Fatrank Podcast

James Dooley: Hi, today I’m joined with Adam Oar, the co-founder of Remote Staff Seeker. What’s going on with the life these days, is it good?

Adam Oar: Yeah, all good.

James Dooley: So today’s video is about virtual assistants and trying to hire a virtual assistant so they are not just doing low level tasks. If you have systems and processes set up and you are able to use a virtual assistant properly, it can change your workload. Remote Staff Seeker is focused on Filipino VAs. For anyone that knows you, the running joke is “I want to be an Adam Oar” because you have managed to reduce a lot of your workload. You play a lot of golf, you travel a lot, you have a lot of time for family and friends. There are people out there who might be more successful financially than you, but they are digging their own grave, working 14 hours a day, seven days a week. You need a work life balance and you need to enjoy the journey.

For anyone who does not know what a virtual assistant or a VA is, can you briefly explain what a VA actually is?

Adam Oar: A VA is just someone that works remotely from their house or wherever. Maybe they go to a Starbucks or a co-working space, but they work remotely. It can be anyone from anywhere in the world. The people that we employ happen to be in the Philippines, but in general it is just anybody who works remotely for your business.

James Dooley: It is a good story in your case, because you initially needed people and you needed some help yourself on video rankings. Where did you first go when you found Daisy?

Adam Oar: A long time ago, probably about 14 or 15 years ago, I used a website called onlinejobs.ph, which is a big VA marketplace for the Philippines. I found Daisy on that site. I was actually looking for someone who knew how to use a specific piece of software. I got two people who replied. The first person did not work out. They said they were good at everything but that was not really true. The second person was Daisy, who has now worked with me for over 14 years.

James Dooley: For anyone who does not know Adam, he has a very successful business over in the States. He does a lot of lead generation and SEO across a broad spectrum of industries. The family has an amazing concrete resurfacing company and you have built that up with a lot of leads. I think it is fair to say, and I might be underplaying this, that the day-to-day running of your SEO and lead generation is pretty much run by Daisy. Daisy runs the operation and organisation. She hires the staff and puts the systems and processes in place.

For a lot of business owners, that sounds unreal. You have reduced your workload and someone else runs it completely. I wind you up and say you are lazy and always on the golf course while I am grinding in the office and saying “I want to be an Adam”. The truth is, reducing your workload allows you to think and innovate. You can integrate things like artificial intelligence. You also do a lot of networking. You always come over to Chiang Mai, you come to other SEO conferences, you join private masterminds.

I know Daisy sometimes gets frustrated because you come away from a mastermind with ideas and then say, “Right Daisy, I want to test this, this and this.” So, in terms of reducing workload, it does not mean you are not working or not in the know. Moving slightly away from virtual assistants, what are your thoughts on attending SEO conferences? Do you personally get much from them?

Adam Oar: Definitely. Even though I do not do a lot of the physical day-to-day operations, I am more of the “ideas person” in the business. I do a lot of learning. I read a lot of content, I watch a lot of content, and I come up with ideas.

For example, for lead generation I might spot a new niche we want to go into and build a lead generation site. Daisy is the one who helps turn that idea into reality. We will sit down and chat: “Let’s target this niche, I want to start generating leads here” or “Let’s start a YouTube channel” or something similar. I come up with the rough idea of what we want to do. Then we have a discussion and Daisy turns that into a plan. She delegates it out to the team so everything is implemented and we can start generating leads or whatever the goal is. We do a few different things, but that is the general flow.

James Dooley: With a virtual assistant, it is very important to have the systems and processes in place. Also, if anyone has read “Think and Grow Rich”, you will know that actual thinking is the hardest work. Daisy will disagree with me on this, but the thinking part, where you pull something together or choose a niche, is the hardest bit.

Once you have an SOP, whether it is for search engine optimisation, Facebook ads, PPC or lead generation, that system becomes rinse and repeat. You can get a low level, minimum wage VA to do the work if it is just “follow these steps”. The thinking part cannot really be outsourced to a VA.

I always get asked what the difference is between a good SEO and a great SEO. I always say it is not just knowledge or some magic hack. You need good quality content, topical authority, good quality links and a technically well built site. That can all be systemised once you know what “good” looks like.

I always talk about the three Ps: prioritisation, procrastination and perfectionism. I think those three are the main reasons people do not hire a VA. Do you see that when someone first enquires about hiring a VA, that it takes ages to get SOPs because they are trying to perfect everything instead of getting the job done? I always say a job 70% done is better than not done. People chase 100% perfection, but 70% is good enough. Kyle Roof talks about not needing to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other people running from the bear. You just need to do enough to beat your competition.

Do you see those three Ps when people first look at hiring a VA? Do you find that over time they start to realise how much more they get done by hiring VAs?

Adam Oar: Yes, absolutely. I know for myself I struggled with that when I first hired Daisy. I was a perfectionist. I got analysis paralysis and wanted everything to be perfect. It slowed me down and made it hard to release control and let someone else take over. You feel like you can do it better than anyone else and you want to protect all your work and make sure it is exactly right.

I definitely had that struggle. Then I remember seeing some content talking about letting go, and taking that step so you can grow faster and scale. I took that step. It worked out really well. Daisy stepped up, she took responsibility for a lot of things.

At first I still checked her work and made sure everything was good. Then there came a point where I realised she was probably doing it better than I could. After that we grew more staff and you need checks and balances, but you learn to trust the system.

A lot of people simply do not want to give up control. If you do not, you will probably work longer and have less time with family and friends. That was a big priority for me. I wanted time with friends and family. I believed that if I invested enough time into building systems, I could reach a point where a lot of my workload came off my shoulders and the system handled the work.

That gave me more time to golf, hang out with you in different countries and spend time with family and friends. The people who are most successful with VAs are the ones who build the SOPs and put in the time to train them. It is more work on the front end than not hiring a VA, but very quickly it becomes a huge advantage. You have a lot of weight lifted off your shoulders and, once you trust that person, you have more free time and can scale faster.

James Dooley: For sure. There are lots of benefits to hiring a virtual assistant. I want to talk about the fact that it is not as simple as people think. It is not just “hire five VAs and everything is sorted”. You have just talked about training, development and building SOPs, especially when they are not in the same office as you and you cannot just lean over and correct them.

I do not want this to sound like I am just promoting your business, but I genuinely think Remote Staff Seeker is an absolute must. You want to know that your virtual assistants are being tracked, that you know when they log in and log out.

No disrespect to the Philippines, this is the same in South Africa, Bangladesh, Venezuela, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Thailand and anywhere else. We have VAs all over the world. When we previously used VAs from places like onlinejobs.ph, Upwork, Freelancer or PeoplePerHour and similar platforms, my issue was reliability and accountability.

I had a VA whose mum “died” four times. She kept changing her excuses. The next door neighbour’s dog died so she was off for a week. The electricity was cut off. All sorts of stories. I am not saying this just to push Remote Staff Seeker, but I am saying you need a managed VA system.

Talk through why that is important. Obviously you have Remote Staff Seeker which I think is the best VA business in the world, but for someone watching who wants to hire a VA, why should they look at something like Remote Staff Seeker so it is managed? Yes, it might cost a couple of hundred dollars more than going direct, but the onboarding, interviews and management are difficult. You do not hire a VA to then spend all your time managing them and checking hours.

Give a short breakdown of why a managed VA system is better than going direct, even if direct looks slightly cheaper.

Adam Oar: If you are hiring a VA, a lot of the time they will be in a different country. They can be local, but most people do hire abroad. When you hire from another country there is often a cultural barrier. Both cultures do not fully understand each other and that creates a gap and sometimes issues.

For us, one big advantage is Daisy is from the Philippines. She understands Filipino culture. She has worked with me for over 14 years so she also understands Western culture, especially US culture. She can bridge that gap.

Another thing is what you mentioned with excuses. Not all, but a lot of the time, from what Daisy and I have seen, some VAs are working full time for two, three, even four companies at once. So sometimes when excuses come up it is because they are working on tasks for another employer.

In the Philippines they also tend to avoid confrontation. I have heard many stories of people who had a VA from the Philippines where everything was going well, then one day the VA just disappeared and never replied again. That is common. I think sometimes if they feel they have messed up, instead of saying “I made a mistake” they just vanish because they do not want the confrontation. Daisy has confirmed a lot of that from her side.

James Dooley: Yes, and there are cultural differences like public holidays. Daisy might say “They are off next Monday” and I ask why. It is a national holiday in the Philippines. In the UK, that is not on our radar. If I do not know that, I could create conflict by saying “No, you cannot have that day off,” when everyone else in their country is off.

There are also things like payment timing. In the UK, if you are a day or two late on payroll people kind of know the money is coming. In the Philippines, you pay on time. If you are even a day late they can panic and think they are not going to get paid. They overthink it.

Then there is health insurance. In the UK we have the NHS, so I first thought “Why should I pay for health insurance?” In the Philippines it is important and it can be the difference between landing a high quality VA or not. If everyone else is offering health insurance and you are not, you will lose the best talent. It might be less than $100 a month, so just pay it to get a better VA.

Because Daisy is Filipino, she knows all this. That makes a big difference.

So if someone is watching this now thinking “I am working too hard and I need a virtual assistant”, how do they find you? What is the website?

Adam Oar: The website is remotestaffseeker.com. They just go there and enquire, fill in the form, and then Daisy will get back in touch.

James Dooley: So they fill in the form on remotestaffseeker.com and then Daisy sets up a discovery call?

Adam Oar: Yes. Usually they fill out a form, Daisy will set up a discovery call, get to know their business better and understand what skills they are looking for. Then we go into our database, we vet candidates and pick, say, the top three that match. Sometimes it is more.

Then we set up a Zoom call where we introduce the customer to those VAs so they can see who fits best. They choose who they want to work with.

As you said, there are pros and cons to everything. You can hire direct and get a great VA and save money compared to using an agency. But you might miss some benefits of an agency.

In our case, VAs are employed by a Philippine company. That gives them a sense of safety. They feel like they have proper employment protections and that they cannot just be dropped overnight. There are labour laws. That security matters to them.

We also monitor them. At Remote Staff Seeker there is customer support. If the VA has any issues, they can speak to Daisy or the team. If they feel embarrassed about something, they can talk to another Filipino who understands them and who can even help them frame an honest message back to the client. That often stops situations where they would just disappear.

So yes, you might pay a bit more for a managed agency, but the VA gets more security and support. And you get more stability and less headache.

James Dooley: And you have people full time consistently looking at universities and colleges in the Philippines to find the best people. For us to try to find a VA ourselves in the Philippines is completely different to you doing it. There have been times when you have come back with 20 VAs who perfectly fit the role we want, and I could not even find two or three, and the two or three I found were nowhere near as qualified.

So it just made sense for me from a business perspective. It reduces my workload and is a fraction of the price of a full time wage in the UK or US. You still need salespeople local to close deals, like you still do a lot of the calls for your US clients, but all the fulfilment is handled by VAs.

You now spend your time working on the business, not in the business. It gives you time to innovate. I always say if you do not innovate you will evaporate. You cannot innovate if you have no time and you are stuck in the trenches doing all the work.

So for anyone watching this who is thinking about hiring a virtual assistant, head over to remotestaffseeker.com. Daisy will get back in touch. If you are unsure, look at Adam’s profile. He is on the golf course every other day. I will call him out as lazy, but he has a great lifestyle because he has VAs in place to run the business.

He has a very successful business in the US. Remote Staff Seeker has grown massively and that is now a very successful business too. I strongly recommend anyone looking for a VA to go to remotestaffseeker.com.

It has been a pleasure mate, good speaking to you.

Adam Oar: Definitely, cheers.

James Dooley: Cheers.