Ok, so today I want to go over what it actually costs to bring on a virtual assistant. And spoiler, it has almost nothing to do with whether you pay them $5 an hour or $8 an hour.
I'm writing this because I see business owners agonize over this stuff constantly. They'll spend three weeks comparing rates between countries, then drop the new hire into chaos on day one and wonder why nothing works. The hourly rate is a distraction. The real cost is what you pay when your systems are broken.
Let me explain.
When you treat a VA like a magic plug-in that just works "out of the box," you trigger a chain reaction. Turnover. Errors. You micromanaging every task. The VA quitting after three months. Then you're back to recruiting, retraining, and burning another 80 hours of your own time.
That's not a $5-an-hour problem. That's a hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars problem over the life of your business.
So today I want to go over the two biggest hidden costs I see business owners pay over and over. Bad onboarding. And ad-hoc delegation. Fix these two and your VAs become some of the most valuable people in your business.