Ready to take the plunge and hire a Virtual Assistant? Tune into this episode of the 3-Day Workweeks for Millennial Entrepreneurs Podcast where we discuss the best ways to get organized and find the perfect VA for your business. Kate talks through the key steps, from understanding what you need from your VA to effectively manage your working relationship. Get the inside scoop on how to find the perfect fit for your business and make sure you're getting the most out of your VA.

TAKEAWAYS

As a business owner, you don't have to be a master of every task. To avoid becoming overwhelmed, start by bringing in help for specific tasks that you don't excel in and start small.

RELATED LINKS

• The Blog Societies Membership
• Kickstart Your Team (3-Week Group Coaching Container)
• The Smarter Not Harder: 3-Day Workweeks for Millennial Entrepreneurs© Program

Always cheering you on,

Kate

Creator of the Smarter Not Harder: 3-Day Workweeks for Millennial Entrepreneurs©  Program

Owner + Founder, Kate Waldo + Co. 

P.S. Curious how you can grow your 6-figure business while slashing your workweek in half? Click here to learn about the Smarter Not Harder© program!

FULL TRANSCRIPT

 Welcome back to another episode of the Three Day Work Weeks podcast. I just got off of a call with the blog Society's TBS members, and it was so much fun. So I wanted to share a little bit about what we talked about on that call, because I think it would be really beneficial. For y'all to hear. Cause I get this question a lot.

So in case you don't know me, I'm Kate Waldo Jones and I'm a systems and efficiency expert. I love creating three day work weeks for you as a millennial entrepreneur. When you get to that six figures, how do you maintain it and grow it, but still live a life that is fulfilling and gives you a lot of grace and ease?

We're not about that hustle culture Let's get into the topic that was on everyone's minds today. By the way, if you don't know the Blog Society's, go follow them on Instagram. If you are a blogger or influencer, content creator of any kind, because they have fantastic resources for you, they have all about blogging, pitching.

To know it, shop style, all of those things, all those resources for you. And they have an amazing membership, which was where I taught a workshop for. , so I'll link their membership below. It's really affordable right now. When I'm recording this, it's $17 a month. So a really great resource to a lot of information and a great community of content creators who are taking their businesses seriously and want to make money from it.

So it's not just like hobby blogging type of thing because that's what we're about over. We're, trying to make some good income from doing what we love. So I was over there and the topic on everybody's mind was hiring. And we, depending on when this comes out kickstart your team is either happening, it's probably happening right now when you're listening to this episode, but we put together a group coaching.

Container for you guys because you wanted an affordable option for how you could get support in hiring your team. And we have all those resources inside of Smarter Not Harder, our signature program. And people wanted an add-on of some group coaching around the topic as well. So got live calls with me and if it.

Before February 22nd, shoot me a dm if you need a link and you want to join us. Otherwise you can catch us on the next round. But when it comes to hiring, this is a question that I get a lot saying that I think I'm ready to hire an assistant. A lot of times people say a va, a virtual assistant, where do I begin?

And. This is a loaded question, but I'm gonna give you the highlights of where I would start. The biggest thing is that first you need to get yourself as organized as you can. Now, I don't know if I've ever said this , which I should say it more often, but I am not always a hundred percent organized. It's an ongoing process.

You will never be. 100% done or perfect. That's just not an achievable standard. But it is important to have your ducks in a row as much as you can before you bring somebody else into the fold. Think about having a child, for example, and bringing this little baby into the world, but you didn't take the time to think about what do you need for this baby?

Like it needs clothes, it needs. Bottles. It needs pacifiers, it needs diapers, and if you didn't get any of that stuff, the if you don't have every single bit of every single thing, you can always go out and buy it and bring it in. The baby will be just fine for a few days. But if you didn't have any of that stuff together at all, you would be super overwhelmed and the baby wouldn't have what they need.

A weird example, but same thing goes for a team member. If you're not prepared for them, they can't help. , you can't help them. You can't give them the resources that they need to be successful in that role, and they can't, so they, they can't give you that return on your investment if you're not organized and prepared for them.

So that's where it's really important to have systems, processes in place have created standard operating procedures for what you want this person to. and make sure that. What you're having them do actually aligns with the three phases of what we teach in smarter, not harder, which first you identify your profit, what makes profit for you in your business?

Because there's no sense in outsourcing a task to an assistant that doesn't actually even make you money or doesn't impact your bottom line. You want to go for the things that have a high impact on the income that you bring in every. and then you want to once you've identified your profit, then you're going to prioritize your profit.

So I recommend that when you start out, when you have someone help you, that whatever they do is either directly creating profit for your business or one step away from creating profit in your business. Or it. through that, it removes a barrier for you of something that helps, if it's not something that actually directly creates income for your business, like someone standing at your at your register and helping check people out, like that's directly impacting your revenue.

or someone helping you pack and ship orders so that they actually go out to the customers so that they can get the item. And that removes that barrier for you of actually either checking the customers out or packing and shipping those orders so that you can be out there selling, making the product, advising your team on how to make the product, creating your marketing plan, all those things.

So get organized and then make sure that whatever you want this person to do, that it impacts the profit in your business in a positive way. And start really small, like when you're identifying what you want this person to help you with, start really small, because oftentimes I see I've done it myself.

And I see other entrepreneurs make this mistake that you hire somebody and want them to be a superhuman and have them do all sorts of things across all sorts of categories. Like maybe you want them to pack and chip orders, but you also want them to manage your social media account. And then you also want 'em to create Canva graphics, holy cow.

Like you know as a business owner that you have to wear all the hats, but you also should recognize. You aren't 100 at doing all of those things. You're not a master at doing all of those things, and so bringing in someone to help you, they're not gonna be a master of all those things either.

Even if they're good at them, it's not an effective use of your time. When you start out to have somebody do a million different things across a million different platforms and topics of business, it just gets overwhelming and confusing so start small and also have a budget. Have it Doesn't matter what your budget is, it could be, what I was saying on my call today with the workshop is it could be as low as a hundred dollars a month and you just need five hours a month of someone's help to help you get ahead on doing something that moves the needle in your business.

and then you move up from there. But when you set clear expectations for yourself, you are literally putting that money away at a hundred dollars a month or whatever your budget is away in a bank account that is specifically for them. You keep it an ear market for, to be paid to them.

Then You are no matter what, giving them those hours, they can expect those hours. And then if you wanna move up from there, you absolutely can. But when you're moving up from there, make sure that you are tracking your KPIs, your key performance indicators. You want to make sure that. , you're seeing that whatever they're helping you with is actually creating a positive impact in the business.

Now, it may take some time. You may not see that from week one, but you probably will start to see that in some way. Even if it's not directly showing up in your numbers you, feel it personally, that you have more time to think about higher level aspects of your business. that really move the needle and keep you in your zone of genius.

So have a budget. Communicate what that, even if it's not the dollar amount, the budget of hours to that team member that you're hiring so that they know what to expect. And then, gradually increase as you see fit, track those KPIs so that you know that it makes sense and you're not just pouring money into something hoping that it's creating a return for you before you really watch what's going on.

So I hope that's helpful and that you guys, I'm so excited that so many people are talking about hiring and outsourcing and leveraging your team in a better. because there is so much to learn, especially when so much of the culture is hustle culture and do it all and grind in silence and show people your results later.

I don't love that. I don't think you have to air everything that you're doing right when you're doing it. . It's all like that old saying of what's the point of all the accomplishments if you do it all alone and there's nobody there at the end of the day to enjoy it with. So your team can really be an expansion of you and your brand and what impact you're trying to create in the world.

Think about that, especially when you're going into the hiring process that you want somebody to be that extension of you and your brand. And if you don't wanna hustle, you don't have to . You do have to be diligent and you have to be consistent. But hustling and grind in and out day in and day out is definitely not what I'm about.

And I don't think that you have to be. So I hope you like this. I hope you enjoyed it. All the resources that I talked about, the blog societies, the Kickstart, your team group coaching, and our Smarter Not Harder program are all linked in the show notes. We'll see you next time.