As a small business owner, the decision to hire for help is a big one that can impact your business’s growth, performance, and financials. VAs or virtual assistants are some of the most affordable and effective for businesses where many tasks do not require the assistant to be physically present in the same physical location as the business owner, the term virtual assistant. However, there are still many key factors to be considered before making that decision.
The first question is often at what point should you hire a VA? Should you do it early on when you don’t quite have enough business yet? Or should you wait until you’ve grown your business to a level, where you have so much work and absolutely need relief? To help us make a decision, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each scenario.
In the scenario where you hire a VA early on in your business. Let’s assume your business is doing well, but you know it can be much better. It isn’t quite to the level of performance you want yet, and you realize that there are things that you hate doing or spend way too much time working on. In this scenario, there definitely is potential for high ROI if you bring on a VA and delegate the tasks that you don’t enjoy or spend too much time on. This will allow you to focus more on high ROI activities and tasks that you enjoy and this should result in getting your business to that next level.
However, when you hire early on, your business may not have much income and or working capital yet. So naturally, the cost is the first concern that comes to mind. A VA is not free and now you will be losing some of your income to your VA. If the hire does not result in positive growth for your business, then yes you will be taking a loss. Alternatively, if you think of it as an investment for your business, that will return a high ROI so it is a risk worth taking.
On the other hand, if you choose to wait until your business is at a level where you absolutely need relief because you have no time to do anything. Then how can you expect that your VA will be able to help you when you don’t have the time to properly train them and bring them up to speed? In addition, another perspective is that if your business is to the point where you are so busy, how much potential business are you losing by not being able to keep up with the demand from clients you’re working with and leads that you weren’t ever able to follow up with because you were so busy. Now imagine, if you hired early on when you weren’t so busy, you would have had time to train and teach your VA properly. This would have resulted in them being able to help you more and provide a bigger impact once your business takes off.
Another factor to consider when hiring a VA is that you now have pressure and accountability to produce and stay focused on your business! You are no longer working to only make money for yourself and your family. Now you are also responsible for the livelihood of your VA and their family. This means that you must have work for your business and in turn, you must have work for your VA. So this is a natural motivator that will help you focus and grow your business.
Loss of income vs cost motivation as a result of hiring a VA. As I said previously, hiring a VA will hit you where it hurts most, your wallet. Because you have to pay your VA, you will have a reduced income. So what can you do about this? Well, you have two options: one either take the loss of income, or two work harder and produce more income to not only make up the cost of hiring the VA but increase your income beyond what you’ve been doing by yourself!
There you have it, these are some of the key factors to consider when hiring a VA. If I missed anything or you have further questions on this topic, please let me know and I can address them in a future post.