Five Signs It’s Time to Bring in a Virtual Assistant

Atiba de Souza: There are five signs it's time to hire a virtual assistant or some help in general in your business. 

Hey, everybody! Welcome to the Build Your Team show. I am your host Atiba and we get together and talk all about how to build fantastic and wonderful teams for your business so that your business can grow. And today we're going to dive into five signs. Five signs that you should be on the lookout for, to know that you are ready to hire a virtual assistant. Someone who can help you. 

So let's dive right in. Number 1, tell me if this is you, are you spending a ton of time on administrative tasks? Like, are they just running your life? Are you spending more time doing admin tasks? You know, the tasks that support making money, but don't actually make the money? Are you spending more time on those tasks than you are on the tasks that will actually grow your business and bring in more customers? 

If you're a small business owner, you're spending a ton of time on admin stuff, yeah, it's time to get some help, guys. It is time to get some help. And a virtual assistant is perfect for this because you've been doing those tasks so you can systemize and you can figure out what needs to be done in the order that it needs to be done in. And then you can bring someone in and train them to do those tasks for you. So that's number 1. 

Number 2. Number 2, you're struggling to meet your deadlines. So let's say you're not spending all your time on, on admin tasks, but you're actually trying to get your work done. And you're, you're doing client work, but man, you are always behind because there's just so much to do. There's just so much to do for this client, for all of these clients and you're constantly behind. Yep, that's another moment that you know it is time to get some help. 

Get yourself some help. It's time to hire a virtual assistant or some other type of assistant. And if you're hiring a virtual assistant, you want to look at, okay, what are the tasks and make it specific and narrow. What are the tasks that I can take off of my list to give to someone else that they can do, that will help me in this process? Sometimes it's as simple as research. Sometimes it's just that simple. Sometimes there are things that you need to look up, like, you know, you need to compare this software system versus that software system. And you have to figure out which one is better. 

Well, if you know what you're looking for, you can tell that to your assistant and have them go do the research and come back and report to you. Maybe you need to hire someone. They can even help you with that. Let's say, for example, you-- I'm telling you, it's not even an example, this is something I'm doing right now. We need a fractional CMO! No, sorry. It's fractional CFO, financial officer. Fractional CFO. And I've got a virtual assistant who's an accountant. Well, she is great at going out and doing research and figuring out who will be a great fractional CFO for our business. Because she knows the questions to ask and she can bring a few candidates to me say "Hey, here are the guys that you, or the gals that you should interview", okay? So if you're struggling to meet deadlines, yup, it's a good time to look at getting help and getting a virtual assistant, all right? 

Number 3. You've reached your limit on what you're able to do for yourself. Now, this one kind of encompasses the first two because you are probably doing the admin tasks. You're probably doing all the client work but you just can't do more. Right? Maybe you've got new clients who want to start with you and yet can't. Maybe there's more, but you can't, maybe you can't because you've reached your physical limit. There are no more hours in the day that you can add. You've tried. I know I've tried. So if I've tried, you've probably tried to add a few more hours in a day or I've been lobbying for a long time for that 8th day of the week. It hasn't happened. Guess what? It's not going to happen. So, if you reached your limit, yeah, it's time to get some help. It is time to get some help, okay? 

Here's another one which kind of relates to the last one, but here's a different way of looking at it. You got know life outside of work. If all you do is work, okay? If all you do is work, and you have no life outside of work, you know, your friends go out, but you don't go with them. Your kids want to do things, but you tell them maybe later. Your spouse wants a date, but you're just too tired. If you've got no life outside of work and you're completely consumed by your business, you need help. You need help. Get some help! Get a virtual assistant that can help you. 

And then number 5. So all the rest of those were problems that could be existing, right, right now in your business. So those are signs, right? Those signs are based on problems inside of your business or inside of your personal life right now. Number 5, if you're having this issue, it's a great issue to have. It's not really a problem per se, okay? And here it is, you're ready to scale. So you've got efficiency. You've got efficiency in your business. Things are going well. Things are humming really, really well in your business. Things are going along well in your business. 

But now it's time to level up. It's time to scale up. And in the process of scaling, you may need to bring in, or you may need new skill around you. New talent around you that you don't possess yourself or that isn't currently on your team right now. That, my friends, is a great place to be. And the perfect time to also hire in a virtual assistant. 

Let me give you an example of this. So for, with my agency, we've been doing content writing and content marketing and SEO for a very, very long time, okay? And the pandemic has hit and people, which is kind of weird, with more time on their hands, people stop wanting to read and they wanted more video. 

And so we've been looking at, okay, how do we deliver the same results? How do we scale up? Deliver the same results for our clients, but now do it in video. Well, I've got a bunch of writers on our team. They don't know video. They don't know video editing. And so in order to do this, even though the content is going to be the same, but we're not just delivering it on video, we needed video editors. 

And so we went out and hired a team of video editors, guys. And so you can bring in new talent. A new skill that can help you scale your business up. 

So those are the five signs. Five signs that you need help. Five signs that you need a virtual assistant. Five signs that you should be looking for someone right now. 

Let me go through them again really quickly. You're spending more time on administrative tasks. That's number 1. 

You're struggling to meet your client deadlines. Number 2.  

Number 3, you've reached the limit on how much you can do. You just can't do more in a day. 

And then number 4, you got no life because you're spending all your time at work. You got no life. And then the 5th one, it's time to scale, and you're ready to scale this business. If any of those, any of them, and especially if you've got multiple of them, are you, it's time to get some help. 

Down below, I've listed some websites where you can go to find great virtual assistants.

Alright, everybody! That's my time for today. I hope you got something out of this. I'll see you later. Bye-bye!