How to Manage Virtual Assistants

Mike: Hey, it’s Mike Hambright from FlipNerd.com. And we have a quick VIP tip to share with you from Antonio Edwards, who is going to share a tip on how to manage your virtual assistants.

Antonio: One quick tip for this session right now is, I get a lot of questions about, from business owners, “Antonio, how do you manage VAs?” I have a team of 5, a team of 10, or maybe one or two VAs and I have a hard time managing VAs given that they’re in, maybe, a different state or even a different country.

A few good ways that we manage our VAs. I use a web-based platform called Slack. Slack allows me to — I think it’s way better than Skype. I know some people use Skype, but Skype is not, sometimes the connection is off. I don’t know, I think it’s way more sexier than Skype because, for one with Slack.com, I like the functionality of it. It has a cool functionality, a cool feel to it. It’s very simple. You can segment your departments. Let’s say if you have a lease management department, a marketing department. It allows you to segment those and invite those people in that department where they can all talk amongst each other.

Also, it has integrations where you can integrate Dropbox, you can integrate all sorts of stuff inside Slack. And everybody’s all on this one platform. You can upload docs and you can share docs within one group to the next group within Slack.

So that’s one way I manage my assistants. I also use it for constructing my phone and my apps. So I can see everything within Slack from my phone and manage my team of virtual assistants from my phone within Slack.

Also, another way is we use Hubstaff, which is another great way to manage your team of virtual assistants as well. With Hubstaff, I have them log in, they log in to Hubstaff and that’s like they’re clocking in for their shift and they clock out through Hubstaff.

Let’s say if they work 8 hours a day, I will see all my team within, I can see how many hours they worked. It automatically, it randomly takes snapshot of each assistant every 10 minutes. So they don’t know when their computer is getting snapshotted, but it takes a snapshot of their productivity or what they’re doing every 10 minutes. So I can go in and see what they’ve done throughout the whole day.

And it also rates them from 0 to 100 on their productivity. So if they’re at 30% average for that day, that will let me know that they weren’t very productive throughout that day and I might go in and question, “Hey, what are you doing? You were at 30% level today.” I really like for them to be over 50% on an average day.

It also calculates hours. It automatically pays them because it allows you to set their rates, their hourly rate within the Hubstaff platform as well. And you can connect it to, like, a PayPal or any other paying source online where it will pay them every time you set it, whether every two weeks or every week.

So those are two cool things I use to manage and track my virtual assistants is Slack.com. Most people don’t know about Slack yet, but it’s getting very popular.

Mike: A lot of people are using that now, yeah, we’re starting to play with it. That’s fantastic. And I do have experience with Hubstaff, too, that’s a great product. So, you’re right. I think the key is, with a virtual assistant, is just making sure that you can get rid of some of the fears you have with the virtual part, as you can kind of see what they’re doing and you have clear communications, which is really important in any relationship, right?

Antonio: Absolutely.

Mike: Yeah, awesome, awesome. Antonio, thanks so much for sharing today. So check out Slack.com or Hubstaff.com. Both great tools for managing your VAs. Thanks, my friend.

Antonio: Absolutely. And I want to give one more thing. If they want a flowchart, they can see my flowchart of my outsourcing group. They can go to MyVANow.com and check out my outsourcing group for how my flowchart looks and to give them a blueprint for my virtual assistants.

We’d like to thank our sponsors, RealtyMogul.com and National Real Estate Insurance Group.

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Mike: Please note the views and opinions expressed by the individuals in this program do not necessarily reflect those of FlipNerd.com or any of its partners, advertisers or affiliates. Please consult professionals before making any investment or tax decisions, as real estate investing can be risky.