Hiring Your First (or Next) VA Domestic or Abroad with Bonnie Fahy
Episode 277: Show Notes
Hey everybody, and welcome back to The Strategy Hour. Today we are super happy to have a conversation with Bonnie Fahy, who is the founder of SourceIt where she helps her students and clients grow their businesses through outsourcing. Bonnie has a particular approach, which she calls “hybrid sourcing”, that can make your company run more smoothly and iron out some of the traditional issues with getting outside help. Bonnie is going to be telling us all about how it works and how you can use it to your great advantage. Sound great? We think so! She is going to be giving concrete, actionable advice on how you can build your team and grow your revenue through some very simple steps. So you are not going to want to miss this episode!
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The subject of hiring and how you go about sourcing your employees can sometimes be taboo; but don’t worry, in this fearless conversation we break down all these walls and give you the real inside scoop. Here at TCC we have had our fair share of successes and failures with hiring over the Internet and we are so excited to share Bonnie’s revolutionary and forward-thinking rules of the game with all of you, our listeners. Bonnie even tells us how she managed to quadruple her income in just three months using the strategies she is going to be explaining today! This means that by outsourcing smartly, you can have a lot more money in your pocket and also free up more time to do the things most important to you. Get ready, and let’s dive in!
The Outline of What Bonnie Does and What Hybrid Sourcing Is
As some of us undoubtedly know, outsourcing team members can be a horror story and this is mostly because marketers do not always give you the full story. If you are going to be hiring through correspondence you need all the information that is can be available to you. Just plain outsourcing is not enough! Bonnie believes that you need the best of both worlds, the worlds being local expertise and international affordability. So the skill becomes knowing what to outsource from where. Bonnie tells us that when she is outsourcing for content and writing positions she always looks local because of the of the cultural understanding and perspective that it offers. When she is looking for someone for a position in tech, any web design or video work, she usually looks abroad because it is just so convenient. If you can mix these two streams of work you might be well on your way to a better model. She also reminds us how we can build long term relationships with the people we do hire, and just because people might be external to our immediate environment does not mean they are peripheral to our lives and company’s future.
Using Outsourcing to Quadruple Income Quickly
When Bonnie started out, she was doing almost everything herself and she quickly realized she was not excellent at everything and as a result her first two years working were very difficult. These struggles gave her the idea to hire some help and in turn showed her how she could use virtual work to her advantage. When she saw how much an outsourced VA and new team member boosted her income and business, she imagined how she might be able to systematize this situation and resell the service to clients. Bonnie uses Asana to keep her team on the same page, but also uses a hands on approach in some select situations. Her whole team is hired in this manner, having a VA found locally and the foreign graphic designer and video editor. She really believes that this can be a powerful tool for anyone!
How to Get Started Hiring an Outsourced Team
There are three main steps in the hiring process and they are really not that difficult! The first is to create an attractive job ad, second is to simply filter appropriate candidates and then comes the interviewing process. The ad is very important, even more than you might think. Some entrepreneurs forget to put effort into making the job appear desirable because this is really how you entice good people to work with you! Bonnie tells us that a good way to go about it is to talk about the culture at your business, what drives you, the perks of working there and what the people who work there are like. Speak about your industry! You need to give a potential applicant a reason to want to apply. There are a variety of websites where you can post ads but remember to cast a wide net to ensure visibility! Filtering candidates effectively can save a lot of time and Bonnie does this by creating a form that automatically eliminates irrelevant resumes and cover letters. Some tips from Bonnie on the interviewing process are to steer away from questions that gauge enthusiasm and to ask what someone wants to get paid. A good test can be to create a hypothetical situation and see how the person deals with a scenario. You mostly want to hire people that are going to make your job easier by being able to take action and responsibility, so try test for that at this stage.
The Conversation Around Salaries, Wages and Interview Project
A good starting point for a discussion on salary is to advertise it as DOE (depends on experience), but if you know what you want and how much it is worth to you, you can also state this explicitly. There are plenty of ways around the difficulties of wage negotiating and pegging it at the right level will benefit you in the long run. Bonnie likes to use a quick screener call with applicants, no longer than ten minutes, where she just lays out what she expects and touches in with them. The first interview should not leave you feeling strongly either way about a someone, you just want to lead the conversation in the right direction and Bonnie often uses this opportunity to suggest an interview project which most people agree to. This can be a quick test to see if the person is a fit. Bonnie likes to keep it very brief, something that can be done in about an hour. The best way to go about doing this is to think about what you will be requiring from them and a short way to assess how well they can do it. You probably also want to test self-sufficiency and if someone can take ownership of a situation. Another great tip from Bonnie for this part of the process is to ask for clarification and double check that everyone is understanding each other. This helps to build a report and gauge the suitability of the person too.
Quote This
The thing to remember in a virtual environment is that 90% of our nonverbal communication is missing.
—Bonnie Fahy
Highlights
The Outline of What Bonnie Does and What Hybrid Sourcing Is. [0:03:52.2]
Using Outsourcing to Quadruple Income Quickly. [0:09:51.5]
How to Get Started Hiring an Outsourced Team. [0:15:20.4]
The Conversation Around Salaries and Wages. [0:27:35.2]
#TalkStrategyToMe [0:43:42.6]
Make an Attractive Ad
Filter with a Form and Question
Stage a Sample Project.
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Bonnie Fahy
Website | Instagram | Live More Formula
Bonnie Fahy is the creator of SourceIt, a dynamic course on hiring and outsourcing, and one of the industry’s leaders on leveraging outsourcing to grow and scale businesses. Bonnie stumbled upon outsourcing during the early days of her internet marketing career, and was astonished to see her profits quadruple in 3 months. Inspired by her results, she started consulting with other entrepreneurs and helped them grow their businesses from 5 to 6 figures and from 6 to 7 figures using the same techniques and strategies. Bonnie takes a unique approach to outsourcing that she calls “hybrid sourcing”, a combination of leveraging the global workforce and strategically hiring local talent. This hybrid approach has helped her clients save tens of thousands of dollars on their bottom lines and build the teams they need to gain an unfair competitive advantage, skyrocket their profits and live the lives that they love. Today, Bonnie coaches entrepreneurs around the world on how to strategically leverage outsourcing to meet their business goals, how to build long term relationships with their outsourced team and how to use human psychology principles to get the best results from their team. You can learn more about Bonnie at GetSourceIt.com.
KEY TOPICS
Outsourcing, Interviewing, Employment, Advertising, Hybrid Sourcing
