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“Ever since the pandemic, I’ve struggled to find and KEEP competent employees. Now my business is burning me out. Help!”
Owning a small business can be a double-edged sword. While there’s potential to make life changing income, there’s also the potential of added stress, exhaustion, and financial night tremors worse than anything your subconscious mind could conjure up in a nightmare.
The big picture: The COVID-19 pandemic has evolved into a “broken-employment” pandemic. Businesses from Main Street to Wall Street are complaining that they can’t find and keep qualified people, and the unemployed are running up against new levels of hiring hurdles they face to get a job they feel they are qualified – and often over-qualified – for.
Neither employers nor job candidates are getting what they want.
Productivity, profit, and personal income are staring down the barrel of a looming recession.
Yes, but: The answer, at least for business owners, may be right in front of them. Have you considered the benefits of a Virtual Assistant (VA) agency? I have used them myself for years and they made me feel like I was Leonardo Dicaprio holding Kate Winslet at sunset on the prow of an “unsinkable” ocean liner. Yeah, I felt like The King of the World.
So much so, I started my own virtual assistant agency as a service through my company, The Profit Finders.
How it works: A VA agency is continuously interviewing, hiring, and training people to meet the needs of the marketplace. If the agency can’t provide people with competency in the skills the market needs, they go out of business. So, they either hire those skill sets, or they train the bright, professional, and optimistic people they hire to become technically proficient in a variety of skills.
Why this matters to you: When you outsource some of your job functions to a virtual assistant agency like The Profit Finders, it’s on us to do all the work it takes to match the right candidate to the skill sets you need. And you still get to interview that candidate.
The VA does not become your “employee;” you don’t provide benefits. In fact, while you’ll work directly with them by assigning them tasks, some VA firms like ours give you a bonus “account manager” who actually manages the VA for you and makes sure they deliver the tasks on time and as requested.
Between the lines:
Hiring & Firing: If the VA hire doesn’t work out, you simply tell your agency account manager and they provide you with new candidates from their agency to interview. Have you ever hired and fired an employee? This is much easier.
While some VA agencies have US-based people, many are based in South America, Asia, or India. The Profit Finders provides virtual assistants from the Philippines. They are incredibly courteous, hard-working, and almost all have college degrees. And if they don’t have one they are working on one. They are skilled in accounting and bookkeeping, many types of software like Excel, Powerpoint, Canva, and a variety of CRM software programs. Also e-mail marketing software like Aweber and Mailchimp, and social media posting as well. I stand by their competence 100%.
Low-Cost & High-Output: I personally have worked with several agencies, and can attest that they saved my business as much as $10 to $30 per hour in wages. And the quality of work has been incredible. Most are college-educated, and some even have master’s degrees.
US-based virtual assistants typically have a rate of $25 to $30 per hour. The Profit Finders virtual assistants are $12 per hour. You read that right; we provide college-educated people with awesome attitudes who are eager to please for a mere $12 per hour.
Yes, but: But what if you don’t need desk-top, administrative help? What if your business needs more people “working the floor” in your store, your gym, or your salon?
Then if I was a member of your board of advisors, I would challenge you by asking…
“Are there tasks you are doing which, if you were able to delegate them, would allow you to be ‘on the floor’ making a difference in your customers’ lives?”
What to watch:
- Are you, as the business owner, doing tedious and routine tasks every week?
- Are you only working on things that have a direct impact on growing your revenue and profit? (You should be).
- Are there tasks that you could shift to someone else so that you can be working in the most important part of your business? In other words, are you doing a $15 per hour task when you should be only working on the $500 per hour roles?
Let’s get blunt: On that last bullet point, if you’re doing the $15 per hour tasks, then you are hurting your business, preventing revenue growth, and leaking profit. Ouch.
You may be skeptical. That’s normal. Start slow, like you’re feeding a pigeon breadcrumbs in the park. I’m not suggesting you dump an entire loaf of tasks on them. Change is hard, even for a rock star like you I bet. But after a few months you’ll start off-loading more and more to these laptop super heroes.
Go deeper on how Virtual Assistants can help you:
- How to Have Multiple Side Hustles While Reducing Stress
- How Business Owners Can Win in a Tight Labor Market
- Best Virtual Assistant Services
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