When you need help with your business, and you decide to go offshore. How do you find a VA that will be right for you; that will provide you great timely support, and understand the legal processes for your countries business? Well, you do the obvious and use referrals and your networks. You research online communities and talk to as many people as you can. It can be done.

What they do

So what is it that the offshore VA(s) do for some of my clients? Well, they specialise in video, graphic design, they are ebook creators, white page creators, website designers, graphic designers, developers, and some specialise in programming. My role in all this is to manage my clients VA(s) workloads. Handle any issues they may have and troubleshoot for my client.

Where they are

They are in countries like the USA, Portugal, South Africa, Asia and South America. The virtual assistants that some of my clients contract to (and those I contract for that matter) can vary in dollar value from $10 to $30 per hour. In some cases, these VAs have been providing support to their clients for years.

What I do

For those clients that need my help in this area, I manage their VA teams, allocate their workload and make payment. This way my client only needs to deal with one person, and that’s me, yet they have a whole team at their disposal. It’s a win-win for them; the VA only has one person to deal with not two or more, so it’s a win-win for them also.

Go offshore for the right reasons

If you are going to go offshore do it for the right reasons. Do it because you want to help someone, and their community don’t do it because you want to get rich quick by paying as little as you can. You know what karma does, it always comes around and bites you in the @#$.

No matter where you are in the world, you can find someone to help you with your business, whether they are home grown or offshore. Don’t make the mistake of using offshore because you think it’s cheap and easy labour … it isn’t. It will cost you and your business a lot of money if you get it wrong.

Here’s some help

In a previous blog post, I provided a list of questions your prospective VA should be able to answer when you have your initial conversation. Use these to help you build your team by asking the right questions.

Please, leave a comment; I’d love to have your thoughts on this.