Hi guys! So I just wanted to share a blog with you today on a question I get asked a lot. I speak to a lot of different people who have got existing and established businesses, a lot of different types of businesses, and often the question is how do I know when I’m going to be ready for a VA? How do I know if I am already ready for a VA? 

I just wanted to give six kinds of warning signs and things to look out for, which are definite indicators for you to know that you are ready to start working with a virtual assistant. 

The first kind of huge warning sign is that you are spending a lot of time doing mundane day-to-day admin tasks. These are things that take you away from generating revenue, things that make you feel kind of drained and that don’t inspire you and don’t excite you. If the tasks that you’re doing leave you feeling highly energised and feeling like you are putting in an effort that you need to generate new business and to get extra revenue and make you feel really excited, then that is exactly where you should be spending your time. 

If they make you feel drained and tired, it is mundane and admin-based, it is not really what you want to do or what you envision you would be doing, then that is a strong indicator that maybe you should be looking to outsource some of those admin tasks. 

The second thing to look out for is that you are trying to complete tasks that may require you to learn new specific skill sets. Now, I am a big advocate for having a general idea of what you need to delegate out and having some comprehension of the skills that are required and any software that needs to be used but I am definitely not an illustrator or a graphic designer or a video editor. 

For me, to learn those skills would take a really long time. So if your business requires some things such as graphic design, video editing, creating an app, for example, and that’s not your area of expertise, there’s a good chance that you need to outsource that. It would be an excellent way to bring a virtual assistant in to help you. 

Third, you are missing out on sales opportunities because you literally just don’t have the time to either follow up people that you have already spoken to, on warm leads, warm prospects, or because you are not getting back to new leads quickly enough. You are not able to answer the phone or return the email or return the call. So if you are literally letting cash leak out of your business because you don’t have time to deal with the leads, you need some extra support. 

Point number four is if you are working eight or more hours per day and you are sometimes working on weekends and, more importantly, you are feeling guilty about it because it is taking you away from your responsibilities as a mother or a wife or a friend or a daughter, or any of those other roles that I talked a lot about in the last couple of videos, then that is a definite indication that you need some extra help to be able to get that time back to give you the freedom to choose how you want to spend it. 

Point number five, you are stuck. You feel like you are reacting all of the time. You feel like something happens and you kind of need to jump on it instantly, taking you away from those things that we talked about in point one that make you feel excited. You are bursting at the seams. You have got all these ideas and all this creativity. All these things you want to do to build the business that you know is going to give you the business that you want, get you working with clients that you want, but you literally have no time to develop or execute those ideas. 

The final point of how you know that you are ready for a VA is that you know that you need help but you really don’t want to go down the route of hiring a full-time employee, because you may not have the space. You may not want the risks or the complications that are involved. You may not want to have to pay the costs that are involved in hiring a full-time employee, so a virtual assistant is a great solution instead.

I hope that those tips were helpful for you. I look forward to speaking to you at some point in the future!

Sophie Dearden
Resource Worldwide