In todays video we’re going to cover my experience building a 6 figure dropshipping business and how I was able to scale the business using only overseas Virtual Assistants (VAs).
We’ll specifically cover…
Why it’s important (even vital) to outsource
How to know when you’re acutally ready to outsource
How to go about finding good people to bring on (and where to look for them)
How to pay your virtual assistants
How to communicate with your VAs
How to train your VAs
How to make sure your Virtual Assistants are actually doing the work you’re paying them for
If you’re already doing well with dropshipping, outsourcing is super crucial because it lets you buy back your time so you can work ON your business and not IN it.
And if you’re just starting, having this blueprint will really help you when you’re ready to take that next step and bring someone on to take over certain parts of it.
The truth is you can hit 6 figures dropshipping on your own, but if you want to accelerate this process, I highly recommend outsourcing certain aspects of this business….and building a team.
I currently have 3 full time VAs (Virtual Assistants) that help manage my dropshipping business for me.
Why is it important to outsource?
Bringing someone on to help is a no brainer if you’re business is ready for it. Most entrepreneurs pride themselves on being hard working…and also tend to be control freaks so they typically struggle with letting go and giving other people permission to take over (I certainly did….literally for years).
But I realized it doesn’t matter if I’m working 14 hour days as hard as I possibly can 24/7…I’ll never be able to consistently outproduce multiple people doing the same thing.
And there’s no way I can compete with bigger companies and other people already ahead of me doing so.
Outsourcing also allows you to continue learning and innovating to stay ahead of your competition (which is super crucial in any business), but especially dropshipping.
It’ll also give you added time to audit your own business and strengthen weaknesses you might not have otherwise noticed.
Most importantly, it’ll un-handcuff you so you can focus on other ways to scale. And it’ll allow you to seek out new frontiers and new opportunities you wouldn’t have otherwise seen simply because you’ll have more time to allocate to these areas.
So, How do you know when you’re actually ready to bring someone on?
There’s 2 boxes I would recommend checking off to ensure you’re ready to hire your first VA.
You have to be at a point where you can offer someone full time work consistently. If you can’t offer them full time work….or consistent work at the very least….you won’t be a priority to them (or they’ll constantly be looking for other opportunities to fill that void). So if you’re not ready to bring someone on full time, I would recommend holding off for a little bit
You have to have at least have some idea on how you can better use your time. There’s no point in buying back your time if you’re going to sit around and watch Netflix all day.
How do you go about finding good people to bring on and where do you look for them?
There are 4 main sites I like to talk about when looking to hire a Virtual assistant (fiverr, upwork, online jobs.ph, and facebook).
Upwork is a great place to find people to bring on, but it can be more expensive to hire people from here. It does tend to be more geared toward professionals…and the likelihood you’ll find someone that fits well into your dropshipping business from here isn’t that high. So, keep it mind for other things, but for this business….probably not the right place.
Onlinejobs.ph is a great place you can look for virtual assistants, as well. You pay a monthly fee to access this site and then you can post a job listing. Then people can apply for your job...at which point you can interview them and decide if they're a good fit or not.
This site is all workers from the Philippines which is great because a lot of them have prior eCommerce experience and have been VAs before.
Also, you can cancel your subscription as soon as you hire someone from here. So it's more of a one time fee to find a good VA...and not so much a subscription you have to continue to pay for.
Facebook groups are also a great place to find VAs because there are a lot of people from overseas in these groups that are already interested in whatever business model you're involved in and also looking for virtual work.
No matter where you hire from though, always make sure you test them on a small scale first. And always trust, but verify. Then as they earn more of your trust and your confidence, you can give them more freedom and bigger tasks in the future.
Ultimately though, my favorite place to hire is fiverr.
I love using fiverr as my own hiring testing platform. I can find someone to do just about anything on this site for about $5.
Then, if they do a great job, after a few "gigs" I'll bring them on to the team full time. This is when I'll bring them off the platform to work full time for me personally and I'll pay them/message them directly.
I've taken this approach with every single person I've hired and it works really well.
How do you pay your Virtual Assistants?
You can either use paypayl or western union. Between both of the payment sites, you can pretty much pay anyone anywhere for anything.
How do you communicate with your VAs?
I highly recommend using whatsapp to communicate with all your VAs. It's free for most people to use because it works on Wifi and you don't need to use any data.
How do you train your VAs?
I recommend creating video tutorials for them. Simply record a step by step video of what you expect them to do and in what sequence (systemize everything so you can just give them the system to work off). It's much easier for them to learn this way...and it's much easier for you to bring someone else on and teach them that same system if you need to in the future.
Have them watch it a few times (at least twice!) and pay them for their time watching it (like all companies do for training). Then have them start.
You want to watch what they're doing and really check up on the work they do during this training phase. Because you want to make sure they're able to actually perform the work you need them to do.
Keep in mind, you do want to critque their work and make sure they're doing it correctly...BUT you also want to give them enough runway every so often to make their own mistakes. That's how they'll learn faster.
If you hold their hand through everything, not only will they not get any better...but it also defeats the purpose of you hiring THEM to do the job in the first place.
If you'd like to watch the complete video explanation of this, check it out below.