SECTION FIVE

The Next Level: Building Your Virtual Team

Building an effective virtual team is a skill that takes time and trial and error to master, but it’s definitely a skill worth acquiring. Skills are assets, and even though it may initially seem like you’re putting more work into your VA program than you’re getting out of it, don’t worry. Your hard work will pay off.

Before we get into building your team, let’s do a quick recap of the most fundamental principle in virtual staffing—thinking in terms of roles rather than tasks. The task mentality will keep you stuck on the endless merry-go-round of hiring VAs from virtual platforms like oDesk and Elance, returning each time you have another job to be done. The last place you want to be is caught in the time-consuming and exhausting freelance-hunting cycle: incessantly writing job postings, receiving small floods of response e-mails (just one job ad can generate dozens or even hundreds of responses), and taking chances on new workers before starting all over again.

When hiring, you also need to think in terms of team-building, which means looking for people who will become long-term assets to your organization.

In this section, we’re going to zoom in on the concepts of building a team of virtual staff members—revisting the different types of virtual workers described in Section 1 in more detail—and what that can do for your business. We’ll be handling topics such as

         •    cultivating a well-oiled team (hiring, moving from part- to full-time, and integrating new employees)

         •    the importance of setting company goals

         •    why you should consider meeting your virtual staff in person

         •    creating a social network for your VAs to use regularly

         •    the virtual project manager role

We’ll begin with a look at how you can integrate each type of VA role into your team in order to develop a productivity engine and to create the level of freedom that we’ve been talking about.

How Different Types of Virtual Employees Will Work Together

Every VA is like a specialized tool, but not all jobs require the same tools. This is why it’s important to understand each role individually as well as how it will function as part of a team.

Let’s break your team down into the primary VA roles I laid out in Section 1:

         •    general virtual assistant (GVA)

         •    web developer

         •    graphic designer

         •    SEO/web marketing VA

         •    content writer

         •    audio/video editor

         •    app developer

As always, we’ll start with the GVA.

General Virtual Assistant (GVA)

Remember, this is the one type of virtual assistant that every entrepreneur on the planet should be working with. The time that these little superstars will save you is worth their weight in gold.

Tips on Hiring Someone for This Role

Finding a quality GVA is worth the wait. Typically, the best ones I’ve seen are moms who are looking to supplement their families’ incomes while working from home.

         •    Use lots of bullet points in the job posting and list every task the candidate can expect to do on a regular basis.

         •    Use a 30-day trial period to see if the person is a fit. Don’t force yourself to work with someone you have trouble communicating with. You and your GVA should have a natural and enjoyable relationship.

         •    If you prefer working with someone in the same time zone, whom you can call with tasks instead of e-mailing, I suggest checking out Craigslist (Craigslist.org). You’ll pay more for a domestic GVA than you would for an overseas employee, but you’ll have a great shot at finding someone local, for example, who was once a career professional and is now taking a different course with his or her life.

When to Make the Transition to Full-Time

If you don’t feel you need someone full-time, then I recommend starting off on a part-time basis with ten to twenty hours per week so that you can get used to working with your new GVA and evaluate whether or not the position is a good fit. This role will organically transition into a full-time spot as you give the GVA more work. Remember your 3 Lists to Freedom? Go back and spend a little more time developing them—it’ll help!

The real secret to using a GVA effectively is to never do work that he or she should be doing. Always ask yourself, “Is this a task I should be doing, or could I pass it along to my GVA?”

Fitting This Role into Your Virtual Team

The GVA is a unique position since his or her work is meant to assist you and doesn’t fall into a specific category. However, the GVA can also operate as a type of project manager. For example, say you have two VAs working on a project to create an e-book. The project involves a content writer who will write the e-book and a graphic designer who will format the content and create a cover.

Before starting the project, you could ask your GVA to research the bestselling books on Amazon on your topic. In the same e-mail, ask him or her to message your SEO VA to begin keyword research on a specific topic that points toward current trends. Your GVA would then be responsible for returning a single e-mail to you that includes a list of links to popular Amazon books and keyword analysis to help you write an outline and market the e-book.

Once you’ve decided which direction you want to take, your GVA can e-mail the content writer with your notes about the topic and the outline you’d like him or her to follow. The GVA can also e-mail your graphic designer with the title of the book and links to bestselling books in the category. The graphic designer’s goal is to make something comparable to other bestsellers in the category without copying anything.

That’s just one example. As you incorporate your GVA into the picture over time, you can create systems that begin with a simple e-mail to your GVA and result in completed work landing in your inbox. It’s pretty exciting stuff.

Web Developer

If you’re like me, you know nothing about web development beyond which websites look and feel good and which ones are utter messes. I’m fine with this, and you should be, too. After all, we’re business owners—not web developers.

Tips on Hiring Someone for This Role

The hardest part of hiring a web developer is that you might not know which coding skills are needed to complete the project you have in mind. If you want someone to build a simple website, that’s easy. You can quickly find someone on a freelance site like Elance or oDesk to customize a WordPress site. This requires knowledge of PHP coding and—depending on the number of pages you need and how much customization you want—could cost anywhere between $50 and $500.

However, let’s say you want to create something more complex like a dating site. First, you’ll need to find three to five examples of existing sites that have the functionality you want. Then you can post an ad on a job-posting site or complete a job description document with a recruitment agency that lists the examples and requires the following information:

         •    a list of skills the applicant thinks will be necessary to complete the project

         •    two examples of similar projects the candidate has completed in the past

         •    the candidate’s most competitive bid or monthly salary option

         •    any suggestions the candidate has after learning a little about your project (I love doing this because it gets people thinking about working for you before they’ve actually been hired)

From there, you should be able to make an educated guess as to whom you should work with.

When to Make the Transition to Full-Time

Most virtual bosses don’t know how to code, so working with a web developer might not be as simple as working with someone in another role. Depending on your business model, you may only need a web developer on a project-by-project basis. For this reason, you might work with a developer only when he or she builds a new site for you or makes updates to your existing website.

If you do need a full-time developer, it will quickly become apparent. But there’s a catch. The developer you’ve been using on a project-by-project basis may not want to or be able to become a full-time member of your team, which means you’ll need to hire someone from scratch. That being said, you should always ask—it’s better to do so and potentially get the developer on your team than to find out that he or she took a full-time position with someone who did ask!

Fitting This Role into Your Virtual Team

The web developer will ultimately take direction from you. However, the developer should also be speaking with your graphic designer on a regular basis in order to give him or her dimensions for graphics, banners, and any other custom work that might be necessary to complete the project.

Graphic Designer

As with a web developer, you might not need a full-time graphic designer right away. However, if you’re developing an online business model that will eventually turn into a full-time Internet-based business, the chances are good that at some point you’ll need a permanent graphic designer on your team.

Tips on Hiring Someone for This Role

This role can be expensive domestically, but you’ll be surprised by the talent and pricing you can find when you venture overseas. Keep the following tips in mind:

         •    Ask for a portfolio with examples of past work and run a few test projects to see if the designer is able to create the same look you’re after.

         •    Infographics are all the rage nowadays, and a lot can be said for a graphics person who can put together a highly creative and actionable infographic. Throw one into the mix to see if your candidate is capable.

         •    Be sure that the person you’re hiring to handle your design work already has all of the relevant software needed to do so. Software prices can be a little scary, and you shouldn’t have to pay for the programs your designer is using right out of the gate. It’s better to find someone who has already invested in the necessary tools to do the work.

When to Make the Transition to Full-Time

Unless you need graphic work created on a regular basis, this is the type of role that will rarely move to a full-time position. However, if regular graphic work is required, then a full-time designer is something you should seriously consider—even if your team member will have a few quiet days from time to time.

As I’ve become more and more active online, I recently decided to take the plunge and hired my first full-time graphic designer. So far, it’s been a great decision—but if I had done it even six months earlier, it would have been too soon.

Fitting This Role into Your Virtual Team

As I mentioned earlier, I recommend connecting your graphic designer with your web developer so that your developer has the freedom to request images, icons, and buttons directly.

I should also add that if you already have someone in one of these roles and you’re looking to fill the other, ask your VA to get involved in the recruiting phase for the next team member. This gives your existing employee a little pat on the back and shows that his or her input is appreciated and valued. Since the web developer and graphic designer will be working so closely together, it makes sense to have one VA help you find the other. However, involving a VA too much in the hiring decision could be detrimental to the business. He or she is your employee, not your partner—don’t forget that. By all means, open the door to this type of responsibility, but be sure you have the final say. You wouldn’t want your VA to ultimately veto the candidate you feel is best suited for the role and the company.

There are a lot of moving parts in the relationship between developer and designer, so you might want to monitor how they are working together in the beginning. I suggest using a project-management system to kick things off so that you can pop in and see how things are going. After a project or two, they’ll probably prefer to switch to e-mail and Dropbox to share files and ideas.

SEO/Internet Marketing VA

Most small business owners are not fluent in SEO. I know I wasn’t when I first started becoming active online. However, with a little reading and self-education, it’s a simple enough subject that you can get a general grasp on it. The most basic thing you need to know is that your SEO VA will help you optimize your website and get it listed at the top of searches with Google and other major search engines.

Tips on Hiring Someone for This Role

Once you start interviewing, be sure to ask candidates for portfolios of sites that they’ve already worked on and optimized.

         •    Hop over to Google and type in a few relevant keywords to check out how well the candidate’s websites rank. For example, if he or she optimized a website for a skateboard store in LA, you’d search for “skateboard stores in LA” and see where the website ranked in the results.

         •    If the candidate has been at this for a while, he or she will undoubtedly have reports to send you that show the improvement of some primary and secondary keywords he or she has worked on.

         •    The world of SEO changes quickly. You must insist on knowing what candidates have done to keep themselves updated with changes in the market and industry.

When to Make the Transition to Full-Time

When you start focusing more and more on the growth of the online side of your business, it’s probably a good time to look into hiring a full-time SEO virtual staff member.

This marketing strategy should be seen as the online equivalent of a plumber advertising in a local newspaper—he or she advertises regularly to keep the inquiries coming in. Once you’ve started optimizing your website, you have to continue. Every change you make to your site has implications for SEO, and even if you make no changes at all, the search-engine industry is in an almost constant state of evolution. Simply put, if you stop focusing on SEO, your traffic will decrease and your leads will start to drop. Before you get started with SEO, you should know that it’s an ongoing marketing strategy.

Fitting This Role into Your Virtual Team

This member of your team will work closely with your content writer. The SEO VA will perform initial keyword research on your industry, identify relevant search terms that will bring in the most traffic, and then pass those lists on to your content writer. Your content writer will then forward any copy he or she writes to you or your project manager (who we’ll get to shortly!) for final approval. Then, the content writer will pass the work on to your web developer to post on your website.

Your SEO VA might also work regularly with your general VA on marketing concepts for YouTube videos and other types of online content.

Content Writer

When it comes to a full-time content writer, you need to make sure that this hire is a really solid one. Writing full-time is an art, plain and simple. If someone is going to be producing written content for you on a daily basis, he or she needs to be passionate about your business and your industry. Your content writer must also have the ability to self-motivate—a quality that you should really be looking for in every team member!

Tips on Hiring Someone for This Role

Whether you choose to hire an overseas or domestic content writer, I recommend that you follow these tips:

         •    Ask for three samples of the candidate’s work and ask yourself, “Is this easy to read?” and “Would this style connect with the audience I’m trying to reach?”

         •    Ask the candidate to write 300 words about a recent movie he or she saw and to explain why you should watch it. This simple activity will allow you to see his or her writing abilities with regard to description and persuasion.

         •    Keep an eye out for anyone who overuses big words in an effort to sound smart. You won’t find too many in this book, I assure you!

Here’s a quick bonus tip in case you do end up hiring someone from overseas: if you’re working on a large project together like an e-book or a collection of web articles that will be used to market one of your online products, hire someone domestically to proofread the writing before it goes live. This person can clean up the content writer’s work by smoothing out any areas that sound forced—and it will likely be a lot cheaper than hiring a domestic writer. This setup gives you the best of both worlds and is one that I incorporate regularly on my marketing materials.

When to Make the Transition to Full-Time

If your business model consists of reaching across multiple niches and selling info products online, then you need a full-time content writer ASAP.

Even if that isn’t your business model, I suggest bringing on a writer or editor to review your work each month. Some entrepreneurs feel that typos and simple grammar issues aren’t worth the trouble (or cost) of hiring someone to check for them, but I disagree—especially if you’re trying to build a reputation in your industry. Your potential clients are looking for reasons to not trust you. Why give them any?

Fitting This Role into Your Virtual Team

Here’s my suggested workflow for content writers:

Step 1: Your writer receives a Google Drive document with a set number of monthly topics and due dates researched by you or someone on your team, such as your SEO VA or GVA.

Step 2: Your writer sends the finished articles to your GVA, who then uploads the writing and any accompanying images to whichever websites they’ll be published on. They go live following your approval.

Step 3: Your GVA updates the Google Drive document you’ve created that lists each month’s topics and due dates, stating that they have been, or will soon be “published”. If your writer is late in delivering the article, your GVA sends an e-mail to him or her and copies you in.

Video Editor

There are plenty of editing tools online, such as Animoto (Animoto.com), that allow you to create engaging videos for free. You can also purchase the premium versions of these tools to get additional resources and to produce longer videos. These are fun tools to use, but be careful about getting sucked into doing your own video editing. You could easily spend an entire day editing a three-minute video. You might have a lot of fun doing it, but you need to remember that as the boss, your time is better used elsewhere.

Tips on Hiring Someone for This Role

Hiring a video editor has nothing to do with the candidates’ résumés or where they went to school. Your decision should be entirely based on the completed work they have produced. Either the candidates have it or they don’t! Keep the following tips in mind:

         •    Always ask for access to the candidate’s demo reel.

         •    See if the candidate’s work matches the style you’re looking for. It does you no good to hire an amazing editor who works on short films if you’re looking for someone to animate text for your online videos.

         •    If you take the job-posting route for this position, you’re going to get a huge response. I suggest having someone else like your GVA or project manager go through all of the proposals and weed out any editors who did not submit an example of their work or do not have any examples that match the style you want.

         •    Find an editor to work with directly, instead of choosing someone from an agency that has a lot of editors on staff. This will allow you to form a direct relationship with the video editor that can be developed in the future.

         •    Look for someone who’s already invested his or her own time and money into developing the editing skills you want. This level of commitment is a great trait for this type of role.

When to Make the Transition to Full-Time

This will depend solely on the amount of video you want to incorporate in your business strategy. Keep in mind that it takes a lot longer to edit a video than to create a storyboard, produce a script, and shoot it. Even if your video editor is only cutting three or four videos a month, it’s going to keep him or her pretty busy.

There really is no rule of thumb to determine when you should transition your video editor from a project basis to part time to full time. Typically the editor’s hours will simply increase organically.

I recommend working with more than one video editor. If one of the editors falls through or needs to put things on hold due to a personal or family emergency, you’ll still have a backup. When you’re creating video content regularly, a backup editor is a godsend—trust me, I know from experience.

Fitting This Role into Your Virtual Team

I love online video and produce a lot of it. With that in mind, I’m just going to tell you exactly how my video editor VA fits into my team.

Step 1: As the content producer, I shoot the video and then pass it onto my video VA via Dropbox.

Step 2: He edits the video following guidelines and certain standards that we’ve already set and then uploads a low-resolution version into Dropbox for me to review. Once I approve it, he exports the full HD version of the clip.

Step 3: Finally, my GVA picks up the video, uploads it to YouTube, embeds it into a blog post, and publishes it for the world to enjoy.

Awesome, huh? If I want to take it to the next level, my content writer transcribes the video so that I can use the text as a separate blog post, insert it into an e-book, or utilize it as a PowerPoint presentation in the future.

We’re talking about creating a content repurposing machine that allows you to convert several pieces of content into many other media types. No matter what your customers prefer, there’s a form of content for everyone to enjoy. We’ll go into this idea in a big way in the next section. You’re going to love it!

App Developer

The biggest thing to keep in mind with this role is that there’s more to mobile app creation than just making the app. There’s the submission of the app to an app store or directory, promotion of the app, and the uploading of new content and updated versions of the app over time.

Tips on Hiring Someone for This Role

Much like web design, you’re either going to know your stuff here or not. My gut instinct is that you won’t have a single idea how this gets done, just as I didn’t! Making sure that the person you’re thinking of hiring knows his or her stuff is one thing, but when you can actually see the work the candidate has already accomplished for other people, the proof is in the pudding.

         •    Make sure the candidate you’re considering has at least a handful of fully designed, built, and marketed apps available to the public.

         •    Check into those apps. Download them—even if you have to pay for them!—and feel what the customer feels as he or she experiences the app.

         •    Because of its new place in the market, this is the one role where personal recommendations mean a lot. Ask around to see if you know anyone who, er, knows of anyone.

When to Make the Transition to Full-Time

In terms of virtual staffing, app creation is a project-based role unless you anticipate becoming an app-building company! Ongoing maintenance and updates can be handled on a case-by-case basis, which means you can work with one developer as needed or try out different developers at different times to get a feel for their work and perspective on the direction you should take.

Fitting This Role into Your Virtual Team

The only person your app developer will need to interact with regularly other than you is your graphic designer. The app developer and graphic designer VAs will work together to determine how the app looks to the end user. From the wireframe that outlines how the app will work to the end product, all of the planning will need to be handled by the app developer and you or your project manager.

Lifestyle entrepreneur Lewis Howes is an ex-pro athlete turned podcaster, speaker, business coach, and content creator. He plays the delegation game perfectly. Except for his personal assistant (who works physically with him), he only hires on a project basis—but it’s using the right people for the right jobs that makes what he does so effective. His VAs—whether video editors, app developers, podcast engineers, or web developers—always work together as a team. It’s this focus on hiring the right people for the right roles that has catapulted Lewis to Internet marketing stardom and garnered him a massive online following.

The examples I’ve used in this section showing how individual members of a virtual team work together are just the beginning. I could almost write an entire book on this subject, with additional blueprints illustrating how to do this. I have produced some material on this subject as part of the Going Virtual series that you can access for free on my blog. The direct link is ChrisDucker.com/GoingVirtual.

Once you’ve got your team in place, it’s time to get everyone motivated. There’s no better way to do that than to set some goals!

Setting Company Goals and Rewards

Many companies throw out the word “team” a lot during their interviewing processes, saying things like, “We operate in a team environment,” or, “We’re really looking for team players.” That’s usually just code for, “We want someone who puts the company first and does not question management.”

Sorry, but that’s not a team. The basic definition of a team is a group of people working toward a common goal. That’s what a team truly is.

However, simply having that group of people working together is not enough if you really want to utilize them properly in your quest toward virtual freedom. As the boss, you’re the one with the skills and the authority to effectively set and manage goals and targets.

You’ll enjoy several key benefits when you give your team a common goal or something exciting to work toward besides the next PayPal deposits. I’ll explain those benefits in more detail in just a moment, but let’s first look at a few examples of team goals.

         •    Set a sales goal and reward everyone on your team if you hit it. It doesn’t have to be a cash gift—the reward could be, for example, Amazon gift cards that the VAs can use on their families. Even if your VAs are not directly involved with the selling process, everyone’s work contributes to the end result and they should all be rewarded.

         •    Set a calendar goal for completing a project. The project could be a revision of your website, the creation of a new product or service, or even a complete rebranding of your company’s look.

         •    Set loyalty benchmarks and award appropriate bonuses. This is exactly as it sounds—a gift that rewards loyalty. Obviously, you’ll want to select a gift that reflects the amount of time each team member has been with you. At our company we have yearly awards given out to all employees, along with gift certificates and cash bonuses. The longer the employee has been with us, the larger the amount of cash they receive.

Here are the aforementioned key benefits to establishing these common goals:

         •    It encourages loyalty.

         •    It shows your newer VAs that loyalty is valued.

         •    It reinforces the meaning of the word “team.”

         •    Small gestures go a long way, especially in other cultures.

         •    It makes your VA feel like he or she is a part of something. Isn’t this the kind of place you want to work?

An added benefit of encouraging loyalty through team goals is that your next hire might be an internal referral. The next time you’re looking to fill a role or complete a project, your VAs will be proud to recruit for you.

There are a few reasons why internal referrals are effective as you continue to grow your team. First, using your current staff to find new team members saves time, money, and effort in recruiting and advertising. It also allows you to have your virtual staff members take your new recruits under their wing and have a feeling of ownership attached to the growth of their fellow teammates. Finally, it creates brand loyalty within your organization—something that I believe in strongly.

Some of the best VAs you’ll hire will be recommended by other VAs on your team. Just make sure to only take recommendations from your long-standing VAs. They won’t want to damage their reputation with you, which means they’re likely to give you quality referrals.

Meeting Everyone in Person

Before taking the leap into full-time entrepreneurship, most people sit in their offices or cubicles and daydream of the days they’ll be free of pointless meetings and reporting to managers who serve up company Kool-Aid. But once that day arrives and freedom is no longer a fantasy, the entrepreneur soon realizes something—entrepreneurship is lonely.

The human interaction you once experienced during the day is now gone—and let’s face it, even though the people at the office may not have been your best friends, it was nice to feel a sense of belonging.

Then there’s the issue of productivity. Say two employees are working on the same project. Each of them is responsible for a different part, and they’ll need to communicate on a consistent basis to complete the work. They can e-mail each other or call each other with questions or comments, but every now and then, each employee will decide to walk over to the other’s desk and have a good, old-fashioned conversation instead. E-mail is great—but it can never replace face-to-face collaboration.

Unfortunately, this is where virtual staffing can fall short. Even though you may have a team of people working for you, the physical separation of your team can create a disjointed feeling for everyone involved and a bottleneck effect that leaves you as the middleperson for everyone. This is why it’s essential to have your team meet on a consistent basis.

In a perfect world, that would mean getting everyone together in a meeting room where you can spend the day brainstorming with a whiteboard as people get to know one another better. If your team is separated across different time zones and continents, this may not be an option, although I do know several business owners with virtual teams in the Philippines who love to come over and spend a week or so in the sun while enjoying brainstorming minus stuffy meeting rooms!

If you have the ability to meet in person with your team on a regular basis, then I absolutely suggest you do it. If you don’t, fear not—we live in the twenty-first century, and there are some fantastic tools, such as Google Hangouts, Skype, and online meeting software like GoToMeeting (GoToMeeting.com), at your disposal.

Here are a few tips for encouraging virtual interaction among your team members:

         •    Introduce your team to one another for the first time. The first step is to have your team meet one another. You can facilitate the introductions in a group chat and have each member say a few words about him- or herself. The purpose of this is to break the ice and allow each member to associate names and voices with the other people on the team instead of viewing them as e-mail addresses.

         •    Encourage your team members to chat with one another. Sometimes a problem will be resolved a lot faster through a conversation than through a series of e-mails—but it’s up to you to encourage that. Don’t expect a VA to reach out and chat with a member of the team he or she has never met before. This is also why it’s so important to introduce everyone in the beginning!

         •    Meet regularly as a team. I’m not saying you should start having weekly meetings, but I would suggest a monthly group meeting where you can recap how things have gone in the last few weeks and discuss how you can improve as a team.

         •    Talk one-on-one with your team members. This goes deeper than sending an e-mail saying, “Need anything?” or “Keep up the great work.” This tip is about connecting one-on-one with each of your team members to ask for feedback and suggestions on how things could improve. It’s also a time to thank each person for his or her work and to connect with each VA on a personal level.

If your team is spread out over different time zones, then you’ll need to take it in turns as to who might have to stay up late or wake up early to be involved in the meetings. Remember, you’re the boss, and the time of the meeting should be convenient to you before anyone else, but do consider the other team members, too.

Everyone wants to belong to something. Creating a team atmosphere is the best way to make sure your VAs gel with one another. It will help your operation run more efficiently and remove you from the middleperson position.

Setting Up a Social Network for Your Virtual Team

Now that you’ve established a company culture of interaction, you may want to consider setting up your own VA social network.

A digital platform like Facebook or Yammer that allows your VAs to connect privately is a brilliant idea. This may be excessive if you only have two or three VAs, but it will serve as a good breeding ground for collaboration once you’re running a team of at least five people. You can even include freelancers who were brought on for one-time projects in order to develop relationships and promote the importance of high-quality work throughout the entire team.

It’s best to keep things simple here: I don’t suggest hiring a web developer to build an entire platform for you from scratch. There are a few great options already out there that you can use right away, such as

         •    A private Facebook group: This is free to create and easy to get people to use because practically the entire planet is already on Facebook. Unlike other areas of the site that are mostly public, you can set up a private Facebook group where only members who have been specifically invited can see what’s going on inside.

         •    A LinkedIn group: This isn’t my first option, mainly because my virtual staff are not all that active on the platform—but even if you don’t create a LinkedIn group for your virtual team, I recommend starting a professional group for your industry or city. It can be a great lead generation tool.

         •    A Google+ Community: You can start a G+ Community for free and then invite the members directly. Just be sure to set it up as a closed group.

         •    Yammer: This really is an enterprise social network, and I love it. Yammer.com also has brilliant mobile app versions for iPhone and iPad.

         •    Ning: You can also launch your own digital community. Depending on the number of team members, you can choose from different pricing options with Ning.com. It’s a solid choice if you have a very large team.

         •    BuddyPress: This allows anyone to create a social networking site on the WordPress platform.

The main focus here is to create a team element where people feel comfortable working and chatting together online. I’ve had excellent success with mine—my team has used both Facebook and Yammer—and I’m sure you will, too.

How can you promote interaction without providing the means to do so? Once again, this is something you only need to consider once your team begins growing beyond five employees—otherwise there won’t be too much going on!

When to Create the Virtual Project Manager Role

Before we discuss the process for hiring a project manager, let’s quickly recap why you began venturing down the road of virtual staffing in the first place: to free yourself from performing tasks so that you could focus on the strategy and growth of your business.

We’ve come a long, long way since we first got into this topic. By now, you could well be sitting pretty with several staff members on your virtual team—and if you’re not already, my guess is that you will be soon enough.

In the beginning, you will always be the manager by default. Maybe it’s been that way for a while or maybe you’re just starting to feel it—but either way, it’s time to start getting things back on track. We’re ready to transition you from the role of manager to business owner. We’ll do that by bringing a special someone on board to help you run things.

I’d like to wrap up this section on team building by focusing on four main components of working with a virtual project manager (VPM):

         •    knowing when the time is right for a VPM

         •    finding a VPM

         •    hiring a VPM

         •    working with a VPM

When Is a Virtual Project Manager Necessary?

The moment you begin working with at least three or four full-time members on your virtual team, you’ve created a need for a project manager. Whether you like it or not, that role is instantly filled by you—and will continue to be filled by you until you bring a project manager on board. For some business owners, this is exactly where they want to be—running things in the middle of it all. However, you know me by now, and you know that I’d argue that running things isn’t the best use of your time!

You don’t have time to be the project manager. As someone who has taken action in today’s market and built a virtual team of support and marketing staff, you’re already in a new role as the chief growth officer. As the CGO, your role is to continually find ways to work on the business—not in it.

This means you need to put the right people and systems into place so that you can afford the time to identify new opportunities for growth. To truly utilize the power of your team, a virtual project manager is one of the most important roles you can put into place. This is why I recommend looking to fill this important role once your team reaches a benchmark of three or four full-time employees. You won’t find a project manager overnight, but you should at least start thinking about the process.

I should also point out that this benchmark is about the same time you’ll begin to feel that same sense of freedom slipping away that you felt when you first began hiring virtual staff. You’re not doing anything wrong. It’s just the natural progression of things. Simply put:

    →    More Success and Growth = More Work = More Staff = More Management

However, that progression doesn’t—and shouldn’t—mean that you need to let go of any more freedom than you’re comfortable with. Freedom is still our main focus. Consider a gas tank: When your gas level starts to get low, you simply fill ‘er up, right? In this case, you need to refuel yourself and your business by taking yourself out of the equation once again and finding someone else to come in and run the team for you.

Where to Find a Virtual Project Manager

Have you ever heard the saying, “The best jobs aren’t advertised”? If you haven’t before, you have now! The same is true for a VPM. The best VPMs aren’t recruited—they’re discovered.

One of the first people you should consider is your own general virtual assistant. In many ways, your GVA has acted as your right hand since the beginning. Your GVA has a good understanding of your processes, especially if he or she has been the middleperson who helps you coordinate the projects and tasks that keep your business running.

In fact, most VPMs were GVAs at one time or another. They evolved into their current positions by demonstrating attention to detail and by hitting deadlines consistently. My suggestion is to only consider a GVA who has been working with you full-time for at least one year—and only if he or she has demonstrated a strong sense of personal drive, leadership, and communication ability. These are the traits that will drive your GVA to go above and beyond what he or she does for you.

To see if your GVA is a good potential fit for a VPM role, begin giving him or her projects to manage. Start with something small and see how your GVA does.

A recruitment service is another avenue you can use to find a VPM. If you’ve grown your team quickly and you don’t have a GVA who has demonstrated the necessary traits to take his or her career to the next level, a recruitment service is the perfect option. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider your current GVA for a promotion in the future—but if you need a VPM now, then you need one now!

A recruitment partner is typically a faster way to hire someone than to post a listing on a job board. You’ll obviously still need to spend some time training your new VPM on your company’s procedures and policies, but the candidate’s experience level should be good enough to ensure that he or she can take whatever guidance you offer and run with it.

Due to the recent trend of downsizing, there are a lot of great people out there in the global job market who are looking for freelance careers instead of a returning to a typical corporate environment. This phenomenon has been referred to as the “gig economy,” with more than 42 million Americans working as self-employed consultants and freelancers. For the small- to medium-size business owner or start-up entrepreneur, this means that you can acquire talented people without having to hire them full-time or offer expensive benefits packages.

A quick look at Craigslist will give you a handful of decent options on any given day. Obviously, a US-based project manager is likely to be more expensive than an overseas VPM, but the domestic candidate’s experience should allow you to get going a little faster. I wouldn’t suggest you take this route to find a long-term, full-time employee unless you are willing to continue to pay a premium for the service. However, it’s a great option as a quick fix or when you need to hand over a project with a fixed end date.

How to Hire a Virtual Project Manager

If you’re promoting your GVA to the VPM role, you probably won’t need to conduct a formal interview. However, if you’re bringing someone new into the position, you need to really focus on creating an interview process that narrows your search to a few prime candidates—just as you did when you first brought your other virtual workers on board.

Don’t rely on a résumé to tell you an entire story. Just because someone has already worked as a GVA or a project manager for a number of years, that doesn’t automatically mean he or she is good at it—and it doesn’t guarantee that the candidate will work well with you, your team, or your business.

When hiring for this particular role I like to take an unconventional step. It’s something a little out of the ordinary and far removed from the typical process of e-mailing a résumé with a cover letter. Ask the VPM candidate for something that demonstrates creativity and a high attention to detail. For example, have each potential VPM draw you a picture of the best vacation destination he or she has ever visited or write you a quick paragraph about his or her favorite animal. I know it sounds a bit gimmicky, but if you place this request at the end of your job posting, you’ll quickly see who was paying attention and you’ll get a sense of each candidate’s personality.

If you’re using Skype for the interview, you should also absolutely insist on using the webcam feature of the software in addition to audio. You’ll be able to get a better feel for the candidate’s demeanor and see if he or she has the confidence it takes to lead a team while maintaining an approachable attitude.

As you interview VPM candidates, it’s imperative that you ask them to discuss past projects they’ve led—both successful and unsuccessful ones. Ask them to elaborate a little on why those projects did or didn’t work out. However, don’t just leave it at story time—dig a little deeper. Request information on why each candidate’s project was so successful and why he or she was an important part of that success. This allows each person to sell him- or herself a little.

At some point, it’s inevitable that your VPM will run into some kind of pushback or excuse from another member of the team when a task isn’t completed. Ask each candidate how he or she would manage this type of conflict. The candidate’s answer will allow you to see how he or she is going to handle potential internal issues.

Tips for Working with a Virtual Project Manager

Once you’ve identified a potential VPM, I would suggest working with the candidate on a trial basis to see how he or she does. This could be a period of time, such as ninety days or for the duration of a particular project. Even if you’ve decided to move your GVA up the ladder into this new role, I’d still suggest putting a trial period in place. This ensures that your GVA knows that it’s important to prove himself or herself to you before getting the job for good.

Working effectively and successfully with your VPM isn’t going to be a whole lot different than working with your first GVA. However, there are a few extra points that I’d like to cover:

         •    Your VPM will be responsible for assigning tasks to individual team members based on the project. The VPM will also set deadlines and meetings as he or she sees fit. However, it’s important for your VPM to know that even though there are several different moving parts to the machine, the timely completion of the project falls squarely on his or her shoulders—no one else’s.

         •    Empower your VPM to make a specific dollar amount of purchases each month (anything over that set amount should require approval from you.) This gives him or her a sense of ownership and also shows the rest of the team that there is someone else around who has the power to spend a little of the company’s money, thus promoting a sense of hierarchy within the team.

         •    Even if you’re a solopreneur, bring your VPM into your strategy and brainstorming sessions. He or she can help you set realistic deadlines and can be a valuable resource as you bounce ideas around. Getting your VPM involved in this side of the business is a great way to show that you trust him or her to work for you at a higher level.

         •    Have your VPM create an operations manual. This is the one project I think you should have your VPM handle on a consistent basis. The manual puts a standardized process in place for your organization, helping you train future VAs and even allowing you to transition them into VPMs if needed.

Building a virtual team is something that might be far from a reality for you right now. You might have picked up this book to learn how to get started with freelancers or perhaps to figure out how to get that one GVA on board. That’s fine. Really.

The most important thing here is that you learn to believe in the concept of building a team of people to help you virtually run, support, and grow your business. Keep in mind that building a team is a skill that’s developed over a period of time—but it is a skill that must be developed in order for you to truly grow your business. There is no reason why you can’t follow in the steps of the countless entrepreneurs who are featured in this book—and no reason why you can’t also take things to the next level.

Remembering to stay honest to yourself and the beliefs and dreams that led you on this journey is the single most powerful concept you can follow. The virtual freedom you’re chasing down will enable you to build a great team—and in turn, your team will help you build one hell of a business!

Your team will also help to keep your feet planted firmly on the ground as you continue to produce great products, services, and content to help, educate, inspire, and entertain people. In the new world of business, it’s this last piece—content—that will set you apart from your competition. Content is undoubtedly the focus for the big players in your industry—and it’s a focus you need to have ASAP.

So, let’s talk content.