Business Owners, Here Are 3 Things to Do BEFORE You Hire Your Virtual Assistant
In case you didn’t know, once a month we post a blog that is relevant for all small business owners, not just virtual assistants, and a lot of times they are related to what it looks like to HIRE a VA and manage a team.
One of the things I see business owners struggle with is not just knowing WHEN it’s time to hire a virtual assistant or delegate to a new team member, it’s actually preparing their business to do it. I think that this is maybe what holds a lot of people back from hiring support; hiring and bringing on a team member can feel really daunting if you have never done it before or you have hired before and it didn’t go very smoothly.
I truly believe that if you don’t have a strong process on onboarding in place to bring a VA into your business you:
1. May not be able to use them effectively or…
2. Think that it isn’t a good fit when really, there just needs to be better processes and communication between the two of you!
So today, I want to bring up 3 things you should do BEFORE you hire a VA. I am hoping that this will take a little bit of the mystery out of it all and just help you game plan for when you are ready to hire!
First things first, let’s revisit what a VA does.
A VA is going to be able to take tasks off your plate and help you crush your to-do list. They are the implementers, the doers…. You should be able to just hand over tasks to them and they get completed.
What a VA is not, is a strategist. Sure, there are VAs that are good with strategy and systems, and helping you figure out those processes, but in my opinion, that is outside the scope of a “typical” virtual assistants job, and if you are really needing help with creating systems, strategy, workflows, etc… you might actually be looking to hiring an OBM, which stands for online business manager (that’s actually what I do within our agency, and then we have VA’s as well) or a specialist/strategist in whatever area you are looking for support in.
Okay, now I want to give you 3 things that you should do BEFORE you even get on a discovery call with a virtual assistant. These 3 things are going to help you get crystal clear on what it is you need support with in your business, what type of experience you are looking for your VA to have, and also set some really clear communication and expectations from the get go! It can be really hard on both you and the VA you hire if things are muddy and not crystal clear, which can cause for frustration, overwhelm, resentment, and a whole host of issues you do not want when it comes to working with someone in your business!
01. Figure Out What Tasks You Are Delegating
Seems self-explanatory, right? It’s not that simple sometimes! I have chatted with so many entrepreneurs that are like “Kate I KNOW I need help, but I have no idea WHAT to delegate.” I think sometimes this stems from feeling like you HAVE to do it all – I know, I have been there.
For example: You might feel like there's just NO WAY that someone could respond to your customers and clients.
They HAVE to hear from YOU. Well… they actually don’t.
Your time and energy is important. And when you are bogged down in emails, what is that taking away from? Having a team member respond to emails is a great way to open up some space for you. And they don’t have to like, pretend they are you or something – just create a signature for your inbox that says it’s your team! I don’t believe that people should just have unlimited access to you just because you are the business owner. It’s good to have a buffer there.
Or maybe, you feel like “Yeah I could probably delegate ____, but I am afraid someone won’t do it as well as me, so I should just do it.” And there’s a couple ways this couple play out.
First scenario, you’re right, your assistant may not do it as good as you. But what if it was still good? What if it was DONE? What if it was something you just didn’t have to worry about anymore? Sure, it may not be exactly how you do it, but what if that isn’t a bad thing?
Second scenario, what if the person doing the task actually does it BETTER? There is a gal on my team who is 100000% better at graphics and design than I am. And hey, I think that I am pretty good at them. I can get the job done and they turn out good. But when she does them, they are better than I could have even imagined.. And now she legit does all of my graphics, and when we have clients that need design and graphic work, she takes those projects over as well. The one thing I thought I would just always do because I didn’t think people would do it the way I did it, actually became something that was delegated because the person does it better!
Okay so the easiest way to figure out the tasks you want to delegate is by doing a massive brain dump of everything you do in your business or want to do in your business, because let’s be honest, there are so many things that we can think of that we want to do whether its projects, getting consistent with a certain tasks, etc. But we just don’t have the time or capability to do them!
So start with a massive brain dump, and then when you finish, use these questions to help you sort through them:
What tasks do you love doing?
What tasks do you dread doing?
What tasks don’t you have time for?
What tasks are falling through the cracks?
Now put all the things you love doing in one category, and all the rest of things in another. All the things you love and enjoy doing, keep doing those things! All the other things, let’s break them down further:
What things do you HAVE to do? Like what are the things that need YOUR touch and expertise? Now make sure you get really honest here. Are these things ACTUALLY things you HAVE to do, or is it your ego getting in the way and someone else really could be doing them.
What things can you teach someone else to do?
So now, the tasks from the first question, you are going to have to decide if they are things that you actually need in your business or if you can actually scrap it altogether. Like what is the ROI of that thing. I had a client who really dreaded doing a service that she was offering and it was a lot of work on her side of things to do it! So she looked at potentially scraping it to focus her energy elsewhere, but when she looked at how much revenue that thing was bringing in, she decided to keep it around because it was significant enough it made sense to keep it going. Now if she decided like hey this isn’t worth it to me, then she could have stopped doing it! You have to decide as the business owner what “worth it” means to you.
And I hate to break it to you, but we all have things in our business we don’t love doing but have to. It’s just the reality of life ya know? But rephrasing your thoughts around that thing might help you when it comes to your productivity and actually maybe starting to enjoy that task. NOW let’s talk about the things you can teach someone else to do – that’s the list for a VA.
02. Create a Schedule of the Tasks for Your VA
What I mean by this is, when do these tasks need to be done? Are they daily? Weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? Etc. This is going to be really helpful for your VA to know if they have the availability to bring you on as a client, and what their rate might look like!
It will also help your VA with time management and creating a schedule for not just your business, but their business as well. This just goes back to that communication and expectation piece. Everyone knows what to expect, when to expect it, and you can keep things streamlined and organized. Takes the guesswork out of it!
After you have the tasks figured out and when the tasks need to get done - it’s time to do what I think will help the MOST when it comes to hiring your new VA, and frankly anyone that comes onto your team, and that is:03. Create an SOP Library
This might sound daunting to you if you have never done it before and this is where it’s going to take some additional time from you upfront to make these SOPs, but I PROMISE YOU it will save you so much time and so many headaches in the future! SOP’s are what you already do in your business when you are doing tasks, and taking it a step further and recording HOW you do it… it just like little mini lessons or instructions on how the process works or how to do certain tasks!
I am going to give you a couple of my best practices for creating a recorded SOP, but I want to first say you can make your SOP’s as extensive and elaborate as you want but here at Your Behind the Scenes BFF, we like to keep things simple yet effective. And I don’t know why, but creating SOPs is my favorite thing to do. Truly – probably because I know the difference they make in people’s businesses and with their teams.
So because this will take you a little extra time, I am going to just give you a little hack to help you out. The next time you are doing ANY task in your business, record your screen and talk through what you are doing step by step. I like to use Loom to do this because it will record your screen, create a transcript, and you can easily add people to your Loom team or share the link with whoever. So then, after you complete the task, you stop recording and BOOM you have an SOP.
I personally like have the video, and then step-by-step written instructions stored in a project management system or even something like Google Drive or Dropbox. I have mine in Click Up and I just have a folder labeled SOP’s and then I upload everything there.
Honestly, even if you aren’t ready to hire just yet, I think starting to build out your SOP library would still be a really good idea because then it’s done and you can just update it as you grow!
This is wildly beneficial to your business when you are bringing on a virtual assistant or other team members because they can go in and see exactly how to do something, and then also revisit it if they have questions! It eliminates a lot of the back and forth that comes with people learning new things! And yes, your assistants will likely still have questions, but it’s a great resource to have and also is a little reminder for them to look their first and really own their role and take initiative which is only doing to help them build confidence in themselves, and you build confidence in them!
If you need help with creating recorded SOPs, or even figuring out what the procedure itself is, like I said, it’s my favorite thing to do – so shoot me a message or go to our website under the work with me tab and let’s connect!
Okay so to recap, the 3 things you should do before you hire your virtual assistant are:
Figure out what tasks you are delegating
Create a schedule of the tasks for your VA
Create an SOP Library
I hope this blog post was helpful no matter where you are at in your business: whether you are ready to hire like, yesterday, or you are still in the DIY phase of your business but looking forward to bringing on some support in the future!
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