The Best & Worst Time To Hire A Virtual Assistant

A virtual assistant can make a dramatic impact as you transition from growing to scaling your business. Virtual assistants are a tremendous asset for business owners who need to spend more time on the growth of their company and less time on various day-to-day operations. But how do you know when it’s time to hire a VA?

The Best Time To Hire A Virtual Assistant:

You’re making a profit. Your monthly business revenue is consistently increasing while your time resources are steadily decreasing. In other words, revenue is up, time is down. You are having a growing pain and this is a good thing!

Ready to delegate tasks. In order for your business to continue to grow, you need to get day-to-day operations off your plate. We advocate for firing yourself as soon as possible from as much as possible.

Your business is “thriving” but things are getting neglected. That includes self care, marketing efforts, big projects, business planning, and financials. Your business is growing, but it’s not thriving and neither are you. Yes, it’s very much time to hire a VA.

You have a clear vision and strategy, you just need to pull away from daily operations in order to spend more time in the role of CEO, leader, and visionary of your company. Yes!

You’re under-staffed. You are an established company that is perpetually short staffed and need virtual talent to relieve the burden on existing team members. You may want to transition your virtual talent to a full-time position, and Sparent’s VA-To-Hire service gives you that option. We like options.

We often speak to business owners who want to work with a virtual assistant because they know other business owners with VAs, or because they think a VA is the answer to their growth struggles. It’s important to understand that a virtual assistant is not a magician, miracle worker, or business savior.

Although virtual assistants can handle tasks related to increased revenue such as follow up communication, email marketing, researching speaking opportunities, creating lead magnets, etc, it is not their responsibility to strategize and grow your business. When business owners seek a virtual assistant for the wrong reasons and at the worst time, they set themselves and their VA up for frustration and failure. And nobody has time for that!

So, when is the wrong time to hire a VA?

The Three Worst Times To Hire A Virtual Assistant:

You are in survival mode. It’s early days and you are still getting established. Your business does not have consistent, monthly revenue growth yet. In other words, your revenue resources are low and your time resource is high. You may feel like you are floundering and need help, but you don’t need a VA yet. This is an opportunity to leverage your time resource to get to know your customer deeply, define your brand, strategize, plan, network, and find business mentors.

You are in chaos mode. We can see your To DO List from space and you aren’t sure what to delegate and what you should focus on. This is a sign of a growing business with a business owner that waited too long to delegate. Now, you need to slow down before you can speed up.

You can’t verbally vomit your CVS receipt-sized TO DO list at your virtual assistant. I mean you can, and that is a billable hour, but a VA can’t do much with that information. First, you will need to categorize and prioritize your daily operations and select 1-3 (no more than 3!) tasks that you most urgently need to get off your plate. By narrowing down your task list, you are making delegating less overwhelming for you, and setting your virtual assistant up for success.

You are NOT in systems mode. Until you adopt the “systems lifestyle” you will find it difficult to delegate and impossible to scale. Systems are simply replicable processes in your business. Anything that is repeatable is scalable. So invest time in your onboarding, sales, marketing, invoicing, and admin systems. Use digital tools to automate as much as you can to make your business more efficient and reduce labor costs.

Once you have a system, document it in excruciating detail in an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). This living documentation will reduce training time now and in the future as you continue to grow. Your systems will continue to evolve as your company does so we like to use Google Workspace to create, collaborate and store our SOPs.

And whatever you do, don’t delegate a BAD system to a virtual assistant. We often see business owners unwilling to fix their bad systems. Eventually, they get fed up with their ineffective, clunky processes and decide delegating is the answer. A bad system is like driving a car with a seized engine. Don’t ask a virtual assistant to push your car uphill. Get a new engine. Fix your systems.

The good news is that by doing some pre-work and preparing to delegate to a virtual assistant, you will set your business up for long term success. Delegating is the key to building a sustainable business that aligns with your values and income goals.

Being busy can feel an awful lot like success, but if your busyness is not translating to dollar signs, you may want to sign up for our next Task Mapping Workshop on May 19th at 12pm ET! In 90 minutes, you will unveil exactly what you should focus on to take your business to the next level.

If you are ready to dive deeper on how DELEGATING is the foundation to growing and scaling your business, APPLY EARLY for our fall semester of D School to secure your limited seat. D School fills fast!