In the U.S. or Canada, the per-hour range is often $25—100. Seems like an obvious choice, right? Bangalore 100%? It’s not. The important metric is cost per completed task, not cost per hour. The biggest challenge with overseas help will be the language barrier, which often quadruples back- and-forth discussion and the ultimate cost. The first time I hired an Indian VA, I made the fundamental mistake of not setting an hour cap for three simple tasks. I checked in later that week and found he had spent 23 hours chasing his tail. He had scheduled one tentative interview for the following week, set at the wrong time! Mind boggling. 23 hours? It ended up costing me, at $10 per hour, $230. The same tasks, assigned later that week to a native English speaker in Canada, were completed in two hours at $25 per hour. $50 for more than four times the results. That said, I later requested another Indian VA from the same firm who was able to duplicate the native speaker results. How do you know which to choose? That’s the beautiful part: You don’t. It’s a matter of testing a few assistants to both sharpen your communication skills and determine who is worth hiring and who is worth firing. Being a results-based boss isn’t as simple as it looks. There are a number of lessons to be learned here. First, per-hour cost is not the ultimate determinant of cost. Look at per-task cost. If you need to spend time restating the task and otherwise managing the VA, determine the time required of you and add this (using your per-hour rate from earlier chapters) to the end sticker price of the task. It can be surprising. As cool as it is to say that you have people working for you in three countries, it’s uncool to spend time babysitting people who are supposed to make your life easier. Second, the proof is in the pudding. It is impossible to predict how well you will work with a given VA without a trial. Luckily, there are things you can do to improve your odds, and one of them is using a V