You don’t have to do it alone: How a VA can help

This shorty episode is for all of the mompreneurs who are looking for ways to lighten the load by hiring help without taking on a full-time employee or payroll – the answer is Virtual Assistants!

Hiring a virtual assistant can be a game changer as you grow your business. If you are beginning to toy with the idea of hiring employees, this is a terrific way to test-drive that process. I walk you through a few ideas of how they can streamline your time, and potential tasks to outsource so more of your time is freed up to do what you do best, run your business!

I also share a mistake I made when I first hired virtual assistants and the steps you should take before you start your own hiring search. These remote freelancers can take on tasks that maybe you haven’t even considered before and this initial investment can make your life so much easier at work.

• This episode is sponsored by Devix Kitchens

Read the Full Transcript ⬇️

Hey, hey, hey, it’s Rebecca and you are listening to Resilient by Design.

[00:00:04] Today’s a shorty episode, and I want to talk about virtual assistants. And specifically, I wanted to do this topic close to Mother’s Day, just because I feel like all the mamas out there could use some support. I’m sure the dads could use support too. So this could apply to you as well. But. But as a mom myself, I know how crazy it can be and how much is on our plates.

[00:00:24] And running a business is just one more thing. In addition to running a family, running a household, and let’s face it. Oftentimes the buck stops with us and we are the ones who. Truthfully, we’re doing a lot of the work at home. We’re doing a lot of the planning. We’re trying to organize. We’re mentally trying to organize everything.

[00:00:43] And so on this Mother’s Day episode, I really wanted to talk about how to make your life a little bit easier. I know you could hire help at home and that can be helpful too, but how do we make our lives a little bit easier at work? One of the ways that you can do that is by hiring a virtual assistant.

[00:01:00] You could hire an in-person assistant as well, but today I wanted to talk about virtual assistant, just because. There are so many resources out there these days. It is so accessible. Now, I just kind of want to walk you through what they can do for you because this is not an ad I don’t have. I’m not selling virtual assistants.

[00:01:16] If anything, I don’t know the best place to find them. I have a few resources and I share those inside Designer’s Room. There are a few different companies where I have found virtual assistants myself, but I just want to be clear that a virtual assistant really essentially is. Just a freelancer or someone who works for you on contract that could be based on a retainer, or it could be hourly, and they basically just help you do whatever it is you need help with.

[00:01:43] So, In my experience, I have used virtual assistants for marketing help. So for social media, planning and posting my social media, I’ve used virtual assistant help for the marketing, the backend of setting up my course launches, making sure that the platform is all set up, managing the Facebook groups, getting that set up.

[00:02:03] I’m currently working with three different, what you might call virtual assistants, but essentially they’re just freelancers. They just happen to live in different cities. One of them’s in Toronto, but one’s in Pennsylvania and one’s in California. So really the idea is that you’re opening up this pool where you can find talent and help from anywhere.

[00:02:23] There are virtual assistants for marketing. As I mentioned, those are all sorts of marketing-related tasks, but you can really find tons of virtual assistants who can help you with administrative tasks. And I think that is probably the first place where a designer if you are looking to hire, but you’re not ready to have full-time employees, you don’t want to have a payroll, figure out all of that, what that all looks like, and maybe have a hard time finding someone in your city, and you can’t give people full-time hours.

[00:02:48] You should consider hiring someone to virtually. They can do things like Organize your inbox. This is something that I want to talk about because when I was first starting out, I couldn’t imagine anybody else touching my email. Like I don’t want anyone to see my email. No, that is something you need to let go of.

[00:03:06] Let go of that sense of control. A good virtual assistant can go through, they can weed out the spam, categorize, can put things into folders, and then there can be a folder where it’s just for your eyes, just for you to see and There’s a lot of emails that we get that Are a vendor asking if we want to do a lunch and learn, or it could just be somebody saying, Hey, do you want to meet for coffee?

[00:03:29] Like. They’re not going to necessarily respond to your email from your mom or your kid’s school teacher, but they can help you think about the hours that you spend just trying to get to inbox zero. I’m just going to quickly respond to that because I just don’t want it sitting in my inbox. If that’s you, then you’re like me because I’ve always been very diligent.

[00:03:49] And in the last few years, I’ve learned to let a little, let go a little bit of the control of needing to be at inbox zero because it’s not. It would take literally me being on my computer all day and I would do nothing else than respond to emails and write and send emails. Virtual assistants can also help you with other things, booking travel. Maybe you want to go to High-Point market. They can figure out what the best flight is, and what the best hotel is. They can coordinate that. Probably if I’d had help with my last trip to High-Point, I wouldn’t have missed the fact that the free shuttle didn’t start until Saturday and I arrived on Friday.

[00:04:22] And so I ended up having to last-minute scramble. And rent a car for an extra cost of money and an extra inconvenience and stress. That’s another area that can help you with. They can also help you internally. So if you’re someone who’s taking power of process and you’re like, Oh my gosh, I love all of the teaching and now I just need to implement and I just need to create my own internal documents and I want to take Rebecca’s templates, but like even taking someone’s template and filling in your own info that takes time.

[00:04:48] That is something that you could outsource to a virtual assistant. You could say. Here’s what we’re doing, or you could even have your assistant watch a course or a lesson. You could send your assistant a YouTube video. You can create maybe a loom or maybe they could create a loom for you to show you what they’ve done and how they’ve set things up in your Google drive.

[00:05:06] You could hire a virtual assistant for like four hours a week. There’s no minimum or well, there’s probably a maximum, but there’s no minimum to how many hours that person could help you. And maybe it is, I don’t know what they charge. Maybe it’s 20 bucks an hour. For four hours a week, or maybe it’s 30 bucks or maybe it’s more than, maybe it’s like 60 bucks, whatever it is.

[00:05:27] If you can get really specific and you know those areas where the assistant can help you, you can free up your time. If you’re listening to this shorty episode and you’re like, Oh, I’ve been thinking about this and wondering, and I don’t know, just do a Google search. Just start, ask around. If you’re in Designer’s Room, just start.

[00:05:45] Post a message in the Facebook group, and ask where other people have found them. I will share in that group the places where I have found my virtual assistants for various tasks and the other companies that I’ve heard of, I haven’t actually hired from, but I know of. Because I think that the biggest hurdle to any of us hiring is that first step.

[00:06:04] It’s uncomfortable. It’s scary. We feel like, Oh, I don’t want to give up control. You could hire a virtual assistant to do your sales calls and your discovery calls for you if you really want. And you find someone with that skill set. I had a designer send me a message the other night saying, Rebecca, do you know people who have someone else do their discovery calls?

[00:06:22] Like it might make them look more professional. And I said, yeah, I do. Actually. I know designers who have People, and all they do is answer their phones virtually, and schedule and host the discovery call. They essentially have a script, they know the business really well, they’re able to say, okay, and assess if it’s the right fit, and then that virtual assistant books the consultation.

[00:06:43] You may not be ready quite for that, but I am telling you, if you dream it, it does exist. You just need to start looking. And before you look, what I recommend you do, because this is a mistake that I made early on, I was like, I just need help. I need help with everything. And then when I was looking, people wanted to know specifically what the tasks were.

[00:07:03] And I didn’t even really know myself. Now I’m much more specific and intentional. And a lot of these sites are going to ask you to have a specific list of what This person will do because they want to make sure they’re matching you or they’re matching you with somebody who has that skill set. And so that you can have success with them or the individuals who are reading your posts will know whether or not it’s the right fit for them.

[00:07:23] And so you’re going to save yourself a lot of time and headache. So I really recommend the first thing you do is just write it down on a piece of paper on a Google Doc, and type it out. All the areas that you would want help with. And then what are the individual tasks associated with those areas? You might be surprised by the volume of tasks and you might need to get selective on which ones you want to outsource, but let this be the year that you take a step forward and you find the right one.

[00:07:48] Some assistance in your business. Mama, you deserve it. Even if it means at the end of the day, you can go pick up your kids from school. And because you know, somebody else is cleaning up your inbox, or you know that somebody else is working on the thing that probably is not the best use of your time, let’s be honest.

[00:08:07] And yes, it’s going to cost you a little bit of money, but the idea is that in the long run. It’s going to improve your efficiency and productivity, and you’ll be able to earn and make more money as a result. So. So that’s my little push to get you out there hiring. I can tell you one of the hardest parts of running my business over the years has been managing people.

[00:08:26] I’m not trained. I don’t have any experience in HR or management. So that has been a steep learning curve, but I can tell you that I started hiring Right away, like within my first year of business, I had either an intern or a part-time junior assistant helping me and I think hiring out even small tasks is one of the quickest ways to free your time up so that you can focus on those things that move the needle and you don’t have to grow a massive team, but I think you should do it.

[00:08:56] Definitely consider a virtual assistant, especially if you’re someone who’s feeling a little bit overwhelmed, a little bit overworked, because you got a lot of other things going on in your life and I don’t want your business to take over your life. All right. I hope that was helpful. I’ll see you soon.