What holds businesses back from hiring a Virtual Assistant?

This may be a bit unconventional but I'm going to tell you why people DON'T end up hiring a Virtual Assistant for their business. But spoiler alert: that decision is detrimental to their business and most likely their work/life balance. And isn't that the whole point of owning your own business - you wanted to be more in control of your life and get your balances straight. Well when your business ends up running YOU, everything suffers.

So I'll challenge you that if you find yourself in any of the reasonings I explain below, step out of the mold - take action - make a change - try to see what a Virtual Assistant can do for you! I know making that first step is hard. But remember, a discovery call is free and I guarantee your shoulders will feel 20 pounds lighter.

Let's de-bunk some of things that are holding you back.

1) I don't know what I need.

What I say to that is - that’s okay! If you knew what you needed you probably would have hired someone 3 months ago to help you.

You are probably looking to hire a VA because they have a skillset you don’t have and it’s okay and it’s right to lean on them to drive the car for a bit & lay out the plan. Let them help you figure out what you need. You give the goal and let them show you how to get there. You don’t need a perfect list in order to setup a first call to chat about services. It usually starts as an idea for 2 things and then it grows together as you work together.

2) I want control of my business.

Warranted, true, heard. I’m a bit of a control freak myself. Usually business owners feel better in that state of control. But what that hold on control may be doing is limiting your growth and actually causing YOU more stress. 

And hiring a VA is far from giving up control. Usually the way a VA is successful is when the business owner has a process, a checklist, a system that the VA repeats. Just the same the business owner would. That’s actually control. They aren’t in your business just running a muck. They are doing what you say to do, in the way you say to do it. You actually are in control if the relationship with the VA is setup correctly.  

And I’ll go back to number one, if you didn’t know that you needed processes, checklists or systems or they aren’t setup - that's okay too! Most businesses don’t have those things until the bring in someone who isn’t inside the owner’s brain knowing all the pieces to the puzzle.

3) I need to organize my business first.

This is a common one so above all, remember that you do not be embarrassed to go to a VA and say “things are a bit messy back here.” They literally will be excited that you reached for help and that they get a project they love! You should hire someone who likes different things than you - my team LOVES a mess, we love to organize. And that outside eye on how to organize may be what you need, that kick in the butt or else it would have been done long ago. Different ideas, different tips pay off. Let them clean it up in a way that works for you.

4) I won’t need consistent help.

That’s fine! Then find a VA that fits your needs. Did you know there are 40 million VAs - we all work differently.  I’d say if you had to give two categories of the way we work - there are VAs that work on retainers meaning you sign a contract for x amount of hours over the length of the contract. That works for businesses that do have consistent work. But there are many different models - my business model personally is hourly with no minimums. We work when you need, we ramp up, we scale back - all in line with you. So there are solutions if you don’t have consistency, you just need to keep that in mind when you search.

5) It’s faster if I do it myself.

Yes, true. Usually in the first month of working with a VA, yes you will be faster than them as they learn. But when you get through that training phase and things are set up for success between the two of you, they will get faster. They will become almost more efficient than you in the tasks you give them. And when you add up those 7 minutes you take to publish a social media post every day let says for a week, that’s actually eating up 1800 minutes of your year without you really  knowing it. Small tasks pile up and I’ll challenge you to ask yourself, even if you can do it faster, do YOU need to be the one doing it? Can you spare a bit of a slower start to achieve a faster end result? And how can you set up the VA for success to do it just as fast as you? And then I’ll go back to - what else can you do with those new found 1800 minutes.  It’s more about what else you can be doing with your time vs the mindset of your speed vs someone else’s.

6) Trusting someone is hard.

Yes, 100%. This is probably THE biggest hurdle to overcome when you are trying to open that door to the virtual assistant world.  There are ways to still gate keep certain areas of your business that you don’t want them to have access too, there are ways to gate keep even inside certain softwares they use, they do not need the keys to the kingdom.

I’d advise you to find someone you connect with on a personal level and you can see that they have systems in place within their own business to safe guard passwords, customer data and anything else that is sensitive in your business. Ask them those questions on your vetting calls.   Ask how they store passwords. Ask them their preference of working inside someone’s email. Learn who they are and who their staff is. Read reviews, testimonials, talk to their current clients. Ease into it.  There is someone out there that fits your needs if you ask the right questions and go with the right company.

If any of these fears resonated with you and hopefully any of my solutions are things you are ready to tackle - I’d love to hear from you! Head over to the Contact Page on my website and let's chat!