I don’t know about you but I am low key obsessed with all of the behind the scenes of how other people run their businesses.
I used to be part of a membership for online business owners with a lady who is quite well known and I didn’t use all of the resources as part of the membership (P.S. which is totally normal) but what I did do was obsessively watch her monthly behind the scenes of how she is running her business.
If you want to grow your online business – one of the absolute best ways to do that is to get in the room with people who are where you want to go and who have the types of businesses you want to create and learn from their behind the scenes because that’s absolutely where the real gold lies.
To that degree – each month in the Peace and Profit Mastermind I share a behind the scenes Engine Room Session with our squad so they too can learn exactly what we’re working on in the business.
One of the things I love seeing, is who people have on their team, how they’ve hired them and what everyone is doing – so that’s exactly what I’m diving into in this post.
P.S. If you want to know more about my work and what my day to day looks like – I have a free guide you’re absolutely going to love that contains my full daily work schedule, my exact tasks and some of the big lessons I’ve learned about how to get more done… in less time. Click here to get my 16 Hour CEO Guide.
Listen to the full episode
So, exactly who is on my team and what they do.
When I first hired a team member in my business
The first team member I hired in my business was a Podcast Manager, Monica who I hired as a result of her reaching out to me on Instagram as a listener who was also someone who had a background in radio and she pitched me a podcast audit which I absolutely loved, and then she pitched me her monthly services to edit and upload my podcast with show notes.
I remember when I first hired her and although I’d hired contractors before for small jobs, this was the first time I felt like I needed to consistently have revenue generation in the business in order to continue with this service.
I also knew that the podcast was a major priority for me and that without that regular support, publishing would continue to land on the backburner because at that time I was incredibly inconsistent and sporadic in releasing episodes.
Mistakes I made in hiring Virtual Assistants
Alongside Monica, I then tried to hire a Virtual Assistant in the business and at one point I also had a video editor – who was also great, when YouTube was a priority for me, but I kept running into the same problem.
The Virtual Assistants I’d hired before were all from the US or Australia and were consistently in the range of $30 – 65 per hour, which generally meant that I could only afford for them to work in my business for approximately 5 hours per week.
What would inevitably happen was that 5 hours per week wasn’t enough to sustain them financially, while at the same time not be enough for them to really be emotionally invested in my business, nor get a significant amount of work done.
It became like a revolving door. They’d stay for about six months and then bounce, while I felt like I needed more support in the business but in order to tip into 20 – 40 hours per week, I’d be paying upwards of $5,000 per month.
At one point I had a senior VA called Emma who was a professional VA and an absolute gun on Pinterest, coupled with the ability to work really independently, but again because I was paying such a high rate, and at the time was only working 6ish hours per week in the business, continuing with her wasn’t working for the business.
If you’ve ever worked in corporate you’ll know that when you have a team, your role transitions from ‘doing’ to ‘leading’ and with such a short number of working hours per week, I didn’t have that ability to lead. Full stop.
More recently (as in 2024) I had a great and valuable team member, Kate in the business who did things like manage our Asana tasks, manage my email inbox and all very administrative tasks but I ran into a similar problem: because I only now work 16 hours per week in the business, I only have so much time for delegation, training and workload, so I didn’t have enough capacity to lead, nor enough workload to actually make it worthwhile to keep Kate in the team.
Enjoying your Business
Leading a team is also the least enjoyable task for me in my business.
In my corporate days I used to lead a team of 20 people and literally all day felt like support for them, putting out fires, training and hiring.
While it’s a big misconception that you should enjoy every waking moment of your business: newsflash – you won’t.
You should enjoy ~70% of your day to day in your business.
Another misconception spruiked by the bromarketers is that you should be working ‘on’ the business, not ‘in’ the business, but working ‘in’ the business is one of the joys I have in my business, so hiring team is a very considered decision for me that also takes into account my peace.
And of course, what would this conversation be if I didn’t also talk about profit.
Every team member you have reduces profit
Another consideration for hiring team is that every new person you hire, reduces your profit in your business unless their role is a profit-generating role.
When you’re building a giant business and the goal is millions of dollars, an office building and giant scaling, the goal is almost always to hire a giant team and become that true CEO in the business (often with the eventual goal to sell that giant machine in order to receive a payout and eventual exit). It requires long hours in startup and reinvesting a tonne of money back into the business in order to scale.
That’s not the business I’m creating.
A lot of the rhetoric around online business is that every team member should be generating 2-3x return on investment in terms of profit, yet I’d argue that’s not always as easy to quantify, or true.
A human resources manager or a bookkeeper is not going to have a direct link to profit in your business, nor is someone whose role is primarily customer service or admin based.
So therefore when I’m hiring, I’m considering both peace and profit in my business.
Hiring my first Filipino Virtual Assistant
In 2022, I shut down my life coaching business and sadly said farewell to Monica as my Podcast Manager because I was no longer producing a podcast and this is when I was at a giant crossroads in the business.
I was running the membership for infertility life coaching but all the while losing all connection to that business and increasingly feeling unaligned – and again, struggling with the consistent tasks that needed to be achieved in the business.
Through my Mastermind I was introduced to Michelle from Outsourcing Crew and later in 2022 for the first time ever, explored working with a Filipino Virtual Assistant.
I’d resisted in the past for ethical reasons and also because I felt like the level of direction required was more than I was willing to give to be honest, but having known and built a relationship with Michelle I could see that their agency was different.
Michelle prioritises ethical hiring and wages, regularly invests in training her team, they have a full team Slack Channel and also a number of stop gaps in communication to ensure that if there’s a problem or a gap – we can manage it.
So this is when Phebe joined the team.
I believe I was her client and she has been with me ever since, and is truly like my right hand woman in the business.
We started at 10 hours per week and over time have increased to 20 hours per week and if you think about that across a 5-day period, that’s 4 hours each and every day that she is available for the business so it’s tipped the scales in my favour.
And as time has gone by, as she has come to really know my brand, so too has her role in the business.
As of today, Phebe is the only other person I have in my business on a consistent basis, and she is a contractor not a staff member.
I will from time to time call in copywriters and other professionals too – but Phebe is my one consistent presence and the person I budget for.
My budget in the business for virtual assistance is approximately 10% of my annual revenue.
The tasks breakdown between myself and Phebe
I see myself in the business as having two main roles: building relationships and supporting clients.
In the business in real terms for me that looks like:
My Role as CEO of the Business
Building Relationships
- Content creation
- Recording the podcast
- Managing Instagram and Threads
- Planning out my launches and preparing the content for things like webinars
- Conducting discovery calls and having conversations in the DMs with potential clients
- Managing our Ads
Supporting Clients
- Coaching and strategy through our Slack Channel and client calls
- Developing and updating training materials
- Writing our Peace and Profit monthly Mastermind Magazine
- Auditing Mastermind and 1:1 Coaching Client work
My CEO Admin
- Paying bills
- Email Management
- Missed payment management
- Customer Service Emails (we don’t get many at all)
Phebe’s role is largely in supporting me with the nitty gritty of things that need to be done and this looks like admin and editing.
What my Virtual Assistant does in the business
VA Admin
- Prepare weekly reports
- Prepare launch debrief figures
- Add new names from Kartra into our warm leads tracking
- Sending client gifts as directed by me
Editing
- Designing our Peace + Profit Magazine (this goes out monthly to all Mastermind Members) ready for me to add content
- Editing and uploading the podcast
- Scheduling emails (including our weekly newsletter and weekly Mastermind ‘what’s on’ email, as well as launch emails)
- Designing graphics such as webinars
Tech
- Creating new products and memberships in Kartra
- Designing resources such as template sales pages and webinar slides for our Mastermind Members (as directed by me)
Other tasks
From time to time we have other projects in the business and typically we’ll jointly manage each launch and delegate all of the tasks within a launch, starting with me creating a list and delegating a number of tasks to Phebe.
How I communicate my Virtual Assistant
One of the reasons Phebe and I have worked really well together is because we’re both generally on the same page in terms of communications: we’re not having meetings for the sake of having meetings.
It also helps that we’re both in the same time zone.
The way we communicate is that every Tuesday at 10am we’ll have a check in.
Tuesdays are my first ‘real’ day back in the office after the weekend – I list out exactly what my schedule looks like here but typically on Monday we’re both doing the ‘CEO’ type tasks.
I’ll run Payroll (for myself ha! But I also run another business with my husband so there are more people on that team) as well as review what needs to be done for the week, while Mondays is when Phebe goes through and does the weekly reporting.
Weekly VA Meeting Agenda
When we catch up on Tuesday morning, that’s when we’ll walk through (and this may look like a lot – but generally this meeting is only 15 – 20 minutes long):
- The priorities for the week ahead
- Check that Asana is up to date with that needs to be done (usually on the call is when I’ll look through anything that’s missing)
- Speak to any changes that have happened from original plans (for example Phebe set up a webinar, products etc as part of an upcoming launch, and then handed it back to me and then when I went back to work through and edit the wording etc, I decided to make a significant change to the way the tech for the webinar would work to test how that will affect our show up rates and conversions, so in this week’s meeting I’ve walked Phebe through exactly how that change happens and why so she is across it as much as me)
- See how Phebe is going for workload
- Discuss any tasks that may have fallen by the wayside
- Speak to any upcoming leave either of us have (so for example, December + January will be my school vacation so there’s a number of things that need to happen during that time as I’ll essentially be on a smaller workload that will mostly involve supporting our existing clients, and Phebe will also need me to have things like the podcast batched for that time too)
- She’ll kick my butt into gear (like… if I haven’t batched the podcast she’ll be like yo! When will you be getting that to me ha!)
- She has the opportunity to ask me any questions about things she can’t complete or requires more guidance on
How I communicate through the day with my VA
Phebe and I speak/back and forth multiple times through the day on our Slack Channel.
Daily Check in Channel
We have a channel for a daily check in (where we each post daily bullet points about our priorities and to-do list for the day). It generally looks like a few bullet points, and we’ll reply in thread with questions or requests from one another.
Team Projects Channel
When we’re working on projects, we’ll post in the projects channel. This looks like a title post, and then replying ‘in thread’ with various links or questions we have about the project, which enables us to look back over the channel quickly to reference things.
How I assign workload and Tasks to my Virtual Assistant
We use Asana for our task management and general business overview and mainly use a single project board called Team Projects.
When I have a task or a project, I’ll create a task, assign to Phebe and always set a due date. I’ll include a description but I don’t generally create sub-tasks because having worked with Phebe for 2 years’ now know that the way she works through Asana is to create a view that just shows her what she has due (it comes through as a to-do list) and sub-tasks, as well as tasks without a due date won’t appear at the top of this.
We’ll then assign tasks back and forth to one another to finish them.
So for example if we have an upcoming Webinar
- I’ll create this as a Task in Asana (and it might be assigned to me)
- I’ll go into Powerpoint and create in outline view (if you know what you want to say this makes it SO fast)
- I’ll then import into Canva
- I’ll re-assign to Phebe and change the due date
- When she has finished designing it – she’ll reassign to me to go back and make edits
- When it’s fully finished and ready to go, I’ll tick completed and move into the ‘completed’ board
When we create the podcast
- Phebe will create the podcast with a live date in Asana and assign to me
- When I’ve created the show notes, recorded and then uploaded the raw file, I’ll assign to her
- I’ll move the podcast episode (which also exists in our Podcast Project over to ‘recorded and uploaded’
- She’ll send me the transcript so I can pull out the part I want to use for our Audiogram and assign to me
- Once it’s live and published and she has sent me the audiogram – she’ll tick completed and move to ‘completed’ in the Team Projects folder.
My other ‘team members’
It’s no secret that I also refer often to the other members of my team who work 24/7 for me.
One of those is Kartra and another is Facebook/Instagram Ads – and the level of peace (and profit) they bring to my business is next level, to the point that when I’m not running ads is actually when I feel more anxious in my business.
This is also echoed by the members of our Mastermind when they begin to consistently run ads in their businesses too, so special mention to my tools and tech.
So – this is how I manage my team, what we do in the business and how I’ve cultivated a great relationship with my virtual assistant. If this is helpful to you I’d love to know! Come and find me and let me know if you have any other questions over on Instagram. You can find me here – I would love love love to hear from you.
