Case Study: Nina Froriep, Clock Wise Productions

I’ve always had some kind of assistance because when you’re in the film industry, that’s really important. But when I did my [digital] pivot in 2015, I had no help at all.

And the problem is, I love my detail work. So I would do an awful lot of detail work and not a lot of all the other things that I should have been doing. So, I was moving along very, very, very slowly.

I was teaching myself to do things that I should never even have touched. Like, how does an automation work? How do the email funnels work? How do CRMs work? All stuff that, in hindsight, I should have outsourced from the get-go.

On the other hand, I was curious, so why not? But at least a couple of months in, I should have seen the writing on the wall in big, fat letters.

And then, I did hire VAs really early on, in 2017, right after my pivot. But I never found the right VAs, and the right setup of a VA, until I found Outsourcing Angel.

So by the time I ended up with you guys, I was a pretty burned child when it came to VAs. And I’ve done every imaginable detour possible. So, it’s not just the VAs. It’s also finding the right company to help you with your VAs. I think that is hugely important.

I had outsourced already before, and my experience had been very mixed. I was very nervous about people ghosting me.

So that’s why I ended up coming to you guys because I knew enough at that point [and] had enough experience [to know] that I wanted to have a company that was responsible, that held the VA responsible on their own turf. Not all the way from America, but on their own turf.

And a lot of my colleagues were like, “Oh, I found a $5 VA!” [But] I don’t want to work with a $5 VA. I want to work with somebody who gets health insurance, gets a community, gets the support, gets the continuing education and gets the feedback that they need to thrive.

And I knew I wasn’t going to be the person to do all of that. After having worked with one VA, I just felt that I didn’t have the patience for it, [nor the] talent or the personality to really nurture the relationship the way it needs to be nurtured, when you’re one-on-one with a VA.

I was also really nervous [about] putting all my eggs into one basket [and] about the quality of work without being able to really know what’s going on in terms of what kind of equipment they have, what kind of internet service they have, what kind of lifestyle they have that can disrupt the workflow.

And some of our workflows are asynchronous, which makes it really hard. Asynchronous work is so easy to outsource, but I find synchronous work really hard to outsource because it has to happen at a certain time—and reliably so.

So all of that made me pretty nervous. Especially after I had a VA that started posting her personal information on my LinkedIn account!

I think peace of mind is probably the biggest. [The time I saved] is certainly huge, but I think the time [saved doesn’t] help [with] anything if I don’t know that it’s being done right and being supervised correctly, et cetera.

So having that peace of mind, knowing that I have a lovely person who is being supported properly and being paid a living wage, doing the work that I need her to do in a timely fashion and does it well, and I get the impression [that she] actually likes her job—[all] that peace of mind, to me, is just invaluable.

I’m also feeling like I’m not abusing anybody or I’m taking advantage of anybody. I know there [are] a lot of small business owners [who feel that] it’s also a necessity to be saving money.

But I think there [are] places where you save money, and there [are] places where you’re saving money by hurting someone else. And to me, that is not okay.

If you want to scale your business with a VA, I would say the number one thing you need to [know is that] the VA is only as good as the input you’re giving him or her or them.

You need to have clarity on what you want them to do. And you need to be willing to put that initial work in, if you don’t already have airtight operating procedures, or sending operating procedures (SOPs).

A VA can create those for you as you’re going along, but again, the VA is only going to be as good as [your input]. There [are] VAs who are outstanding and think beyond what you tell them, et cetera, but they cannot read your mind. They don’t know your business yet when they’re starting with you, so you have to set them up for success.

And that means [putting in] quite a bit of time, effort and input [at] the very beginning. And right now, for what we have our VAs do, we have airtight SOPs.

With Outsourcing Angel, there was a manager who managed the [transition] process with us and made sure that [our] new VA was a really good fit for us. And because I had all these processes in place, we were very clear on what the VA needed to do. It was a really easy process.

[Consider] having an agency that also helps you with the translation of cultural differences that you want to be aware of. That, for me, was a big pitfall. I’m Swiss. My feedback is as straight as it comes. That does not sit well with everybody, right? So being aware of that myself and getting some feedback on that with an agency [is important].

And with an agency, you will also have accountability, a person who helps you navigate with your new VA and make sure that there’s sort of a translator there. I think that is invaluable.

There’s a bit of time investment upfront. But then, once it’s set up and it works, [another thing that] I loved about it [is] it showed me where my madness was of changing rules and things all the time. And I really had to learn [being] steady with how I give feedback and with what I’m asking for.

I thought that was a really great learning experience for me, personally.