Fast Easy Tip

Featured Article by Marlon Sanders

Marlon’s In-Depth 16-Point Guide To Hiring Your First Part Time Virtual Assistant Based On How I Hired My Own Virtual Assistants.

Let’s talk about hiring your first part time virtual assistant:

– Can you afford it?
– Where do you find them?
– How do you work with them?
– How do you save 50% on their pay?
– What country should you hire them from?
– What if their work isn’t up to par?
– What skills do they need?

One of the big steps in your online career will be when you make that move to hire your first online assistant.

There are many ways to outsource your work. You can, of course, hire freelancers off of elance or other sites.

That’s good for one-off projects.

But very soon in your career, you’re going to want to hire a part time virtual assistant and later a full-time one. That way, they can learn over time how you think and what you want.

You get a higher quality result with less work.

As you know, Lisa worked for me for 7 years. I’ve had other virtual assistants. And now I have some employees. But I worked my way up to this point over time.

Here are my tips for finding and using your first part time virtual assistant:

1. Hire someone in Canada. They have high speed Internet and are Internet savvy. If you’re in the U.S., they’re on US time.

Lisa was in Canada. Rick Hanson did my technical stuff for many years. He’s in Canada.

2. Hire someone in your relative time zone.

It’s hard for me to work with virtual assistants in UK or Australia because of the time zone difference.

Whatever country you’re in, I think you need to look for someone in the same time zone. That way, you can collaborate on projects during work hours.

The cool thing is that if you’re a night owl, you can find a time zone where that’s someone else’s work day.

3. Grab a 50% discount on pay

The great thing about Canada when I started there with Lisa was I got a 50% discount due to the exchange rate. Over time, this wilted.

But when you’re getting started, look for that exchange rate discount.

4. Use your resources to find people

a. Craigs List — That should be obvious. I love using Craigs List.

b. Newspapers. I ran classified ads in several newspapers in Canada.

c. Post in forums. Post what you’re looking for in forums like Warriorsforum, Digital Point forums, the Rich Jerk forum, abestweb forum, Anthony Blake’s forum (ablake com). There are many other forums you can use, depending on the talent.

5. Do NOT be scared to hire someone if you have revenue.

As long as you have a profitable sales process, don’t be scared to hire someone part time. You’ll NEVER feel like you can afford it.

But as long as you have a product that’s selling, a target market and a lead generation process, you will very likely find it pays off.

You WILL be scared to death to hire that first person. But if you have a sales process that’s working, I really believe it’ll free up your time and let you concentrate on higher return activities.

Face it, answering customer service emails doesn’t make you any dough.

6. Hire talent over pay

I’d rather pay more and get someone really talented than pay less and get mediocre talent.

You want someone you don’t have to train. Trust me on this one.

7. Find someone with exposure to Photoshop and good writing skills. When you’re hiring that first virtual assistant, you need a jack of all trades.

Someone whose very computer savvy, has had a little customer service experience, good writing skills, and a little art background or Photoshop is great. It’s ideal if they can do the basics in Dreamweaver.

When I hired Lisa, she was already doing customer service for Internet Marketing Challenge but they let her go when Corey bought the company. She could do a drop shadow in Photoshop and had taken a correspondence course on html.

8. Call them first thing every day and plan the day’s work. Even if they’re part time, you need to review their work plan daily. Just call and go over the work for the day.

This is why I say you need someone in your time zone. In my opinion, Skype doesn’t cut it. You need to be able to talk over the phone.

And you need to be able to EASILY reach the person. If you have to email them and get a response overnight, this isn’t going to work out long term.

Yes, you can do that for repetitious outsourced projects. But the virtual assistant person is your RIGHT HAND. You need them on demand at least during set hours.

9. Here are some tasks you can have them do:

a. Fix html problems
b. Customer service problem solving
c. Compile pdf’s
d. Create reseller pages and contests
e. Respond to the needs of affiliates or jv partners
f. Create products
g. Design banner ads for affiliates
h. Write emails
i. Write postcards to resellers
j. Do things you don’t want to

10. Dictate your promo emails to your VA.

This is why you want someone you work with every day. You can dictate your promo emails to them.

Over time, they’ll learn how to type these up and you get promos out to your list just by dictating an email in your morning call.

11. Set rules upfront about days off, time off, emergencies and advancing pay.

a. Set a rule upfront that you don’t advance pay.
b. Set a rule on time off from work hours for personal errands.

Virtual assistants sometimes don’t see it as a job. And you have crucial tasks for the day when they up and announce they have a dentist appointment or need to take a family member to the Pharmacy. Whatever. Set the rules upfront.

c. Decide if there will be vacation time.
d. Have some form of non-disclosure agreement even if it isn’t legally valid. At least you can have a clear, unambiguous agreement.

12. Be quick to pull the plug.

If junk goes on such as their Internet goes down all the time, tasks don’t get done and you get excuses, critical mistakes are made, pull the plug.

13. You’ll know within one to two weeks if the person is good. A bad hire will want to take a month to get up to speed and research the tasks. A good person will hop right in and start doing work.

14. Let the person in your plans. Brainstorm with them. Let them experience fun and exciting tasks also. Don’t always just give them boring stuff. Find out what they love to do and see if you can work some of those things into their responsibilities.

15. Let them grow in the position.

If you see potential, talent or abilities they aren’t using, pay for them to get a little training and see if that talent will blossom.

I bought Lisa a Photoshop book and in 30 days she had gone through all the tutorials and was amazing. But she had an art background and tons of talent.

16. The hardest person you’ll EVER hire is your first.

I remember Corey (Rudl) telling me that once over the phone. And it was so true. And it’s true.

———————————————————–
Marlon Sanders is the author of “The Amazing Formula That Sells Products Like Crazy.”

Give me a few minutes and I’ll show you how the Amazing Formula can sell your products like crazy! Whether you’re selling on the Internet or offline, the formula will work for your business!

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As men we try to play things off to people and we act as if we don’t care what we look like or what people think of us. We know just how women can be with their looks and we pride ourselves that we don’t obsess like that. What most people don’t know is that there are many men out there who really do care and who struggle with the way they look.

One common problem that men have is gynecomastia – which is also known as ‘man boobs’. Gynecomastia is when fatty tissue will form on a man just below the nipples causing the look of boobs. This is a problem for men and can cause serious self-esteem problems. They will find that they can’t wear the comfortable shirts that they like because the ‘ man boobs’ will show through and people will make fun of them.

Did the Chest Coach System Work For Me?

There are several options to take in order to get rid of this problem. Surgery is usually the first thing that anyone will mention – but this can cost thousands of dollars – which is something that not many people have. Other people suggest a strict exercise routine to help tone them up and down. This is the worst thing you can do because it can often make matters worse and make them more defined.

In my opinion, the Chest Coach System is the most effective way to help lose those unwanted ‘man boobs’. Chest Coach System explains to us that the best way to get rid of these man boobs is to balance out the hormones that have caused them. The author, Cliff Manchaster, understands just how bad of a problem this can be on men and he understands because he suffered with ‘man boobs’ for many years.

He had tried many different treatments just like everyone else and finally found the secret and the answers that everyone is looking for. With Chest Coach System, you can get rid of the man boobs easily and in a reasonable amount of time. Nobody should have to suffer the unhappiness that comes from with this annoying problem.

Josh Blue use to suffer from man boobs, but has used the Chest Coach System to help him Get Rid of Man Boobs. Josh is giving a more indepth review of the various man boobs cure available on the market today as well as free resources on How to Get Rid of Man Boobs on his website.

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Synergy Spanish has a completely different approach to learning Spanish than a traditional Spanish teaching program like Rocket Spanish does and is targeted at a very different group of people too. While Rocket Spanish is a full fledged, ground-up Spanish program that teaches Spanish at university level, Synergy Spanish is not.

Level:

Preferably absolute beginner. Synergy Spanish is aimed at people who are just starting out and do not know much of anything about Spanish. At the same time, it is designed for those who want to learn survival Spanish as quickly as possible. As such, Synergy Spanish is best suited for those who wish to learn Spanish for business and travel purposes.

Depth :

Synergy Spanish goes fairly deep into the language, but not near as much as Rocket Spanish. However, this is a good thing for most people. Since it does not focus too much on the technicalities but instead focuses on the practical language skills, it is structured very differently than other Spanish programs. While it may not be deep, there is no doubt that once you go through the entire course, you will be able to speak and understand Spanish just as well as anyone else.

Structure:

Synergy Spanish has a very different structure that it follows than traditional language courses. Instead of first establishing a core and then building the language around it, SS (Synergy Spanish) follows the opposite system. It first builds an outside understanding of the language by focusing on easy and common phrases (138 of them), and then slowly builds a core that makes sense in the context of these phrases and words. This way, the learner can pick on the language very quickly without having to know anything technical to the language, yet, in the end comes out knowing just about as much as anyone else learning Spanish.

In this particular regard, SS is rated higher than Rocket Spanish.

Speed: This is what the program is really built for. This is the biggest plus in the favor of Synergy Spanish. Anyone can learn Spanish with this at an incredibly quick rate. If what you are looking for is a fast pace that gets you speaking basic Spanish in an extremely short time (about a week), then this is your best bet. The thing is fast…’nuff said.

Quality:

The audio version of the program is offered as an upgrade to the basic course, and is highly recommended. Since SS is priced lower than almost every other program, the upgrade is very reasonable and easily affordable. The audio version of SS can be compared to Rocket Spanish. While it’s not quite as ‘polished’, there is nothing lacking, and one should never have any difficulty understanding what is being said.

All in all, Synergy Spanish is a great program for everyone who wants to learn Spanish as a hobby, or for travel and business purposes. On the other hand, if you wish to learn Spanish for career or want to make it your second language, then Rocket Spanish would be a better option since it is more structured and in-depth.

Reference:
Synergy Spainsh: www.marktse.com/cb.php/chagoya/fet/
Rocket Spanish: www.marktse.com/cb.php/rspanish/fet/