Whether it’s your first time hiring, or if you need to get a second Virtual Assistant, it’s critical that you understand the factors that will indicate you’re ready to hire.
The biggest mistake to avoid?
Don’t wait until you’re needing them IMMEDIATELY as this can cause you to just hire a warm body, someone to alleviate the pressure.
I’ve experienced this and seen it in practice in the company that I used to work for years ago. The Human Resource department was directed to pressure us to hire people just so they could show that we were hiring, with the assumption that you hire people, you’ll get more work done.
I remember delaying the hiring because we couldn’t find the right fit, and sure enough, it wasn’t much long afterwards where they froze hiring and I would have had to let someone go.
In almost all areas of your business (and life), it’s so important to think long-term.
That’s one of the reasons why it’s imperative you hire for CAPACITY, which is one of the three pillars we teach for getting a Rockstar Virtual Assistant in our course and community.
What this means is you focus less on what their skill level is right now and more on what their skill level will be like in six months.
OK, so how do you know if you’re ready to hire someone?
Here are 9 indicators that you can think about and evaluate to see if you’re ready.
9 Indicators that show you may need to hire a Virtual Assistant
1. You’re feeling overwhelmed on a regular basis
If you’re anything like us, you’re going to feel overwhelmed from time-to-time as you want to do more, accomplish more, learn more….just MORE!
That’s more of a self-inflicted overwhelm that will never go away no matter how many people you hire, clients you fire, etc.
Because there’s always more out there for us (which is a great thing)!
We’re talking about feeling overwhelmed constantly because you have a lot of work to do that can actually be given to someone else, and it’s keeping you from doing what you do best.
There are hundreds of things that a Virtual Assistant can do that will let you have more joy and enthusiasm for your work and life.
In our course, we have a pretty long list of those things, but here are a few that you may not have thought about:
- Research a topic for you
- Execute on something and create a process (something that you’d normally do)
- Social Media, not just posting but also monitoring
- Auditing of your processes
- Website maintenance
- Listening to a podcast and giving you a summary
- “Sit beside you” to solve a problem (we use this technique constantly to quickly resolve issues)
- Check your emails and notify you of what’s most important
While you may think someone can’t do the task as well as you, even if you’re right, we guarantee that there will be some tasks they will do BETTER than you, and you can’t do everything yourself.
So if you’re feeling overwhelmed regularly, it is likely time to hire someone.
2. You’re working too much outside your strengths
For maximum productivity and enjoyment of our work and business, we should be spending as much time as possible working within our strengths and not outside of them.
In fact, this alone can cause false, and continual, feelings of overwhelm.
You can realize this when you just don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, or you dread a significant part of your workday.
If you want to know what your strengths actually are, you can take an assessment. The best way to do this is to get the hardcover book that has a code to take the assessment, and the book is awesome for reference. Below is our affiliate link:
If you feel you’re working too much outside your strengths, you’ll want to hire someone that compliments you.
3. You want to focus on a particular area to improve your business
Having someone on your team with a particular focus will help you to make enormous strides in creating/offering a new product or service.
This is what we’re doing at Pro Website Creators, with the development of an SEO service. We have someone working part-time to help us work through bringing this to market.
Or if you have that product/service and you want more work to be accomplished, you can hire someone focused there.
Or if you want a certain aspect of a product/service to be of much higher quality, you can hire someone to develop that for you, and begin executing on that. And there is no reason why that person you hire to do this has to be with you forever.
4. When you want more time
One of our clients, Sara, wanted to simply spend more time with her family.
She wanted to get some of her life back.
So we helped her get a technical virtual assistant from the Philippines that has changed her life.
If you want more time to do things other than work, such as taking up a hobby, or even if you want to build a team to execute in your company so you can have more time to pursue other things, then it’s time to hire someone.
5. You’re turning down business because you either can’t accept the new business or it’s outside your organization’s capabilities
Do you find yourself turning down new business, or referring out to other businesses because you don’t offer what some people want?
Then consider hiring to expand your team to either help you execute on more business or to bring a new product/service to market.
Of course, don’t go crazy with this; do one thing at a time, then move on from there.
6. Your turnaround times have gotten longer in delivering your product/service
If it’s taking you longer than you want to deliver goods and services to your clients, then it’s likely time to hire someone to help you execute on that.
It could be you’ve accepted TOO much business.
It could be that what you’re delivering has gotten more complicated to do it well, like building out an e-commerce website versus a brochure site.
If so, then you may need more help.
7. Your waitlist is unacceptable to several people
Many successful businesses have some type of a queue that they put clients into at various stages of them delivering their product or service.
Even Amazon puts you into a queue when it comes to delivering a physical product that you’ve ordered.
If the length of time you’re delaying is causing you to lose clients or makes them unhappy, it may be time to hire someone to help you.
8. Your waitlist is growing
Similar to the above, if your waitlist, or queue, is getting longer and is not staying stable or improving, you’re going to need to hire someone, or offload portions of what you’re doing, very soon.
9. Your personal life has changed, and you need help
This hits all of us; there will be some type of family concern, maybe an extended illness, you may want to volunteer somewhere, or ya just wanna take a dang vacation!
A few years ago, Dave’s wife, Cheryl, was in the hospital several days for an emergency appendectomy. Because he had built a team, he was able to spend the time taking care of her and not worrying about major delays in client work.
Finally...
We’ve only got so much time in our lives, and it’s our choice how we spend it.
Choose wisely!
And if your choice is to hire someone, signup for our course and community!