s nice to go on the entrepreneurial journey with other folks. And unlike a lot of VA programs that are out there where they’re offering you a series of videos, or forms and templates, that kind of thing, there’s actual human interaction to help guide you through the process. The idea here is to get you closer to your entrepreneurial potential faster. And I just want to break the habit of people saying it’s easier to do it myself.
Larry Broughton
00:09:47
You know, there’s a saying that says, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with the team. And so you could have short-term success, but you’re always going to be at a barrier, a threshold, or something that you’re not gonna be able to break through. And so by hiring, having virtual assistants, we think that’s the best way to get your team built quickly. And that doesn’t mean you always have to have VAs, you can replace them at some point with people right here in the US ,or right here in your office. But my sense is that you and I who have successful businesses, we’re probably always going to have the VAs. I can’t imagine us not having VAs.
Dave Braun
01:10:29
To me, that’s part of having a successful business because otherwise, if you don’t have VAs, if you don’t have a team, you don’t really have a business. You have more of a job.
Larry Broughton
01:10:38
Yeah. I was talking though about transitioning from a VA to somebody who’s actually working in your, in your space, but yeah, teams, for sure. For sure.
Dave Braun
01:10:49
Alright, awesome. That was fun, Larry. Well, thank you everybody for joining us today. And remember building a team is the way, the way, the way, the way to reclaim your freedom and we’re here to help you. So three things we’d love for you to do and we’d really, really appreciate it. Number one, subscribe to the podcast, YouTube channel, et cetera, if you haven’t already done so. Number two, give us a rating. We’d love five stars, preferably, but do that, give us a rating. And then number three, go to hiremyva.com for more information on our course and community, our freebies, articles, podcasts, all that kind of stuff, because what we’re here for is to help you guys, even without experience, you’ll learn how to prepare for hire and thrive with virtual assistant. Larry and I have helped folks and helping them now. And we want to help you too, to get your freedom back. So go to hiremyva.com for more information.
Larry Broughton
01:11:45
Hey folks, do yourself a favor. Do the world a favor. Go do something significant today. All right. Go get ’em!
