Virtual assistants have helped many entrepreneurs in their businesses. From task delegation to creative collaborations, VAs have made the lives of business owners easier and more productive. Today we’re continuing our series on maximizing the value of virtual assistants and we’ll be getting insights from Pat Flynn on how VAs helped him in his online business.
Who is Pat Flynn?
Pat Flynn is a successful online entrepreneur who became famous for his Smart Passive Income website. He graduated from the University of California Berkeley and worked in an architecture firm in San Francisco. In order to have more career opportunities, Flynn decided to take an elite industry certification.
He decided to start a WordPress blog where he posted all his review notes. He found the categorizing, tagging, cross-referencing, and linking to external pages beneficial in his studying. It also helped that his blog was accessible anywhere thus allowing him to review whether he’s at work or at home. What he realized later on was he was devoting 20% of his time studying and 80% of it exploring WordPress.
Flynn failed the exam so he decided to get serious this time and really devote more time reviewing. He passed with flying colors on his next take. In the process, he ended up creating a content-rich website that generated huge traffic from people who are about to take the exam.
The turning point
In 2008, Flynn got laid off. He continued to explore the possibility of having an online business. He read books and paid for online courses until one day he paid attention to his review blog. He discovered that thousands of people visit his site every day! Traffic was coming from different sources—Google search, referral traffic, and direct traffic.
He then decided to put up a Google Adsense account and advertisers began to place ads on his site. He was earning $1,500/month without doing anything. He later on put up the Smart Passive Income website where he shares everything he knows about internet marketing, blogging, and online business.
Pat Flynn on Hiring Virtual Assistants
Entrepreneurs need all the help they could get especially during the early stages of their business. Things can easily get overwhelming when you’re trying to do everything and oversee everyone.
TIP #1: Delegate tasks that other people can do better and faster than you do.
Flynn shared in an interview that he first outsourced a task to a virtual assistant when he needed help in turning his ebook to an audio book. When he did it, the end product was awful. When he hired a virtual assistant to do it, the result was amazing!
“It was ridiculous because all I did was put out (sic) a job and I got the deliverables back and it was done. And that was my first sort of taste of using VAs and how do other people do stuff that either I didn’t know very well or didn’t know how to do at all or just shouldn’t be doing,” Flynn says.
TIP #2: Hire from the Philippines!
This may sound self-promotional but Flynn is half-Filipino and his experience with hiring Filipino VAs has been great which is why he highly recommends it. He describes virtual assistants in the Philippines as loyal and proficient in English.
“Again I recommend hiring a VA from the Philippines. I’m half Filipino. You know the understanding is that Filipino culture they are (sic) they all speak english and they are really really loyal and they are the perfect VAs. And what’s crazy is just the sort off difference in how much think (sic) you might need to pay them,” Flynn shares.
TIP #3: Invest your time on things that give you the most returns.
As much as you enjoy doing certain things, not everything can give you as much returns. If you just started your business Flynn recommends that you hire a full-time VA as it is important that you have someone devoted to specific tasks during the beginning stages of your business.
“Lately, however, I’ve been incurring a lot of daily tasks in some of my businesses (mostly geared around the Niche Site Duel and other niche sites that I’m building) that I believe would be better suited for a full time VA,” Flynn said.
He continues, “Working online for two years now, I know just how valuable my time is and where my time should be invested to give me the most return. Plus, I’d like to keep things as passive as possible, and utilizing a VA will help keep me from working during the beginning phases of some of these potential passive income streams. Tasks such as building a website and building backlinks, as much as I enjoy doing those things (I really do!), should probably be handed off to someone else.”
Pat Flynn keeps things practical and simple when it comes to hiring a virtual assistant. He delegates anything that he can’t do well, he hires people that he’s had good experience with, and he lets go of tasks that doesn’t give him that much returns. Flynn continues to build websites and helps other entrepreneurs start their online business. With a reliable virtual assistant team backing him up, there’s no stopping Flynn’s success.
Check the other parts of this series!
About Pepper Virtual Assistants
Pepper Virtual Assistant Services is a business solutions firm that specializes on administrative assistance, customer support, CRM, copywriting, and personal virtual assistance. We take pride in our reliable service and responsive client handling which embodies our team’s optimal performance.
Learn to let go of some things that you just love to do. Concentrate on those that give you the most return and hand over the lower earning tasks to the VA.