Overseas VAs

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Hi, welcome to the podcast that explores what virtual assistants want business owners to

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know when they start asking themselves the question, Hey, do I need a VA?

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I'm Rachel Davila.

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And after 18 years as a virtual assistant going it alone, I experienced the steep learning

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curve from the other side of the VA client relationship when I hired my own assistant.

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Joining me on this podcast is a group of friends and colleagues who all have their own take

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on what busy entrepreneurs need to know to find, hire, and work with a virtual assistant

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and mindfully answer the question, Hey, do I need a VA?

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Let's get this episode started.

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Hey everyone, welcome to Hey, do I need a VA?

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The podcast.

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We're on episode number five.

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I'm your host, Rachel Davila, and with me is Bree Bebe, Leanne Ermele, and Sydney Hubbard.

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And today we're going to be discussing overseas VAs.

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So ladies, when the term overseas VA comes up, what does it mean to you?

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How have you heard it and what brings to mind?

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I think my idea of overseas VAs has always been the agency stuff.

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So a group of people overseas who are just churning the tasks.

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So it's just a bunch of people.

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They have some kind of supervisor that you sometimes get to communicate with them and

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someone else is doing the tasks.

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Sometimes it's just a person in a thing, but it's always, to me, it's always been a somebody

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in our room working on task after task after task.

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They're not like just you, just for you.

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They have a large amount of people and the clients that they have, if they get stuck,

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I kind of feel like it, they always, your project always ends up at the bottom until

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it rises back to the top where they work on it again and it goes back to the bottom when

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they get stuck.

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So my feeling has always been that the VAs overseas are, they're just churning tasks.

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They're not really working with the client.

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It's just like, hey, I have this thing in my inbox.

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Now it goes to my pending and it just keeps going back and forth.

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I know there's other VAs out there that are overseas that are like self-employed and that

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kind of stuff, but all the ones I've worked with have always been more of the agency task

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oriented kind of thing.

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So my view of overseas VAs has always been the lower cost, how fast can they do it because

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they have their dumb piecemeal.

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In other words, they're paid by the piece that they are doing.

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I'm assuming there's other, Bri, you've probably worked with other people who are not quite

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the agency type.

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Yeah.

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With some of my clients, they've had previous VAs that were overseas that when I came on,

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we just kind of combined forces.

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And my experience was that it has been that they're really great.

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The ones that I've worked with have communicated directly with the client.

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And some of the things that we found are the time difference and things like that play

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a factor.

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But other than that, we've had really good experiences.

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We've had where they communicated with us directly.

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The only kind of parts that we've had is where that delay in time thing.

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Sometimes you can't get things, something came up last minute or you notice something

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that maybe there was a mistake or something that sometimes there's troubles with the glitches

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getting sorted out right away.

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But other than that, yeah, the other version of an overseas VA that I've come across are

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people from Canada or United States or other places who've moved to say Bali or somewhere

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like that and are working as an overseas VA, which is also a different version of it.

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Overseas VA's kind of get this wrap of being outsourced, more task driven VA's, more of

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that doer type versus more of the business partner collaborative executive level type.

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When we hear the term overseas VA's, I think we automatically go to that $5 VA or the lower

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end of the price spectrum.

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But I think it's fair to say that there are pros and cons to working with an overseas

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VA.

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So it sounds like if the things that you want to hand off are more task oriented, they're

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easy, quick or repetitive tasks, those can be good to hand off versus those bigger picture

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things.

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And I kind of feel like most people immediately think the lower cost VA's, the task oriented,

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throw it over to Fiverr or whatever and that kind of concept, which is not always what

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a VA is, but then there is a good reason to use them also.

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Yeah.

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Why don't we shift into talking about the pros and cons of working with an overseas

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VA, knowing that in our definition, it kind of tends towards the doer side.

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So in my experience, the things that they're good with, they're really good with.

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One of my clients worked with an agency VA, but they worked together.

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So it wasn't, he didn't have a number of clients.

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He did work with my client and so they did interact back and forth.

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And he was amazing with social media.

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He was very interested in the technical side, the learning, how to build apps and programming

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and things like that.

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Things that I was like, I'm so glad you like it, because I do not.

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And he was really great at it.

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And so I did not work with him directly.

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My client worked with him directly.

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So in my mind, that was kind of a pro because they could go back and forth.

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What are some pros that you've run into with working with an overseas VA?

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I found the same thing that they really like, any of those techie pieces, connecting programs

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using Zapier or any of that kind of stuff, working with email marketing platforms and

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compiling those together.

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Generally when we're doing that, we're giving them the copy and doing that kind of thing.

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Because sometimes some of the cultural language barriers can play in a little bit, but it's

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been really good that way.

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Getting them set up things ahead of time so that they're ready to flow out, working through

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some processes and workflows on email sequences and stuff like that.

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I've had a lot of experiences in some with the social media stuff as well.

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If you have some repetitive topics and things like that that are easy to recreate, but then

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just shift a little bit, that's been really good.

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In my experience, those are kind of like the biggest areas that we've dipped in for that.

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This is a one-off experience with a website builder and stuff, that they did it on a little

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bit of a predated way of doing it.

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If somebody else was going in to do it, you would have to have coding knowledge to be

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able to go and change anything in there instead of some of the more common platforms and things

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that would be used now.

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That was just one thing, but that was a one-off.

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I don't know how, but it would be a question I would ask is the types of things that they

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do that way, just to make sure you're not having those things.

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Most of the pros I found are more of the, hey, can you do this and then use the time

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difference to help you continue the process along.

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It's like, hey, I worked until five o'clock and I'm now going to go do other things, but

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I'm going to hand this off to you so you can do all these other pieces.

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When I come back, all those pieces that, yeah, I could have done, but you can do them too,

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are ready for me to go for the next workday.

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You can actually keep your workday longer without having to work a longer day.

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That of course works only if you've got a good communication.

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If they're a task person that they only do it a certain way, it doesn't always work,

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but you can do it for certain things like the workflow for MailChimp kind of thing.

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You're sending out emails, so you're writing them all, but now it's like, oh gosh, now

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I got to load them all in, but I can hand that off.

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Those kinds of things, if you've already written everything, use the time that you want to

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go do personal stuff and use them to continue the workflow, take advantage of the time difference.

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Yeah.

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Pros are great.

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Sometimes cons do come into play and I think that our audience, our potential clients looking

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to know what they're looking for.

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So what are some cons that you can think of to working with an overseas VA?

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My biggest one has been language barrier.

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I had a client who went to an overseas one and didn't let me know this ahead of time,

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which was hilarious because she didn't think about the way she uses language and she asked

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them to find edgy pictures.

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She was referring to, in the American language, edgy kind of modern type pictures that were

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a certain look she was looking for.

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They gave her edges of cliffs, edges of tables.

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It was hilarious what they gave her.

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I got to give them credit.

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The word edgy clearly means multiple things.

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It was not what she was looking for.

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So those kind of language barriers that you don't even really think about until someone

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gives you back exactly what you're not looking for is the biggest con I've run into is just

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the whole, that's not what I meant.

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Let's try again.

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Those of us who speak English as our first language, we tend to really butcher it when

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you're talking to somebody who is using a translator.

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So they're like, oh, that is not what I meant.

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Those are the biggest ones I've run into.

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Sometimes it's platform things like Brie brought up that they use a more antiquated or something

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we don't use.

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So then when you go back to edit, it's like, oh, I need to know this programming language

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versus hey, it was in WordPress and I'm good.

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Those are the biggest ones and that's just asking what are they using.

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Yeah.

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One of the other things I've found is sometimes you're getting into a flow of something that

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you want to have a conversation about things and keep that in the go while you're in that

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flow.

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So sometimes that time difference where it can be a benefit can also be a detriment where

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you have to try and send a bunch of messages and then hopefully they get the flow of what

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you're saying when they see it later on and then having to wait till the next day to continue

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the conversation.

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Sometimes that can play a little bit of an issue, not all the time.

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And like I said, we try, I know as a virtual assistants and as a team and stuff to try

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not to work in last minute things.

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Sometimes life happens and that happens.

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So in those moments as well, then it can be a bit of a struggle, but those are things

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that hopefully don't happen as often.

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And another thing is cultural differences.

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Like I'm in America, the things that I think about are different in other parts of the

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world.

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And so understanding the cultural ideas and ways of working.

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I had an experience that came out of left field for me, but I hired somebody, it was

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kind of a fiverr type thing to teach me a program that I didn't know.

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And they said yes, and they took my money and then disappeared.

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And I came to find out later that that's kind of normal when they don't understand something

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or they're not sure about something.

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And so it's just something to consider and understand that cultural differences can come

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into play.

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But for the most part, if you have your systems, if you have your things, then you can kind

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of smooth over some of that.

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Or you find somebody who can step in and help out with that.

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Anything else that we want to talk about in terms of knowing what you're getting into

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when considering it overseas?

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Something that I kind of want to make explicit about our definition of overseas is that our

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perspective is exclusively North American, coming from America and Canada.

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So what we consider to be overseas is not what someone who is overseas to us, they would

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probably see us as overseas.

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So I think that's something to keep in mind.

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And something else that I also thought of is the currency exchange.

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Because the US dollar, its value varies from country to country.

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And so that's why if some VAs wouldn't cost as much because of that currency exchange.

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And that's not to say that their work is less valuable, because it can be just as valuable

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and fulfilling.

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That's true.

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Good points.

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If you have any questions about what we brought up today in this episode, please drop us an

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email at kbapodcast at gmail.com or reach out to any one of us on our social platforms.

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We'll put those in the show notes.

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And thanks for joining us today on this episode of Hey, Do I Need a VA?

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The Podcast.

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Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hey, Do I Need a VA?

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The Podcast.

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If you found this episode helpful, please leave a like, comment or review.

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And feel free to join our Facebook group, Find, Hire and Work with a VA for more tips

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and tools.

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If you have any questions, please email them to heyvapodcast at gmail.com.

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And we'll see you next time.