You dreamed of creating your own small business, and voila, it’s already a reality.
Your first customers just bought your first product or service, and it’s a moment of celebration for you. You feel excited, proud, and motivated to keep going.
But as customers become more frequent and business starts to pick up, you will notice you’re no longer enough. This is true even if it’s still a small move like a simple product reorder.
You’re no longer enough to juggle all the tasks and responsibilities.
You’re no longer enough to work day and night to keep up with the demands of your growing business.
In short, you need help.
Knowing how to hire a virtual assistant for a small business will transform your busy and overwhelmed days into a more organised and productive work life.
This blog is a quick guide to hiring a virtual assistant for your small business.
A virtual personal assistant is a remote worker who helps small business owners and entrepreneurs with administrative tasks. These include scheduling, email communication, planning, customer service support, or any other task that can be done remotely.
They are also known as virtual office assistants or remote executive assistants.
Online virtual assistants carry out all the same tasks as in-person assistants but work remotely. They should be responsive to emails, have excellent communication skills, and be able to complete tasks efficiently without needing direct supervision.
A virtual assistant should take over most of your daily executive and administrative tasks. They allow you to focus on strategic business decisions and growth.
If the devil on your shoulder keeps reminding you that hiring a virtual assistant is just another expense in your already tight budget, invite him to read below.
Shot of young female worker with frustrated epression, thinks about good ideas for developing business, drinks coffee, has opened notepad on table, does paper work, isolated over pink background
Whatever you do/create/sell within the bounds of your small business, there are always one thousand and one related tasks to do well.
Selling handmade bracelets needs printing on packages, organising, shipping, wrapping, and labelling.
Writing a blog requires researching hashtags, sourcing images, and editing videos.
Even in completely service-based areas with solo practice like psychology, one needs to organize visits, schedule appointments, prepare the site, and more.
When you’re working on core products/services of your business, there is an endless list of auxiliary tasks that require attention. And the last thing you want as a small business owner is to waste your valuable time on mundane administrative tasks. The latter don’t directly contribute to growing your business.
As for the expenses, you eventually lose more money if you invest your time in administrative tasks (not earning what you really can) than if you pay a small business virtual assistant’s salary (earning what you really can).
Financiers consulting about information in document during meeting
Not that virtual personal assistants have a low-level job, but as a small business owner you probably have found your mission in something bigger than schedule management, appointment setting, or database updating.
Your business is your passion, and it’s where you excel. It’s where you bring your unique skills and creativity to the table.
Imagine pausing your flow of creative ideas and strategies to spend hours on tedious tasks like data entry or social media management. Imagine wasting your motivated and excited energy on tasks that don’t utilise your strengths and talents.
A sad story, right?
That’s why everyone needs to do what they do best.
Hiring virtual assistants online is the most efficient way to reach the above-mentioned goal.
Carrying out administrative tasks will hardly add up to your current income. Onboarding several new clients, enriching your list of services and mastering your craft definitely will.
Virtual assistants free up a good space in your schedule for some real work. By doing so, they boost your productivity. With more focus on your business and its growth, you’ll be able to serve more clients. You can increase your revenue, and ultimately reach a level of success you never thought possible.
It’s like establishing an ever-working mechanism inside your small business that is always ready to support your scaling and development.
Do you want to live?
Like closing your laptop at around 6 or 7 p.m., spending warm evenings with family, seeing friends, hitting the gym, travelling, and so much more?
Surveys show only 27% of small business owners take time off when they need or want it.
Why?
Because when you’re your own boss, you constantly tell yourself that you need to achieve more and work more. Breaks can wait until you grow big (sound familiar? 🙂 )
At some point, you realise you’ve been working 14-hour days, feeling exhausted and unproductive every day.
Why reach that critical point if you can avoid it beforehand?
Knowing how to hire a virtual assistant will make you a productive small business owner and a happy person with a fulfilled life.
Do we need to bring stats to claim happy and rested individuals succeed better in anything?…
Quite optimistic about you winning over your devil on the shoulder, here are some truly sensitive points you should consider while hiring a virtual assistant.
An ideal virtual assistant for a small business has excellent communication skills, time management and tech-savviness.
No matter the niche or specialisation of your small business, always look for these skills when hiring a small business virtual assistant. There is no room for error with the core skill set here.
If your small business is very specific and you have very tangible criteria in mind, you can choose specialised VAs in certain areas. You can find niche specialists focusing on and with relevant experience in social media management, bookkeeping, administrative virtual assistant, etc.
You can also narrow your search to find virtual personal assistants for specific industries. For example, real estate, finance, IT, marketing, etc.
If you need a VA right now, let Collab Fabrik’s virtual assistant agency tell you how to hire virtual assistants from the best talent hubs.
Later, when your business grows and you have 10+, 20+, or even 100+ employers, it won’t be rational (and, maybe, possible) to hire only those specialists who are close to you in a personal sense.
But when you are a small business owner, the personality and value match between you both play an important role in hiring a virtual assistant for your startup.
For some time, it’s going to be just the two of you. You will be discussing what needs to be done, how to better serve the customers, and why the old strategies don’t work anymore. If you are lucky to have a friendly, open-hearted, and proactive virtual assistant who is willing to give a hand when it’s needed, it’s going to be easier on you.
At this initial stage, you need to be super comfortable with your online virtual assistant. This will help to find joy in what you do and to move mountains.
So, keep it a habit to chat, talk to or meet your VA candidate via Skype, Zoom or Google Meet before bringing them to your team.
Bring conversation to some free-flowing topics instead of asking too many questions about their professional experience only.
Ask them about what they like to do in their free time. Learn if they have any creative hobbies that help them stay focused and energised at work. What motivates them the most in life and business?
This will help you understand their personality and whether it aligns with your values and company culture.
Hi, I am Armik, a small business owner several years ago and a middle-sized business owner now.
I know that shared experience is the best teacher. So I am here to help any small business owners like me in the past get professional virtual assistants – with a budget that fits small businesses and for the candidates that can really help you scale.
A small throwback to 2021. It’s me. I’m in Germany.
I founded Collab Fabrik just overnight. Yes, indeed, I had the idea for a while and even told some of the people who might be interested.
All of a sudden, I got a call from an acquaintance asking if I had already started the business. Her company needs my services, specifically hiring sales agents.
There was no turning point. I had to register the business, finalise the service, create the website, etc., just in a few days. I wish I had a virtual assistant back then. So many things could have been done quicker and better. That was when I promised myself that if the deal turned positive, I would not procrastinate on hiring a virtual assistant.
I was still not getting there in the first 2-3 months.
I was doing sales outreach, customer management, accounting, and many other things by myself, working 12 hours daily.
It was pretty fine at first. I enjoyed the heroic mood of doing everything myself and attributing any achievement to me, myself, and I.
However, after 3 months, when I got more clients, it was clear I would risk the quality of my services if I continued doing it all by myself. Or I would have to give up putting time into growing my already growing business, which I probably would regret forever.
So, it was time to make the promise and hire an assistant for me.
I needed more training, upgrading classifications, and more networking. In short, I needed to “become serious” about my entrepreneurship, but my daily workload was not letting me do so.
It’s me again, with a more relaxed face—because it’s no longer only me carrying the burden. I hired my first VA from Armenia, my motherland. We’ve shifted the routine business work to her, and I became a mix of manager and creative lead instead of an all-in-one octopus.
I hired my first VA… but it did not stop there. Making this step brought more business growth and sooner the team got bigger, and I already had a few helping hands (and heads :D)
My personal experience transformed into a specialised virtual assistant hiring agency. Our team has already helped tens of solopreneurs and small business owners in the marketing, sales, and consulting fields to get the most skilled virtual assistants for a convenient price.
If you are looking for a virtual job assistant yourself and your small business is in a scaled-down or quit state, I might be the one who understands you best.
Consult with me as alike solopreneur.
Knowing how to hire a virtual assistant is probably your most urgent question at some point in your small business development.
Otherwise, you will reach some moderate growth stage and invest all your time in serving current customers. Meanwhile, you could scale with a little help…
Collab Fabrik is a virtual assistant agency business that can help you find, coordinate, manage your virtual assistant + all the legalities that come with it.
