This video will show you my trip to the Philippines to meet my virtual assistant. I will also show you how to hire and work with a virtual assistant. Plus, my virtual assistant, Dan, will also be sharing some tips and insights.

Here are some questions that I will be tackling about in this video:
Where to find a VA?
Why hire from the Philippines?
What task should you give a VA?

Where to find a VA?
I found my VA in Onlinejobs.ph. It is the system that I used in hiring my virtual assistants. You can check my detailed video about this.

Why hire from the Philippines?
Filipinos speak really good English and they have a good work ethic. It’s also just about $3/hour to hire someone from the Philippines. While it may sound cheap for others, Dan shares that this kind of rate is already a big thing in the Philippines.

What task should you give a VA?
Most of the tasks I give my VAs are those repetitive ones. I just write it down or do a screen recording of how I do it. From there, I then let my VAs do it. Over time, as you get comfortable with your VAs and you are able to find someone you can trust, you can give them bigger tasks.

Some of the tasks that Dan does are the following:
Invoice Checking – This was the first task he received which was for my first company, BDancewear.
Video Editing – At the start, Dan had no idea on how to edit videos. While I provided a tutorial at the beginning, he eventually learned to teach himself.
Bookkeeping
Collecting Emails
Hiring Other VAs – For Dan, one of the things to watch out for in hiring VAs is the way they answer the question. If they are uncertain with their answers, that will already raise a red flag. They could be lying about their answers like giving a skill set that they don’t really have.

In terms of schedule, I allow my VAs to work whenever they want as long as they get the job done for the day. They usually do 40 hours per week, but if they do more, they also get paid more.

Dan shares that one of the advantages of working as a virtual assistant is being able to avoid the difficulty of commuting especially in the Philippines where traffic is a major problem. For him, working as a VA for Travis was very different from his previous job in a corporate setting. He no longer has to commute to work for three hours and can use that extra time for other important things.

I learned a lot of things in meeting my virtual assistants. The most important one is to embrace the hero’s journey. Part of this is meeting with allies. Don’t try to do it all alone and work with other people.