July 22, 2025 • 26 mins
The primary focus of this episode is the transformative impact of employing virtual assistants in leadership and business operations. Our esteemed guest, Anna Brambilla, elucidates how her mission is to assist coaches, consultants, and executives in reclaiming their time and enhancing their business efficacy through strategic outsourcing. Anna shares her profound insights into the art of leveraging virtual assistants, a practice she has mastered to scale her operations and concentrate on revenue-generating activities. Throughout the discourse, we explore the various tiers of virtual assistance, from general administrative tasks to specialized executive support, emphasizing the pivotal role of effective delegation in fostering productivity. This episode serves as an invaluable resource for leaders seeking to optimize their workflows and rediscover their passion for their enterprises.
The Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast features a compelling dialogue between host Jaclyn Strominger and guest Anna Brambilla, an expert in the utilization of virtual assistants to enhance business operations. Anna's expertise lies in empowering coaches and consultants to reclaim their time by outsourcing essential tasks, thereby allowing leaders to concentrate on their core competencies and revenue-generating activities. Throughout the episode, Anna shares her personal journey, illustrating how the strategic hiring of virtual assistants has not only increased her productivity but has also resulted in a substantial increase in her revenue.
The discussion delves into the various levels of virtual assistance, ranging from general administrative support to specialized executive assistance, emphasizing the broad array of tasks that virtual assistants can undertake. Anna elaborates on the unique advantages of sourcing virtual assistants from the Philippines, a region noted for its proficient English-speaking workforce and cultural compatibility with Western business practices. This episode serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of leveraging external support to optimize workflow and achieve greater success in leadership roles, encouraging listeners to reevaluate their operational strategies in light of these insights.
Takeaways:
- The podcast emphasizes the importance of delegating tasks to virtual assistants to enhance productivity and focus on core leadership responsibilities.
- Anna Brambilla shares her journey of using virtual assistants to reclaim time, stating that it significantly improved her revenue and business operations.
- She advocates for identifying tasks that only leaders can perform and outsourcing the rest to optimize efficiency and effectiveness in leadership roles.
- The discussion highlights the growing trend of using virtual assistants from countries like the Philippines, emphasizing their strong work ethic and language proficiency.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Virtually Aligned
- Time Maximizers
- University of Denver
- Simmons College
- Marriott
- Hilton
Mentioned in this episode:
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Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight - Welcome
Welcome to the podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:59):
Well, hello everybody andwelcome to another amazing episode
of the Unstoppable LeadershipSpotlight podcast where we hear from
amazing leaders and get theirgame changing insights on how to
be better leaders and make agreater impact in the world today.
And I am your host, JaclynStrominger. Today I had the absolute
pleasure of bringing on ouramazing guest. It's Anna Brambilla
(01:24):
and she is fantastic. Andshe's smiling because I have my mouth
is the Boston mouth and like,words don't come out. So I'm like,
how do I get your name right?Because names are so important. So
I'm like, yay. Did I did it right?
You did a great job.Beautiful. Thank you. Yes.
So let me give you a littleinformation about our guest, Anna.
(01:48):
So Anna's mission is to showcoaches and consultants how they
can reclaim their time andCEOs and executives and grow their
businesses by outsourcing theright support. And that's really
key because there's a keycomponent to leadership. And so as
a business owner, Anna hasmastered the art of leveraging virtual
(02:09):
assistants to kill her toscale her operations and focus on
what matters most. And that iswhat has inspired her to launch her
business.
So, absolutely.
To the podcast. So glad tohave you here.
I'm so glad to be here. I'm sohonored. Thank you so, yeah.
So I always like to share andask. So if you're thinking about,
(02:31):
you know, you know, what yourbusiness is and, and reclaiming time,
if you could give our leadersone, like right off the bat, running
start tip, what would it be?
(02:52):
Do what only you can do.Whatever that is, right? If it's
revenue producing, do that. Ifit's operations, do that. If it's
whatever technology, do that.Find what only you can do and that
you love doing. That's theother caveat, right? We all have
things that we're really goodat but don't want to do anymore.
(03:13):
But do find what you lovedoing and can do and only you can
do. Outsource the rest.There's tons of people out there
who love to do the stuff thatyou might hate or that you don't
want to do anymore. That's howI found the power of virtual assistants.
It was a game changer. Iactually tripled my revenue when
(03:34):
I found virtual assistantsbecause it's like, oh my gosh, I
can do the stuff that I wantto do, which is coaching and it's
talking to people and workingwith to do revenue generating activities
that I loved doing. And Ifound people in the Philippines that
love doing the admin and wereso good at it and they wanted to
(03:56):
do that work. They didn't wantto do the work that I was doing.
And it's like, well, whyshould you do anything you don't
want to? I mean obviously wehave to pay our taxes. There's things
we all have to do.
That we don't want to do.
But you know, do what you love.
Right. So Anna, you know, so Iworked with some virtual assistants.
So first of all, I guess Iwant to ask the question, why the
(04:19):
Philippines? How does thatbecome the hotbed?
In a lot of ways it'sfascinating. It's fascinating. I
am just starting virtuallyaligned. We've been around actually
for about nine months already.What it is, it's a company that helps
people who know theydesperately want and need a virtual
assistant but don't know whereto start or had a bad experience
(04:41):
in the past and are lookingfor that virtual assistant. So my
company is a direct placementcompany. It's not a cert managed
services where you're payingsomebody, you interview, hire and
manage that person directly.That person becomes a member of your
staff and so we help you withall that. And I can go into the process.
(05:02):
I love talking about theprocess, but we can go in the process
later. I find the Philippinesand there's lots of great countries
out there. I mean a lot offriends have virtual assistants from
Latin America and they'rephenomenal. Or you know, South Africa
seems to be coming up lately.And what I like about the Philippines
is that it's a culture thatreally supports that kind of virtual
(05:24):
assistant work. There's a lotof people who want that. A lot of
people, really a lot of thevirtual assistants that we have on
our team are looking for thatflexible work style and work time.
I love it. I love that I getmy work done, pass all the things
off and while I'm sleepingthey're getting everything done and
(05:45):
then when and they give me mylist of things that I have to do.
Of course.
Right, right. Yeah.
Their English written writingspeaking is phenomenal. I think they
do a better job writing than Ido and I'm a native English speaker
so that's wonderful. And theprice point is good too. There's
a lot of, you know, we're nottalking the US based VAs who are
(06:07):
looking for 30, 40, $50 anhour and they're wonderful and they
serve a specific niche. But ifyou're looking for an admin person
who's going to do, who's goingto do whatever you need anywhere
from about six to sevendollars an hour, all the way up to
15 or $20 an hour depending onthe skill set and everything else
like that. But I've now alsonever seen a harder working community.
(06:31):
They really take pride intheir work and want to do a good
job.
Yeah.
And so I've just beenthrilled. I've just been thrilled.
So that's really great. So youknow, a lot of times people will
say, well what do you have thevirtual assistant do? So tell us,
like what do you have virtual?Or what should or could they do for
(06:52):
your business?
That's a great question. Onethat I get all, all the time. So
we found in our businessvirtually aligned, we have three
different levels of placement.So we have the general va and I'll
certainly explain what thosedifferent things are. But there's
a general VA who's going to dothe more administrative tasks, the
email management, the calendarmanagement, the CRM, following up
(07:16):
with clients, things likethat. For me, I had them do a lot
of client management emails,following up on past clients, reaching
out to potential new clients.They did a lot of outreach on LinkedIn
to get me new clients. You canhave them do a lot of generalist
(07:36):
admin, what we call general VAwork, general virtual assistant work
is what we have. Then there'ssort of a higher level of skills
that could be SEO, it could begraphic design, it could be photo
editing, it could be somethingspecific to real estate. I also have
(07:56):
a lot of people who are doingit around franchises because I'm
transitioning out of doingfranchise consulting and into owning
my own company now. And sothere's a lot of skill sets around
that. That's a higher level.It's not going to be a general admin.
You have to pay them morebecause you're getting higher skills,
but you have to pay them andthey require different, different
(08:17):
skill sets. And then there'swhat's called the executive assistant,
the EA level. So that'ssomebody who has the drive and the
experience to really be yourright hand person who can be that,
really challenge you andreally get you thinking, have you
thought about this? But yousaid this over here, so you need
to do this over there. Sothere's three different levels and
(08:40):
it really depends on whatyou're looking for. And we work with
our clients to really identifythe tasks that need to be done. What
I found from my own experiencewith hiring my very first VA is that
I had them do it was a woman.Most of the VAs in our team are women.
That's just the way it worksout. But she had, she did some basic
(09:01):
stuff. She did some email, shedid some, you know, didn't require
a lot of thought, which isfine because that's, you know, I
wanted to sort of graduallyease her into that. And then as she
started to grow and developand I realized, oh wait, she can
do more than that and she canlike manage my inbox. Oh my God.
Well, that was a game changer.I don't know about you, but how many
(09:22):
emails do you get in a day? Ohmy God, what a nightmare. So she
can manage my email. Shestarted to be more proactive, so
I started to go into LinkedInand actively look for clients on
LinkedIn. Give her a generalsense. This is kind of what I'm looking
for. Because she by that timeknew me well enough and knew what
my icp, my, my ideal clientprofile was. And she started to be
(09:46):
more proactive and reach outand say, and use her own messaging
and sometimes if she hadquestions she would use mine or would
run it by me. But she was ableto do that. Then I hired another
VA to do some graphics for meand they did a phenomenal job of
the graphics and really, youknow, just created some amazing stuff.
(10:06):
As I'm transitioning out ofthe franchise world and into starting
virtually aligned my newcompany, then I've got my EA and
she's my right hand person andshe's doing all the operations and
she's thinking strategicallyand she's thinking. I just was on
a call with her earlier todayand she's like, okay, now this is
what we need to think aboutpricing. This is what we need to
(10:28):
think about packaging. This iswhat we need to think about our CRM.
And I'm going to do theresearch and I'm going to find the
one that's right and we'regoing to find a billing system. So
really runs the gamut and itreally depends on the, on the coach
or the consultant or the, orthe entrepreneur, what they're looking
for.
And so are you finding thatyou're working more with, with, with
that group, the coaches, theconsultants and the entrepreneurs
(10:50):
versus the people that are in, you.
Know, corporate right now?Yes, right now, yes. You know, the
temptation when you start anew company is you can be everything
to everybody. Right. And thatI'm not going to fall down that trap,
as tempting as it is.
Right.
And so I am right now focusingon the solopreneur, the coach, the
(11:11):
consultant, small companies,you know, two to five people, perhaps
Is that the big. Becausethat's what I do really well is finding
one or two people to supportthe key leaders. We're increasingly.
We just got a call yesterdayfrom somebody who wants us to build
a team for them, which ofcourse we'll do, but that's less
(11:33):
our skill set. Certainly myexperience has been. In the number
of years that I've been incorporate world, my experience has
been that the leaders of alarger company typically have staff
in house. It might outsource akey portion of what they're doing,
but most of my experience hasbeen that they're looking for somebody
(11:55):
in house to do it for them.
You know, it just gave me theidea really of somebody who. Of,
you know, on the leadershipside of it, hiring. Hiring a VA to
actually handle this. Yourpersonal stuff.
(12:15):
Yeah, yeah. That happens increasingly.
Right. You know, I mean, howmany times, you know, I mean, I don't
have that kind of money perse, like a. Or a social calendar
like that per se. I guess youcould say more than that. But. But
I think about that. It's sucha. That would be such a great idea,
like a great use of somebodyelse's time to like, plan your family
(12:38):
calendar and make sureeverybody in the family is all squared
away and has all the rightstuff. Or you're planning vacation
and you've got like, you need.All of those bits and pieces correspond,
you know? You know?
Yeah, yeah.
But like, you know, if you'regonna be time saving.
Exactly, exactly. And that'snot something you as an entrepreneur
(13:00):
or leader should be doing.It's not a good use of your time.
Now, if you love doing it,okay, that's fine. But if you have
to think about it, I was justplan. Thinking about planning my
next trip. And you have tothink about the flights. And you
have to think about theflights not only for you, but for
your family. And then you haveto think about the hotel. And it's
fine if you're landing in oneplace and staying there, but if you're
(13:22):
going around, you have tothink about all the different hotels.
You have to think about, doyou rent a car, do you get trained?
You have to think aboutpassports and do you have the right
visas? And, you know, the.Just the list of things is endless.
And some people love that. Andthat's phenomenal. And I'm great
and always grateful to findthose people. And I don't really,
you know, I can do the basics.
(13:43):
Travel agent comes in. Right.
That's what comes in.
I didn't hear agent.
Exactly. Exactly. But you canhire a VA too.
Right, Right.
You know, if, you know,generally, hey, I want to stay at
this hotel or I like whateverthe chain is, you know, Marriott,
Hilton, whatever it is, findme a Hilton.
Definitely hire a VA to dothat for you. And actually, in some
(14:05):
ways you could actually say tothem, you actually tell them, research,
research itineraries and findthe best one and give me. This is
what I'm looking. You couldactually have them do that research
for you so that it's notsomething that you're wasting. That
you're not wasting. But it'snot your. No, but time value. Money.
Yeah. Well. And what'sinteresting, just to give you a quick
(14:26):
idea, I. Everyone's talkingabout AI and don't get me wrong,
I love AI. I'm using it foreverybody. Everything. Right. It's
wonderful. And I was going ona college planning trip with my son
and some friends a couple ofback last year. And so I typed into
AI these are the schools wewant to see. This is. You know what,
give me a schedule. When can Isee them? These are, you know, these
(14:49):
are the times that they havethe tours. Where should I fly in
and out of. It gave me suchawful. Told me to fly into one to
one airport and fly out ofanother one. Neither one were close.
It kept telling me I could seeall five schools, but then had me
tour the same place oncompletely different sides. This
(15:09):
is down in la and completelyside. Different sides of LA within
half an hour of each other.Well, anybody who knows LA knows
that you can't get there fromhere in half an hour. I mean, you
can't even get down the streetin half an hour.
Right.
So that's why you needsomebody who's going to give a critical
eye. And that's. Right. Reallygood. VA can come in.
Okay, so now I just have toask. Where's your. Where's he at
school?
(15:30):
He's going. Well, he's gonna.This was. He's a junior now, but
fingers crossed. He reallyloves the University of Denver. And
so that's what we're doing.Yeah, I'm hopeful.
Yeah. Yeah. Now my son's ajunior too, so that's what I was
like.
Oh, you know, where's hegoing? What's he looking at?
East. East coast schools. East Coast.
(15:52):
Anyway, if you're a woman, I'dsuggest Simmons College because it
was a great women's college.But no, he's not.
Not the right demographics.Not a woman. And he doesn't identify
as one either. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. You can tellwe're in California, right?
But, yeah, so it's, but it's,it's fascinating to me, you know,
(16:13):
you know, it's. This is a, agrowing industry.
Very much so. Very much so.
Really, It's a growingindustry. And so again, you know,
I, I'm going to ask thequestion, you know, what, what made
(16:36):
you. And obviously I know youshared culturally and ethic like,
and how they operate, but howare you picking and finding the VAs
that you have and would youever go to other countries other
than the Philippines?
Great question. I started inthe Philippines by accident. Colleague
of mine said, because Imentioned that I didn't want to do
(16:56):
this admin shit anymore. Andshe's like, oh, go check out the
Philippines. So I did andfound a phenomenal team and loved
them. Just to give you anidea, the VAs that we give to our
clients to interview gothrough a very rigorous, thorough,
20 step process where we'rechecking for things like motivation
(17:17):
and energy and personality andskill set and language and writing.
And we check references. Wealso check little things that I never
would have thought to thinkabout because I have the team over
there, they're like, well, weknow all the islands and all the
different locations. We knowthat this part of the country often
loses electricity. Youwouldn't have thought, I never would
(17:39):
have thought of that. Right.You know, it's like, oh, hello. So
it's nice that we have theteam there that will tell you that,
you know, and, and go takethose people through that. I love
the Philippines. I love theculture, I love the people I love,
you know, everything that theprice point is awfully, often very
good. We are consideringexpanding South Africa, as I mentioned,
(18:03):
you know, offline is becominga popular place and that might be
an option for us. CertainlyLatin and South America, just, you
know, all of Latin America,you know, Central and South America
are just doing some phenomenalstuff. You have to be more careful.
The language skills are not asgood necessarily. I mean, you can
find them. Absolutely. But youhave, you know, my personal experience
(18:27):
is that language is somethingyou have to screen for more carefully.
We're, we're still looking.Right now we're focusing on the Philippines.
It seems to be that reallynice mixture of culture and prices
pricing now as more and morepeople discover the Philippines and
say, oh, wow, that's great,like everything else, prices will
(18:47):
go up. But right now we'refocused on the Philippines because
that's where the team is.
Yeah. And so I'm curious, howdid You. So you. How did you find
your first team?
So I found my first teambecause. And this is a fun story.
I love this story. So I waslike, I said I was looking for a
va and friend of mine said,oh, check out this company. They'll
help you find a va. And thecompany was fine, but they helped
(19:09):
me find some really good VAs.Then I started to grow my team to
offer the same services toother coaches who were doing the
exact same kind of franchiseconsulting that I was doing. And
so I said, oh, I need amanager in place to manage all the
people. So I, throughnetworking and, and found this incredible
(19:29):
person. And actually she wasmy, she was my account manager when
I hired my first two or threefor the virtual assistants for that
company. And she's like, hey,I'm interested. I would like to take
role. I'm like, whole, sold,gone. You know, you're. You're mine.
You're amazing. She'swonderful. So it's, it's interesting
(19:51):
to find that, that one personand then get you in. We now have
a team of, for just that smallcompany, those consulting, you know,
people who are doing franchisebrokers and franchise consulting.
We already have a team of 15virtual assistants who are supporting
almost 70 coaches in thatprogram. And it's all started small,
(20:14):
like everything else, and just grew.
And it's 15 supporting 70.
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So they'redoing phenomenal work. And it's.
And that's why I got the idea.It's like, you know, franchise consulting
has been a lot of fun and I'vereally enjoyed it. But let's take,
let's expand my influence,right? Let's expand the power of
(20:36):
a va. As you can tell, I'mvery passionate about it. But no,
it's great. You know, I mean,I tripled my revenue when I heard
my first VA again, because allI had to do was focus on the things
that I wanted to do that wererevenue generating. And the end of
the day I can come home andsee my son and my husband. Such concept,
right?
You know, and what a concept, right?
Yeah, My son always says, suchconcept. And so now I've adopted
(20:59):
that. But yes, what, What aconcept, right?
No, it's true. It's. It'sbeing able to have the time, you
know, to be able to have that,that, that free time to be able to
go ahead and do that and knowthat it's, it's, you know, not going
to bog you down and you've gotsomebody else that's got your back.
(21:20):
One of our, one of ourtaglines is fall in love with your
business again. And I love that.
Right. You know, it's true.You need to fall in love with the
business again and being ableto, to do the things of. And I talk,
I talk to a lot of peopleabout, you know, working on their
calendar and looking at whatare those income producing activities
(21:40):
that you are doing that onlyyou really can do?
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
Important. That's reallyimportant. Well, well, Anna, I just
love what you're doing. I amso happy that you also are passionate
about it because it's, it'svery important to find the right
(22:01):
people to do this work. Sothat's really, really important.
So you shared the, you know,it's virtually aligned. Is that the
best way for people to findyou and connect with you at your
website?
Yes, yes, absolutely. Sovirtually aligned.com works. We also
(22:21):
are in the process ofrebranding. We started our, our life
as a company called TimeMaximizers. So the website maxyourtime.com
also works. But virtuallyaligned.com is the best way to find
us.
Well, that's fantastic. Icould talk to you for hours about
this because I think it's soimportant and I think what you're
doing is truly amazing. Solisteners, if you have been struggling
(22:46):
at all with finding some extratime in your life, really take a
minute to think about how youcould bring a virtual assistant into
your world. It's truly a gamechanger. And so I want you to think
about that and then you needto connect with Anna.
So please do, please do. Andcheck me out on LinkedIn. Ana Brambula,
(23:06):
you know the LinkedIn.in.whatever. You know, the Ana Bramville.
I'm the only one there andwould love, even if you have some
questions, how do I getstarted? What does that look like?
We're here for you. I'm aneducator at heart and just love to
help people learn about what's possible.
Oh, well, that's awesome.Well, thank you so much, listeners.
(23:28):
If you have gotten somethingfrom this podcast, which I'm sure
you have, because it is greatinformation, please do me the favor
of hit subscribe and then alsogive us a review. We would love that
because it also just helps ouramazing guests. And please do reach
out to Anna on LinkedIn and goto her website and, you know, make
(23:50):
sure you make thoseconnections, you know, with her.
This is the unstoppableleadership spotlight. I'm your host
and I thank you for listeningand thank you for being an amazing
guest thank you so much.
I loved it.
Well, hello everybody andwelcome to another amazing episode
of the Unstoppable LeadershipSpotlight podcast where we hear from
amazing leaders and get theirgame changing insights on how to
be better leaders and make agreater impact in the world today.
And I am your host, JaclynStrominger. Today I had the absolute
pleasure of bringing on ouramazing guest. It's Anna Brambilla
(01:24):
and she is fantastic. Andshe's smiling because I have my mouth
is the Boston mouth and like,words don't come out. So I'm like,
how do I get your name right?Because names are so important. So
I'm like, yay. Did I did it right?
You did a great job.Beautiful. Thank you. Yes.
So let me give you a littleinformation about our guest, Anna.
(01:48):
So Anna's mission is to showcoaches and consultants how they
can reclaim their time andCEOs and executives and grow their
businesses by outsourcing theright support. And that's really
key because there's a keycomponent to leadership. And so as
a business owner, Anna hasmastered the art of leveraging virtual
(02:09):
assistants to kill her toscale her operations and focus on
what matters most. And that iswhat has inspired her to launch her
business.
So, absolutely.
To the podcast. So glad tohave you here.
I'm so glad to be here. I'm sohonored. Thank you so, yeah.
So I always like to share andask. So if you're thinking about,
(02:31):
you know, you know, what yourbusiness is and, and reclaiming time,
if you could give our leadersone, like right off the bat, running
start tip, what would it be?
(02:52):
Do what only you can do.Whatever that is, right? If it's
revenue producing, do that. Ifit's operations, do that. If it's
whatever technology, do that.Find what only you can do and that
you love doing. That's theother caveat, right? We all have
things that we're really goodat but don't want to do anymore.
(03:13):
But do find what you lovedoing and can do and only you can
do. Outsource the rest.There's tons of people out there
who love to do the stuff thatyou might hate or that you don't
want to do anymore. That's howI found the power of virtual assistants.
It was a game changer. Iactually tripled my revenue when
(03:34):
I found virtual assistantsbecause it's like, oh my gosh, I
can do the stuff that I wantto do, which is coaching and it's
talking to people and workingwith to do revenue generating activities
that I loved doing. And Ifound people in the Philippines that
love doing the admin and wereso good at it and they wanted to
(03:56):
do that work. They didn't wantto do the work that I was doing.
And it's like, well, whyshould you do anything you don't
want to? I mean obviously wehave to pay our taxes. There's things
we all have to do.
That we don't want to do.
But you know, do what you love.
Right. So Anna, you know, so Iworked with some virtual assistants.
So first of all, I guess Iwant to ask the question, why the
(04:19):
Philippines? How does thatbecome the hotbed?
In a lot of ways it'sfascinating. It's fascinating. I
am just starting virtuallyaligned. We've been around actually
for about nine months already.What it is, it's a company that helps
people who know theydesperately want and need a virtual
assistant but don't know whereto start or had a bad experience
(04:41):
in the past and are lookingfor that virtual assistant. So my
company is a direct placementcompany. It's not a cert managed
services where you're payingsomebody, you interview, hire and
manage that person directly.That person becomes a member of your
staff and so we help you withall that. And I can go into the process.
(05:02):
I love talking about theprocess, but we can go in the process
later. I find the Philippinesand there's lots of great countries
out there. I mean a lot offriends have virtual assistants from
Latin America and they'rephenomenal. Or you know, South Africa
seems to be coming up lately.And what I like about the Philippines
is that it's a culture thatreally supports that kind of virtual
(05:24):
assistant work. There's a lotof people who want that. A lot of
people, really a lot of thevirtual assistants that we have on
our team are looking for thatflexible work style and work time.
I love it. I love that I getmy work done, pass all the things
off and while I'm sleepingthey're getting everything done and
(05:45):
then when and they give me mylist of things that I have to do.
Of course.
Right, right. Yeah.
Their English written writingspeaking is phenomenal. I think they
do a better job writing than Ido and I'm a native English speaker
so that's wonderful. And theprice point is good too. There's
a lot of, you know, we're nottalking the US based VAs who are
(06:07):
looking for 30, 40, $50 anhour and they're wonderful and they
serve a specific niche. But ifyou're looking for an admin person
who's going to do, who's goingto do whatever you need anywhere
from about six to sevendollars an hour, all the way up to
15 or $20 an hour depending onthe skill set and everything else
like that. But I've now alsonever seen a harder working community.
(06:31):
They really take pride intheir work and want to do a good
job.
Yeah.
And so I've just beenthrilled. I've just been thrilled.
So that's really great. So youknow, a lot of times people will
say, well what do you have thevirtual assistant do? So tell us,
like what do you have virtual?Or what should or could they do for
(06:52):
your business?
That's a great question. Onethat I get all, all the time. So
we found in our businessvirtually aligned, we have three
different levels of placement.So we have the general va and I'll
certainly explain what thosedifferent things are. But there's
a general VA who's going to dothe more administrative tasks, the
email management, the calendarmanagement, the CRM, following up
(07:16):
with clients, things likethat. For me, I had them do a lot
of client management emails,following up on past clients, reaching
out to potential new clients.They did a lot of outreach on LinkedIn
to get me new clients. You canhave them do a lot of generalist
(07:36):
admin, what we call general VAwork, general virtual assistant work
is what we have. Then there'ssort of a higher level of skills
that could be SEO, it could begraphic design, it could be photo
editing, it could be somethingspecific to real estate. I also have
(07:56):
a lot of people who are doingit around franchises because I'm
transitioning out of doingfranchise consulting and into owning
my own company now. And sothere's a lot of skill sets around
that. That's a higher level.It's not going to be a general admin.
You have to pay them morebecause you're getting higher skills,
but you have to pay them andthey require different, different
(08:17):
skill sets. And then there'swhat's called the executive assistant,
the EA level. So that'ssomebody who has the drive and the
experience to really be yourright hand person who can be that,
really challenge you andreally get you thinking, have you
thought about this? But yousaid this over here, so you need
to do this over there. Sothere's three different levels and
(08:40):
it really depends on whatyou're looking for. And we work with
our clients to really identifythe tasks that need to be done. What
I found from my own experiencewith hiring my very first VA is that
I had them do it was a woman.Most of the VAs in our team are women.
That's just the way it worksout. But she had, she did some basic
(09:01):
stuff. She did some email, shedid some, you know, didn't require
a lot of thought, which isfine because that's, you know, I
wanted to sort of graduallyease her into that. And then as she
started to grow and developand I realized, oh wait, she can
do more than that and she canlike manage my inbox. Oh my God.
Well, that was a game changer.I don't know about you, but how many
(09:22):
emails do you get in a day? Ohmy God, what a nightmare. So she
can manage my email. Shestarted to be more proactive, so
I started to go into LinkedInand actively look for clients on
LinkedIn. Give her a generalsense. This is kind of what I'm looking
for. Because she by that timeknew me well enough and knew what
my icp, my, my ideal clientprofile was. And she started to be
(09:46):
more proactive and reach outand say, and use her own messaging
and sometimes if she hadquestions she would use mine or would
run it by me. But she was ableto do that. Then I hired another
VA to do some graphics for meand they did a phenomenal job of
the graphics and really, youknow, just created some amazing stuff.
(10:06):
As I'm transitioning out ofthe franchise world and into starting
virtually aligned my newcompany, then I've got my EA and
she's my right hand person andshe's doing all the operations and
she's thinking strategicallyand she's thinking. I just was on
a call with her earlier todayand she's like, okay, now this is
what we need to think aboutpricing. This is what we need to
(10:28):
think about packaging. This iswhat we need to think about our CRM.
And I'm going to do theresearch and I'm going to find the
one that's right and we'regoing to find a billing system. So
really runs the gamut and itreally depends on the, on the coach
or the consultant or the, orthe entrepreneur, what they're looking
for.
And so are you finding thatyou're working more with, with, with
that group, the coaches, theconsultants and the entrepreneurs
(10:50):
versus the people that are in, you.
Know, corporate right now?Yes, right now, yes. You know, the
temptation when you start anew company is you can be everything
to everybody. Right. And thatI'm not going to fall down that trap,
as tempting as it is.
Right.
And so I am right now focusingon the solopreneur, the coach, the
(11:11):
consultant, small companies,you know, two to five people, perhaps
Is that the big. Becausethat's what I do really well is finding
one or two people to supportthe key leaders. We're increasingly.
We just got a call yesterdayfrom somebody who wants us to build
a team for them, which ofcourse we'll do, but that's less
(11:33):
our skill set. Certainly myexperience has been. In the number
of years that I've been incorporate world, my experience has
been that the leaders of alarger company typically have staff
in house. It might outsource akey portion of what they're doing,
but most of my experience hasbeen that they're looking for somebody
(11:55):
in house to do it for them.
You know, it just gave me theidea really of somebody who. Of,
you know, on the leadershipside of it, hiring. Hiring a VA to
actually handle this. Yourpersonal stuff.
(12:15):
Yeah, yeah. That happens increasingly.
Right. You know, I mean, howmany times, you know, I mean, I don't
have that kind of money perse, like a. Or a social calendar
like that per se. I guess youcould say more than that. But. But
I think about that. It's sucha. That would be such a great idea,
like a great use of somebodyelse's time to like, plan your family
(12:38):
calendar and make sureeverybody in the family is all squared
away and has all the rightstuff. Or you're planning vacation
and you've got like, you need.All of those bits and pieces correspond,
you know? You know?
Yeah, yeah.
But like, you know, if you'regonna be time saving.
Exactly, exactly. And that'snot something you as an entrepreneur
(13:00):
or leader should be doing.It's not a good use of your time.
Now, if you love doing it,okay, that's fine. But if you have
to think about it, I was justplan. Thinking about planning my
next trip. And you have tothink about the flights. And you
have to think about theflights not only for you, but for
your family. And then you haveto think about the hotel. And it's
fine if you're landing in oneplace and staying there, but if you're
(13:22):
going around, you have tothink about all the different hotels.
You have to think about, doyou rent a car, do you get trained?
You have to think aboutpassports and do you have the right
visas? And, you know, the.Just the list of things is endless.
And some people love that. Andthat's phenomenal. And I'm great
and always grateful to findthose people. And I don't really,
you know, I can do the basics.
(13:43):
Travel agent comes in. Right.
That's what comes in.
I didn't hear agent.
Exactly. Exactly. But you canhire a VA too.
Right, Right.
You know, if, you know,generally, hey, I want to stay at
this hotel or I like whateverthe chain is, you know, Marriott,
Hilton, whatever it is, findme a Hilton.
Definitely hire a VA to dothat for you. And actually, in some
(14:05):
ways you could actually say tothem, you actually tell them, research,
research itineraries and findthe best one and give me. This is
what I'm looking. You couldactually have them do that research
for you so that it's notsomething that you're wasting. That
you're not wasting. But it'snot your. No, but time value. Money.
Yeah. Well. And what'sinteresting, just to give you a quick
(14:26):
idea, I. Everyone's talkingabout AI and don't get me wrong,
I love AI. I'm using it foreverybody. Everything. Right. It's
wonderful. And I was going ona college planning trip with my son
and some friends a couple ofback last year. And so I typed into
AI these are the schools wewant to see. This is. You know what,
give me a schedule. When can Isee them? These are, you know, these
(14:49):
are the times that they havethe tours. Where should I fly in
and out of. It gave me suchawful. Told me to fly into one to
one airport and fly out ofanother one. Neither one were close.
It kept telling me I could seeall five schools, but then had me
tour the same place oncompletely different sides. This
(15:09):
is down in la and completelyside. Different sides of LA within
half an hour of each other.Well, anybody who knows LA knows
that you can't get there fromhere in half an hour. I mean, you
can't even get down the streetin half an hour.
Right.
So that's why you needsomebody who's going to give a critical
eye. And that's. Right. Reallygood. VA can come in.
Okay, so now I just have toask. Where's your. Where's he at
school?
(15:30):
He's going. Well, he's gonna.This was. He's a junior now, but
fingers crossed. He reallyloves the University of Denver. And
so that's what we're doing.Yeah, I'm hopeful.
Yeah. Yeah. Now my son's ajunior too, so that's what I was
like.
Oh, you know, where's hegoing? What's he looking at?
East. East coast schools. East Coast.
(15:52):
Anyway, if you're a woman, I'dsuggest Simmons College because it
was a great women's college.But no, he's not.
Not the right demographics.Not a woman. And he doesn't identify
as one either. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. You can tellwe're in California, right?
But, yeah, so it's, but it's,it's fascinating to me, you know,
(16:13):
you know, it's. This is a, agrowing industry.
Very much so. Very much so.
Really, It's a growingindustry. And so again, you know,
I, I'm going to ask thequestion, you know, what, what made
(16:36):
you. And obviously I know youshared culturally and ethic like,
and how they operate, but howare you picking and finding the VAs
that you have and would youever go to other countries other
than the Philippines?
Great question. I started inthe Philippines by accident. Colleague
of mine said, because Imentioned that I didn't want to do
(16:56):
this admin shit anymore. Andshe's like, oh, go check out the
Philippines. So I did andfound a phenomenal team and loved
them. Just to give you anidea, the VAs that we give to our
clients to interview gothrough a very rigorous, thorough,
20 step process where we'rechecking for things like motivation
(17:17):
and energy and personality andskill set and language and writing.
And we check references. Wealso check little things that I never
would have thought to thinkabout because I have the team over
there, they're like, well, weknow all the islands and all the
different locations. We knowthat this part of the country often
loses electricity. Youwouldn't have thought, I never would
(17:39):
have thought of that. Right.You know, it's like, oh, hello. So
it's nice that we have theteam there that will tell you that,
you know, and, and go takethose people through that. I love
the Philippines. I love theculture, I love the people I love,
you know, everything that theprice point is awfully, often very
good. We are consideringexpanding South Africa, as I mentioned,
(18:03):
you know, offline is becominga popular place and that might be
an option for us. CertainlyLatin and South America, just, you
know, all of Latin America,you know, Central and South America
are just doing some phenomenalstuff. You have to be more careful.
The language skills are not asgood necessarily. I mean, you can
find them. Absolutely. But youhave, you know, my personal experience
(18:27):
is that language is somethingyou have to screen for more carefully.
We're, we're still looking.Right now we're focusing on the Philippines.
It seems to be that reallynice mixture of culture and prices
pricing now as more and morepeople discover the Philippines and
say, oh, wow, that's great,like everything else, prices will
(18:47):
go up. But right now we'refocused on the Philippines because
that's where the team is.
Yeah. And so I'm curious, howdid You. So you. How did you find
your first team?
So I found my first teambecause. And this is a fun story.
I love this story. So I waslike, I said I was looking for a
va and friend of mine said,oh, check out this company. They'll
help you find a va. And thecompany was fine, but they helped
(19:09):
me find some really good VAs.Then I started to grow my team to
offer the same services toother coaches who were doing the
exact same kind of franchiseconsulting that I was doing. And
so I said, oh, I need amanager in place to manage all the
people. So I, throughnetworking and, and found this incredible
(19:29):
person. And actually she wasmy, she was my account manager when
I hired my first two or threefor the virtual assistants for that
company. And she's like, hey,I'm interested. I would like to take
role. I'm like, whole, sold,gone. You know, you're. You're mine.
You're amazing. She'swonderful. So it's, it's interesting
(19:51):
to find that, that one personand then get you in. We now have
a team of, for just that smallcompany, those consulting, you know,
people who are doing franchisebrokers and franchise consulting.
We already have a team of 15virtual assistants who are supporting
almost 70 coaches in thatprogram. And it's all started small,
(20:14):
like everything else, and just grew.
And it's 15 supporting 70.
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So they'redoing phenomenal work. And it's.
And that's why I got the idea.It's like, you know, franchise consulting
has been a lot of fun and I'vereally enjoyed it. But let's take,
let's expand my influence,right? Let's expand the power of
(20:36):
a va. As you can tell, I'mvery passionate about it. But no,
it's great. You know, I mean,I tripled my revenue when I heard
my first VA again, because allI had to do was focus on the things
that I wanted to do that wererevenue generating. And the end of
the day I can come home andsee my son and my husband. Such concept,
right?
You know, and what a concept, right?
Yeah, My son always says, suchconcept. And so now I've adopted
(20:59):
that. But yes, what, What aconcept, right?
No, it's true. It's. It'sbeing able to have the time, you
know, to be able to have that,that, that free time to be able to
go ahead and do that and knowthat it's, it's, you know, not going
to bog you down and you've gotsomebody else that's got your back.
(21:20):
One of our, one of ourtaglines is fall in love with your
business again. And I love that.
Right. You know, it's true.You need to fall in love with the
business again and being ableto, to do the things of. And I talk,
I talk to a lot of peopleabout, you know, working on their
calendar and looking at whatare those income producing activities
(21:40):
that you are doing that onlyyou really can do?
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
Important. That's reallyimportant. Well, well, Anna, I just
love what you're doing. I amso happy that you also are passionate
about it because it's, it'svery important to find the right
(22:01):
people to do this work. Sothat's really, really important.
So you shared the, you know,it's virtually aligned. Is that the
best way for people to findyou and connect with you at your
website?
Yes, yes, absolutely. Sovirtually aligned.com works. We also
(22:21):
are in the process ofrebranding. We started our, our life
as a company called TimeMaximizers. So the website maxyourtime.com
also works. But virtuallyaligned.com is the best way to find
us.
Well, that's fantastic. Icould talk to you for hours about
this because I think it's soimportant and I think what you're
doing is truly amazing. Solisteners, if you have been struggling
(22:46):
at all with finding some extratime in your life, really take a
minute to think about how youcould bring a virtual assistant into
your world. It's truly a gamechanger. And so I want you to think
about that and then you needto connect with Anna.
So please do, please do. Andcheck me out on LinkedIn. Ana Brambula,
(23:06):
you know the LinkedIn.in.whatever. You know, the Ana Bramville.
I'm the only one there andwould love, even if you have some
questions, how do I getstarted? What does that look like?
We're here for you. I'm aneducator at heart and just love to
help people learn about what's possible.
Oh, well, that's awesome.Well, thank you so much, listeners.
(23:28):
If you have gotten somethingfrom this podcast, which I'm sure
you have, because it is greatinformation, please do me the favor
of hit subscribe and then alsogive us a review. We would love that
because it also just helps ouramazing guests. And please do reach
out to Anna on LinkedIn and goto her website and, you know, make
(23:50):
sure you make thoseconnections, you know, with her.
This is the unstoppableleadership spotlight. I'm your host
and I thank you for listeningand thank you for being an amazing
guest thank you so much.
I loved it.
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