As a busy professional you know that every bit of help will help you scale your business. As you grow hiring is an important part of your journey, but hiring a full time employee isn’t always the answer.
Having full time employees is great when you have valuable work for them to get done but with all the expenses that come with that employee, a virtual assistant could be the answer.
A VA is a great way to bring on a part time employee that will be able to help you out with everyday mundane tasks. Just because you can do these tasks, and better than most, doesn’t mean that is the best use of your time. It can be very difficult to give up ownership of these duties but if you can hire someone for a fraction of the cost that can do this task 80% as well, then it will be worth it.
Making processes to employees and giving yourself the time to work on high value and high skill tasks is the best way to grow your company. Not to mention these tasks can be draining on your effectiveness and efficiency.
A hard question to answer right off the bat is. “Do I need a virtual assistant?” If you want to grow your company faster than doing it alone, then a virtual assistant will get growing, faster.
1.) There are administrative tasks that you are doing that could be done by someone else. One thing that can help with realizing what you can outsource is keeping a list of things you’re doing throughout the day. Over a few weeks or possibly days you’re going to see some simple things coming up over and over again and those are the things you are going to want to automate with your VA. Bonus: While taking inventory of your time you may realize some other tasks you’re doing that are super valuable that you want to focus on more. Also maybe you realize you aren’t making enough time for meetings with your staff. The possibilities are endless.
2.) You should be working on growth strategies rather than doing repetitive tasks. While your VA is taking care of entry level tasks, you need to be working on high level tasks such as marketing and growing your company. The reason you got here is because you have vision and van get things done. Getting the next level is going to take a shift in your perspective. Bring your company to the next level by allowing yourself to bring out the genius instead of wasting valuable time.
3.) You have training material for full time employees already! Clear instructions are very important when onboarding your virtual assistant. If you have training material already then you can copy and paste some of those tasks to a VA and outsource. Then you’re clearing out space in your calendar and possibly other full time members of your team.
On the flip side, if you don’t have the training material ready for your full time people, then making some quick videos on basic tasks for your team can be great as a refresher or for those fist days for a new hire.
4.) People in your network already have VA’s that are vetted and ready for your work. If you put a post on your social looking for some advice on hiring a VA you may be surprised with the reactions from your friends. You aren’t the only busy professional with things to get done.
Another place to find a great VA is a Facebook group for owners of businesses like yours. For example, of you’re a photographer you may need someone to help touch up pictures. Surely there are going to be photographers that need that and they may have a great VA looking for a second gig.
5.) Hiring a VA is much cheaper than hiring an employee. There are many simple benefits of 1099 employees over traditional hires. One big one is paying per task rather than paying a hourly or salary wage. When someone is incentivized to get the work done on a per job basis they are more likely to do those task quickly and efficiently.
Keep in mind hiring the lowest cost VA is probably not going to work out in the long term. You get what you pay for when it comes to a VA. Just like hiring a full time employee, hiring a qualified VA and paying accordingly will take away your headaches in the long term. With the structure of a per job VA you should still be saving money over hiring another body for the office.
6.) Finding the right VA is easier than you think. Guru.com Peopleperhour.com Upwork.com. One trick that might help you get an awesome VA is hiring multiple people from these sites and giving them an opportunity to prove themselves. Say you find 2-3 quality candidates, you can give them each the same task and see who does it best to fit your needs.
7.) You don’t need to be afraid of firing your VA. Hiring fast and firing faster is a great mantra used by many successful business people. When it comes to a VA that phrase couldn’t be more true. If that person you hired isn’t working out then it’s nothing personal to let that VA go and try another.
When hiring entry level employees turnover is going to be high but at least you haven’t wasted half of a day adding this person to your payroll and benefits system.
You’ve heard about it for years, just pull the trigger and hire your first VA. There’s a reason us entrepreneurs who hire them are addicted, it’s their value!
