Ep. 133: How a VA Can Save Your Sanity & Scale Your Impact with Sara Wiles
EPISODE 133
How a VA Can Save Your Sanity & Scale Your Impact with Sara Wiles
About the Episode:
Ever feel like your to-do list is never-ending? Nonprofit leaders, founders, and busy professionals are juggling way too much—and it’s keeping you from the work that actually moves the needle. That’s why I brought in VA expert and business coach, Sara Wiles, to talk about a total game-changer: hiring a virtual assistant. We’re breaking down exactly how hiring a virtual assistant can transform your productivity, free up your time, and (finally) get those bottom-of-the-list tasks off your plate. If you’re feeling overworked, under-supported, and desperate for more breathing room, this episode will show you how to hire smart and reclaim your time—without blowing your budget.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Sara’s journey from corporate event planning to running an online virtual assistant business
Why nonprofit leaders waste way too much time on the wrong tasks
The real ROI of hiring an assistant (and why it’s more affordable than you think)
How to identify what tasks to offload and find the right VA for your needs
Why feedback loops are crucial for a successful VA relationship
The hiring process: what to look for, how much to pay, and how to onboard smoothly
The power of personal connection in nonprofit storytelling (yes, YOU need to be in your content!)
How VAs can help with influencer outreach & donor engagement
Think you’ve reached out to “everyone” in your network? Out of ideas to get noticed and get funded? Generate leads for your nonprofit or social impact business: https://www.splendidcourses.com/prospect
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“When I'm fresh in my brain, I produce better work that only I can do.” Sara
“What's beautiful and hard about the role of virtual assistant is the possibilities are endless, and it all depends on what you need and what kind of gifts and talents you find in the person that you're hiring.” Sara
“The way to be successful in your VA role is to be super resourceful.” Sara
“Trust is built over time.” Sara
“You have to pay people for the test projects they're doing for you.” Sara
“Having a consistent feedback loop all of the time is a must.” Sara
“Record yourself, create feedback loops, and let your VA know that's how it will go.” Sara
“If you set the expectation about consistent feedback on the front end, VAs will not be surprised and shocked when it happens.” Sara
“If you hire somebody at 10 hours a week, or even 10 hours a month - it will help.” Christina
“The human element in a nonprofit is so important.” Sara
“People will feel more connected to you if you share the boring behind-the-scenes stuff, and then they're just naturally going to want to buy.” Sara
Connect with Sara:
Episode Resources:
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
Connect with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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Christina Edwards 0:00All right, welcome to the podcast. Sarah Wiles, should we tell them how we know each other from a long, long time ago?
Sara Wiles 0:06
Funny as I'm I'm like, in my bathroom getting more ready this morning. I'm like, is this yoga? I'm making Down
Christina Edwards 0:11
Dog. This is, yeah, this is many, many years ago. You're living in Atlanta. I'm in Atlanta, and we're doing yoga on kind of a dirty hardwood floor. It hurts, yeah, you remember that? Yeah?
Sara Wiles 0:24
Oh, my God. Young Blood. Young Blood, yep. Young Blood, yeah, oh, and I loved every minute of it. And then there was the three legged cat, Jolene, yes. Oh, that would come. These are really special days for me and pre kids,
Christina Edwards 0:38
pre everything. So what a wild time. I want you to start by just telling an audience about the amazing work you do, and we're gonna dig in today, so tell us about you.
Sara Wiles 0:48
Yeah. So my background is in corporate event planning. I did that for eight years, and then I had a baby. And you know, everything about your life changes as a mother after you have a child. I worked for a company that really did not understand what that meant to birth a child into the world and then have to change what happens in your life afterwards. And so after fumbling around, you know, for about a year or a year and a half, a friend said to me, Hey, you're really good at planning things and figuring things out, because it's what I literally did for a living. And she said, You should be a VA. And I was like, the heck is a VA? This was 2017 and she told me it was a virtual assistant, and it's essentially just being an executive assistant or a personal assistant or a business assistant for people, but remotely, you know, see your top opportunity, you don't need to go into an office, you don't need to go see someone, although you could, if that's part of it. And so I said, okay, sure, we'll figure that out. And we did, and I was really successful very quickly within, gosh, I'm trying to remember how long, maybe about nine months in, I had so much work that I had a team of nine all moms working underneath me, because the demand was so big. And at the same time, I had so many women you know from my periphery, people that I had known from Atlanta, from yoga, from college, from growing up, from high school, you know, who are also entering this stage of motherhood. Um, saying, How are you doing what you're doing, and how are you working from home? And how do you have this flexibility, but you're still able to bring in an income? And I would just, you know, kind of casually tell people like, well, this is how I'm doing it. And like, Oh, here's another person that needs a VA. So do you want to get started here? Just take this person, because I can't service them. We're full. And then I realized that there was a need there, that there were so many women, not just mothers, women in general, who were such a great fit for this type of work because they had so much experience in corporate positions, other jobs. Yep, that would be so successful, but they just didn't understand how to actually do it, both on the skill side, but also on the business side and the peopleing side, which we all know to be the hardest part of doing everything, is the peopleing. So that's it. In 2019 I made a course, and now here we are in 2024 2025 and this is what I do full time. I train virtual assistants, and I help women from around the world. Mothers have not start businesses bringing their skills, services talents to people around the world to help them
Christina Edwards 3:12
amazing. And so originally, what prompted this conversation was basically a symptom I was seeing with so many of my clients where we're talking about, if you look at their to do list and you look at what's on it, and they're, I'm like, Okay, since our last call, have you done a, b and c? And they're like, no, because I had really been doing X, Y and Z, and x, y and z is, you know, trying to figure out how to create this brochure in Canva, figuring out social media captions for this, right? All of these things that are so important and yet not a use of their time and not in their zone of genius. Like, it's not what they're great at, like, and same for me, like, I can tinker around with all of these things and it's not a good use of my time. And so that's when I was like, Okay, do you have an assistant? And it would start with, well, like, What do you mean? I can't afford that. Did it? And I was like, Okay, this has to stop. So I sort of have this rule inside my coaching program of, like, no one's allowed to do Canva graphics, like no one's allowed to, because somebody out there will do it better, better, better, better, faster. Thank you. Okay, so it's not just about social media, although that is one bucket that you can hire an assistant for. But I think it would be helpful for this conversation, for the busy founder, for the busy nonprofit leader, to think about what are some amazing VA tasks they could offload, and also some question of like, is this a full time job? Isn't this a full time job? Why it's so accessible to start okay,
Sara Wiles 4:47
Okay, so what are some of the tasks that they can outsource? I love the frame that you gave in the beginning, which was, what are the things. That only you can do as the founder, as the leader, and that that that number of things is actually pretty small, that only your brain can be used for. It's not the Canva graphics. It's not the posting such as social media. It might be your face on social media, but it's certainly not you posting. It's not diving in the data of a spreadsheet with your donors, or you know, your volunteers, or people you want to do outreach to. It's not email marketing. It's not all of those things that somebody else will actually do a better job at and probably do a whole lot faster and make look a whole lot better and save you to do the things that only you can do. But also, and I think this is the part that like gets lost, make it so that your mental capacity is so much higher when you're doing the things that only you can do. And I say this as somebody who's also a founder of a company who, year over year, is also trying to grow, also runs a team, also does all of these things when I'm fresh in my brain, I produce better work that only I can do, versus when I've just been sitting in Canva for an hour trying to make something look good. Because I'm not a graphic designer, I'm good enough to be dangerous. So I think what's what's beautiful and hard about the role of virtual assistant is the possibilities are endless, and it all depends what you need and what kind of gifts and talents you find in the person that you're hiring, something that we tell our VAs all the time is the way to be successful in their role is to be super resourceful, right? So we don't ever want to have people that are like problem. I can't fix this. We want somebody to be like, here's the problem. And I already Googled three solutions. Which one is the best? Which one do you think you want me to execute on because ultimately, you're the decision maker, as the owner, founder, you know, leader. So we want them to be resourceful. We want them to be good, quick learners. We want them to be people where, you know, you just move to a new fundraising platform or a CRM platform and it's brand new. And we want them to look at that like an exciting challenge, versus, oh my gosh, I'm so annoyed that there's change, right? We want people who are like, Ooh, cool, new thing. Let's figure this out, you know? So really, it's about finding the right person. So yes, they already understand how to do some tasks, but also they're there to grow with you, and they're excited to grow with you because they're resourceful and because they're good learners, that's
Christina Edwards 7:19
so good. Okay, a couple things. First is, and one of the reasons I specifically wanted to have you on is because you have this matchmaking service, which is free. And so I've gone to you, I've sent my clients to you, and I and you basically input the type of VA, or really just the type of tasks you're looking to offload or have help on. And so you input that, and then they match make you with several of your trained va’s. So I've gone through this process, and I'll give you like an example. So one of them is my own personal VA, and she's been with me now for several years. And so I gave her our content calendar, and I was like, This is what we use for our content calendar at splendid. And she's like, great. And then within a month, it was the most beautiful thing you've ever seen like she took it to a next level, and not because she made it this long, elaborate thing. She made it better. She added formulas and drop downs, I don't know how to do in Google Sheets, but she certainly did. And then I was able to actually say, Hey, I see that you have this skill set. Can you go inside of my programs and make the content calendars, I give my clients better. And it was just like, such a great way to be like, you're not necessarily always looking for somebody to replace your brain. You're looking for somebody to like, make it better, faster, smoother, less friction. So that was a great example of that. Yeah,
Sara Wiles 8:35
I love that. Okay, then you talked about like that. Is this a full time role? Is this not? Yeah, so the beauty here again, is it gets to be what you want. You know, I think sometimes, as a, you know, a founder myself, it feels scary to let somebody into your baby, right? And when we're talking about nonprofits, we're talking about people, we're talking about affecting change in the world, we're talking about really freaking important work, yeah, um, and it might feel really scary to bring someone on. It might feel really high risk. It might feel like but I want to meet that person in person, right? And I really want to get a vibe check and feel them out and all of those things. And I hear that, and I get that, and I see that, and, you know, just like, AI is the future of so much of the work that we're doing, and we can be mad and bitch and moan about it as much as we want, but like, we're gonna have to get on board eventually. It's really the same thing with virtual work. And so what I would say is, the beauty of VA work is it can be really low risk. In the beginning, you can bring somebody on for 10 hours a month, right? That's like two and a half hours a week. That's nothing. And a financial standpoint, go ahead. I'm sorry. I
Christina Edwards 9:38
would argue that is actually like, if anyone is listening, and they're like, I can't afford it. Do that. Do it right now. It's the smartest way to scale. Keep
Sara Wiles 9:46
going. Yeah, yeah, right. So, so you could find a VA and, you know, we can talk about rates, if you want to, at some point that are really all over the place, depending on, you know, experience, background, how long they've been in the space, things like that, you know. But let's say you get somebody who's a little, no. And they're in like, the 25 to $30 an hour range. Your brain as a full time hirer might be thinking that's high or, you know, I don't know what people are thinking, right? But remember that one you're not paying them, payroll taxes, health insurance, benefits, any of those things, right? This is a contractor in your business or in your company, and you can hire them really low risk. You can be like, it's 10 hours a month, so if they're 30 bucks an hour and it's 10 hours, you're making a $300 risk, that's it so much. And
Christina Edwards 10:30
I want to speak to the pain point, because, like so many of my clients, are irritated with their CRM would be the best feeling, I can say, or overwhelmed. I mean, some of them have a love relationship, but for the rest of them, they're just like, I don't know, like, it's just they can be clunky. They can be hard to use again. It's just not, it's not their wheelhouse. And hiring somebody just to do maybe social media or just inbox management and your CRM where you're like, I need a file right now as we're recording this, this is what everybody needs. I want to file of all of the donors who has been given in 2024 send me that the average executive director who doesn't love their CRM, this could take hours. Yeah, this could take somebody who's just naturally tech savvy, I don't know, seven minutes, right? And it's such like imagine that in that seven minutes they're doing that, you're making calls to those donors. You're sending those donors emails. And then I want to offer another thing that I've had my own assistant help me on this, this, this calendar year, which is cards, holiday cards outreach touch points, where you're like, again, pull that file of whoever they are, and you're like, hey, what do you I need some recommendations on holiday cards. Send me the three best ones that fit our cause, and send me two, um, sample things that I can write in it. And I'll pick one like this. Is the type of things that frees you up to go have a major donor meeting. These free you up to do all the things.
Christina Edwards 12:01
Okay, so all of these tasks are just such smart tasks to offload and do in conjunction with, with a VA, even at a small hour, like small hours per month, yeah,
Sara Wiles 12:16
100% and the beauty there is, let's say you love that person, right? They likely have more capacity, so you can continue to do more and bring them on more, but it's just so low risk, right? And listen, you're not going to give that person the keys to the castle on day one. You're not going to say, here's every passport, here's everything, here's access to everything. You're going to make this a slower process, usually, so that you can build trust with that person over time and as somebody who has a fully remote team, fully remote team, I have been in business for eight years. There are some of my team members I have never met in person, but I would trust them with my child, right? There we go. That is saying something. It happens over time. The other thing that I'll note here is like, exactly like you said, right? Yes, they can get into the back end of your CRM. They can manage, you know, they can pull that list for you in seven minutes, when that maybe would have taken you two hours. But also, trust is built over time, and so I do want to set a very realistic expectation that, hey, listen, you might get a unicorn on your team, and they just blow your socks off on day one. And you're like, This is the best thing I've ever thing I've ever done. And also you have to remember that if you're hiring somebody for 10 hours a month, it's going to take them four months to do what is the equivalent of a full 40 hour work week for There we go. Right. Okay, yeah, so, and my point there is, right, if you think about hiring a new person and having them in your office for 40 hours a week, and what you would learn about them in one week, right? That's going to take you four months of this other person. And so my point there is, like it does take time, especially when you're on those smaller hour
Christina Edwards 13:53
packages, and I think for a smaller team. So I'm going to speak to the nonprofit that is under a million usually they have the executive director. They usually have somebody running programs. And I would argue your hire between those two should be this role. Many times they come to me, like, can we just hire someone to do fundraising? I'm like, Nope, you as a nonprofit leader, you're still fundraising, yeah. And usually they're this, this, this person could be in charge of social media. They could help you with that. So I would argue, before you hire an employee, this is the right person to hire. And I want to also speak to like that org, our org size, they may be at $200,000 a year, half a million a year, most of those. And I lovingly say this because I've done this too. We don't have our own SOPs, meaning y'all, we're at to the VA. We are kind of a hot mess for the VA to join our organization, and you're nodding. So I That's okay, right? Sarah, like we don't, we don't, we don't have a welcome packet. You know what I mean, all right?
Sara Wiles 14:58
And, and I think that's the point. Is you really want somebody who doesn't this is what we say on our end, right? Because we train people in a program. They pay to join this program. And we always say, you know, from an ethical standpoint, we are only doing a good job as a business if we are telling people who are a fit for the program, and we're also telling people who are not a fit for the program. And so what we always say is, hey, if you're somebody who wants to walk into a job on day one and you want an entire employee handbook, and you want Step A, B, C and D and B, told to you, this is not for you. You will not be successful as a virtual assistant, because they will not be successful to your nonprofit, you need somebody who comes in and they're like, oh, it's messy. Let me figure this out. You need somebody who sees mess and is like, I love making calm out of chaos, yes,
Christina Edwards 15:41
yes, yes, yes. And so that internally happened for me. And so at some point, one of my assistants said we're creating some SOPs, and I have a second assistant right now, who's I said specifically, your new task is, I did a brain download, and I said, this is everything it takes to launch my program, and I just, it was like, task test, task, and we put a minus on on it. So the next thing I want you to do is create a board for that SOP, so that next time we launch, we're just duplicating that, and it's like, it's okay, and we're doing this. We're co creating this together. It's messy. She's down for it. One of the things she said on our first, you know, Discovery call together was that she's like, I have two boys with ADHD. I'm used to setting reminders. I'm used to double checking. I'm used to being organized. I got this and I was like, say it again like
Sara Wiles 16:36
you are the woman for me. I just want to share a quick tip for anybody that's listening to that feels maybe a little stuck around that or a little scared around that piece one, and everybody's heard this. I didn't make this up. This is somebody else. I'm sure it's in a business book somewhere, but there's like, this concept of training somebody that looks like, I do, you watch, you do. I watch, and then you do, right? So remember that, and then also remember loom. Is your best friend, loom? Do they know loom? They know loom. They know loom. Okay, great, like just loom yourself doing tasks if you're the one who's doing social media, if you're the one who's pulling the report, if you're the one who's doing the thing and you want them to do it exactly the way that you do it instead of having to sit down and write an SOP and spend all of your time doing that, which is going to want to make you pull your hair and your Oh yeah, no, just do it and film yourself doing it and film yourself talking through it. And that is now your living, breathing SOP. And eventually, if you want them to put that into, you know, word form, your VA can do that for you.
Christina Edwards 17:39
Yeah, yeah. It's all of the things y'all that your board has said. Wouldn't it be nice if it's all of the things that are at the bottom of your to do list, it's all the things that you come to coaching calls and you say to me, Christina, I would have had that donor meeting, except I was pulled in this other direction. We were on a call this week, and two separate clients basically said they were having some issues with, like the tech on one was on their fundraising tool. One was on, like, an integration with their CRM and their email donation tool. Again, I'm like, Who can we offload this to? Because you need to go raise 100k right? Who can we offload this to? Because, right, a lot of those tools have great like, online support, chat, etc. And couldn't we say to our VA, kind of a 911 I need you to figure this out in the next 48 hours, something like that. Like, let's, let's troubleshoot this. Let me know what they need. Yeah, yeah, beautiful. Now Are y'all $30 an hour? So let's talk about that. Let's talk about the hiring, kind of like the the nuts and bolts, what a board member would be like, What? What is this? Yeah,
Sara Wiles 18:43
huh? Yeah, for sure. Okay, so you want to talk rates. Tell me what else rates
Christina Edwards 18:47
and what is your recommended process for hiring, hiring, beautiful hirings, kind of you know, I have thoughts. Oh, I want to hear your thoughts. My thoughts are just like, Oh, it's so hard. Yeah,
Sara Wiles 19:01
okay, okay, great. So in general, we're gonna see newer, greener virtual assistants. And I don't want you to think that that means anything, right? Like green could just mean that they're new to being a virtual assistant, but they were a corporate can I say B, A, D, A, S, S, yeah, badass. Thank you. Yes, yes, right? Like they were a corporate badass, but they're just kind of, like, getting their feet wet in the virtual assisting world, right? You might get somebody in the, you know, 25 to $35 an hour range that is either somebody that's newer, could be somebody that lives in Pocatello, Idaho, and like, you know, $30 an hour is like, the end all be all for them, right? I'm thinking of a student that we had in our program who lives in a very small town in Minnesota, I think. And when we shared these rates with her, she was floored, like, the beginning rates, because she was somebody who worked in a hospital, she did something in the medical field, and never in her entire career. This woman is over. 40 years old. Has she ever made more than $18 an hour? Wow. So the idea that she could make $30 an hour as a newer VA blew her mind. Then there's some people who are, you know, living in New York City, and those rates are different, right? So newer, in general, you know, you're looking at between 25 and 35 then somebody who's, you know, been in here for a minute, you know, maybe has a little bit more experience. You're looking at 35 to 45 and then those rates go up. If you want somebody who's like a tech specialist, maybe it's somebody who has experience in the nonprofit space using one of these platforms that you're already using, then you're probably looking at 50 and up.
Christina Edwards 20:35
We had a client inside the club that specifically needed somebody who could do MailChimp, automated sequences and Zapier. It was like, a very specific we need to do a zap to this, to that. And we went to your matchmaking and we found somebody, and yes, they were a little bit higher. They were in the, I want to say like, but that makes sense, because I just named three different tools, and like, everyone collectively, was like, Yeah, I don't want to do that. I don't we. So it was like the best $50 an hour you can spend. And I want to offer this. I'm not kidding. This is what the org was doing before they were manually taking the subscriber from one database, exporting it and importing it, and then manually sending out a five email welcome sequence. And it's like, we don't have to do that anymore. And now I'm mad at it. I'm mad that you're doing that, because there is, I mean, this was probably a three hour problem, $150 an hour. Maybe we get that VA once a year to do a tune up, or to run some reporting a couple times a year. Like, what a beautiful, beautiful use of $1,000 yeah?
Sara Wiles 21:39
Oh my god, please. Like, that's, it's insane, yeah, um, and probably faster too, right? So if you're like, hey, but we could pay somebody in the office, whatever it is that you're paying them in the office. Okay, cool, but how long is that going to take? I
Christina Edwards 21:53
mean, I find Zapier, personally complicated. I find automations. They can get annoyed like it takes and I would like to think I'm pretty tech savvy, yeah, and no, this is not, this is no good. This is not a good use of my time. I have a friend who we I say Facebook Ads Manager, meta ads managers. I hate it. It's clunky. I do it. I hate it. She's like, I love it. I'm like, that's who you want. You're telling me you love the back end of meta. She's like, so good.
Unknown Speaker 22:23
I'm like,
Christina Edwards 22:26
I've again. That's who you want. Because she's gonna do it 10x faster, and she's gonna find the loopholes. Hey, why don't we add this there? Why don't we do this there? I didn't even know about that because I have the thought that I hate it,
Sara Wiles 22:38
right? It's 100% somebody loves it, we hate it. But some it's like, I think goat cheese is disgusting.
Christina Edwards 22:46
Some people love it, yeah, so you just have to go find the person that loves us. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So we've, we've talked about rate, let's talk about your process for hiring. Like, what do we what's a great way to find the person? And then also, in my world, I've kind of heard like, you should have them do a case study or a test project. Like, let's talk about
Sara Wiles 23:06
that. Yeah. Um, okay, so couple different things. If you are hiring somebody for a project, like you just said, you're like, hey, we just need somebody to come in. We have this one time project. It's MailChimp, it's Zapier, it's whatever. The other thing that was that you said, right, um, you probably don't need to be. You want to make sure somebody's proficient in those systems, but you're not going to do as an intensive a hiring process, as if you're hiring somebody with the intent that this person is going to be your right hand or, you know, somebody that's going to be on your team for a very long time. So I just want to differentiate between those two. I'm going to give advice, like, you have somebody that you want on the team for a long time, because that one is a little bit more complicated. Yep. Okay, so just like the term Executive Director, right? Is an umbrella term and means something very different organization to organization, as does the term VA, right? It's an umbrella term. The other way that I would say that is like you could say mom, right, like the term mom and how somebody moms looks different in my house, in your house, and people's houses that are listing, right? And so sometimes people get caught up in this idea of like, Oh, I just need a VA. And a VA will solve my problems. But it's like, no, you need a virtual assistant who is, who does XYZ, 123, right? Yep. And so being clear on the front end, what it is that you want out of that role is going to help you in your hiring process, because it's going to increase the likelihood that you get somebody on board that's actually going to help you solve your problems, versus hiring for the umbrella role. Does that make sense?
Christina Edwards 24:33
I just need somebody to help me. You're not going to be very happy if that's your criteria. And you go fill out a form to be Match Made. And I will say I'm a real life example of this. I've been very vague about what I want. And the last time I needed to hire, I was very specific. I was very specific. And I even had your VAS basically say on the first call, thank you. Like, Wow, you're really leaning out here. You really laid out. And I was like, I did, and it took more effort on my I was very specific about the tech. I was very. Very specific throughout the areas, and it took more effort on my end, yeah, worth it for both of
Sara Wiles 25:04
us. Keep going. Totally Great point. Um, and it doesn't have to take an hour, right? Like, this could literally take you 20 or 30 minutes. It just didn't take you too many Yes, right? Um, so, so that's number one, right? Like, just be really clear about what you want. The second thing that I would say people get so hung up on proficiency of technology, and it is, in my deepest opinion, that that is not the thing that you should be hung up on if you know that this is going to be a tech heavy role. Yes, you want to make sure that you have a tech person. You want to make sure that you have somebody. So do not hire Sarah do not hire Christina. We know enough, but we're not the people that you need. You need a tech goddess. Now, does she need to know all the tech that you used? No, she's probably not going to, especially in your industry, where there's all different CRMs, there's all different fundraising tools. What you want is, like I said in the beginning, somebody who's a quick learner, somebody who likes learning, and somebody who is techie, if that's the role that you're filling for, because they're going to pick up your systems quick. They're also going to be able to move with you as you, you know, bring in a new fundraising system, because a new one just launched, and you're hearing it's the best one on the market, and it's going to make your life so much better. Well, guess what? Because you didn't hire for the specific task and you hired for the soft skill. Yes, you're good
Christina Edwards 26:22
now, right? Okay, so we're gonna give people a couple of examples, because, yes, I can already feel the resistance of like they don't understand our world. And I asked them on the call if they had heard of our CRM Bloomerang or neon one, and they had no idea. Y'all, both of the ones I just mentioned are very modern. They're not clunky. They will go through a video training or help, and they will get it so fast. One of the things I stopped asking, I don't know that I ever did but, but when I was was interviewing vas, is I never say, like, do you know XYZ social media scheduling platform? Because they're so like, later and planally and all that. They're so similar that I'm, like, I don't if they know one and they, like, you said they have that skill, they'll do it faster than me. Like, they'll do it faster than me. So it's exactly so I think that's a really good distinction of what we're looking for, versus, Okay, what else? Yeah, so
Sara Wiles 27:19
I think soft skills for sure, yes, put in there, like, this is going to be a tech. Be a tech heavy role. This is going to be a customer support heavy role. This is going to be this. They want to know what they're doing day to day. But you really do want to look for those soft skills in that define, you know, what you want them to do, define the tasks that you think that you want them to do. You know, I think something that's really beautiful is if you can tell somebody what success in the role looks like. That's a really great one. Now again, we have chat. GBT, y'all we don't have to use our brains so much. We can use our brains for the things that we need. So you could get that whole document together. You could say, hi, chat, I'm hiring a VA, these are the tasks that I want them to do. Can you help me figure out what success would look like in this role? And chat will tell you, yeah, but then you're really clear to them, and it's really clear so that you know what success looks like. You now have an easy way to track success, and they're able, in an interview, to say, Yeah, I think I can meet those expectations. Or no, I don't think I can meet those expectations. Love it. Chat, y'all, we love it. What else did I want to say? Test projects? Test projects? Yeah, I think test projects are a really great idea. If you are specific about what you want something to look like. The thing that I want people to know is it is appropriate to pay for test projects. They see a lot where people are like, I want somebody to do a test project, but I don't want to pay for it. And it's like, okay, but like, that's not how the world works. You have to pay people for the work that we're doing, especially, you know, because that's what we should be doing. So appropriate, but you do need to pay them an hourly wage for those test projects. Yeah,
Christina Edwards 28:54
I love it. What? Or it's an alternative. And this is kind of what I've done before. When I'm like, you just need to move fast and make some decisions. A little bit yeah, is just send me tons of samples. I have done that. So for example, if I know this person is going to be blogging or creating social content or Canva graphics or captions or something that would have where they could send me examples or case studies. Sometimes, that has been my workaround for for a test project, 100% 100% Yep. Okay, totally. All right, wonderful. What else can go wrong? What else should we be cognizant and looking at like we think we found our person board says, yes, then what? What's a great way, or maybe a positive spin would be what's a great way to, like, make sure that this, this relationship goes well
Sara Wiles 29:44
feed back, having a consistent feedback loop all of the time, something that we do now when we hire on our team. And you know, we're primarily in a female industry, and primarily, I mean everybody on. My team is female, right? You know, so understanding that we let people know on the front end that we are going to provide them with a crap ton of feedback so they know, hey, don't assume that feedback means that you're doing a bad job. Assume that this is how this role looks. Is I'm I want to get to a point where I feel like you 100% get this and you can do this on your own. And the only way to get that, I don't expect. I don't expect you to come in the door and know exactly how I would do it, by way of osmosis and psychic abilities like that. And you know, like, that's not how this works. Um, so creating a feedback loop, using loom for that feedback loop. So if you have asked somebody else to do a task, and they do it, and you go to check it, and you're like, This isn't how I would have done it. Our fast moving, hair on fire. Brains are going to have two things happen. One, we're going to be like, Oh, this isn't working out. I hate this, right? And two, we're going to be like, I just want to fix this myself and move on. Okay?
Christina Edwards 30:55
Pause you're in. This is, this is the past decade of me like Christina, it's the same. I think there's an office episode where it's like, move over. I'll do it. It's that energy.
Sara Wiles 31:07
Okay. So we get it. I get it. I mean, I'm the same way. I did this for years, and now I'm like, okay. But I keep, I keep getting in the same place where I'm overwhelmed and I'm not getting what I want out of people, but they seem really smart. So like, it must be me, um, so this is where loom is really great, because while you're fixing the task, record it, send it back to them. That's it. So it's two birds, one stone. I wish that there was another analogy, or another way to say that, because I hate that analogy, because it's a terrible thing to say. We're just killing birds, but I don't know another one, whatever. So record yourself and create feedback loops and let them know that that's how it's going to go. The example that I have example that I always give. And I know that this is not the best company in the entire world, but it's the only example I have. So we're gonna go with it. If you've ever been in a Lululemon store, whether you've been in my Palm Beach Gardens one, or any of your 52 Atlanta ones, or you go to Canada and you go to one or the UK in general, the experience that you have when you walk in that door, the way that you are greeted, the way that you have in your try on room, the conversation that you have with the you know, employee at the checkout is consistent. You feel the same way you go in there, and people are never rude, right? Like I go into other stores, I go into Athleta and viori and like, they're a little sassy, right? Like Lululemon associates are kind, they're caring, they're knowledgeable. They can tell you everything about the legging that you never knew, that you would need to know. And the reason for this is because they have created a culture of consistent feedback. The only way it's possible, it's annoying. I hear you, we would just like people to get in the role and just know what we want and never have to tell them anything. But it's not how it works.
Christina Edwards 32:38
Can I offer to this is an objection, and this is one I personally have dealt with is, yes, I feel bad. I feel bad being like that. Ain't it like, like I feel I guess that's the people, people pleaser in me. I'm paying this person, and yet I'm like, I don't, I don't want to, you know, I don't. It's fine. It's fine. So how do we deal with that?
Sara Wiles 33:02
Yeah, so two things. One, tell them, on the front end, you're gonna feel less bad if you if you set the expectation that there's gonna be feedback, because that's the thing you're worried. You're like, how are they gonna receive this? And are they gonna think that they're doing a bad job? And I want them to be happy, and I want them to like me, and I want those are totally normal things. I want everybody to love me too, right? Yeah. But if we set the expectation on the front end, they're not surprised and shocked when it happens, yeah, and you have less resistance to it. So that's number one. And number two, this is practice. The more you do it, the better you get at it, the better result you get. You see that you're getting your needs met, and then you're gonna naturally want to do it more, because you get what you want out of the person. I just want to say, I have struggled with this for years, too, and 2024 was the year I really worked on this, and the practice has really helped.
Christina Edwards 33:52
Yeah, I actually think I'm taking away from this episode is I always say it's easier when you say the hard thing, like when a person's about to have a donor pitch, and they're like, Listen, I'm feeling a little nervous. I actually think that softens everybody. And so even just for me to say to VA, I'm going to give you a ton of feedback. So get ready. It's just how I how we do it. I think would soften the entire blow in my head. Of them being like, Oh, this is too harsh.
Sara Wiles 34:19
This is Yes, right, right, totally. And you can also, I mean, everybody's heard of this, but like, you sandwich it, right? So you go back and you say, Hey, here's what was really great. Here's what I'd like you to fix. In general, we're going in the right direction. Thank you so much. That feels really good, right? And like, that's the feedback I want, too. I'm in the middle of, like, a, you know, we're doing our, like, 2024 debrief and planning for 2025 and like, the question I asked my team was like, How can I make your life better? Truly, like, tell me, I want to know, because they want you to be happy on this team. So tell me, yeah.
Christina Edwards 34:49
Okay, that just made me think about so in the nonprofit secretor, we have a large churn with with employees, so we see a large amount of churn, and Part. Of that is just burnout. Part of that is they're doing usually the job of two to three people as one role, you know, one salary. It's heavy work. It's heavy work. And I just want to offer, if everyone listening, could just hire somebody at 10 hours a week, or even 10 hours a month. It will help. It will help. So I would take this to your board and say, we need to do this. I've had organizations again at the 100k 200k level and then a million level also all do this, and it has helped their team. I have an organization that's transitioning their ED left, and so I was, I said, y'all have to hire an admin person you. And they did, and it's been so much better. So everyone really look at that, and you can afford a couple $100 a month, no doubt. And this person can grow with you. This person can grow with you. I wanted to give a little bit of an example, because a lot of my clients know we talk about this method I teach, which is working with influencers and ambassadors, and it's called the social stream Street Team method. And one of the use cases for a VA is you as the organization, you identify who our ideal influencers are to partner with. You could actually hire a VA who is very comfortable in the DMS, right? We would call this social selling, I think, in the for profit world, but somebody who's just or social engagement. This could be a VA role you hire. And so you can come to our calls. You can build out your street team, and you curate who you want on it. You curate the pitch, you curate everything, but you actually have the admin, the VA person go through and do the DM outreach and track it. And so you can add a glance, yeah, you're nodding yes. You can add a glance, check it every Monday and go, how's our dashboard? How's it looking? Where are we? And that VA could also do research for you too, yeah? Oh gosh, yeah. They
Sara Wiles 36:47
love research. Yes, yeah. Engagement is a big thing that's happening in, you know, in our space, for sure, in the for profit space. So this is the thing that, yes, somebody that likes having conversations. Would love to be in your DMS, management conversations.
Christina Edwards 37:04
All right, before we wrap up, I have a couple more questions. The first one I have is, because you are not in our world, I have to ask a couple of a couple of curious questions. And I know that you support a lot of nonprofits. I know that you're a very vocal donor and advocate and champion for many and I'm curious on just a couple of like, just curious on preference. Okay, okay, how do you like nonprofits to communicate with
Sara Wiles 37:34
you? How do I like nonprofits to communicate with me? I'm an email girly, okay. Love it personally. Um, we get a couple flyers in the mail, but I've, I have personally never seen like a mailer that makes me jump out of my socks.
Christina Edwards 37:47
Yep. So I like perfect. Great. I love social. What takes you from Lurker to action taker? Um, okay, so action taker could be donor. I volunteer. Gets to an event. I volunteer, etc. Yeah,
Sara Wiles 38:06
yeah, totally. Um, couple of things. Number one, as a personal brand, I think that, and you can disagree, I'm not in your world, and I'm not the expert. So I just want to preface what I'm about to say with do not listen to me. Listen to Christina. Um, I think the human element in a nonprofit is so important.
Christina Edwards 38:28
Oh, no, listen to Sarah. Yes. Keep going. We're I'm excited. I've been saying this all year. Okay, great.
Sara Wiles 38:33
Um, people want to buy, buy, right? And like, I know that they're not buying, but let's just assume it kind of is. It's like transactions are selling. It's a transaction, right? Like people want to buy from people. So they want to know who the executive director is. They want to know who the team is. They're going to connect more. They're going to see that you're doing this really freaking important work in this world, and they want to see you. Yes, they want to see the people that you help, but they want to see you too. And so I think for me, when I can feel connected, to I'm gonna say, a brand, an organization, and I can see their leadership, I feel a whole lot more connected to them.
Christina Edwards 39:11
I love it. Yeah, I think we're craving as humans, connection. I think we're craving like humanity. I think we're craving the real, real. You're great at doing that on social, and it makes the bonds deeper, lasting stickier. It makes me want to share something. When I actually hear from an organization where I'm like, Oh, I know Giselle. Like, I feel like, I know Giselle, I've never met her, but like, I know her, yep, because the way she writes to me, I know Yeah, by me, I mean me and 10,000 other people, right,
Sara Wiles 39:40
right. This feels like you, yeah, exactly. Okay. Thank you, for sure, for that. Thank you for our donor case studies. You got it. And I think like share more behind the scenes, like there's like, I'm sure, and I'm sure you do a whole thing on social media. And I'm sure that social media is such a stuck point, a stick point for your people, but like share the boring stuff. Stuff. Like, people will feel more connected to you if you share the boring behind the scenes stuff, and then they're just naturally going to want to buy. The other two things that I would say is, make stuff easy, right? Like, yeah, throw links in there. Have trigger words. Like, if there is a friction point to somebody paying you money, it's going to make it so much harder. Do not make them jump through hoops. Make it freaking easy on them. Um, these are great, yeah? I think, I think those are the the big things, yeah, those are so busy.
Christina Edwards 40:23
Yeah. Love it. We have one of our clients in the club that's using many chat. And when she first said it, I was like, oh my god, we have a non profit using many chat.
Sara Wiles 40:33
Shout out to kind of good friends. Go, Kathy. I have a really good friend locally who owns a yoga studio. And I was like, ma'am, you need many chat. She was like, What is many chat? I'm like, so you need to make it so that somebody's like, class. Somebody's like, class, and then they can sign up for the class that you're talking about in your Instagram post. And she was like, wow. So now she has it perfect.
Christina Edwards 40:49
Yes, this has been so good. Okay, we ask every guest on the podcast to share a thought that they like to think on purpose. So I like to think of this necessarily, like a mantra, a go to maybe even an affirmation. Would you share yours with us?
Sara Wiles 41:01
Yes, I have like, 9 million, but I'm gonna give you one that I most recently wrote down on a post it note that's literally right here. Hold on, yeah, this is and I don't know who said this. I want to say it's Glenn and Doyle, but I could absolutely be wrong before we say something, share something, put it out into the world. The questions I ask myself are, is it true? Is it kind and is it necessary? And this is what I've been sitting with a lot lately. So I love that. Thank you
Speaker 1 41:30
for sharing that, Sarah, thank you for coming on. Where can everyone connect with you and connect with your assistants? Like, where can we go match make? We'll link to it in the show notes. I know we have a specific link for matchmaking, yep. So it's, um, I love that you asked this, because, of course, I have two websites, and I never know. Okay, we got it. Okay? So if you go to start and grow co.com/matchmaking
Sara Wiles 41:56
you will have the link to matchmaking. It's 100% free. This is a free service, so there's no cost to us. We're gonna get your information. If you're really struggling to kind of nail down what you're looking for in a VA that form is going to help you. Yes, spend 10 minutes on the form instead of two minutes on the form. Okay, you submit that our team will get it. It'll probably take us about 48-72 business hours to get back to you, and we will send that out to our list of trained virtual assistants based on the information that you submitted. And we'll get back to you, hopefully with a couple of matches. And then you take it. From there, we connect you. We send emails to those people that you're connected with. You go from there, we exit the process. That's right, so that's number one, if you just want to connect with me as a human being and see how ridiculously silly I am on Instagram, you can go find me at, fine. Thank you. Um, at, Sarah, S, A, R, A, underscore, Wiles, W, I, L, E, S, and we also have our, that's my personal brand account. And then you can also follow, um, start and grow, or, I'm sorry, it's at the start and grow. CO and that's our business account.
Christina Edwards 43:05
Amazing. Thank
Sara Wiles 43:06
you. So we're a little funny, but not that you're
Christina Edwards 43:08
super funny on yours. We like it. And really, you are such a champion for causes you care about. And so let's just, I mean, even for that, I just want to say thank you, like thank you for lifting up those causes. I know you're a vocal supporter of quite a few so it's, it's awesome to see that
Sara Wiles 43:24
advocacy happen. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. This is amazing.
Christina Edwards 43:28
Amazing. All right, go hire. Go find yourself a VA.
Sara Wiles 43:32
Get it. You.