CAVO Ep. 92: The Art and Science of Virtual Assistant Pairing

In this podcast, learn the secrets behind virtual assistant matchmaking. Melissa Smith, an industry-leading expert in the area of virtual assistants and remote work hiring, shares her expertise and inspiration with Stephanie Menefee, Associate Dean and Professor in the School of Public Service College of Law and Public Service at National University. Their conversation surrounds future trends in AI, success stories, integration challenges, and essential tips for aspiring virtual assistants.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:02

Welcome to the Center for the Advancement of Virtual Organizations Podcast, the Art and Science of Virtual Assistant Pairing. I'm Stephanie Menfee, and today I'm joined by Melissa Smith. And we are talking about virtual assistants today. Welcome, Melissa. Thank you so much for taking the time to come and chat with us.

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

Absolutely excited to be here and share.

SPEAKER_01: 0:26

Yeah, I think this is a very cool topic and one that we don't hear often about. So I I kind of just want to get right into it so that we can maximize our time together. But first, I'm wondering what inspired you to become a virtual assistant matchmaker.

SPEAKER_00: 0:45

Well, I wouldn't say that I was necessarily inspired. I stumbled into it and probably could have started a lot sooner. So my background was actually an executive assistant. I was an executive assistant for over 15 years. My mom was an executive assistant. It's what I knew I wanted to be when I grew up. I went to secretary school back when that's what we were called. I was doing the thing that I always imagined and dreamed I would be doing. And then I had some, you know, dramatic life changes. My husband suddenly passed away. I was moving. I had a family, my daughter in high school, a son in college. I mean, it was just really difficult and challenging. And there was a time where I had moved back to my home state of California from Georgia. I was there for a year, had a job that I absolutely loved. I thought I was going to be there forever. The average person worked at uh the school for 20 plus years, on average. And so I thought, well, I'm I'm going to be one of those people. I could see why everyone stays here for a long time. And my daughter came to me after a year and said, I don't want to live here anymore. I want to go home to Georgia. I want to graduate with my friends. And I knew I had to give that to her. So I went into my boss to give my two weeks' notice. And he said, We don't want to lose you. How can we keep you? And I said, I could do most of what I do virtually. I don't have to be here in the office. And he said, Okay, let's do that. And so I became the first remote employee for that company. And a few months into it, they sent out contracts every year. And a few months into it, I received my contract and I thought, you know, if I could do this for them, you know, could I do this for myself? Which really went against everything I had ever said. I said I would never own my own company because everyone that I knew did was married to it. They couldn't go anywhere, they couldn't do anything. It was just terrible. And here now that wasn't the case because it was remote and there's so much freedom and flexibility, and I had a small taste of it. And I thought, you know, just what if I could do this? So I set my contract back unsigned. They were super supportive. I finished out my current contract and then I started my own business. Well, a year into the business, I had been meeting tons of people. I was networking like crazy. Um, and I was constantly meeting people who were quote unquote not my clients. I would educate them on virtual assistance, what we do, how we could help them. And at the end of the conversation, they would say, Great, can I hire you? And I would say no. And they would look at me like I was crazy. I would tell them I'm just not that type of VA. And they would say, Well, where does one find that type of VA? And I thought, gosh, I know tons of people. So I began making introductions like that for about a year. And then I had this light bulb moment and I thought, I wonder if someone would pay me to do this. So I tried it and they did, and I thought, perfect, this is what I'm gonna do from now on. And a lot of people told me it was terrible. They told me it was a terrible idea. There was no recurring revenue and that it was bad because of that, and I needed to do an agency model. So, what I do is not, no one else does it. Um, there's been a few people that have come up with the title after me, but they don't do it like I do it, and they aren't, frankly, as good as I am. They don't charge enough, so that's right in their pricing. So I didn't have anyone to look to because I knew I did not want an agency. There's such a high turnover rate, you have to have really good management skills, there's all kinds of things. You cannot run away from that business. And I wanted to create a business I could run away from, which also wasn't something that people teach you how to do. So, you know, it was really you're getting to a point of okay, asking myself a question. Everyone's gonna have to ask have ask themselves their own question, and then saying, well, what if I am meeting my client, but I'm just not charging them? And that's really how it all started. Sure. So I think a lot of people start with what they want, not necessarily what they need. It's fun. I want a better social media presence. That's that's sexy and that's fun. So a lot of people start with that. And I'm not here to convince anyone of anything. I can give you all the information. I can't change your mind. So if that's the path that you want to go, by all means go down that path. But if you want someone to do social media, I am not the right person for you. That is not, that is not what I do. Uh, if you wanted someone who was actually really tech savvy to create, you know, processes and systems and automations and back end work, I'm also not your person. And I think that's really important to know. And when people say, wow, what a great company you worked for, that they would even offer you to be remote, how fortunate you are, how lucky you are. And I said, Well, it's definitely not luck because I I never had a job I didn't love. I was vetting companies and people and the places I worked just as much as they were vetting me. And so I wouldn't work at a company that, not to say they had to offer me the option of being remote, but I wouldn't work at a company where I didn't feel like they were gonna value me just as much as I valued them and whoever was gonna be signing my paycheck. So it's about finding that right fit all the time. And I was really good at finding that right fit for myself. But, and you can call it uh being a little bit of perfectionist or um having imposter syndrome or whatever, but I wasn't gonna take on a job and I wasn't gonna take on a client if I didn't know I would be successful. Being successful is really important to me. And so why I love a good challenge, I'm not afraid of challenging myself. I'm also not going to willingly set myself up for failure in order to get money from somebody. So, you know, if someone says, oh, but but you could do it, they would actually try to talk me into it. And they would say, Oh, but you could do it. It's just this, this, and this. And I said, Yeah, but that's not a great way to spend money. I'm not gonna be able to do any better than you're going to be able to do it. I'm not gonna be able to even do it with the same passion, you're gonna be able to do it. It's a waste of your money. You're not gonna get the ROI from it. And most importantly, I'm never going to be able to anticipate your needs. And the measure of a true assistant, whether human or AI, is the ability to anticipate your needs. If they're not doing that, they're just a task taker. You're gonna have to be delegating all the time and delegating is work. And so when you're thinking about who is this right assistant, well, that comes with a lot of questions. What do you want this person to do? Are you interested in ROI? Are you interested in just offloading? Do you consider delegation work? Do you not consider delegation work? What is your expectation? Is this person going to make you more money? Is it just about making your life easier? Are they going to create more time? Is it all the above? And so that right person has to check the boxes of success. So when I ask clients during their consultation, how do you measure success? If they can't answer that question, then they can't be my client because I tell them if you don't know the measure of success, this person never has the opportunity to be successful. So you have to come up with the expectations of what good looks like, how this person will be successful in their role, how that their success impacts your success. And through that, then we find who the right assistant is.

SPEAKER_01: 9:29

Yeah, that's um actually that was a lot of great advice, especially, and I know we're not here for it, but the the making sure that you're finding a place where you are valued, um, you know, that that relationship goes both ways. Um and I think it's fantastic that you have that in your own practice of placing people. Um and you you talk about expectations, and I think um that the role of virtual assistant may not be what um, you know, a traditional all the time or or what we have always thought of as a traditional assistant. Um, because I I've been um seeing in your blog things like um outsourcing tasks all the way to chief of staff roles. So can you tell us a little bit more about, you know, if you're interested in being a virtual assistant, what kinds of roles you might be able to fill for someone?

SPEAKER_00: 10:27

Well, really, sky's the limit. So there's two roles when clients come to me, I say I don't do. Now it doesn't mean there aren't VAs out there who do this, but there are things that I just don't think are a good fit for virtual assistants as a whole in an industry. So two things. One is sales. So there's a lot of people that would love to have they get their lists from wherever, then they want, they have a script and they want a VA to start doing cold calling for them. And that I don't do. Salespeople are salespeople for a reason. And whether you're buying those lists or you're getting them yourself by attending conferences and everything else, that list better churn, better not churn. So if you don't want that, then you have to really invest in the right salespeople in order to do that. And typically that's not a VA. The other is not always as intuitive. So a lot of people say, Oh, I just need this person to do customer service, take calls, be on call. Well, that doesn't work for a variety of reasons. But the number one reason is because you can't tell a VA when they work. This is an independent contractor. And so it's really hard for VAs to price those services for on call. And you also don't have the ability to really customer service their center, right? Versus a customer service call center where you don't have to worry about dogs sparking in the background. You don't have to worry about kids or lawnmowers. I live in a pretty quiet apartment building, but you better believe there's once I'm on a call, someone else's dog. I don't even have a dog, someone else's dog might be parking. They might be doing landscaping, someone just might be having a party outside. These are things I can't control for, and neither can anyone else. So it's really important that you have someone and a company that that's all they do, that's all they deal with, and they can do it at a low volume or a high volume. So those two things aside, then it really becomes what can't I hire a VA for? Well, since we already covered that, well, you really have to reverse engineer the process. And for the VA, that they might think, well, who would who would pay for this? Who would want this? And it's important to know as a VA, the average VA can only work with three to five clients at a time. So you don't have to worry about serving as many people as McDonald's, right? Are there three to five people who would not only pay you, but be excited to pay you for what you're offering? So whether that is any type of social media and each of these kind of areas of expertise, then drill down into the most specific niches, right? So you have social media, but from there, is it um content curation? Is it image posting? Is it engagement you're looking for? Is it likes? Is it context? Is it um reshares? Are you doing things to convert people to buy or just to give you their email? Um, then you drill down to each one of the platforms someone could possibly be posting on. And then you like drill down from there and you have someone who's really good at reading analytics and understanding. Then you have podcasting, again, podcasting as its own thing. Um, podcasting, getting guests, uh, securing um uh uh advertisements, uh repurposing the content, putting into a blog, doing the images, really knowing how to pump up the volume. You have technical. Technical is so broad. So are you automating your onboarding system? Are you automating your back-end system? Do you have a lead magnet? Do you have a funnel? What happens on your website? What about every time you speak? Who puts all these things together for you? How are you constantly keeping your website updated? You have marketing, you have promotion, and then you get into general VA, executive VA, chief of staff VA. Uh, there's a whole online business manager or digital business manager, each one with its own set of niches within itself. So just like I found a niche from virtual assistant matchmaking, which didn't even exist before, there's things that exist. The difference is how people see them. And so the biggest mistake that both clients don't understand, and the biggest mistake that VAs make, is thinking, I'm going to find one client, and that one client is not going to be my employer because I still want my freedom and flexibility, but they're going to pay me what an employer would pay me. And so that's the biggest disconnect people have. When clients understand that the average person uses a VA five to 10 hours a week, and you can retain a VA for as little as 10 hours a month. And the VA also understands that they're going to have multiple clients, not one client. And that's how I could do this work and be so impactful. Because the reality is, is the administrative field is a declining field. And that's not popular to say with what I do. And I've been in this industry for a long time, over 25 years. My mom retired from it. This is not new information. Just like I predicted before COVID, no one could have predicted COVID, but I predicted before COVID, when I was remote, that office work was going to also start declining. And people would say, Oh, this office would never run without me. And I would say, Well, what are you going to do when there is no office? And they said, Oh, no, that'll never happen. That'll never happen. So, okay, well. So would you think about that? How do we then what do we do and what do we offer? Well, you can offer whatever it is that you love, that you're passionate about, that you can anticipate needs, that you see also that can be future-proofed. And think about on it, on it realistic terms. And when people don't think realistically, is when they get caught up and say, Oh, I can't do that. I can't offer that because there's not enough people. And when I see what people buy and what people will spend money on, I tell them, if you can, if you can think of it and you can dream it and you can do it and you can provide data on it, then you can have this client. So whether it be uh executive EA work, admin work, online business manager work, social media, podcasting. I mean, it is really about making someone's life easier. And there's no no shortage of ways that people need that done. And I'm working with a client right now and he's got an employment search going on because he needs someone in his office, and then he's hiring me to match him with a personal assistant. And the rise of personal assistance has gone way up as people are so busy they can't keep it all together. And they, you know, they're like, I just need someone. And they get so excited about the fact that they can hire someone for five to 10 hours a week just to manage their personal life because their assistant is so busy that they're like, I don't want to give it to them. But if someone can handle this, this would be great.

SPEAKER_01: 17:58

Yeah, that's fantastic. And I I heard you say future proofing. Um, and I'm I'm curious what trends you see shaping the future of virtual assistants, like, you know, with AI becoming way more popular than it's ever been and advent of new technology and such. Do you think that's gonna change anything?

SPEAKER_00: 18:19

It's absolutely gonna change things because people are going to want more data. People love data. Even people who don't know how to read it love it because there's something that is predictive about it, it's something that is almost factual about it. And as a business owner, when you make decisions, it's not saying that you're not at risk, but what you're doing is making the best decision with all the information you have based on the data provided to you. And so when they can do that, they're like, awesome. So the VAs who learn how to incorporate and work with AI instead of work against it, are the ones who are gonna come out on top. So, for instance, people who say, Oh, AI could never replace me, those people are gonna be the first to be replaced. I mean, just flat out, first to be replaced. But those who will lean into it and say, I use AI and I make it better. I know how to use AI to my advantage. I use AI to streamline processes and systems. Because the other implication about those who don't use AI is that they are slower, that they're less efficient, that it's gonna cost them more because they're gonna be doing more things manually. I mean, just think about when people see other people reading books. And this one's uh very personal to me because I read books and I have literal strangers come up to me and they'll say, you know, you could have something that's so much thinner and lightweight and hold thousands of books that you could read from. And it's the craziest thing to me. They think that because I am reading a physical book that I'm super inefficient and a stranger feels the need to tell me this. But think about what a client feels. So if you can't figure out a way to use it, you're going to seem outdated, whether that's true or not. And I mean, if you look at the fine print of a lot of major organizations, they don't even know how they're going to use AI, but what do they put? AI powered by such and such. And then if you look at the fine print, it says plan to implement by 2035. They're not even doing it yet, but they know that their investors and people who buy from them and those who want to see more, they want to know they have a plan for their future. And the future is AI. So if you're not planning for it now, then you are seen to be obsolete, outdated, slow. Um, I mean, who takes a train to travel cross-country, right? No one does that anymore. People fly. A slower way would be to drive. But you have to be able to stay with the times. And so, saying, how can I incorporate this? And you can even use the tools. You can say, I use these tools that are powered by AI. Now, those tools won't work without you. They're not gonna magically uh calibrate with the client's systems. But even just mentioning that you use AI-powered tools makes the client feel that you are in touch with the world and reality, that you're more efficient, and that they're gonna get more for their money. And so working with it, whatever industry you're in, is very much part of the process.

SPEAKER_01: 22:01

You've definitely given us a lot of um a lot of things to think about. Um, I one more, one more question for you on this. Um with the advancement of technology and you know, moving into the future, how do you navigate the challenges of seamless integration of virtual and um of virtual assistants into the different industries and workflows?

SPEAKER_00: 22:30

Well, uh, you know, seamless integration, it really just depends on who you're you're talking to. How what is seamless to them? Um, you know, there's the saying, it's not a bug, it's a feature. So this idea that everything is seamless, that there's never going to be any hiccups, that there's no nothing to learn from, um, it just depends on who you're speaking with. And so figure out how do we do this? How are we, how are we timing this? What do we want to get from this? And that people don't often think about not only just the end result, but how they want to feel at the end result. So, what can set people off by the time they get to the end result will really determine if it was seamless or not. So, for instance, when we're doing integration, whether that is a process, um, a system, or people, at the end of it, what would happen for it to be seamless? And what would happen if we deemed it not seamless? So, for instance, if someone said, if our customers or our clients are impacted anyway, they know it, then that would not be seamless. But someone else might say, Well, it's okay if they're not impacted. I will still be okay if we are impacted on our back end, if we have to do something else, if we have to fix it. But as long as our customers don't know, then that's still successful. Some people want both. They want it all to go perfect on the client side. They want all to go perfect on the back end side. Um, that's much harder. But you know, you have to drill down from there because what is a big deal to somebody is not a big deal to somebody else. And you just have to be aligned on those. So, are we gonna do this over the weekend? Are we going to do it in phases? Are we going to alert people of changes that we're making? Are we gonna try to do this under the radar and just announce, you know, our latest feature or um how how we're working with someone new now or our new processes and systems? How much how much do we want to share with other people as well? Um, you know, just bringing on a VA into your team and making it seamless should be pretty simple if it's just the VA and we're not talking about technology, because the whole person, the whole idea of working with someone like a VA is that they're really working behind the scenes until you make them part of the front side of your business. So when people say, Well, what's the difference between a general VA and an executive VA? And I say the biggest difference is that the EA is client-facing and the general VA is not. That means as an executive virtual assistant, this would be someone who, if you worked in an office, they would go into meetings with you. They might go into meetings on your behalf. So they might be integrated a little more, a little faster, uh, a little more prominent. But like a tech VA, for instance, that person, you kind of even don't want to know they exist sometimes. Everything's running so great that only when something uh there's a glitch, does this person ever, you know, seem to make an appearance for you? Otherwise, they're kind of updating you and saying, it's time to update this. I'm gonna be running this program, I'm doing a backup today for this. I checked this link. I mean, everything that they're doing is so proactive until you know you're doing this this launch. And even then they're being proactive about the launch process, releasing something new within a company, organization, or if you're an entrepreneur within your within your audience. And so again, what do we want out of this? What do we want experience out of this? What does good look like? What is a successful launch look like? What is a not successful launch look like? And I've had people who've had everything go wrong during the launch, but they didn't care because they still got all the signups that they needed. So, you know, you flip it around and at first they're like, oh my gosh, it was terrible, it was disastrous. And said, Well, how many signups did you get? I said, Oh, we beat our, we we beat our goal. I said, Okay, well, if everything had gone the way you planned and you didn't meet your goal, would it still be successful? I'm like, okay, well, no. Okay, well, then we'll we'll leave it at that.

SPEAKER_01: 27:07

Yeah, that's that's a fantastic point, actually. Um and I think that after hearing everything, our listeners are gonna want to come find you. So, how how do we find you?

SPEAKER_00: 27:21

Sure, they can visit my site, thepva.com. There's a a place for you to contact me there. I hang out on LinkedIn a lot. So Melissa Smith, the PVA on LinkedIn, and then I have a business page, the PVA, I have a monthly newsletter. Uh, you can connect with me there. Um, but yeah, you can also just email me, melissa at the PVA.com. I'm a big believer in not uh memorizing things that you can look up later. Uh Einstein was the one who really uh quoted that. Just said don't don't memorize anything you can look up later. You know, now we would just change that to don't memorize anything you can Google. So if someone has a question, you don't have to memorize uh what you what I said or you know, have to write it down. You can just ask me, and I'm happy to answer any questions you have.

SPEAKER_01: 28:12

Well, Melissa, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure chatting with you today. Um, we really appreciate you joining us in support of the Center for the Advancement of Virtual Organizations. We really appreciate your insights, and we know our listeners will definitely benefit from your experience.

SPEAKER_00: 28:28

My pleasure.