So, you are thinking about adding a team member but have no clue how to get started? Here are five things to do when hiring a virtual assistant!

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Trust

Ok, this first tip is... BIG.

Let me tell you about one of my first clients - he was a COO, and my work for him was very different from what we do for our creative clients. I learned one of the most important lessons about trust with this client, and I’ve carried it into my own business. He always encouraged me to be more aggressive in his inbox - probably the most essential part of his business that I handled just due to the nature of his work. One day, he said, “We aren’t curing cancer here. If I miss something important, they’ll follow up or call.” Knowing that he trusted my judgment and attention to detail this much freed me to handle it with greater autonomy and less stress while understanding the importance of this particular job.

When hiring a virtual assistant, I trust them wholeheartedly right out of the gate. I’ve done my homework, evaluated their heart and their skills, and made the leap and the investment to go to the next level! I don’t want to waste time inspecting their every little move, and I make it known to them. I know that because I’ve gone out of my way to hire the right person, they’ll handle my business the way I want it handled. Now, don’t get me wrong - there is an onboarding process in place and training so they know what is expected of them, but trust that they can and will get the job done to the best of their ability.

I read this somewhere and regrettably don’t remember where, but I love it:

“Look at what you have to do, and give away all you can. If you trust others to deliver, you may well be surprised at the outcome—in a good way. Be very clear on your desired outcome. Make sure your employees are well resourced, and let them loose. You may well be unlocking their God-given talent. The people you always wanted may already be with you.”

When you choose Rock Solid Assistants to provide your VA services, the most significant step is taken out of the way for you! We do all the evaluations and testing and match you with the perfect assistant for your personality, business, and timezone! Our hiring process is very extensive and involves 6+ tests and questionnaires before they are even offered a video chat to meet with us. When you hire from our incredible pool of VAs, you already know you’re getting the best!

2. Delegate

The next step in hiring a virtual assistant is delegation.

Ok, full transparency -- delegation is always the hardest thing to get used to and find success with - it's a big learning curve. You’re very good at everything you do, have high expectations and standards, and have been doing it all solo for some time. However, this investment is your chance to grow to the next level.

There are so many things a VA could be doing that would lighten your load and give you more hours in the day - hours for business tasks, obviously, but also hours for personal relationships as well.

I know delegating more tasks involves trust and relationship building, but sometimes stretching out on that limb just a bit more and more each day helps move things forward more quickly! This isn’t an area you should rush, but rather, grow through together and stretch yourself out of your comfort zone just a bit more each day for the sake of personal and professional growth. Once you’re growing in your relationship with your VA, learning that she cares and you can truly trust her, your delegation skills will begin to shine.

As mentioned above, one of the most important things is stretching yourself. Just like an athlete stretches to improve her performance and reduce the risk of a game-ending injury, stretching out of our comfort zone offers the same benefits. Assign a task that makes you slightly nervous, and remember, we aren’t curing cancer here! Give her the necessary details and tools, and step out of the way. When you see that her actions exceeded your expectations, you’ll be assured you can hand off even more.

Being proactive is the 2nd thing we hire for at Rock Solid. We believe that as your VA, we should always be at least one or two steps ahead of you! Seeing this in action also helps the relationship to grow and confirms that you can now delegate more than you ever imagined!

3. Weekly 30-Minute Meeting

We ALWAYS recommend that business owners and assistants have a weekly 30-minute meeting! This is where you can discuss the progress of ongoing projects, assign new tasks, and get to know one another. If possible, it should be done on a video call, and we suggest both parties come up with a list of things they want to address with each other that week. I can’t stress enough the importance of this weekly meeting. It keeps everyone on the same page and moving forward together and can be a space to address issues if they come up.

Recently, I had a team that was all of a sudden at odds with one another. They had been working together successfully for some time, and all the check-ins told me everything was going great. Upon investigation, I learned they had stopped prioritizing their weekly meeting. Things WERE going very well, and it deceptively gave them the idea that they didn’t need to meet as often. We got their weekly meetings back on track, and the last report I got from our client was nothing but praise for her assistant. Yep, it’s THAT important!

4. Use LastPass

LastPass is a free password manager that is great for personal life. We all know we shouldn’t use the same password everywhere we visit, work, or shop online, and I may or may not have been guilty of that very thing pre-LastPass, so this has proven to be a great tool for my personal life. However, when it comes to working with team members, it’s invaluable!

In case you’re not familiar with LastPass, let me give you a quick rundown! I went to the website, created my account, signed into that account, and added the very important browser extension. Don’t forget to sign into the browser extension once you've added it!

Let’s say I want my assistant to work on my WordPress Blog. I will go into my LastPass Vault, click on the WordPress site, and click the share button. Once I’ve entered Christina’s email address, she gets an email saying, “Tracy has shared some information with you.” She clicks “Accept Share” and is now able to go to WordPress and log in as me. The beauty of it is that she never knows my password. When she logs in, she only sees dots in the password box. If the day should ever come that I don’t want Christina in my WordPress account anymore, I simply revoke the share in the LastPass vault and it’s still secure because she didn’t even know my password to begin with!

One more critical thing… we are all busy and in a hurry, and often we share pictures of important documents via text or email -- and we shouldn’t!! LastPass creates a safe place to do this! As an assistant, I’ve received pictures of everything from credit cards to driver’s licenses to passports via either text or email. This is obviously a huge security risk! However, if you enter the information or even a picture into a secure note within your LastPass Vault and share it from there, security isn’t a worry anymore!

5. Use a Project Management Tool

Whether you’re a Trello or Asana fan -- or even Basecamp, a Project Management Tool is key! I love Trello because I am a visual learner and worker and don’t like lists. But Asana is equally amazing, and both have their benefits and shortfalls, depending on your work style. Let me tell you about our Trello boards!

First, I have to give a shout-out to my assistant, Christina! My boards have improved 100% since she joined my team! If I’m being honest, she has improved every aspect of my business! If you listen to podcasts, you’ve got to listen to Amy Porterfield’s Visionary / Integrator episodes. I bet you’re more of a Visionary and bringing a VA onboard to fill that Integrator role is LIFE CHANGING! It has been for me - Christina is surely sent from Heaven!

So, Trello is where all of our future or ongoing projects are listed. There, we can break them down into steps, tasks, needs, and checklists, add a due date, and assign each task to a specific person. If it’s the weekend and I am wondering where we are on a project, I can pop on the Trello App on my phone and look at Christina’s notes and updates. If there is something she’s trying to do and needs my input, she can tag me in a comment and assign that task to me. We use Trello for everything from our Content Calendar to keeping track of our invoices. Our incredible bookkeeper, Sarah from Steadfast Bookkeeping, is kept in the loop with changes in hours, new teams starting, or discounts offered to new clients -- all on Trello!

I also have a couple informational boards there - these rarely ever have any action, but it’s a great place to list our Standard Operating Procedures. If Christina wonders how we usually handle a specific event on my calendar or the steps we take on a certain inquiry, the info is on the Trello board. Trust me, as your team grows, these boards will significantly save time and help the onboarding process!

We want to see you and your business THRIVING!

Hiring a virtual assistant frees you from the mundane daily tasks and enables you to reach your full potential by doing what you were made to do!