The highest leverage in business today is using AI.
The second highest? Hiring virtual assistants.
But here’s the problem: most people don’t hire VAs or they try once and never go back.
Why?
Because they disappear.
The quality isn’t there.
They’re not reliable.
And you spend more time correcting mistakes than getting the work done.
That’s why most outsourcing efforts fail.
But what if everything you think you know about outsourcing… is wrong?
What if you could run your entire business in just 42 minutes a day?
You can, and Josh Thomas is living proof.
He built four 7-figure businesses in under 90 days without a big team, industry experience, or being involved in the day-to-day.
Today, you’ll learn his 8-step system for hiring virtual assistants that actually buy back your time and remove you from the weeds.
If you’re ready to stop drowning in admin work and focus on revenue-generating activities, click below and listen to the full interview now.
The Two Biggest Problems Holding You Back From Outsourcing
Before we dive into the tactical steps, let’s address the elephant in the room. If you’ve been putting off hiring your first virtual assistant, you’re not alone – and there’s a reason for it.
Problem One: The Fear Factor
Josh hit the nail on the head when he said the biggest problem is thinking you have to do everything yourself. Sound familiar?
We tell ourselves things like: “I can’t afford it,” “Nobody can do it as well as me,” and “It’s faster if I just do it myself.”
Here’s the thing – Josh explained this comes from a place of fear. We’re afraid the work won’t meet our standards. We’re afraid it’ll take longer to train someone than to do it ourselves. We’re afraid we’ll spend money and never make it back.
“There is literally a phenomenon called the conservation of resources theory that basically says, I’m going to hold my bag because it’s safer in my position than in your possession.”
There’s nothing wrong with feeling this way – it’s just your survival brain kicking in. But here’s the truth: if you’re going to grow and expand any kind of business, you absolutely cannot do everything by yourself. You have to delegate as soon as possible, as much as possible.
This is exactly why we created our Digital Investors Program – to give you the skills and confidence to build digital assets that generate real income, and to show you how to leverage other people’s time so you can scale without burning out.
Problem Two: Operational Drift
The second problem kicks in after you decide to hire someone. You hand over a task, give some quick instructions, and say “good luck.” Then over time, things start to drift.
Josh used the analogy of the childhood game “telephone” – where you whisper a message down a line of people, and by the end, it’s completely garbled. In business, this is called operational drift. People start cutting corners, taking liberties, and doing things a little differently. Without constant oversight, quality suffers fast.
The good news? Josh has developed a systematic approach to solve both of these problems. Let me walk you through it.
The 7-Step Process for Hiring Virtual Assistants in 2026
Step 1: Understand the True Value of Delegation
Before you hire anyone, you need to understand what your time is actually worth. Josh calls this “delegation math.”
Here’s the quick calculation: Average working days per month is 21, average hours per workday is 8, giving you a total of 168 working hours per month. If you pay yourself $10,000 per month, your hourly rate is approximately $60 per hour. Pay yourself $20,000? That’s $120 per hour.
Now here’s the kicker: according to Forbes, executives and entrepreneurs spend up to 36% of their work week on low-level administrative tasks – checking emails, setting appointments, sending invoices, chasing people down.
If you’re paying yourself $60 an hour to do those tasks, you’re essentially robbing yourself of time that could be spent on high-value activities. Would you pay someone else $60 an hour to manage your inbox? Of course not. So why are you paying yourself that much to do it?
For those of you just starting out online, I’d estimate you’re probably wasting even more than 36% of your time. Be honest with yourself about where your hours are really going.
Step 2: Find the Right Person
Here’s something that might surprise you: Josh doesn’t even look at resumes anymore.
Why? According to Microsoft, as of 2025, 45% of all resumes are either modified or completely generated by AI. The paper means nothing. What matters is finding the right person.
Step 3: Look for Unteachable Traits
Josh has a brilliant framework for identifying great hires. He looks for what he calls a “PRO”: Proactive, Responsible, and Organised. And as a bonus, they should be pleasant to work with.
These are unteachable traits. You either are proactive, responsible, and organised, or you aren’t. No amount of HR intervention will change someone’s fundamental character. So hire for these traits first, then teach the skills.
“They learn faster, they perform better, they stay longer.”
Step 4: Make Your First Hire an Operations Generalist
This is one of the most valuable pieces of advice Josh shared. If you’ve never hired before, your first hire should be an Operations Generalist (OG).
An OG is someone who meets all the PRO criteria, has decent skills across multiple areas, can quickly learn and adapt, and handles administrative tasks, appointment setting, communications, and inbox management.
They might not be a master at anything specific, but they’re competent across the board. This gives you the best bang for your buck because one hire can cover multiple needs.
The immediate benefit? You save up to 15 hours off your work week. This lowers the water line, lets you breathe, and gives you clarity to see what your business actually needs next. Then you can start hiring specialists.
Step 5: Pay a Fair Wage (Avoid the $2 Mistake)
This is where many beginners go wrong with outsourcing in 2026. They see cheap VAs advertised at $2-5 per hour and think they’ve found a goldmine.
Josh was blunt about this: “A $2 an hour VA is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make.”
Here’s why: No matter what country someone is in, $2 per hour is survival wages. When someone is in survival mode, they’re thinking about how to make rent, how to feed their family, and how to get through the next day. They are not thinking about how to expand your company or bring innovative ideas.
The solution? Pay a fair wage, respect people, and treat them like human beings. You’ll still save 50-70% compared to hiring locally. Just don’t get greedy – it will burn you.
In Australia, our minimum wage sits around $25 per hour. In the US, average employees earn about $28 per hour. When you outsource internationally to countries with favourable exchange rates and strong English skills, you can access highly qualified professionals for a fraction of that cost while still paying them well above their local market rate.
Step 6: Implement the PULSE System
This is where Josh’s brilliance really shines. He created a management system called PULSE that eliminates operational drift and allows him to run businesses in under 42 minutes per day.
PULSE stands for: Process, Update, Leadership, Skills, and Execution.
Morning Huddle (30 minutes via Zoom): Review what happened yesterday, discuss weekly and monthly goals, each team member shares their updates and daily priorities, and reach agreement on key deliverables.
Throughout the Day: Regular communication via Slack or Microsoft Teams with quick check-ins to ensure tasks are on track.
End of Day Meeting (10-12 minutes): Review team performance, check off completed tasks, identify issues and make adjustments for tomorrow.
This bookend management system ensures problems surface within hours, not weeks. Josh mentioned that without this structure, issues fall through the cracks because people don’t know what to do and tasks just drift off to the side.
“If the world’s elite athletes – Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, LeBron James – need coaches watching and tweaking every little metric, why would I think someone on a computer in another country could perform without that level of support?”
The beauty of this system is it works whether you have one VA or twenty. The structure keeps everyone accountable without requiring you to micromanage.
Step 7: Use AI to Augment, Not Replace, Your Team
This final step is particularly relevant as we move through 2026. Everyone’s talking about AI, and Josh gets asked constantly whether he builds AI agents.
His answer surprised me: “AI actually kind of sucks.”
Now, before you dismiss that statement, hear him out. AI demos incredibly well, but in the real world, it breaks constantly. Companies that went all-in on AI and fired thousands of people? Many brought those workers back because it simply didn’t work.
Here in Australia, we saw our banks get in serious trouble over aggressive AI implementation. And the data backs this up – 70-80% of customers don’t want to interact with AI. They’d rather talk to a human.
So what’s the smart play? According to an MIT study, people trained in using AI show at least 40% higher performance than teams that don’t use it. The key is using AI to augment your human team, not replace them.
Here’s a practical example Josh shared for content creation: Record yourself talking about a topic on your phone (with all your ums, ahs, and random tangents). Send that recording to your VA. They pull out the transcript and feed it into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. The AI restructures it into a Facebook post, LinkedIn article, Instagram carousel, etc. Your VA quality-checks the output and publishes.
Result: Five or six pieces of unique content without you ever touching the AI. Your voice, your ideas, but massively leveraged through smart systems.
The Bottom Line: Swing Hard
If you’re currently at zero and trying to get to one, the decision to hire depends on your situation. But if you’ve already got a business producing sales and you want to go from “okay” to “great,” delegation is the most logical next step.
Josh shared something that really stuck with me. He hired his first VA – a woman from Mexico – ten years ago, long before he was ready, long before he could actually afford it. He did it because he knew the only way out of his rut was to get tasks off his plate so he could focus on innovation.
“If you’re in a hole, the key is not to conserve resources and hold the bag – that’s just gonna make the hole deeper. You’ve got to swing hard. One of the best ways to swing hard is to delegate as much as possible.”
If you’re ready to start building a digital business that gives you time freedom and financial independence, I’d encourage you to check out our Digital Investors Program. We’ll teach you how to buy, renovate, and sell websites for profit – and how to build teams that run without you.
And if you want help finding and managing quality virtual assistants, reach out to Josh and his team at VAIQ.net. They’ll find great talent, vet them, onboard them, and manage them daily using the PULSE system so you can focus on what you do best.
The opportunity is there. The systems exist. The only question is whether you’re ready to stop doing everything yourself and start building something bigger.
