Hey there entrepreneur, congratulations! You’ve done it. You’ve built a business that is growing and now you’re realizing that money is coming in, expectations are growing, people are depending on you and frankly…you’ve run out of time. Fuck! Now what do you do? Well once you’ve given yourself a healthy amount of time to panic, scarfed down a twix and diffuse all the grounding oils, it’s time to get into action and make a plan. And that plan…hire a virtual assistant!
Yes, you’ve reached the point where HELP is vital to your success and that my friend is EXCELLENT! You want to have help, you want to be the expert. You can’t do all the things all the time! You’re past that now. So it’s time to hunker down and figure out exactly what you need because there are a few things that you should know before you hire the first virtual assistant you meet, and let’s make sure they are the right person to help you achieve your business goals.
Delegation without intention is just throwing money into a fire.
Saying “ I need a VA” is like saying you want pizza. Hate to break it to you friend but that’s just too many possibilities to wing it! Being intentional and discovering WHAT you need to delegate and WHO you need to accomplish it is super important. So important in fact, that our very own Sabra Gilbert of #TeamMolly is gonna step in here and help you understand why intention is so important and why people get easily frustrated their first time working with a VA.
So let’s dig into what you really need here.
Sabra here, let’s figure out how to get you your genie in a bottle without rubbing every dusty lamp you see. The #1 time waster for both you and the virtual assistant you want to hire is not knowing what you actually want to hand over from the very beginning. You need to know and plan exactly what you want to get started with so that you can even pick the right person who is going to be your right hand in your business. Trust is key here. If you even feel slightly uncomfortable with the person that you pick, it just isn’t going to work out. They are a key team member in your business.
Not every virtual assistant uses the same tools and systems.
I do not use all the exact same tools as Molly and some of my other #TeamMolly members. We all have our specializations and tools we know and love. So if you have specific tools and systems that you want your VA to use. You need to find someone who has some basic knowledge in those tools. They don’t have to be experts, but will to learn it if they don’t know it. Which, not every single VA is willing to do that. It’s their prerogative to have boundaries in their business too. But that’s why it needs to be talked about in the discovery call.
You need to know your level of involvement.
Be honest with yourself, can you fully hand over these tasks? Do you want to never look at your social media again and be ok with whatever your VA puts out there? Or do you love writing up the copy and just want graphics and scheduling done. Do you want someone writing your blog posts for you? Or just an editor?
This is my favorite way to have potential clients figure out how involved they want to be.
- Write out every task that you do in your business.
- Grab a yellow highlighter and highlight everything that NEEDS your touch.
- Highlight in blue everything that you ENJOY doing.
- Hand over EVERYTHING else.
Seriously, you don’t need to be doing the things that you don’t enjoy or that don’t need your personal signature on it. Find the person who all these things are their jam and let them do their magic instead.
Number one killer of VA relationships? Not having enough tasks.
We seriously want to make your business easy. We don’t want you to feel like you have to micromanage us!
So instead of giving over a task one bit at a time, give us those task lists all at once. Of course, we will have a conversation over what is the most important to finish first, what is a secondary project, and then what is a sideline project for months that are a little slower in the usual tasks. But if we have that big long list of the things you want, we can work our magic for you and get things done in record time.
Most VA’s work weird hours. That’s one of the joys of owning a business that I’m sure you enjoy too. So instead of having to wait for an email or Marco Polo replies to move on, it’s so nice to just already know what the next item of business is. It maximizes our time together. (Want some other time maximizer tips? Head here)
Truth Bomb: Not all virtual assistants are created equal.?
Actually the real truth bomb is not only are virtual assistants not all the same, but a lot of times people aren’t looking for a virtual assistant at all! I see it all the time in Facebook groups from side hustlers needing support to BIG name entrepreneurs, virtual assistants get roped into a mega pot of assumptions that just aren’t reality of the industry. Here are a couple of examples I see ALL. THE. TIME.
“I need someone to help with Social Media”
This is one of the most common things I see because let’s be honest, when you are elbow deep serving your clients or creating products, time just doesn’t exist for social media. And there is an underlying expectation that all virtual assistants do social media well and that really just isn’t the case. Finding a VA that specializes in SM will be super important. But before you start googling Social Media Virtual Assistant…make sure you’re not looking for a social media manager. There’s quite a difference between the two both in offerings and price tags.
- For the most part you still want to be the person calling the social media shots, you just need either someone to write captions or create graphics from your templates and make sure it gets scheduled in your automated social scheduling platform. This is 100% in the Virtual Assistant world.
- You need someone to help with social media and you want them to design all your graphics, write all your captions, and develop a strategy plan for what to post…and you probably think that’s what a virtual assistant would do, but actually that’s a social media manager. Social media managers have the expertise and now how to help you authentically connect with your ideal client and use statistics and intuition to develop a detailed game plan.
“I need a VA to populate my Kajabi (teachable, mighty networks, etc.) and I need it the next 48 hours”
Woah, friend! Pull back the reins, there’s more here than meets the eye. This comes up over and over again in a premium (read buku bucks) business group I’m in on facebook and I cringe every time. First of all, waiting until the last minute to look for a person to create ANYTHING is just a turn off. Now there are always exceptions like your web developer got Covid or something and then finding someone in a pinch is fine. But building quality, SEO optimized landing pages and websites with all the connected items takes WAY longer than 48 hours. So, don’t do that.
For the most part if you’ve NEVER used Kajabi or any of the other systems mentioned above before, you will probably need more than a virtual assistant and will need a systems expert that specializes in YOUR specific system. You may see “just” a landing page, but in reality it connects to many other pieces of the sales funnel journey and missing a single step can literally fuck you over. That’s not even touching on optimizing things for SEO, expanding your brand visual identity, and making your site is ADA compliant.
If you’ve been using Kajabi (or the other systems) and need someone to help you MAINTAIN that system ( i.e. upload content, add a new section, and in some cases create a new course using your previous one as a template) then that is 100% Virtual assistant territory. Many VAs are familiar with SEO and branding so some little touches here and there are entirely possible.
If you’re saying…
you need the nitty gritty tasks done so you can open your schedule to money producing activities then yes you DO need a VA. Now if you are saying you have goals like stabilize your business or grow 6 & 7 figures then what you really need is a business strategist! Business and brand strategists help you figure out the roadmap of tasks to get you to your goal. And some strategists, like my micro agency, help you get the necessary tasks done to reach your goal and get you to a place where your team can maintain it!
