One of the most common concerns I hear from someone when they are thinking about hiring a VA is “I don’t have enough work for them.” It’s a valid point, why would I pay someone for 40 hours of time if I only have 20 hours of tasks for them to do? I don’t want to be paying someone to sit around and check Facebook….. Straight up this was EXACTLY how I felt, so I put off hiring and continued to do all the work myself. I had made the biggest mistake that can be made in outsourcing, thinking time is created equal instead of money in vs. money out. I was so caught up in having 40 hours of work for someone that simple math and logic had passed me. If I’m paying a VA $1300 a month, as long as they make me more than that back it’s profitable. The light bulb had gone off in my head, who cares about hours, I care about profit! The next day I hired a VA full-time knowing well and true I did not have enough tasks to keep her busy for 40 hours. My next thought was what do I get her to do when I don’t have anything for her, which was a couple of hours a day…. while it was still profitable and saved me time, regardless I knew there must be a better way to use this downtime. The second light bulb had gone off in my head, TRAINING!!!!! Every minute that my VA is not doing a task for me she can up-skill. These days you can learn to do pretty much anything off YouTube tutorials. So I got her to watch tutorials and practice new skills. As the weeks passed by not only was I making more money and saving myself more time but my VA was getting more skilled. She was now skilled with:
Photoshop, Google apps, and Project management software Podio. (by the time you are reading this it’s more than likely she has learnt WordPress skills and posted this blog and manages my sites.) What I worked out very quickly is that by doing things in this way I was adding new skills to my business at $0 extra cost. I literally just pick new skills that will help my business and my VA will begin learning that skill.
My VA is now doing tasks that are of higher value to me than was intended when I had originally hired her, saving me more time each and every week. Something that was unexpected is that by investing in my VA with training and new skills she was happier at work, she felt a part of the team. Because she feels so valued it built a great deal of trust and loyalty. My only regret is that I had not started doing this earlier. I could have had multiple VA’s running at this capacity if I had only known how much value a well trained VA could add to my business. If you want to explore how you too can enjoy the 40 hours saved a week and pay only AUD$11.25/hour for a full-time assistant, then speak to us TODAY.
