Letting In the Light: How a VA Can Save Time and Growth for Your Business
According to the poet Rumi, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” While this might seem an unusual quote to open a business blog, it carries much practical wisdom. Whether in business, health, or other aspects of life, wounds show us where something needs to be fixed. By attending to the injuries, we often find answers.
This article explores two common business “wounds,” lack of time and growth, and how hiring a virtual assistant (VA) may be the answer for small and independent businesses.
First, let’s address the wounds.
Lack of time
As a limited commodity, time is a factor that unifies all humans. Regardless of who we are, where we live, or what we do, we all have 24 hours in the day—no more, no less.
Any small or independent business owner knows or quickly learns we have more hats to wear than time in the day to achieve. While the first few weeks of being your own boss can be bliss, you quickly realize that the vibe of your favorite coffee shop won’t speed up necessary admin tasks and that you can only have so many mid-week lunches with friends and family before you significantly cut into your sleep time. In fact, small business owners are NOTED TO WORK TWICE AS MUCH AS REGULAR EMPLOYEES, more than 50 or 60 hours a week in many cases.
And while time wouldn’t be an issue if we could be guaranteed an ever-increasing hourly paycheck, that is simply not the case. For business owners, lack of time is intricately linked to the second “would” we will explore.
LACK OF GROWTH
All businesses face challenges, but some are particular to small businesses. While small and independently owned businesses often bring edge and innovation to the world, they start like small fish in the ocean. With rising interest rates, inflation, and boundless competition in the digital world, it can be challenging to raise needed revenue. Small businesses simply can’t scale fast enough to float.
While there are ways around this, especially increased marketing, no one person can do it all. Even the most skilled entrepreneur can’t manifest the extra hours required to raise brand awareness, generate leads, and delight current customers with personalized attention and service in addition to what they’re already doing as the CEO. While Hubspot and others offer helpful information to overcome common small business growth struggles, knowing “how to fix it” is not enough. All fixes require time and a certain level of expertise that can’t be attained without hours of self-training. While most entrepreneurs would love to invest time and effort to grow their business, they don’t have enough time in the day without dropping current clients or essential life tasks such as eating or sleeping.
If you’re noticing a vicious cycle here, you’re right. Growth requires time, and without time, growth is stymied.
The effects
As you might expect, lack of time and growth takes a toll on more than just the business.
Business owners aren’t superheroes; they work while seeking to provide for families, deal with chronic health issues, and conduct the other necessities that make up everyday life.
The exhausting day-in, day-out pressures can lead to the following effects for small business owners:
• Toxic stress levels
• Depression
• Feelings of isolation
• Severe Loneliness
• Fatigue
• Health issues
• Struggle to balance work and personal/family life
• Failure of the business
It’s easy to see how things can quickly spiral. Fortunly identifies that only 78.5% of small businesses survive their first year and 29% of businesses fail because they run out of cash. And while it may be a good life choice for some would-be entrepreneurs to return to a traditional job, for many, it is a crushing loss both personally and for those of us who will never get to experience their services.
THE SOLUTION
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Hiring a virtual assistant (VA) may be the top solution for small businesses that need more time and growth. Giving your VA any tasks that can be delegated –tasks that aren’t essential for one person to do – can free up the time needed for growth. And as time and growth positively affect the business, the benefits compound into even more growth and freedom from the stress factors listed above.
There are many tasks that you can delegate to a VA. Imagine releasing the following from your to-do list:
• Accounting
• Scheduling and Calendar Management
• Proofreading
• Invoicing
• Data Entry
• Transcription
• Project Management
• Research
• Event Planning
• Booking Travel
• Creating Document Templates
• Branding
• Web Maintenance
• Video and Photo Editing
• Customer Service
• Moderating Blog Comments
• Email Marketing
• Affiliate Program Management
If your business needs strategic support in one area, you can hire “specialized VAs,” such as freelance CPAs or social media managers.
What keeps many business owners from utilizing this wonder is that the personality of people who start businesses tends to avoid delegation. For some, hesitancy may be due to familiarity bias, perfectionism, or simply a fear of passing off tasks to someone else. For others, it’s because they feel time pressure to get things done and don’t think it worth stopping long enough to look for, hire, and train a new VA.
While it is true that there is an initial time/money investment in hiring a VA and that your new employee may not do every task exactly as you would, it is important to consider the trade-offs. It may give you a shot of dopamine to feel autonomy over your systems, but you might be sacrificing an overall wellness lifestyle for minutiae. And since VAs often work at hourly rates, it’s more than possible for businesses to start scaffolding one in regardless of their current fiscal level.
As Brian Sutter indicates on score.org, not delegating tasks that could be delegated is “all well and good – but it’s a choice.” Any hesitations you have over hiring a VA are likely there because of valid points for consideration. However, concluding that you must do everything yourself (and experiencing the resulting consequences) is a choice that you’re making.
Delegating tasks can free you up to plan your business and growth strategy and redeem time for your personal life. And since VAs are trained to work to brand, you’ll realize you can still have your business function as you desire, even if your hands aren’t in every inch of the pot. With a VA, you can have things the way you like them and live the good life too.
Where to Go from Here
Ready to let in the light? Hire a VA and start by passing off one or two tasks to see the radical effects doing so can have on your personal and business life.
Luneer Mgmt would be happy to get you set up with one of our VAs. We take pressure off of you by dedicating ourselves to learning your business so that we become an extension of you rather than someone you need to guide and coach.
