Hiring a virtual assistant is a huge step for any entrepreneur. It means giving up some control over your business.
But it’s also your first move towards scaling up your business so that it can grow beyond its current limitations.
If you’re thinking about taking this crucial first step, there’s a certain mindset you need to cultivate first.
You need to be open – and even excited – about the possibility of working with a virtual assistant.
If you approach new tasks and projects with an “I will never hand this off” attitude, you’ll always be limited by your own work hours and level of productivity.
You can only go so far without help. The people who succeed in outsourcing the right tasks and delegating the rest recognize this.
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Learning to Let Go
When you hire a VA, you’re not giving away the keys to the kingdom. But you are letting go of some part of your business operations, even if it’s just a handful of tasks.
Your business is your baby. Up until now, you’ve done everything yourself. It’s easy to understand why outsourcing tasks is scary.
The way to overcome this fear is to focus on the positive.
Think about the immediate benefits you’ll receive from outsourcing some aspects of your business.
You can also mitigate this fear by being careful about what you hand over.
Hire a VA you can trust and only share with them what they need to get the job done.
Outsourcing Costs Money
It’s certainly true that hiring a virtual assistant costs money.
How much does it cost?
This depends on what you need to be done. It’s also not a good idea to cut corners.
If you pay as little as possible, it’s only natural that you’ll get what you pay for.
You can mitigate this risk by allocating a budget you can afford.
Work out the numbers beforehand and make an offer that doesn’t break the bank.
Hiring a virtual assistant, if done right, will earn you greater profits in the future.
One way to adjust your mindset is to think of hiring a VA as buying time.
You pay for the VA to take tasks off your hands so that you have time to focus on more important things.
Managing Others Is No Fun
One mindset challenge that many faces are that they don’t want to become managers.
Up to this point, you’ve only had to manage yourself, and, for some of us, that’s enough of a monumental challenge. But now you have an employee and you are their boss.
Working with a VA isn’t the same as managing a busy office.
First of all, as the name suggests, it’s “virtual.”
You give the VA tasks to do and check in regularly to see how they’re doing.
Once the training and onboarding is finished, they’ll require little management, and the investment you make in training will pay off with the time you gain.
So Many Things Can Go Wrong
You may have heard horror stories about virtual assistants who caused terrible headaches for other businesses.
Especially the first time, hiring a VA isn’t easy and there are many things that can go wrong.
While it’s true that it’s a complex and often difficult process, you can overcome this by being prepared.
Carefully consider the jobs you need to be done, search for the right person, and prepare a good training and onboarding process to get them on track.
It also helps to realize that a bad VA experience isn’t a business-ending event but a learning opportunity.
Create a Game Plan
Before you start hiring your first VAs, create an outsourcing game plan.
Spend some time on this before you actually hire anyone, so you’re clear about what tasks and projects to handoff.
Even if the list of tasks is short, it will put your mind at ease knowing that someone else can handle them for you.
This game plan is the backbone of your outsourcing strategy.
You can’t just give your VA a long list of tasks and hope that they complete them all within budget, on time, with no mistakes.
The best VAs are in high demand because many business owners don’t make their needs clear when hiring.
Here are just a few of the many benefits that you can gain by hiring a VA: The Future of 24 Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant in 2022
What you can do with a Virtual Assistant
It’s important to establish just what you want from an assistant before you start looking for one.
You want to have a very clear idea of what types of responsibilities need to be delegated so that when you hire someone you know exactly what the parameters are.
What will you need your assistant to do? W
ill she be answering customer emails, putting together proposals, or updating social media profiles for you? What will he be doing exactly?
Do you have a full job description in mind, or is it more of an open-ended role that could expand over time as you have more work for him to do?
Don’t forget about all of the non-work-related things you could ask your assistant to help with, too.
Do some brainstorming on this list so that you can get a clear idea of what work might be performed by an assistant before you start looking for one.
Phone calls, for example. If you hate making phone calls to prospects, suppliers, or customers to set appointments and follow-up meetings, an assistant could be the perfect solution to your problem.
You can avoid ever having to make another phone call in your life.
Researching information about potential businesses to acquire when you’re working on an acquisition plan is another task that many entrepreneurs hate.
An assistant could be a great help when it comes to finding the right companies, evaluating their financial information, and putting together an acquisition proposal.
Organization. Good organization is key for any entrepreneur who wants to succeed in business.
But even if you’re the most organized person on earth, there are still certain tasks you might not enjoy doing.
Taking care of your bookkeeping doesn’t have to be one of them.
You could also use an assistant to help you keep organized by sending appointment reminders, building project timelines, and creating the weekly schedule for the staff in your company.
It all depends on what responsibilities you can hire someone else to do for you so that you can focus on high-value activities.
Check out this article by Thinkific: Worth the read to learn more about the benefits of hiring virtual staff
How to find your Virtual Assistant
Easier than ever before thanks to the internet, finding someone who will be able to perform all of these tasks in just a matter of reaching out and asking around.
You may not know where to start, but there are many ways.
If you are looking for a VA, now is the time to do it.
Now that you know what each task entails and how it will help your business grow, go ahead and get started on this list of tasks so you can let someone else take care of them while you focus on making deals happen!
Want to learn how to hire the right VA and get started growing your business?
We’re offering a full course here to help you avoid the pitfalls and start your first VA relationship on the right foot.
