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What should you always do before hiring a virtual assistant? How can virtual assistants be the stepping stone to bringing in more income into your business? Why should you definitely consider outsourcing, no matter what?
In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks about how to hire and train a virtual assistant with Roland Omene.
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Meet Roland Omene
Originally from Cameroon, West Africa, Roland holds a Biochemistry degree from TCU. In 2009, he founded FrogTutoring.com, followed by the inception of GradeGetter.com in 2021. His latest venture, Honesttaskers.com , was launched recently to support his wife’s psychiatric practice by providing high-quality virtual assistants. These Virtual Assistants are specially trained in crucial areas to enhance the functionality and growth of her practice.
Visit Honest Taskers and email Roland at: [email protected]
- What to consider before hiring a Virtual Assistant
- What to outsource
- Mistakes practice owners make with hiring a Virtual Assistant
- Different types of Virtual Assistants
- How to maintain value and consistency
- Roland’s advice to private practitioners
What to consider before hiring a Virtual Assistant
The number one thing you should do is to basically take your week and just document your day, and what you spend your time doing on a day-to-day basis. [With] this process, at the end of the week, you will be able to come up with a list of things that you do that someone else should be doing, because the [admin] things you do are not worth your hourly rate. (Roland Omene)
If you are running a private practice while seeing clients, and you are doing everything – including basic admin tasks – then you may need to consider hiring a Virtual Assistant.
Your hourly rate is better used earning higher amounts of income to bring into the business – which only you can do as the owner and main clinician at the start – so hire someone else that you can pay who can cover those tasks.
So, if you find yourself doing tasks that are not equivalent to your hourly rate, note them down, group them together, and then hire a Virtual Assistant to take them over.
Additionally, are there things that you want to do for your business, or that you know need to get done, but you just don’t have the time? You can also hire a Virtual Assistant for these – either outsource these tasks once off or hire an assistant to handle them.
So before you go out and start looking for a VA, I think it’s important for you to have a clear picture of what you want that VA to do. (Roland Omene)
What to outsource
1 – Administrative tasks: anything that needs to be done on a basic daily, weekly, or monthly basis, or to be done manually.
2 – Answering or returning calls: have someone handle the phone so that you can focus on being in session with your clients.
3 – Billing: billing can take a while to do sometimes, especially with following up with insurance companies. Hire someone or use a great system like Gusto.
4 – Marketing: as the business owner you can be involved in the marketing strategy, especially at the beginning, but navigating daily posting and social media can be a big task. Consider hiring someone to handle this.
Mistakes practice owners make with hiring a Virtual Assistant
If you are not really careful, you could double your workload, right? Because managing people is not easy … You could spend a lot of time managing the VA, and that’s time that you could have dedicated to something [else]. (Roland Omene)
If you don’t have a clear process in place, then you could risk spending even more time managing and explaining what you want from the Virtual Assistant.
You need to hire a good person, and you need to explain yourself well to them! No one can read minds, so you need to explain your process, train them, and then let them get it done.
Naturally, allow them to follow up if need be, but not training them to “save time” means wasting time training down the line.
Therefore, Roland recommends working closely with your Virtual Assistant for the first two weeks so that they can fully grasp the task at hand, and build a good foundation with what needs to be done from the beginning.
Additionally, document everything to build a knowledge base.
Different types of Virtual Assistants
- Administrative
- Marketing and social media
- Copywriting
- Receptionist
- Billing
- Documentation
- Research
And whatever you need! You can train people up, and combined with their skillset, they can do almost anything that you need done in your practice.
How to maintain value and consistency
Of course, when you have different people working on different parts of the business, you would want everything to still be coherent and cohesive under the umbrella of the practice.
We always recommend that you have a weekly [meeting] with your team just to make sure … that everybody is doing it according to the brand identity, the brand story. (Roland Omene)
These weekly meetings are especially important in the beginning, but as the team becomes accustomed to the brand and the mission, vision, and values of the practice, you can trust in them to get it done.
However, do remain in contact with them. A business is built on people, so maintain and focus on the relationships between everyone so that the departments all speak to and work with one another.
Roland’s advice to private practitioners
How can you keep a business successful? Keeping costs low, and bringing in new clients, and both of these are possible through hiring Virtual Assistants.
Sponsors Mentioned in this episode:
- Trust me, don’t waste any more of your time, and try TherapyNotes.
- Apply to work with us one-on-one!
- $750 close-knit intensive: email [email protected] with the subject line “April retreat” this 2024
Useful links mentioned in this episode:
- Visit Honest Taskers and email Roland at: [email protected]
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Email Joe at [email protected] to suggest guests for the show
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Meet Joe Sanok
Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners who are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.
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