Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
This episode is the fourth in a series of four episodes that I want to share with you as a lead up to my 50K VA Group Coaching program that is launching in the next couple of weeks. Missed the rest of the series? Catch up here with episode 1!
Today I want to talk about creating systems to scale your VA business.
Today’s Quote: Systems run the business and people run the systems. — Michael Gerber
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Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
Being able to scale your VA business whenever you want means being able to bring in new clients whenever you want, make more money whenever you want, take time off when you want, or travel, or make a big purchase, you get the picture.
Scaling is the way you grow, and it’s much easier to get yourself set up for growth than you think.
A report by Small Business Trends says that 66% of small businesses that do not adopt automation and advanced digital systems as part of their productivity, fail to do so because of ineffective systems and a lack of proper organization.
Think about it – we offer our clients organization, time management, productivity, and efficiency – but many of us don’t do it for ourselves… for our own VA businesses.
You have to treat your business just like your clients’ businesses. It’s important, it needs structure and strategy. And it needs systems.
When you are organized and efficient, you can handle new clients easily. you can invest in training or support when you need it.
We weren’t meant to do everything ourselves. Even thought we are solopreneurs as VAs, there are things that others are better at than we are. There are things that others should be doing, instead of us.
Again, it’s all the same stuff we tell our clients. Some things are out of our area of expertise – and yet we struggle through them.
VAs tell me every day that they are learning to build their own website, learning how to do FB ads, learning how to use every CRM system out there in case a client needs them to know it.
We need to be able to identify when it’s important for us to learn or do something in our VA business, and when it’s more efficient or just smarter to outsource it
Today we are going to talk about the importance of systems in your VA business growth.
Why Systems Matter
Systems and processes are essential for scaling a 50K VA business – to 50K, or beyond it.
It doesn’t matter how much you want to earn.
In order to consistently get clients, you need to have a system to get them.
In order to get discovery calls, you need to have a system to book them.
And I don’t mean an online scheduler. I mean who are the people you want to book discovery calls with you – how do you connect with them and get them on that call? What is the repeatable system that you have in place to be able to do that?
The systems you need in your VA business that will help you grow are these – the repeatable processes and tools that you use to manage them – that will help you make decisions and take actions every day that lead to the success you want.
And honestly you even need systems in your business if you don’t want to grow. Just being as productive as you can be means using systems too.
If you don’t put systems in place, you run the risk of spending FAR too much time doing things – like marketing, networking, planning, researching.
Without systems, you are probably not doing what you need to do efficiently.
This not only refers to your business stuff, but it extends to your clients businesses too. If you are spending too much time going back and forth in communication with your clients to get their tasks done, you need to create a system that will alleviate that.
If you are spending too much time learning how to do your website, you need to get more efficient at what you are doing with it, or how much time you are spending doing it, or you should outsource it so it gets done and you can move on to doing something that will help you get your business open, or growing.
Burnout is a very common topic among the self employed. We take on everything, and we leave time for nothing else – no rest, no down time – and then we simply hit the wall.
Have you had it? I have. It totally sucks. It’s really rough to be in burnout and it’s even harder to get out of it.
That’s why support systems are so important to you as a VA as well.
Key Business Systems
What are the key systems you need to set up in your VA business?
Client management – you need to be able to manage not just who your clients are, but all of the stuff you are doing for them too.
Task management – your tasks and your clients tasks.
Financial tracking – you need to manage this stuff too – how can you make more money if you don’t know how much you are making right now?
And finally, support systems. Your peeps, your cheerleaders, your sounding boards. Ah, support for the supporters. Insanely underutilized. We’re going to talk about why this is extremely important to prioritize.
Yes, you need others, but these are the ones we are going to focus on in today’s episode.
Setting Up Workflows and Automation
Let’s start with what you are doing right now.
I’m not here to tell you that what you are doing is wrong. There are many ways to do things. But, if you are doing things your way and struggling … well, girl, there could be a better way. I’m just sayin!
Think of everything you do as a workflow – it’s easy to create a to do list or a task list and then check things off of it when they are done. Don’t you love crossing stuff of a checklist? I love it! Such a sense of accomplishment.
BUT … if you instead look at that stuff you are doing as connected to something else, you can create workflows that help you streamline everything you do.
I talk about this often when I explain how you are going to fill a ROLE for a client, not just do their stuff.
When you see the bigger picture, you see everything – you see the value of the job you are doing, you see the time it actually takes to do the stuff, you see why something is important to do now (or later). It really helps you to uplevel yourself as a VA when you can elevate the way you look at the things you do every day.
Some of the things you will do in a day are billable to your clients. Some will be necessary business things for your VA business.
I’ll give you some examples of workflows that VAs commonly manage:
Client Onboarding – it doesn’t seem to matter who comes into your business, there are always lots of steps to take to get them set up and to get things working as flawlessly as you promised them they would in your discovery call.
Creating a client onboarding process is essential to making sure that your client gets looked after quickly and efficiently – remember they are making a big decision here to spend their money to work with you. Don’t leave them hanging in the onboarding process. Know what you need from them, what you need to send them, and how to get them set up to start working quickly.
Project completion – start to finish, you should have a system that allows you to work as efficiently as possible for your clients. When you are doing task A, say that’s a weekly newsletter or email for your client – this is something that can easily be mapped out. I’m a fan of checklists as I mentioned earlier, but you can use any system you want to make sure that things are moving along at the pace they should be.
Something like a weekly newsletter means that time is essential – we have to do this task every week, so nailing down the process by which we will complete that project every week is necessary so that we can be as productive as possible. Look at all of your projects as start-in progress-finished, and get them documented.
Invoicing is another workflow that we need to do regularly – monthly, usually, unless you bill clients on different days of the month. This is one of those start-in progress-stop projects I was just talking about.
In this case, we need to make sure our invoices go out, but also get paid. So even though our task of sending them is done, there is another part by the client that is arguably the more important part! And then you have to wait on them to get it done. To keep it flowing as a workflow should, what can you do to make things easy for them? Online payment? Automated billing to a CC? or is EFT easier? You will figure these things out, whatever works best for you is what you do.
What tools or apps or platforms can you use to automate some of the things that you do daily, weekly, monthly? You should always consider whatever you can do – getting help with your workload or your productivity doesn’t always mean that you have to pay someone else to do it. There are many, many ways to automate.
You only need to ask your colleagues (or me!) what there might be out there that is available to you. And don’t ever forget that even if you have something in place, there could be something better around the corner.
I remember when I got Calendly, I didn’t realize how much easier it would make things for me. My old system I had used for years – TimeTrade. It was simple and cheap and I used for a very long time. But then the price went WAY up (I think they offered some new features, but I used it in the simplest way possible. I had to look around. Got Calendly and it does SO much more. It syncs with Zoom, sets up a custom meeting for each person who books. Sends reminders automatically. And a lot more. I never looked because I thought my system worked. I had done all of that stuff manually before. What a time saver!
Anyway, you get an idea of workflows and how they help you streamline the things you do every day.
We want to carry this concept through to everything we do.
I’ve talked a little about managing your client stuff already, but I want to make sure to cover what you need to grow your 50K VA business.
Client Management
Being able to keep track of who you are working with is one thing – but a CRM helps you manage them long before they actually say yes to working with you.
They says the fortune is in the follow up and they aren’t wrong. It can take a long time for someone to become a client.
You want to be able to identify the people you are connecting with on a regular basis, and what you talked about.
I highly recommend a simple follow up system when you are networking, at the very least.
But if you are growing your VA business, you will be connecting with a lot of people – and a CRM is a necessary solution to keeping track of your leads, managing follow up, and wrangling communication.
There are a lot of CRM systems out there – you can look at ones like HoneyBook, HubSpot, Zoho, and others. I can’t possibly name them all. You will look for the one that suits your VA business best – if you need email templates, or great support, or scalability, automation – do some research of your own and compare a few systems, then pick one.
Task Management
One of the most important things to manage well in your VA business is communication and your schedule, or your calendar.
A typical work week has 40 hours – and you need to make the most out of every one of those so that you aren’t working around the clock. One of the reasons that VAs come to me to raise their rates is because they are working all the time and not making enough money.
And the first thing I ask them is how much time they are taking to do things right now. Work pace, time management, these things are essential to master. If you can’t master them when you are not earning 50K, you are going to struggle to manage them once you are way ahead of that.
Communication is easy to get better at – you just have to identify the problems that are arising when you know you are doing too much of it. Is it your client? Is it your clarity? A lot of back and forth? Lots of last minute stuff?
To fix a problem you have to identify the issue. Then you fix the issue.
Your calendar should be your best friend when you are a busy VA. Being able to block time and work efficiently is something you can learn and practice.
Like my Calendly system, are there better ways for you to be managing something in your VA business, or with your clients?
It’s not about speed – it’s about efficiency.
If you are struggling to get your tasks done every day, look at what is causing that to happen. Distractions? Rabbit holes? Tech issues? Lack of stuff from clients? Your work pace too slow? There is a reason that things get slowed down. It’s your job to find it and fix it.
Using things like templates, procedures, checklists, scheduled meetings, regular updates – these are the tactics that will help you get more done in less time.
Financial Management
From the beginning I tell you to track your income and your expenses. Being able to understand what is coming in and what is going out is crucial to your business success.
Like I said earlier, how can you make more money if you don’t know how much you are making right now?
You can start by using spreadsheets, but when you are talking about a 50K VA business and beyond, it’s time for a tool like QuickBooks, Wave, FreshBooks – something like that.
You have to manage what you pay out – what you pay yourself – your taxes – your budget – there’s a lot to unpack here. I’m not a financial professional so I’ll leave it at this .. .but you know you need systems to manage your finances when you are looking to grow your business.
Luckily this stuff is easy to set up and monitor every single day. And that’s how you are going to be able to grow.
Support Management
When you are jumping into another revenue level, obviously your workload is going to increase. There are simply going to be more things to do.
If you bring in 4 new clients, can you manage all of that work? If you do something like social media may you can.
But if you do a lot of admin tasks for your clients, you might be suddenly overwhelmed with too much to do.
How do you know if it’s the right time to hire subcontractors? I’ve got a podcast episode about just that – I’ll link it in the show notes.
But you will know because you will see when you are doing too much, or struggling with something. In the simplest terms, if you feel like you need help, you probably do.
When you add subcontractors into the mix, there will be more admin and more communication to manage them – so don’t think that just bringing someone in will solve all your problems.
Here we come back to systems again – what do you need to have in place for your subs to work efficiently from the start? SOPs, procedures, boundaries, policies, many some tools like slack or asana.
I won’t go into how to find subs, but that’s a big part of it too – finding reliable people who will stay with you long term. I could probably do a whole other episode on that. Maybe I will!
My subs were awesome. At my busiest I had 4 of them and they did a range of stuff – some did admin, some did creative stuff like graphics, some were clones of ME – there are so many options to outsource stuff. When the time is right for you, you can make up all the rules!
But know for sure that when you grow to 50K or higher, getting help will be one of the best decisions you make as a business owner.
I’ll give you one last piece of advice – and this is something I always told my clients as well … create the systems that you know you will need for the business that you WANT to have (that 50K+ business), not for the business you have right now. Make the choices about what to do with this or that based on where you WANT to be – and that’s what will help you build that path to success.
Whew! That was a lot. I know I covered WAY more than I planned to (there’s a lesson in there about efficiency ha ha) but when I’m teaching you how to build a 50K VA business, I don’t want to leave anything out.
We talked today about the importance of creating systems that will help you grow your VA business. When you plan, you can do it all better.
I encourage you to look at the systems you have in your VA business right now – or the lack of systems, as the case may be.
Having strong systems in place helps to make sure that your business runs smoothly and that when you are ready to scale, you are able to. Effective systems are the backbone of business growth, and will help you stay in business a very long time!
We will be going over systems in great detail in the 50K VA program – I can’t wait to talk to you about it!
I’m going to leave it here for this week, and I guess that wraps up this series.
I hope you have started thinking about the possibilities that lie before you for creating the VA business that you dream of.
If you want more information about the program, drop me a PM. I’ll share more info in the coming weeks across all of my social channels, but I’m available to answer any questions you have right now too.
Thank you again for trusting me to teach you and to guide you. I truly love to be here for you every week.
If I could ask you a favour – to subscribe to the podcast or leave me a review if you haven’t already. That’s something I should say every week and I never really do. But it matters and it will make sure that I know you are finding value in what I create just for you every week.
Do You Need Help?
If you are looking to build the kind of business I’m talking about – a 50K and beyond VA business, that’s where I can help. I am here to help you become a ridiculously good VA.
I have helped hundreds of VAs who are stuck get moving through private coaching, group coaching, and live and self study trainings. If you want to talk about how we can work together, let’s connect on a Cut to the Chase call. You can book yours at YourVAMentor.com/chase
Thanks for tuning in this week! I’ll see you next time!
What You Need to Do Next:
PRIVATE COACHING: Let’s work together privately to get you to your really big goal. It’s the fastest way to get results and we can start right away. Learn more about private coaching here.
GROUP COACHING MASTERMIND: The Virtual Circle is a group coaching mastermind option that costs less than private coaching, and can help you achieve the goals you set for yourself. . Check it out here: The Virtual Circle Group Coaching Mastermind for Virtual Assistants . We’d love to have you join us!
50K VA GROUP COACHING PROGRAM: If you have been struggling to build your VA business, get in on this live coaching program where we will help you create the framework for a business that can earn you 50K a year and beyond. LAUNCHING FALL 2024, stay tuned!
MONTHLY EMAIL MEMBERSHIP: I also have a brand new low-cost monthly membership program that will help you build your VA business – and it doesn’t require you to be on social media! It’s an email membership that I call The Virtual Toolkit! Every Monday morning you’ll receive a lesson and a downloadable resource in your inbox, that you can use to take a step further in your VA business. Get more details and sign up here now!
SELF STUDY PROGRAM: My self study program Getting Started as a VA can help you get your VA business started easily and quickly too. You can sign up right away and be on your way to getting clients by the end of the program, with all the right foundations in place. Check out the program here.
COMPLIMENTARY CONSULT: Reach out to me if you need to talk about where you are stuck and what the right option might be to get you moving. It’s literally all I’m here to do is help you get to where you want to go. Book a complimentary Cut to the Chase call with me here.