How to Know You’re Ready to Hire & VA (and how to hire one successfully)
How to Know You’re Ready to Hire a VA (and how to hire one successfully)
Knowing you’re ready to hire a VA and being ready are two different things entirely.
I’m here to help you figure both parts, because as a boutique Virtual Assistant agency owner, I’ve seen lots of clients come and go and know exactly how to spot the signs you’re ready.
I’m also sharing the steps you can take to get ready for one so it becomes not only a smashing success and your days feel so much easier, but becomes the kind of supportive partnership you wished you’d made sooner.
🙇🏻♀️ First up - these are the signs you’re in need of a VA;
You know you’re ready because your diary is chaos, you’ve played email tennis back and forth way too many times with too many people trying to set up those meetings and god forbid, someone has to reschedule, you’re back at square one and want to scream.
Meanwhile your work is eating into your evenings and weekends, even more so if you’re travelling - it only compounds the lack of time you have.
Let alone the expenses you’ve forgotten to file and your accountant is slowly getting tired of chasing you for.
Then the next thing you know you’ve become the silo in your business with clients or team.
Things are not getting finished or handed over in time because you’ve barely had time to approve or discuss anything and there you go, cracking the laptop open at 8pm again.
It’s time. You are ready to hire a VA.
🤷🏻♀️ So how do you become ready for one?
There’s a few things you need to do before you start casting a net out for a VA (or simply booking a chat with me to make it all so much easier 😉).
📝 Make an ‘Everything List’.
Coming from a Type A person, I like to be ready before I’m ready and it starts with… a list! Surprise, surprise!
I want you to take ten minutes each day over the next few days writing a list of things you’d love your VA to help with.
Keep noting down what you think you’d like to hand over as things pop up.
Even write down the things you’d like help with but aren’t sure if a VA can help, the mystery tasks, jobs and bits that you keep failing to get to - business and personal stuff.
Note down how long you spend doing the things you’d like to hand over, or take off your plate.
That’s why I call it the Everything List, it’s a brain dumping list that helps two ways;
It shows you how much you’re doing that a VA could do for you and how long it’s been taking you that you’ll be saving time on when you have a VA in your life
It’s a list of things you can bring to a discovery call with me or a potential VA and ask if these things are within their area of expertise, which makes helping find the right VA even easier.
And finally - there are a few things you’ll need to have in place to be ready to work with your VA but I’ll come back to this in a minute.
💸 Plus, you know you’re ready if the cost of your own time per hour is more than a VA’s hourly rate (which spoiler alert it is).
You’re literally wasting your own genius doing things that a VA can do.
👩🏻💻 If the majority of tasks on your Everything List makes up tasks that sound suited to an executive assistant, then bingo - that’s the kind of VA you need to search for.
🏠 If the tasks seem mostly lifestyle support - you, your personal life, homes, holidays, family, then you’ll want to search for a Lifestyle VA.
👋🏼 If it’s either or those or both combined - I can help!
I have an incredible team of highly experienced and wonderful VAs who are not only kind and confident, but who specialise in business admin and lifestyle support, often both together for clients.
✨ If it’s creative work you need support with - updating your website copy, creating and scheduling social media posts, editing your podcast, customer service etc, you’ll need a specialist service provider (not a VA) like a copywriter, social media manager, podcast editor or ecom support.
I can’t stress this enough, if you are a business owner hoping to find creative, admin and lifestyle support within one person for a small hourly fee you’re going to be sorely disappointed.
Unicorns not only don’t exist, but we also shouldn’t expect one VA to know and do everything everything.
There are specialists for certain things for a reason and by separating those out, you’ll get better results and surprisingly it won’t cost you the earth.
Though I don’t supply this kind of creative specialist support, if you need this alongside having a business or lifestyle VA and you choose to work with us, I can help you find the right specialists with my trusted service provider network. So I’ve got you covered there, don’t worry.
When you work with the Lifestyle VA, you are tapping into my amazing team and a big juicy trusted network.
You’re also working with someone who values integrity and honesty, so I will always let you know where the edge of our abilities end and help you find the best next or additional service provider to help.
💡 I mentioned there was a third thing you need to do to be ready to hire your perfect VA right?
It’s quite simple. Hire slightly before you’re ready, or basically don’t hire in chaos.
Or at the very least, hire knowing you’re going to need to dedicate 1-2 hours per week from the get go to spending time on Zoom and in Slack with your VA so they can get to know you, your business and the tasks.
The VA and client relationships that truly succeed are the ones where the business owner gives that VA so much input in the beginning, so she can crack on, learn faster and be even more autonomous sooner.
This is a huge reason why the partnership succeeds vs fails.
VAs are incredible but they can’t be mind readers, so be sure you’re open minded and communicative so they can do their best possible work for you.
With one of our incredible VAs on board, you’ll soon be kicking back with 20, 30 or even 50 hours gained back everything month to do exactly what you’ve not been able to do yet.
If this sounds like a dream and you’re like yes please Mel, I’m ready and raring to go and would love to find your perfect match VA, simply click here to book in a call with me.
You’ll answer a couple of quick questions before we jump on a call and we’ll have a chat about the kind of VA that would be perfect for you and the support you most need.
If you’re happy we’ll discuss the number of hours per month you need, depending on your budget and the estimated workload.
You’ll then receive a proposal outlining the details discussed and the support required.
You’ll sign a contract and pay your first invoice, then I’ll book you in meetings with two of my VAs, the ones who I feel would be the best match for you based on needs, personality and their suitability.
You meet both VAs and then you choose the VA you most want to work with and we get you fully onboarded and ready to go straight away.
It’s that simple and you can start enjoying a sense of calm and peace and wished you’d hired us sooner!
If you’d like to know more about what we do and how we do it, including our rates and packages I’ll leave a link to download our services guide in the episode show notes below.
