I am thrilled and excited by this question because I’ve found on my own journey, that there can be so much fear in building your team in your business. Hearing this question is so exciting because it lets me know that people are thinking about building their team and this is a fear that can really hold you back in growing your business so I’m ready to nip it in the bud!

I want to give you the black and white moments of when you absolutely need a VA (Virtual Assistant) and then I want to share a few gray area whispers that you might hear along your journey that actually point to you needing a VA. 

You need a VA when you are hitting consistent 4-figure revenue months. Whether that’s $3,000 or $9,000 once you’re hitting these numbers consistently you need to bring in a VA. That doesn’t mean you need a full time employee, a few hours a week at $20-$25 an hour is totally fine.

The longer you wait, the more money you’re putting on the line to lose. I know, that sounds dramatic, but I’m serious. By waiting to hire, you’re unconsciously building a bottleneck in your business because you’ll still have to train your new hire. You’ll still have to let them know your processes. You’ll have to do some onboarding. So if you wait 3 months to hire, that’s 3 months of extra time and capacity that you could have freed to make more money in your business, but you spent burning the candle at both ends instead. 

I’ll be honest, when you bring someone on, you should expect a 30 to 60 day runaway before they really start going without needing to check in with you constantly. It can also take 6 weeks or longer to even find someone you want to hire. So add that up and think about whether or not you really want to wait until you literally cannot handle all the work you’ve got, or start the hiring process now and minimize your stress and maximize your capacity and revenue. 

I cannot stress this enough, but hiring a VA frees up your time for revenue-generating activity. You do not need to get caught up in the minutiae of setting up a Zoom call. You do not need to be in the weeds on Canva. You do not need to be tracking down invoices or generating contracts. All of these things you do can be given to a VA and you'd be surprised at how much time is freed up for you to focus on generating revenue.

So there’s the black and white of it all. Now for the gray areas and whispers you might get that indicate you should invest in a VA. 

• You’re forgetting about money in your business

  • Forgot to send an invoice?

  • Forgot to follow up on a past due invoice?

  • Didn’t even realize you had a past due invoice?

  • Forgot to respond to a potential client's email?

• Time Study

  • Choose a time tracking software (there are plenty online!) or create a spreadsheet to track your time. You’ll want to track how much time you spend doing each activity you need to do to run your business, whether or not it’s a revenue-generating task, and whether or not that task brings you joy. 

  • Track your activities and log them every 15 minutes for two weeks and then look back at that data and determine how much of your tasks are bringing in revenue and joy, and whether or not the ones that aren’t fitting the bill can be delegated to a VA (they usually always can)

• You’re Playing Small

  • Ever thought about submitting an RFP to something before realizing you probably don’t have the capacity to handle the project if you get it?

  • Or maybe there’s a new service you want to launch that you know will help your audience tremendously but you don’t have the time or brainspace to really get it sorted and launched?

  • Do not let fear allow you to become complacent and keep you from spreading your wings! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, fear is a tool of oppression that convinces you that playing small is actually as big as you can go. That is a lie.

If any of these whispers speak to you, you need a VA. Point, blank, period. And shoot, getting a VA could get your money on time. Getting a VA could pay for the VA. Getting a VA could get you out of Canva and into money-making meetings. It could free up the time you need to develop your next-level service offer. Getting a VA can be scary, terrifying even, but once you hire and get your revenue-generating time back? Yeah, you’ll be happy I told you so. 😉

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