Last week, I ran a workshop with Randy Rosales from Freelance Latin America.
His company provides virtual assistance to businesses across Canada and the United States, and he has 102 active virtual assistants.
He knows what it takes to onboard and leverage a virtual assistant successfully in a construction company.
We identified three key non-negotiables when hiring an assistant, whether virtual or in person.
Watch the complete workshop here:
Do More Valuable Work
We all start our business doing everything.
This approach is 100% required when we start.
But as soon as we get traction, dropping that approach is required.
Many remain stuck doing $15/hr tasks and miss the multiple $10,000 opportunities.
As the main engine for your business, you have to move from low-value, low-leverage work to high-value, high-leverage work.
| Low-value work is anything that generates little revenue or profit.
Low-leverage work is anything that can’t be repeated or systematized. High-value work is networking to fill your prospect pipeline and building partnerships with key suppliers. High-leverage work is training your team to complete complicated jobs or preparing standard operating procedures. Because you can’t simply stop the low-value and low-leverage work in your business, you have to get good-quality team members in the right systems to take those things off your plate. Your business only scales as fast as you evolve to shift how you spend your time. |
Three Key Non-Negotiables1. Roles and ResponsibilitiesMany overlook creating a formal role for your VA with a clear list of responsibilities. The act of listing actual tasks that your VA will do IS CRUCIAL. A job description of ‘helping with admin’ is not a role. When tasks and expectations live only in your head, every task becomes guesswork, which leads to mistakes, rework, and frustration on both sides. This forces you to assign the task, but also the responsibility for getting it done. Many contractors will delegate the task but will hold onto the responsibility and ownership to get it done. The task is off your plate, but the mental bandwidth to ensure it gets done doesn’t decrease. This approach is more exhausting than just doing the task yourself. I get that you may be worried that the VA won’t do it the way you want it done. Or that they’ll miss a deadline. But the reality is that you’re the builder, I repeat, you’re the builder, and if you give them clear direction and get out of their way, they’ll execute their admin tasks better than you ever could. Once their role and responsibilities are defined, you need a system to support them. 2. SOPs, Systems and KPIsSOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) are step-by-step instructions to ensure the assistant knows what to do. Key components of a good SOP are:
Grab the SOP template here to jump-start creating SOPs. See the fastest way to create an SOP with tools like Loom, CompanyCam and NotebookLM. Stop wasting time sitting at a computer trying to draft a list of everything you need a VA to do. Now, the SOPs need a place to live where your VA can access them and where you can monitor the work getting done. That place is a Project Management (PM) tool. Contractors and builders who embrace a PM tool and use it properly are significantly more efficient and effective at building a strong team, without exception. I’ve seen too many contractors and builders with clunky spreadsheets because the PM tools they tried were “too expensive and complicated”. You need centralized, asynchronous communication; clear scheduling; task delegation and accountability; and financial visibility. I go over a few good examples for contractors and builders in the workshop at 28:07 And once you’ve delegated the tasks, you need to track their performance. You need key performance indicators (KPIs). Without measurable targets, you’re left relying on gut feel:
When you give a VA clear KPIs, you’re giving them a scorecard. They know exactly what good performance looks like, how fast tasks need to be completed, and where to focus their time. When the KPIs show that emails are answered by the end of day, invoices are sent within 24 hours, labour hours are posted daily, and follow-ups are completed on schedule, then you know the system is working. 3. Hiring For SuccessThe success of a VA is less about them and more about you. How well you’re prepared will determine a large part of the hire’s success. You cannot throw a VA into chaos and expect them to save you. When I hear that a VA is ‘not a good fit’, my first question will be “Show me how you onboard your VA”. But we’ll assume that you’ve created a proper role and responsibilities description, and have a System with SOPs and KPIs, so you can focus on hiring the best. But a successful hire doesn’t end when the VA takes the job. The next biggest part of a successful hire is ‘Ongoing Onboarding’. Through monthly check-ins, quarterly and annual performance reviews, you’ll motivate your VA to continue to deliver the best. Now that may sound like a lot… But Freelance Latin America has a ready-made system in place to get you an excellent VA, in a great support system, without wasting time and $1000s. They’ve done it 100s of times before. They’re confident that they can help you find a VA that you’ll love. It might be worth checking out. Get 20% off the first three months of your first hire. Just mention the workshop with Strucs. |
