By Evan Ringler
What challenges are you currently facing with your business?
Maybe you’re a small business with venture capital and multiple store fronts with a high-growth strategy. Or maybe you’re a one-woman show owning and running her consulting firm in Washington, D.C.. All businesses face similar challenges and one of the biggest limitations to growth and expansion is simply, workers. How do you find vetted, qualified candidates who are outperforming your expectations? Will your new hire care about your business as much as you do? The other piece you’ve been thinking about is the amount of hours this person would work; you think the role may be a 10 hour/wk job, maybe 15. But as you think about it, it’s really hard just to commit to 5 –– what if there isn’t as much work as you thought?
No matter which type of business owner you are, you’ve undoubtedly heard of, considered, or even fantasized about the idea of bringing on fractional help (more specifically, a virtual assistant). But where do you even begin?
There are many things to consider when looking to bring on a new team member. The first is whether you need a full-time person or if you’d be better served by an hourly, contracted role. It’s easy to get ahead of ourselves when it comes to the hopes and aspirations for our businesses, yet a cautious optimism usually serves us best. Discernment will likely lead us to making the more logical first-step of hiring fractional help that can scale with us as we grow.
Even though we gain confidence that a virtual assistant is our best next step, there will always be resistance to change and fear of whether the investment of both time and resources will ever pan out. The hiring process is daunting, even if it is only for fractional help, and the amount of options in the marketplace can lead all of us to twiddle our thumbs and never move forward in light of the decision-fatigue so often faced. It’s hard to know who can be trusted, what is the real ROI of hiring a VA, and how can I take on the additional responsibility of training someone when I can barely keep up as it is?
The big question is: How can I be confident that hiring a VA is my best next step? And how can I overcome the natural inhibitions that stand in the way?
Having seen a myriad of small businesses in all industries, here are some of the feelings and experiences you may find yourself relating to:
- You feel like things are constantly falling behind in your calendar, with rescheduling being more consistent than follow-through.
- Your business is growing towards a place of abundance and you’re really wanting to capture the energy you currently have to further amplify what you can do.
- You have a small team with tight margins and really don’t need (or can’t afford) another full-time hire.
- Your business has less predictable revenue cycles, or seasonal income.
- You are the business owner who wears all the hats, even though you’re not good at all of them.
Each of these scenarios fill in the pieces of the puzzle that ask the question: is a VA right for me? If you found yourself nodding your internal head to some of these examples, then I can assure you that the right time is now.
Business requires us as owners to wear multiple hats (if not all of them) constantly. When we are busy executing the work, there is no time to invest towards working on the business and not just in it. While it may not feel like a big deal in the day-to-day, over time this gap creates a larger divide between where your business is now and where it could be, or even should be, if priorities were realigned.
The most important decisions and strategy come not from time spent on the urgent, but rather on energy put toward the less urgent but crucially important aspects that will enable long-term success and a sustainable future for your business and your people. This is the single-most important reason why bringing a Virtual Assistant onto your team matters, and why it really is a non-negotiable if longevity is to be attained.
This reframe, from a line-item expense to a long-term investment, is vital for the business owner to make. Without shifting our mentality we will forever be slaves to the resistance that stems from the bottom line. It takes courage, intentionality, and future-vision in order to overcome this resistance. Even more importantly, it takes a natural next step that is readily available to us. A step that is so easy, we would be foolish not to take.
Like you, I’ve shared these same fears and questions when considering hiring a VA. Yet, in taking that step of faith and making the decision to hire a Virtual Assistant, I’ve experienced abundance in a variety of ways. I now have a teammate, a right-hand, who can ensure the business is running smoothly in my absence. I have more time (about 20 hours each week!) to focus on the business instead of being in the day-to-day minutia or fires that arise. The greatest gift has been the peace of mind I’ve experienced; hiring a Virtual Assistant has empowered me to reframe my perspective and know it’s not “up to me” to keep the business afloat.
Evan Ringler is the Founder of Hey Girl Friday –– a boutique, Virtual Assistant Agency based in the United States. HGF’s Virtual Assistants, or Advocates as they like to call them, are the best at what they do: offering top-tier administrative support in a fractional capacity. If you’ve considered hiring a VA but don’t know where to start, reach out to Hey Girl Friday at hello@heygirlfriday.co to start the conversation today.
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