What’s holding you back from outsourcing?

Here are some reasons why you haven’t started outsourcing to a VA yet: 

• You feel overwhelmed just at the thought of bringing someone into your business.
• You’ve spent a lot of blood, sweat and tears building your business – it’s like your baby. You think, ‘surely no one can do a better job than me!’
• You fear losing control of your business.
• You don’t have the time to show someone what to do.
• You’re afraid your business ideas will be taken or shared with your competitors – how can you trust anyone?
• You don’t know what to outsource.
• You don’t know where to find a good VA – you’ve heard some bad stories about people getting burnt and have wasted a lot of time and money in the process.
• You think you can’t afford to pay for a VA – you’re barely able to pay yourself.
• You’ve got a mindset block that you can do it all and have a hard time saying you need help.

These are some of the reasons why business owners don’t ever get started.

When should you hire a VA?

This is a trick question because you’ll find that nearly everyone needs a VA.

Some other indicators include:

• You can’t seem to get through your to-do list and get ahead without working day and night.
• You’re on the verge of burn-out and you feel like giving up.
• You’re falling out of love with your business and you’re starting to resent it
• You’ve forgotten why you started your business in the first place. Or was it to have the freedom and flexibility to work when you wanted to? Instead the business feels like it’s controlling you!
• You are spending more time working IN your business (in the backend of running it), than working ON your business and growing it towards you vision.
• There’s some tasks you aren’t skilled at or don’t love.

If you’re nodding your head to any of these, I’d say you’re ready for your first team member.

Start before you’re ready!

You don’t want to be in a mad panic because your course launch is happening next week and you’ve found yourself in a pickle to get #allthethings done in time.

It’s only fair that you have time to train and onboard your VA instead of throwing her into the deep end.

And start️ before you think you can ‘afford’ it and you feel ready.

Turn this around, if YOU didn’t have to do those social media posts, create that blog post, schedule those emails or answer a gazillion emails… you could spend your time working with more clients and making more money. Doing the things that you enjoy. Spending quality time with your family.

You can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that you’re not the bottle-neck in your business.

Know your budget

You can start small with 1 hour a week doing a task or two. Set an initial investment amount that you feel comfortable with and go from there.

You don’t have to be locked into hiring a VA each week.

Ad hoc tasks here and there are a great way to get started.

What can you outsource? 

There are so many tasks that a Virtual Assistant can help you with.

Check out these 101 tasks to outsource to a Virtual Assistant here. 

Write a list of tasks you can outsource 

Go about your day and start writing down all of the tasks you are currently doing.

Next to each task – write down whether ONLY YOU can do this task (like client coaching sessions) or you can train your VA to do this task.

Ask yourself:

• does this task drain my time and energy because I don’t enjoy it?
• does this task pull me away from client facing activities?
• does this task light me up, do I enjoy doing it?

I recommend doing this for a week and up to a month to capture as many tasks as possible.

Create a position description 

Now that you’ve done some brainstorming on the tasks you can outsource.

Let’s put them all into a nice and neat position description.

You will be sharing this with your VA so that they can see what is required of them. And it will help you map out the type of VA you are looking for that will fit in with you and your business.

Where to find a VA 

Referrals: Ask your business friends and community if they have a VA they can recommend. Or ask me, I have a network of VAs at different skillsets and in different timezones.

Facebook Groups: There are some brilliant Facebook Group communities that have many connections. Check the group rules before posting your request to find a VA. 

Upwork or job boards: You can search through some job boards to find a suitable VA or post a job ad yourself.

Social Media: Post on your Facebook page, LinkedIn account or your Instagram account a post like ‘We’re hiring!’.

Applicant Process

You’ll want to make sure you have a proper process in place before you start the process of finding a VA.

You may be inundated with applicants.

I suggest you lead them to a landing page on your website which sets out your position description and clearly sets out the steps of how they can apply.

Ask your applicants to complete a questionnaire first in Typeform. I recommend Typeform because you can integrate it with a Google sheet spreadsheet and all of the responses will be organised in that spreadsheet.

Make sure you ask all of the right questions in this questionnaire to make the process of narrowing down the applicants easier.

Interview Process

I recommend having your interview via Zoom video chat so that you can see and meet each other. You’ll be able to see how the person communicates and you’ll get a good sense of their energy.

Research them before the call – do they have a social media presence or a website. What are their social media post designs like? Do they have any testimonials?

Make sure you prepare some questions in advance of the interview:

• What do they know about your biz? This should show if they’ve done their research about you.
• What they can bring to the table?
• What types of businesses have they worked with?
• How many clients do they currently have?
• How much time can they allocate to you?
• What tech tools do they have experience with?
• Confirm availability and fee structure
• Will there be a trial project so that you can see if you work together well / if they’re the right fit for you
• Allow them to ask questions 

Choose your VA

After the interviews you should know which VA is the right fit for your business. If not you might like to conduct a second round of interviews.

Once you have chosen your VA, send them a contract and start them off with a 1 month trial period.  

Get Organised

Set up a project management tool like Asana – or this can be one of the tasks your VA does for you.

Start recording yourself doing the tasks you want to outsource using Loom.

The next time you do a task, record your screen showing how you do it using a tool called Loom – it’s free for the first 100 videos. Then add this video to Asana in a project board called VA Tasks. Your new VA will take that video tutorial – learn how to do it and create a SOP for it. They can also add a recurring task (if required) in your Asana.

Use a time tracking app like Toggl or Clockify to record how long it takes you to complete each task – this will give you a realistic idea of how long your VA should take to complete a task once they’ve learnt the process. And allow you to set realistic deadlines.

Onboard your VA

Here are some essential tips to make sure you onboard your VA smoothly:

1. It’s not fair on your VA or yourself to not dedicate time to onboarding and getting things set up – be patient with the whole process. Putting the time in now will pay off later.

2. Show them exactly what they need to do using Loom and clearly explain your business’s processes, systems and tools.

3. Set up a Zoom kick-off call – record this session so your VA can refer back to it.

4. Start the trial period – this gives them time to settle in.

5. Be clear in your communication from the start. The more detailed your instructions, the less questions they will need to ask.

6. Indicate how much time you want them to spend working on a task.

7. Be open and approachable if they need to ask questions.

8. Explain your business’s values and mission so they can embody them in the work they do for you.

9. Talk about your goals for the next 3 months and what you’re trying to achieve – gives them the bigger picture of what you’re working towards.

10. How will you communicate with each other? Email, Asana, Voxer, Slack – I recommend only 1 or 2. Too many apps gets confusing.

11. What are your available working hours and theirs?

12. Set boundaries and respect yours and theirs. Turn off notifications when you’re not working.

13. Set your expectations from the beginning. Eg do you expect them to check-in with you each day at a certain time to give you an update on what they’re working on? Or will you have a weekly call to talk about what tasks they need to focus on?

14. How will you delegate tasks and information? Use your project management tool to allocate tasks to your VA.

15. Give access to all appropriate logins using Lastpass. This means your password is secure and can’t be seen. If your VA should ever leave your business, you don’t need to reset all of your passwords.

Show Gratitude

Last but not least is to communicate your gratitude.

When your VA completes a task say ‘thank you’ or give guidance if they didn’t get it right.

A thank you goes a long way.

I can guarantee you that the more gratitude you give, the more your VA will feel appreciated and want to go that extra mile for the next task.

Good luck outsourcing and working with your VA!