When I first started MoneySavingMom.com in 2007, I could have never imagined that the site would grow to the caliber that it is now. I never dreamed I’d make more than a full-time income from blogging, and I certainly never could have imagined being the place to hire on virtual assistants and full-time employees. It truly is astounding to me!
Learning to delegate and outsource is essential to the growth of any successful business. I’ll tell you right now that if you think you can grow a successful and thriving business all on your own, without any help, think again. Okay, well you probably could, but you’d likely also be exhausted and burnt out.
As my business has grown, I’ve learned just how much I need a good team around me whom I can rely on to help me do a much better job of running the business than I could ever do on my own. And not only that, but they ensure that I still have breathing room in my life, too!
The biggest benefit of having a team has been the realization that investing some of my income in great help frees me up to focus on those few things that only I can do well. In turn, this increases the overall business income, allows me more margin in my life, and gives us the opportunity to be able to impact more people!
If you are at a place where you’re feeling overwhelmed with running your business or thinking maybe it’s time to consider hiring someone on, here are some tips to help you navigate the hiring process and build an effective team:
1. Hire someone for a few hours a week.
Before you hire on someone part-time or full-time, consider contracting out some of your tasks for a few hours a week. You may be really surprised at how much an efficient person can accomplish in just 2-3 hours each week!
I’ve found it helpful to write down exactly what tasks I want to/need to hand off and then design a job description based upon that list of tasks. Once I have a job description written up, it’s much easier to determine what kind of person I’m looking for and what kind of experience and personality will be best suited for the position.
2. Start with a personality test.
It has been highly beneficial to me to have potential contractors/employees take the Myers/Briggs personality test.
I’ve found that I work best with certain personalities, and knowing a person’s personality type beforehand saves me a lot of headaches when it comes to turnover. If I find a person has the right type of personality for me, then I will consider bringing them on for a short-term project
3. Begin with a two-week trial period.
I rarely ever hire someone without a test period first. This is usually asking them to take on a small job or project or for a trial period.
In some cases, I tell them it is a trial period. In other cases, I don’t; I just hire them on to do a short-term job. It depends upon what position I’m thinking of hiring for long-term and my relationship with the person as to whether I disclose these things or not.
In any case, I find it very helpful to test things out first without making a long-term commitment. Hiring someone on a part-time or full-time basis is a big commitment — both for you as an employer and for the potential employee. I want to make sure it’s a win-win for everyone involved before taking that leap.
4. Don’t walk on eggshells during the trial period.
During the trial period, don’t walk on eggshells or be overly nice. If you are the type of person who often will send one-line responses or quick and direct emails, don’t feel like you need to sugarcoat your emails or add two paragraphs of filler greetings and small talk. Just interact with your potential employee exactly as you’d hope to interact with them when you hire them.
Be kind and gracious, of course, but don’t change who you are in fear that you’ll scare them away. People need to know exactly what they are getting themselves into and exactly what it’s going to be like to work for you. Being anything other than yourself is doing a disservice to them and to your future working relationship.
Having a trial period gives you a chance to pay close attention to the way someone handles your requests, responds to your emails, completes projects, handles deadlines, and deals with constructive criticism. Finding people who are approachable and teachable is very important when building a lasting team.
You need to be able to send an honest e-mail asking them to make changes without worrying about hurting their feelings. Sometimes everyone on the team will need to put on their “game faces” come crunch time and get the work done. Having to tip-toe around someone on your team will affect the entire team’s productivity, not just yours.
5. Increase their obligation.
If you like how the person is handling your projects and communications with you, then it’s time to consider increasing the amount of time each week that they work for you by extending their trial period or asking them to consider working a set number of hours each week for the next 2-3 months.
As you hand off tasks, you will learn more and more of what they are capable of doing and how well they handle juggling multiple responsibilities.
Once you feel confident that someone can meet your expectations, it’s time to not only talk to them about coming onto your team in a more “permanent position” — be that as a part-time VA, a contractor with a set number of hours each week, or even a full-time employee. Have an honest conversation about what would work best for both of you.
If they are willing and able to move forward, then it’s time to take a look at your to-do list and start delegating more. Remember, many hands make work light! Don’t be afraid to delegate — even if it means that you have to put the effort into training someone to take on new tasks. It will be worth it in the long run!
Over the years, I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons when it comes to hiring people to join my team. I have whittled my hiring process down to these five steps and these steps have allowed me to create an amazingly strong team of effective and incredible people who not only do a great job, but who I also love working with!
Do you have any additional tips for someone considering hiring a virtual assistant?
These are great tips! My husband recently hired a VA and your advice is spot on!
The trial period was helpful, knowing her personality type has made all the difference in how he interacts with her, and he certainly didn’t walk on eggshells with her because he knew ahead of time she would need to handle difficult tasks.
One additional thing that has been helpful to them both during this first month or so is that they hop on a video conference call about once a week to review projects. It’s much more personal than email and it’s helped them build a stronger working relationship.
As his wife, it’s been wonderful to see this evolve into such a helpful partnership because he was able to off load many tasks that were weighing him down. He’s already able to focus on more important tasks that bring in more income. It’s a win-win!
I love the video call suggestion! That’s something we do a LOT of for meetings. I’m a big fan of being about to have face-to-face conversations — even if they are virtual!
Since I offer VA services in addition to my writing, I enjoyed reading your tips, especially the one about not walking on eggshells during the trial period. It’s hard when clients seem to change after the trial is over! I’d rather get a good baseline, as it helps me read the situation.
I also love it when my clients take the time to give more feedback initially. It really helps to nail down expectations and see what I can tweak to make things even better going forward. So don’t be afraid to gently point out things you’d like to see done differently–even if it’s something minor!
Such wise advice here! Thank you for chiming in!
So, how do you decide when to pay someone to help you? If your blog is only making a few hundred a month, is it worth it to invest in help? If you’re at a point where you’re spending a lot of time but not getting much return, where is the best place to invest money?
This is a question that I need to answer in a post or a series of posts, but I’d say that you start be calculating how much you’re making per hour by working on your blog. Are you making more than $10 per hour by blogging? If not, then you might not be ready to hire someone on yet because you’d be paying them more per hour than you are making per hour.
However, if there are some things you’re doing where you’re making $15 or $20 per hour by doing them and it’s something you could easily hand off to someone else, then definitely consider if you could hire someone to do those things for $10 per hour to free up time for you so you could focus on the things that are going to be bringing in even more income.
Here’s how I approach things: If I can pay someone $20 or $25 per hour so that I can spend that hour doing something that’s going to bring in $100 per hour, it’s totally worth me paying to buy that hour back. However, if I pay someone $20 per hour to do a task that I’m only going to make $15 for or so I can work on a task that I’ll only make $15 for, it’s not worth it.
I encourage people to work toward getting to a place where you are focusing on doing those things that you love and that only you can do and that you are hiring out help with the things that are just eating up your time. You have to start out by doing the things that eat up your time, but eventually, you want to be able focus your time on the things that are going to bring in the most return on your investment. That could be producing a product, writing a post for a brand, getting on live video and promoting a product, etc.
I hope that helps?
That makes sense! Thanks for helping me. You’re the best. 😀 I love your new blog and can’t wait to tell everyone about it.
Oh, and I didn’t see a field to check to get an email when you follow up on a comment. So, I didn’t know you had responded to this. I’m glad I checked back.