Do We Have High Standards For Our VAs?

We pride ourselves on fostering a team of A Players—talented individuals committed to excellence.

A recent incident with one of our newly hired virtual assistants has prompted us to examine our work culture and the expectations we set for our team members.

Mawe joined our team with enthusiasm and the skills we believed would contribute significantly to our operations. Unfortunately, within 24 hours of diving into his role, Mawe decided to step down.

His resignation letter expressed feelings of anxiety triggered by the sheer volume of communications and the tone used within those exchanges. He perceived a culture of fear and high tension, a far cry from the supportive and collaborative environment we aim to cultivate.

Here was his resignation email he sent barely 24 hours after we onboarded him:

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Mawe’s Resignation Email After Barely 24 Hours

Agency owners often ask us why we have such “high standards” for our virtual assistants. But I think that’s because we have different definitions of what VAs even are.

When most think of VAs, they generally think of a repeatable task that someone in the Philippines does for an hourly wage. 

Here’s the agreement: The worker has a singular job, does that job for a set amount of hours, and gets paid hourly as long as the work is adequate.

Here’s Why This Doesn’t Work

The cost of hiring a low quality VA is higher than you think it is.

We’re not looking for robots – we’re looking for individuals capable of practicing active listening and going above and beyond. What this means is intimately understanding the content so VAs can perform their best work.

At first there’s a knowledge barrier since VAs need to understand the content before they can work on it (hence LDT), but the truth is that some people simply aren’t cut out for it. For some reason or another, they cannot practice MAA (metrics, analysis, action).

A few months ago we let go of an underperforming virtual assistant. For the sake of privacy, let’s call him Bob.

Just yesterday, Bob messaged us for a different position. When I made clear that we tend not to re-hire, his response was “yes, but I want the job”.

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“Bob’s” Response To My Email

His response is exactly why we won’t re-hire him.

No thought to what he did to be let go in the first place and no self-reflection on how we can improve. He’s likely to repeat the same mistakes again, meaning we have to privately train him again.

Here’s some proper MAA he could have used instead:

Metrics: I didn’t complete much work and the work I completed cost you and your team too much time and money to fix than it was worth.

Analysis: This is because I didn’t study the 9 triangles, or practice active listening and MAA in any significant way. Therefore, you were paying to teach me instead of actually completing tasks.

Action: I will better study the 9 triangles, practice active listening and MAA, and work so that you and Dennis don’t have to be my personal VAs.

Our “High Standards” Aren’t Even That High

A lot of employees will complain, make excuses, create distractions, and vandalize – but not realize they are causing so much harm, because they are focusing on their feelings instead of first making sure they are competent.

The A Players are reliable and competent and because of this, they get tons of praise, level up to get paid more, and continue to rise.

Just imagine someone who believes they can be on a professional basketball team.

But when teammates pass them the ball, they lose it, airball, and make all sorts of mistakes.

Yes, we have an A Player only rule. Yes, we typically start our content VAs out at $3- $5/hour while they’re still learning. But unlike other agencies where they want a robot, we want to train folks to be masters.

Of course it’s going to feel overwhelming as you get started, but if that inspires you to learn more and perform better, you can subsequently make more money by providing more value.

Just like our Ops VA Muzamil, who went from making $3/hour to $3k USD/month by being reliable and practicing active listening. And like other VAs on our team who’re starting to step up and be more valuable, who’re well on their way to making more money.

Here’s a secret: Even most of our US people who’ve worked on projects over the years don’t have the stomach for working reliably in teams, which is why they’re no longer here. Which means even US talent often violates the #1 VA Mistake of not understanding the goals of the content we want to produce.

The “myriad of emails” Mawe claimed to be getting are less than 1/5 of the emails myself (and especially Dennis) get everyday. If Mawe worked on it, he could’ve used this opportunity to learn, do, and teach.

Instead, he ran away, scared of a few emails.

The response to Mawe by another one of our newly hired VAs Catherine perhaps says it best:

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Catherine’s Response To Mawe Leaving

Once You Practice LDT and MAA, It Isn’t Hard At All

When I started my agency Analytic Aim in collaboration with BlitzMetrics, I was also overwhelmed by the workload and emails. Even though I wasn’t managing 1,000 emails a day like Dennis, it was still a difficult task.

The difference (in my opinion) that made me perform better was studying the 9 triangles and having some self reflection with how my work could improve.

We don’t want to micro-manage. We want you to study the material, get great at following our blog standards, and start producing content reliably without us looking over your shoulder 24/7.

If that’s you, you’ll find that in a few weeks what was “hard” is actually easy. What took 5 hours before suddenly takes 30 minutes, and more tasks are being completed than ever before.

The difference being your ability to learn, reflect, and continuously improve.

If you can do that, the sky is the limit and we want to give you all the tools you need to succeed.

Parker Nathans
Parker Nathans
Parker Nathans is an entrepreneur and founder of Analytic Aim, a digital marketing agency specializing in getting more calls booked for local service businesses. Parker has been in the digital marketing space for over a decade. In partnership with BlitzMetrics and Dennis Yu, Parker wants to make sure every local service business gets more quality calls in their service area.