There comes a time for many small businesses when it makes sense to scale by hiring an assistant. As such, fellow travel advisors often ask me: “How much should I pay an assistant?” The answer is simple. Entry-level assistants will cost anywhere from $5-35 per hour depending on their education, fluency in English and country of origin.
What is a Virtual Assistant and What Do They Do?
When I respond in this way, people often ask what I mean and are surprised to hear how easy it can be to hire a virtual assistant (VA) from a different country. With sites such as Fiverr and Upwork, you can pretty much hire anyone, anywhere in the world at any time. You can also work with any of the thousands of staffing agencies that operate around the world. To start, I recommend the latter. This way, you know there’s been some type of vetting process prior to this person ending up on your doorstep.
I’d also take into account your personal business needs. Will this VA be speaking with your clients directly, or will they mostly be working behind the scenes?
I have a team of VAs that works with our clients to ensure every last detail of their trip is exactly how they would like it. They book spa appointments, make dinner reservations, set up surprise birthday celebrations and so much more. They speak with my clients on a daily basis, even though they live halfway around the world.
I have a team of VAs that works with our clients to ensure every last detail of their trip is exactly how they would like it ... I have an entirely separate team that works on the backend.
I have an entirely separate team that works on the backend. They create itineraries, send out invoices and final payment reminders, they reconfirm each of our bookings, coordinate with hotels to leave handwritten notes in each client’s hotel room and they take care of my books. This team does not ever interact with our clients and is instead on the operations side of the business.
You would have to work very hard to find a VA that can do both roles. Detailed, data people are not usually also friendly customer service reps. Divide your roles and hire both part-time if you need. You’ll be surprised how much you will find for them to do as you begin working with a team and learning how to leverage yourself.
Where to Find Virtual Assistants
Now that you have a good idea of what a team like this could help you with, let’s talk about where to find them. Again, there are plenty of freelance sites out there, but I find it best to work with a staffing agency that will train VAs on skills such as time management and using technology, and will help with any fluency issues they may have.
You will find many VAs sourced from countries such as India, the Philippines and Pakistan. The book “The 4-Hour Workweek” made a company in India famous for entrepreneurs. The company is called Your Man in India, but again, there are thousands out there. I recommend that you explore to figure out what works best for you.
Even paying double that, you’d be hard pressed to find an American willing to work for you, especially one that would be interested in starting part-time and moving to full-time as your business grows.
I’d also recommend working with a company that hires educated contractors and allows you to interview several at once as you dive into the process. I use a company out of the Philippines called Pineapple Staffing and would highly recommend it. All of the brand's contractors are college educated, speak perfect English and, from my experience, are very hard working. They also cost only $8 per hour. Even paying double that, you’d be hard pressed to find an American willing to work for you, especially one that would be interested in starting part-time and moving to full-time as your business grows.
How to Hire a Virtual Assistant
The process of hiring a VA is simple. You first choose the number of hours you’re interested in hiring someone on a per week average. You are not committed to this, but they do ask that you commit to a long-term hire. Again, there’s no contract here, but they don’t want you to hire someone for just one project. They are looking for partners that need an assistant for a certain number of hours per week. I recommend starting with 10 hours and increasing as needed.
Again, there’s no contract here, but they don’t want you to hire someone for just one project.
From there, you describe the type of work you would like done, and they will give you three candidates. You will receive full resumes, as well as portfolios if it’s a design-oriented position. You will also get a short two-minute video from each candidate. This will help you evaluate if you feel like you would communicate well with them. Then, you schedule a Zoom interview with the one you’re most interested in to ask them any questions you may have. If you don’t like any of them, the process starts over.
Building Trust With a Virtual Assistant
Trust is always going to be an issue for many travel advisors, as you’ll need to give this person passwords to your systems in order for them to truly help you. My first VA is still with me, and this man even has the password to my bank account. I would absolutely trust him with my life, but that did not happen on day one.
Start small and build trust together. Do background checks if you’d like to, although that may be difficult in some countries. I also make my VAs sign contracts, but in reality, taking someone to court in the Philippines would not be realistic.
Instead, get to know them as humans and build a working relationship you can be proud of. All of my VAs have access to my clients’ credit card information at this point, but I know they’d never risk their jobs. Even though I pay a certain amount to the staffing agency, I give them bonuses frequently and pay for healthcare for all of my full-time VAs. When we hit sales goals, they reap the rewards, as well, because they allowed my travel advisors to focus on sales.
The travel advisors on my team sell. That’s it. The rest of the nitty gritty is handled by support staff. Just sell.
I don’t see much of a downside at all to working with foreign contractors, especially because many of them will work in the middle of the night, so they can adhere to American hours. They are grateful for the work (especially when given bonuses), and I can leverage my company’s cash flow to go much further than if I chose to hire a VA from the U.S.
If you are not ready to hire someone abroad, hire someone at home. You should not be doing work that someone else would do for $20 per hour. Your time is worth much more than that if you leverage yourself properly and focus on your sales efforts. The travel advisors on my team sell. That’s it. The rest of the nitty gritty is handled by support staff. Just sell.
