How Museum Hack Founder Nick Gray Works With VAs and Gets Stuff Done

Nick founded Museum Hack, a company that gives renegade tours at the best museums in the world. 

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After successfully selling the company, Nick is now busy launching a book, running a newsletter with 9000+ subscribers, regularly updating his blog, throwing amazing parties, and posting travel videos on his Youtube channel — all on top of running a small family office called Tri Peak Holdings that invests in technology stocks. 

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His secret to staying on top of all these projects? Awesome virtual assistants. 

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In this interview, Nick shares his experience working with virtual assistants and how they help him get stuff done.

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Thanks, Nick!

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Let’s jump right in:

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How long have you been working with virtual assistants?

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I’ve been working with VAs for more than 10 or 20 years.

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When I graduated college, I moved to India to try to hire some overseas programmers to help me with an internet project I was working on, so I’m familiar with the virtual assistant-and-remote-worker force.

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I launched my last business — Museum Hack — thanks to the help of several VAs. My first full-time hire was based in the Philippines.

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How many VAs do you currently have on your team?

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I currently have 2 full-time VAs and 1 long-term, part-time VA on my team.

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What was your biggest struggle or challenge before you hired one?

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I’m really bad at following up on things and I’m a terrible procrastinator. I would often let my emails pile up and I would avoid doing important tasks. Now that I have a team of VAs, I find that it’s easier for me to complete projects and stay on top of my communications thanks to all of their help.

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What’s the hardest part about finding a good VA?

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In my last job, we often would not hire museum tour guides even though that was literally what my business did (my last company did renegade museum tours at some of the biggest museums in America).

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This was because they had a lot of bad habits that were hard to correct. For the same reason, it can be hard to find a VA if they have been one for many years or if they have been working in other types of office environments — it would be hard to fit them into my culture. So I would say the hardest part is finding a good cultural fit and someone who succeeds in working within a small business.

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How did Somewhere help you overcome these challenges?

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Somewhere does a very good job at recruiting and reviewing the applicants. They focus on the top end of the funnel and that even includes helping me write a perfect job description.

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In your experience, what are the top three benefits of hiring Filipino VAs?

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Flexible schedule and availability

Being able to set the time and the schedule when I have support has been very helpful.

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They’re fast learners and are computer-savvy

Both of the VAs on my team are very fast learners and incredibly savvy at using web-based applications.

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They allow me to do much more than ever before

Having the help of VAs has allowed me to do a lot more of the things that I want to do and less of the things that I don’t want to do.

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What's the number one tip you can give to folks who are just starting their delegation journey?

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I recently went on a cruise to the Caribbean with some friends. The internet aboard the ship was not very good, so I was not able to do the video conferencing and training with my new VA.

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We started to use the Loom software to record the training videos and we have found that very helpful. My assistants like it because they can start and stop the videos and use them as a reference. The best piece of advice that I can give is to have clear and detailed instructions and training on exactly what you want.

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Ready to hire an awesome virtual assistant of your own?

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Let us know about the post you wanna fill and we’ll find you an awesome assistant that costs 80% less than US equivalents. 

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