Dave Braun
00:00:00
Hello. Again, 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 again, as normal, I’ve got my partner, co-host crazy dude, Larry Broughton here with me and I am Dave Braun. We’re here to answer another fantastic question that you guys have been asking. How are you doing, Larry?
Larry Broughton
00:00:27
Awesome. David, how are you, sir? Nice hair cut!
Dave Braun
00:00:30
I’m doing great. Yeah. Oh man. It felt so good to get one.
Larry Broughton
00:00:33
You were looking mopey.
Dave Braun
00:00:35
Yeah. Yeah. I was, I think I’ve lost a couple of pounds. That’s the, that’s the diet secret of the week.
Larry Broughton
00:00:41
Oh I see, you look great! Yeah. It’s good to see you my friend, thank you for leading this effort today.
Dave Braun
00:00:49
You’re welcome! All right, Question. You ready? Sure. Bring it. All right. This came from one of our tribe. They asked how do I specify in my job specification that I’m looking for someone who has the same “voice” as I do.
Larry Broughton
00:01:07
I think I know who this came from.
Dave Braun
00:01:09
The same voice, so they want somebody to replicate their voice.
Larry Broughton
00:01:13
So this is probably somebody who do you think would be doing ghost writing or social media posts, those types of things I’m assuming here. Can I tweak this question just a little bit? Is that, okay. No, never mind.
Larry Broughton
00:01:32
What I encourage people to do is when you’re trying to do these postings for your virtual assistants, there’s to consider posting not necessarily a job description, but what we call a position profile job descriptions are oftentimes awarded broadly position profiles are much more detailed than what are the skills, the specific skills that you need, the achievements that they’ve had in the past, what your expectations are for, for this person and how they’re going to fit into the organization. It’s not just a list of things. And so it’s a little bit semantics, but we do go through this with you in the program. But this is a really good question, Dave, because it’s not like so easy, like I’m going to sit down and I’m having somebody follow a specific recipe and how to bake cookies. Right? So I think it’s a, it’s a great question.
Larry Broughton
00:02:19
And I’ve talked about this before, because it is a recurring question. And so, but you know, there’s probably a four or five different things that we we can do on us, but I do agree, Dave, that it’s an important question because if you’re hiring a VA and they’re in many ways going to be the voice behind your face, that’s meeting the public, it is so important, right? So, you know me I’m pretty colloquial, but pretty casual high energy, oftentimes. But if I were to hire somebody, who’s going to start writing social media posts for me and they’re very scientific in their approach and they’re very exacting and they’re kind of have this monotonous tone that is not going to come across at all. So one of the things I would really encourage you to do when you’re, when you’re posting your position profile, the first thing is make sure that there’s some place where these applicants can go to hear your “voice”.
Larry Broughton
00:03:17
So with me, it’s pretty easy because I’d list a bunch of YouTube videos. I would list a bunch of TV shows that I’ve been on where I’ve actually talked because you’ll notice my dog just ran in. Hello, Bodhi. You’ll notice that we all have different mannerisms, cadences, words that we use over and over again. Like I’m kind of a California guy, I say awesome a lot. I say, you know, I do say hi to say, dude, what’s well, and I get pretty casual. Oftentimes say this, you know, go get them or use the word significant a lot or intentionality a lot. So we do, we, when we’re talking about what are, what we’re passionate about or what it is that we’re doing for our job, there are certain colloquialisms. Linguistically, there are patterns that we all use and see if the applicant can, can kind of pick up on that.
Larry Broughton
00:04:15
Right? Exactly. So I would, I would include that. So it’s much easier with video, but if there are, have been writings that you’ve done in the past articles, posts on social media or whatever, then it’s easier. Now if you’re brand new to it and you don’t have a lot of this out there, that’s going to be much more difficult. Dave, you’re going to have to, you’re going to have to do, I think one of the things that you and I talked about before, and this is be very specific and describe what your voice is. Is it energetic? Is it serious? Is it scientific? You’re going to have to get very, very specific. If you, if there’s not a place that you can point a candidate to say, Hey, go, listen, go read, go watch. Then you’ve got to get very specific about listing what it is. And it’s probably gonna be a little bit of a longer process. Yeah, for sure. So let’s say you, David,
Dave Braun
00:05:05
You know, you got a great point. We didn’t talk about this in our pre-show meaning, but if somebody doesn’t have a lot of stuff out there, I wonder they may, they may have a certain voice now, but it may change over time.
Larry Broughton
00:05:22
For sure.
Dave Braun
00:05:24
I think especially if, yeah, if you’re, if you don’t have anything out there it’s going to change probably pretty quickly. So it may not be the right thing for you to do to find somebody to duplicate your voice until you’ve kind of almost found it, right?
Larry Broughton
00:05:37
Yeah. The more people get out there, whether it’s in writing or on video, the more casual people tend to get, they get more comfortable when you first start,
Dave Braun
00:05:50
I was gonna say, I lost, we lost you there for a sec. What was the last sentence you said,
Larry Broughton
00:05:54
I have no idea. You know what I mean? He’s gone. I may have said something about that the more you write, the more you post, the more you do a video, the more comfortable you become, the more casual we oftentimes become. Yeah. And so I think that’s a really good point, Dave, that if you, if this is brand new to you, you may have to have like a writing partner who’s going to help you find, find your voice. But I understand if it’s the person I think is who submitted this question to kind of in the spiritual space, not spiritual space, w what’s the word I’m looking for, anyway, if you’re, this is not the person, I don’t think, but let’s say that you are a Christian, right? There are certain terms that you’re going to use in your writing versus someone who you’re an atheist and every been exposed, right. The kind of language, a language, right. So you’re just gonna, you’re gonna have to find it, but I think it’s really important that you describe your voice where you, what you’re trying to get across. And if there is a place to point people certainly haven’t go there yet. What else should we, what else can we give?
Dave Braun
00:07:09
And I think another great tip would be, is in every business, should have something close to this as some kind of a, you know, a client avatar that they’ve developed. Oh, for sure. Because we, as entrepreneurs, we should be speaking to, or in the language that our ideal client avatar can understand. Because it could be very different if you are, if you’re writing a blog post, I mean, if you’re writing it, you’re a professor and you’re writing a blog post, well, you may need to be college level writing, but if it’s, you know, like for us HireMyVA, it’s maybe fifth or sixth grade level, that’s very, very different. So giving them your avatar of who you’re actually trying to reach would also help. Yeah.
Larry Broughton
00:07:53
Good point.
Dave Braun
00:07:54
Yeah. And then, and then the other thing is, I think it’s going to be important when you’re screening for candidates. And the question is more along the lines of, you know, your job description or position profile of you said, but you’re going to have to make sure when you screen candidates that you’re gonna, you’re gonna really need to get some good samples from them. Right. And you’re going to have to, you’re going to have to ask specifically, Hey, I want a video. I want you to do, you know, something written or I want you to do an Instagram post in my voice or whatever you think is going to be my voice. Right?
Larry Broughton
00:08:31
Yeah, yeah. Again, the key is here. I give them every point them to as many directions as you can, whether it’s social media posts that you’ve done before articles before, but yeah. Have them give them a little writing assignment or a video assignment or a script to send whatever it is on, get as close as possible as you can. I would encourage you though, don’t have them do a job. Like if you need a script written for a video, don’t have them write the entire script for the video. That’s not fair to them to have somebody do your job and you’re not paying them. Oh yeah.
Dave Braun
00:09:06
Abs absolutely. You should pay for them. If you’re gonna, if you’re gonna ask for a significant amount of work, you know, like if they’re going to have to take a whole hour or something, then you know, you need to pay for it. Or even a couple of days, you know, the, the other thing is it may be something that would help you describe your voice if you asked a couple of people that consume your content, how they would describe your voice.
Larry Broughton
00:09:28
Yeah. And by the way, we’re not talking about, we’re not talking about is my voice high-pitched or that deep, is it baritone? Do I have an accent? That’s not what we’re talking about here. Right? Dave, we’re talking. Okay, good.
Dave Braun
00:09:40
Yeah. Like the characteristics, cause you know, Larry, somebody else may say your voice is this, but you may think it’s that. And so I think it could help if you would ask a couple of people that have followed your content or that you’re familiar with you, what they think your, your voice is really like, how would they describe it? And as like you said, is it calm? Is it deliberative? Is it energetic? Is it excitable? Is the, you know, whatever that, whatever that is. Yeah.
Larry Broughton
01:10:11
Cadence is one of those things that you can capture for sure. Like I’m a, I’m a quick, yeah. I speak quickly. And people told me like when I do, when I write articles or even the victory book, people said, I can hear your voice as I’m reading and I’m reading this, you know, and we were very intentional and when we put that together to make it sound that way.
Dave Braun
01:10:32
Yeah, exactly. All right. So we’ve got some good tips for you about how to find somebody that’s gonna actually duplicate or mimic your voice in a certain way, but make sure of course you follow these tips that we gave you. And then I think the final thing that we want to mention is it will probably even when you hire somebody, it’s going to take a little bit of time for tweaking and tuning. You’re going to have to work closely with them to go back and forth. And then I think that that will pay off over time cause I know you’ve had a lot of experience with that.
Larry Broughton
01:11:07
I have, you know, when I was really on social media a few years ago and we were posting several times a day, I had hired a social media company. And in the beginning I was like, I was looking at every single post and rewriting and it was a real commitment. Right. And then over time it got easier. All I would say is, Hey, here’s the topic of what I want the post to be and let’s match the image. And they got very, very good at it, but it took a commitment and I would also encourage you is if you’re not willing to invest time into it, just do it yourself. I mean, it’s good. It’s like anything, when you’re hiring somebody, you got to invest time and getting them up to speed. Right. But if they’re not working, cut them loose and try somebody else.
Larry Broughton
01:11:55
Right. Don’t complain. This is one of the hardest things. Like I said, this is not like you’re trying to find somebody to come in and do math, correct. Or do accounting, which is very black and white. This is really in the art side of the, of the hiring and not the science side of it. Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. So don’t get frustrated if the first couple of people don’t get it. And then when you do find somebody, you better be doing everything that you can, that’s part of the program and the thrive. How do you keep them? Right. Because if you find someone and they’re amazing and you treat them like dirt and you don’t show respect to them and you don’t pay them appropriately, they’re going to go someplace else. And this is why frankly, good ghost writers make so much money. You know?
Larry Broughton
01:12:44
I mean, you’d be surprised. Like I know, I know the guy who wrote one of Hillary Clinton’s book or the guy who wrote Hillary Clinton’s, Hillary Clinton’s book. So I know the guy who wrote one of Colin Powell’s books, they spent a lot of time with this, with these people. And they interview a lot of people and they read a lot of their writings and watch a lot of their videos. It’s a full-time I mean, it’s a, it’s an important task to capture someone’s voice. So when you find someone who does capture to get close to it, then, then the treat them well, but don’t expect, you’re going to find somebody right out of the gate, that’s going to get it a hundred percent. If you find somebody gets 50% of the way there and you just kind of help them get it across the finish line or if they can get to 80% and you just tweak it by adding, replacing a word for one of the words you usually use. That’s awesome. Yeah.
Dave Braun
01:13:41
Yeah. I mean, just that would save you a ton of time, time it produced twice as much content or it help you to use that time for something else
Larry Broughton
01:13:49
And just remember it better done than perfect. Better done than perfect. At least you’re getting your content out there. Yeah.
Dave Braun
01:13:57
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. All right. Well, any other final words, or do you think we got it covered?
Larry Broughton
01:14:01
I think we’ve probably beaten this one to death, but don’t forget that one of the best parts elements of this program is going to the community forum that we’ve got. This is a question you can pose to all the other folks that are going through this, or have been through this program and ask them the same question. It wouldn’t go back and forth. And we’ve got our, our calls that we do that people can jump on and we can kind of beat this thing and get a little bit more specific about what it is that you’re working on and why things are succeeding. And some things you’re still struggling with these very important.
Dave Braun
01:14:33
Absolutely. And our Q and A sessions are like you said, are really great for these kinds of things. That’s right. Yeah. All right. Well, everybody, we’re going to put a bow on this and we’re going to wrap it up. Thanks for joining us. And remember building a team is the way to reclaim your freedom. We are here to help you to that. So three things we’d love for you to do right now. And we’d really, really appreciate it. Number one, subscribe to this podcast, if you haven’t already done. So number two, give us a rating. Obviously we want five stars, but do what you you want to do. And then the third thing is go to Hiremyva.com for more information on our course and community. Because remember, even without experience, you learn how to prepare for hire and thrive, as Larry was talking about how important that is, you’ll learn how to thrive with virtual assistants, Larry and I have helped folks like crazy for helping folks now in our community. We’d love to help you too. So just go to Hiremyva.com for more information.
Larry Broughton
01:15:31
That’s right. Okay. Do yourself a favor, do the world a favor. Go do something significant today. God bless you. God keep you. God hold you. Now, go get them!
Dave Braun
01:15:40
All right, Bye everybody!
