What is a VA? How to hire one for your business? What can you delegate to your VA? Let’s talk about how to grow your business with the help of a VA.

Do you feel overwhelmed with the daily workload on your plate? As a starting entrepreneur, pretty much everything that goes into growing your business is up to you. You’re the visionary and the one implementing all the ideas. 

But being a one woman show often means that your ability to grow depends on your own bandwidth. This effectively puts a cap on your business capabilities and reduces the freedom you were likely after as an entrepreneur.

Even As A Solopreneur, Outsourcing Tasks Is An Effective Growth Tactic

Once you’ve decided that it’s time to get some help, there are different options depending on what you need:

• A specialized contractor: If you’re looking to offload specific projects or tasks and feel like you need an expert, a contractor is the closest you’ll get to hiring a team member without the long term commitment and the legal responsibilities of hiring an employee. A classic example is your accountant! They’ll come in, take care of your taxes, maybe set up a better financial system that makes sense for you, and let you run business as usual. You can find writers, web designers, event coordinators, and much more to fit your business as it evolves beyond your own set of skills. 

• A Virtual Assistant: A Virtual Assistant, often referred to as a VA, is a type of contractor you can hire to take care of many different areas of your business. Keep in mind that your VA is often the person who will take care of your busywork to free up your time. Unlike the graphic designer or marketing specialist, your VA is hands on in your daily operations and you’ll likely want to find someone with a broad set of skills to offload more tasks as your relationship (and business) grows.

• An Online Business Manager: For most entrepreneurs, the road to an Online Business Manager begins when they feel ready to bring someone in to handle the day-to-day management of their business operations. Unlike a VA, your OBM is someone who comes in to remove the burden of everyday decision-making from you to let you run with your core genius. She’s not your assistant but a strategic partner that’s with you to make high-level plays and help move your business forward.

3 Tasks Your VA Can Do To Help You Run Your Business

Have you heard the 80-20 rule? Known as the Pareto Principle, the 80-20 rule estimates that 80% of all outcomes are the result of only 20% of all causes (or actions). 

Curious about the 80-20 rule? Read more: The 80/20 Rule And How It Can Change Your Life  

Your Virtual Assistant’s role is priceless: By taking care of the backend of your business, she frees up your time so you can hone in on the tasks that are likely to have the biggest impact in your business’s long term development and sustainability.

Your Virtual Assistant can help with:

Email Management

Your Virtual Assistant can help you save time by creating systems to limit the amount of time you spend checking your inbox. She does this by creating filters, clearing up the junk, organizing tasks into action items, and even replying to agreed-upon requests (such as invites, cold emails, and even initial screening for clients and/or team members).

Content Creation

Whether you offer products or services, offering valuable content to your audience is the best way to establish your authority and legitimacy as a provider. 

Your VA is your ally in creating valuable content for your channels, including your website, social media, digital downloads and more. She can also step in if you already have a robust library that you want to repurpose into graphics, worksheets, and other formats. 

Social Media Management

In line with Content Creation, Social Media Management is seen by many as a necessary evil. 

The truth is that digital marketing is here to stay. As a business owner, especially now that many operations have moved online, you likely understand how important it is to show up where your potential clients are.

Your Virtual Assistant is your best bet in ensuring you’re consistently showing up and adding value to your followers, which means that you’re proving time and time again that you’re an expert they can trust and rely on.

Collaborate With Your Online Business Manager On These 3 Tasks 

As we covered earlier, your OBM’s role differs from your VA’s: 

• Working with a VA means delegating time-consuming tasks that don’t exactly bring in money but are still essential business needs (your inbox, content creation and management, social media logistics…). 

• An Online Business Manager is your right hand in implementing the money-making side of business: Your strategy, operations, OKRs, and more.

Your OBM can help you with:

Strategic Planning

It’s simple: Without a clear direction, your business won’t go anywhere. But as a visionary, you may need an external point of view to help you turn your ideas into a reality.

This is where your OBM steps in: She’s with you to make your vision a reality by designing an action plan, setting milestones, defining objectives and assigning responsibilities to make your project go smoothly.

Operations Management

Project and team management are easily some of the most time-consuming aspects of owning a business. As a business owner, it’s fairly common to find yourself doing less of the work you love and more of the management side of things as you level up.

Your OBM partners with you to implement systems designed to make daily operations run seamlessly and oversee your team’s performance. She’s also able to predict when help may be needed and can facilitate both the selection and the onboarding of new team members.

Curious about system implementation? Read more: Creating SOPs for Your Small Business 

Analytics and reporting

Working with your OBM, you and your team can create the habit of tracking KPIs for marketing campaigns and social media performance, analyzing data from your Google Analytics, comparing MoM (Month over Month) performance, and even zooming out and conducting Year over Year reviews to foresee trends and seasonal growth.

Once you hone in on your stats, you’ll be able to make informed decisions about the direction of your business in terms of development, investing resources, and exploring opportunities with confidence.

Related: What are the key performance indicators you should track in your business?  

As A One-person Show, Your Business Growth Depends On Your Bandwidth

For many business owners, the point of having a business is having the freedom to design a work life around the things that matter most in their personal life, not the other way around. 

The downside is that, unlike a corporate environment, your growth will depend on your own bandwidth. While it’s tempting to do all the things all the time, this road only leads to exhaustion.

Bringing in additional help (whether a VA or an OBM, depending on where you are in business) is crucial in sharpening your focus on the real money-making activities, whether it is working directly with your clients, developing new services and products, or connecting with your dream client–all things no one else can do for you. 

Are you ready for an Online Business Manager?