You have probably heard this phrase before…”it takes a village.”  Well it’s the truth in more ways than one.  If you truly want to scale your business, you need help.

How to Plan for Growth

Hiring a virtual assistant is a major step in growing your company. With a VA taking
over certain tasks and aspects of your business, you can do more. They give you
more time to plan and strategize, and more room to scale. The key to hiring and
working with a VA successfully is to plan well.

What Tasks Can You Outsource?

Start by thinking about what tasks you want to outsource. Consider tasks you’d like
to outsource today, as well as those you might find helpful as your business
grows. For example, you may have some routine daily activities you can get rid
of now, but also plan to turn over your social media and blog writing to
someone in the future.

You need to clarify which tasks you’ll outsource so you can find a qualified person
to handle them. This will determine the skills and experience you’re looking
for.

Training and Onboarding Your VA

When you first hire a virtual assistant, you’ll need to onboard them. This is the
process of kicking off your relationship and getting them started. It includes:

• Teaching them the important core values and vision of your business so that they’re on
  the same page
• Getting to know them personally so your relationship gets started on the right foot
• Training them, which includes providing training materials and protocols for
  accomplishing tasks you’ll delegate
• Following up with your VA to make sure they don’t have any issues and to giving them
  constructive feedback.

This process is important at the beginning of your relationship with your VA, but
you won’t need to continue after the first few months or so (though it never
hurts to give feedback). What’s important here is to have everything planned
and in place before you hire them.

Create a Communication and Workflow Plan

Before hiring a virtual assistant, you’ll need to set up a plan for working together.
This includes any tools you’ll use, such as a project management software
program or special platform for communicating.

Since you’re working together virtually, you’ll have to choose a method and frequency
for communicating with your VA. Even if they know what to do and the work is
going smoothly, it’s good to touch base regularly and see if they’re having any
issues. There may also be changes you need to tell them about.

The Growth Mindset

Finally, there’s a certain mindset you have to cultivate in order to hire a virtual
assistant. There are risks involved and you’ll be handing over some aspects of
your business to someone else. During the process of hiring and working with a
VA, keep in mind the benefits of this working relationship and the future
growth it will enable.

We’ve only scratched the surface here and I have much more I can tell you about
hiring and working with a VA.

Are you ready to start growing your business with your first VA?

I’m offering a full course that teaches you step-by-step how to find the right VA
and work with them, complete with learning exercises so that you get started as
you learn. You can learn more about my course via my free download today.

Please post comments below.  We would love to hear from you.