How to Get Success Working With A VA Outside of Your Timezone
Want the transcript? Download it here.
In this episode, Matt and Barbara talk about how to avoid frustration with Virtual Assistants who work in different time zones as you and how to keep everyone accountable.
Some of the areas covered include:

Tools to use for tasks and reporting
Frustrations most business owners feel when their VA works in another country

 
Let us know in the comments below what your key takeout has been from this episode or why not join the continuing conversation over in the Virtual Success Facebook Group.
In this episode:
2:27 Timezones

6:21 Setting parameters and direction to avoid feelings of frustration

9:12 Loom and Asana

9:30 Designing a system that works

10:32 Stand up

15:06 Creating documentation for recurring tasks

18:21 Time, Patience and Attention to Detail

Intro: Do you find yourself running out of time to accomplish your work, are you spending time doing things that you're not that good at? There are effective ways to outsource these tasks so you can focus on your business. This is the Virtual Success Show, we bring the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And now here are your hosts Matt Malouf and Barbara Turley.

Barbara Turley:  Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Virtual Success Show where I'm again joined by my co-host Matt Malouf. Matt, how's the going?

Matt: It is. It is, and I had to think about that because we normally do these recordings in the morning but it's—

Barbara:  Great, thanks. And as always we've come up with a fantastic topic again today that we think the listeners, you guys are gonna really love, common problem. I love how when we're just chatting in the planning of the show, we just come up with all these ideas that just come from our experiences with clients and, Matt you with coaching clients, me seeing people getting VA's, brings up the most interesting stories for us.

Matt: Absolutely, and I'm really excited about today's show.

Barbara: Yeah, so a common one and something that did come up for us recently, and I know a lot of people in the Virtual Assistant, virtual team game out there globally would have this problem, is how do you get success when you're working with a virtual team or a Virtual Assistant that is not in your time zone?

So for example, you're in the US working, your business hours and you have a VA in the Philippines who works their business hours. So therefore, it's in the middle of the night for you, which sounds like the Holy Grail because the idea would be that you wake up in the morning, and all these amazing tasks have been completed overnight.

But often we find that, while that does seem like the optimum solution, it doesn't always work out that way. So, Matt, I'm sure you've seen this with people who have offshore VA's and overseas contractors.

Matt:  Absolutely, and I'm, and I'm like, I've even seen it to the extent of where Australians are working with Filipinos where there's only a couple of hours time difference. Don't get this right. So its-

Barbara:  There's a couple of extra tricks I think to getting this right. The…

Matt: I agree.
Timezones
Barbara: I think all of the things that we talk about on this podcast all still hold very true. But when you're working different shifts and different time zones from each other, you almost need to like crank up the fuel on all the things that we talk about and you need to be extra vigilant with so many things.

Of course that means, using things we always talk about, project management tools like, Asana or Trello, whatever, using Slack effectively, making sure that you've got really detailed processes and task lists, et cetera. But there's a little bit more to it than that, isn't there Matt, to get this right?

Matt: Absolutely.

Barbara: Yeah, so we had a case of this, the reason this is an interesting one for us.