I often see posts and comments in Facebook groups made by business owners who struggle with working with someone else in their business. Handing over work to a Virtual Assistant (VA) can be difficult, especially if you are so used to doing everything yourself. It will take time to build up a business relationship with a VA who is helping you with tasks so you can have more time to focus on your business.
Here are a few ideas to help with preparing to work with a virtual assistant.
Have a task list ready
Once you have decided the time is right to delegate some tasks, spend some time reviewing your tasks and workload. Highlight the tasks that you will be happy to hand over. Over time, you will feel happier to hand over more tasks.
Now that you know what tasks you need help with, your VA search can begin. There are VAs that focus on certain areas, such as social media or websites. Others will be more focused on technical skills or providing customer support.
Be clear on what you need your VA to complete
A lot of VAs will have a system in place for how they work and will be adaptable to working with the tools that you use. Trello and Asana are great tools for using with a VA creating tasks and clear instructions on what is required. You can also add links, graphics and documents as well as having conversations keeping all things in one place.
Build the relationship
Take the time to find a VA that you click and connect with. Many connections and working relationships are made in Facebook groups, where you will often see people commenting on posts to help them with a query. This is a good way of finding someone to work with. I have often commented on posts in some of the Facebook groups that I belong to with a response on how to do something or tools that I use and that is often the starting point of building up a connection.
Boundaries
All businesses will have their own terms and conditions and ways of working. It is important to that boundaries are made clear and adhered to by all parties. I often see VAs post that a client is messaging them at weekends or late at night and moaning when the VA does not respond. Likewise, I see business owners having issues with their VA disappearing and not responding to their messages.
As with any new relationship, it takes time to build up trust and networking and connecting online with potential team members for projects is a good way to start.
Have you worked with others to help you with your business? How did it go?
