Are you thinking about hiring a virtual assistant, but you’re not sure if now is the right time to do so? Then stick with me until the end of this article, because I’m about to over five signs that it’s time for you to hire a virtual assistant. By the end of this article, you’re going to have a better understanding and grasp of what to look for out for, in terms of whether or not it’s the right time to hire a virtual assistant.
Over the years, I’ve hired hundreds of virtual assistants and these VAs has helped me in saving tons of time every single week to help me. Scale businesses and grow side projects. Through the systems and teams of virtual assistants that I’ve built, my VAs saved me at least 50 hours every single week, which allows me to work more on growing my businesses as opposed to being simply in my business.
Sign 1: Your weekly to-dos bleed into your following week or your weekends.
The first sign that it’s time for you to hire a virtual assistant is if your weekly to do’s are starting to bleed into either your weekends or your subsequent weeks. What I want you to do is I want you to think about if your to do list is starting to carry over week over week. And if the pattern holds for at least three weeks, seriously, consider hiring a virtual assistant. I know that there’s a common mindset in the entrepreneurship space, which is to always be grinding and always be working 24/7. The idea is that you can beat your competition if you do so, but in my opinion, that’s just not a sustainable the way to ultimately build a successful business.
It’s really important to take a step back and whether it’s just a single day instead of a whole weekend, mentally reset yourself for the week and what your goals are for that particular week. So that’s what a virtual assistant can help you out with is they can take a couple of things off your plate so that you can have that time for yourself or with your loved ones in terms of just regenerating your energy to be going into the next week full of energy.
Sign 2: You find yourself working in your business vs. on your business for more than 50% of your time.
The second sign that you need to hire virtual assistant is if you start noticing that you are working in your business versus on your business, more than 50% of your time. What this means is that you have not operationalized your business and the components that make your business successful, enough for you to actually be developing and scaling your business.
I’ve mentioned this in my prior articles on virtual assistants, but pretty much if you are unable to remove yourself fully from the day to day operations of your business, you have created yourself a job as opposed to necessarily a business. So it’s really important to remember that if you find yourself working in your business consistently, that it’s probably time for you to take a step back, delegate some work to a virtual assistant so that you can start working more on the strategic things that move the needle forward.
There are tons of things that you can outsource to a virtual assistant. There’s even virtual assistants that can help you out with your bookkeeping if you hate categorizing things in QuickBooks or Zero or whatever accounting software you use. Whatever the case may be, if you want tips in terms of how to manage and train your virtual assistants, be sure to check out my other article on that.
Sign 3: You feel bored in work you’re doing in your business.
The third sign that it’s time for you to hire a virtual assistant is if you are constantly finding yourself bored with the sorts of work that you’re doing in your business. What I mean by that is if you feel like you’re starting to get disengaged on a day to day, or you feel like you could be spending your time doing something else, and it’s time to bring in a virtual assistant.
Like I mentioned in the prior tip, what this will allow you to do is it’ll allow you more time to work on the strategic things that drive your business forward. This means that you can do things that are more creatively based or potentially stimulating in a day to day workday.
For example, that you right now, you’re running your entire sales process. Well, what you could do is you could hire a virtual assistant to start doing some initial qualification for you via email, or by doing some discovery calls. What that would allow you to do is it would allow you to have a virtual assistant who would then do the first qualification for you so that all you’d have to do would be the actual important meetings such as the closing conversations or the actual demos themselves.
In this way you’re optimizing your time so that instead of a single work day involving you doing discovery calls, demos, as well as closing calls, you’re just doing the things that move the bottom line the most. For example, closing new business or bringing in new clients and onboarding them.
By hiring a virtual assistant you’re going to be able to start doing only the work that you like to do. So that you can continue to stay engaged in growing your business.
Sign 4: You haven’t taken a vacation in several years.
This is a clear sign that you are likely either already burnt out or on the verge of burnout. Personally, I went over six years before taking a real vacation and it wasn’t until I did to take a two week vacation that I took a step back and realized that these are super important in terms of combating burnout. Even just taking a three day weekend can be a great way to just unwind a little bit from a sustained period of hard work.
If you can’t take a vacation because either your systems or your processes would break down without you running it in the day to day, then it can just be a good time for you to have a reality check and take a step back to write out what those processes are, bring on a virtual assistant to help you out so that you can remove yourself and take that day off.
All you need to do is train your virtual assistants and operationalize all your key processes so that things can run smoothly on your days off.
Sign 5: Your business is impacting your personal relationships.
The fifth sign that it’s time to hire a virtual assistant is it’s impacting your personal relationships. Whether it’s your partner, your loved ones, or your close friends. Telling you that they don’t see you enough or they don’t spend enough time with you. This can be a clear sign that it’s time for you to take a step back and delegate some more work in your business.
I’m an introvert, so I can go long periods of time without seeing some good friends and still pick up exactly where we left off. But even in the times, when I was in the heart of the grind, I would noticed years would go by in which I would literally be so absorbed in my work that I would forget to be cultivating the relationships that mattered to me. It wasn’t until I took a step back and use this app called RescueTime that I was able to start reclaiming my time.
What RescueTime is, is it’s a little widget that essentially installs on your desktop or your laptop and attracts every application that you’re using, the websites that you browse, things of that nature, and then gives you a compiled report every single week to your email, as a digest. And so it’s kind of similar to those screen-time updates that you’ll get on your phone if you’re on iOS, but it’s pretty much an easy way for you to then categorize between productive and unproductive time.
Something I want you to remember is that if your business is holding you back from having time for yourself or your loved ones, then it’s time for you to reassess how you’re running your business.
Making a ton of money means absolutely nothing if you have nobody to spend it with or spend it on. And so just take a step back and reevaluate your priorities when it comes to work if you are finding yourself in this situation.
Big takeaways
There are two things that I want you to remember when it comes to looking for signs that it’s time to hire a virtual assistant.
- The first one is that if you’re starting to realize that you hate a ton of parts of your business, it’s not necessarily always because you’re completely over your business idea. In fact, it can be just because you are doing way too many administrative tasks that you haven’t delegated off to another team members such as a virtual assistant.
- The second thing is that you can always start small with the virtual assistant. What I mean by that is if you just give your virtual assistant two hours of work every single week, That is eight hours every single month, annualized over a year. That’s the equivalent of saving yourself 104 hours, which is at least two weeks of work time. So taking a step back and evaluating how you invest your time, as well as how you can delegate some work off to a virtual assistant can mean huge returns for you in terms of the direction of your business and how you feel about your business.
If you liked this article, be sure to check out my YouTube channel to get new videos every single week. I’ll help take you from zero to self-starter as you grow your business, get more customers, and hone your business acumen. Also, feel free to share this with anybody that you think might benefit from when is it time to hire a virtual assistant.
That’s it for this time. If you found these five signs helpful and you want them for reference later on or any of my other virtual assistant tips and tricks, I’ve put together a quick free resource at the end of this article.
In the next article, I’m going to shift gears a little bit. I’m going to talk about how to run an effective meeting.