Over the past few months, I’ve written a lot about delegating: knowing when to delegate, choosing what to delegate, and choosing who to delegate your work to. 

Today, I’m actually doing it. Because sometimes, I think I’m doing great at delegation… but in reality, I’ve actually handed my team a raging dumpster fire that they need to quietly put out. 

Please meet my right hand, Paige Sparkman, who sees all the ways I succeed and fail, and generously guides me to be a little bit better every day. Below, she shares her tips on how to choose a virtual team and become a great delegator.  - Jill

At some point, you realize you can’t do it all as a business owner. Usually, that’s when someone will suggest:

“Have you thought about getting a virtual assistant?” 

That’s where I come in. My name is Paige. I’m an online business manager (OBM)/virtual assistant (VA), specializing in marketing and operations, and I’ve worked with Jill for about 3 years in this capacity, and others.

Now, if you’ve asked around about virtual assistants, you’ve likely heard a wide range of opinions.

Some people will tell you, “My VA saved my business.” Others will say, “The idea of a VA is incredible -- if you find a good one, please send them my way.” And then there’s the camp that insists a VA isn’t the place to start, and that someone more specialized is the move. 

My opinion? A virtual assistant may be the right move for you. It also may be the wrong one. It depends on your budget, what you actually need off your plate, and whether you have realistic expectations about how hiring support impacts your time. 

A VA is great for the stuff that keeps your business moving when you’re buried in execution, like admin, operations tasks, and data entry. 

But the tricky part is that “virtual assistant” has turned into something of a catch-all label we use for a lot of different specialties. 

For example, in my peer group, you can find someone with one year of experience who can maybe answer an email accurately, as well as someone with niche experience charging hundreds of dollars per hour. I’ve also worked on teams with multiple VAs at once: marketing VA, admin VA, operations VA, each with their own specialty and price point. 

So when someone says, “Just hire a VA,” my first thought is: 

“OK, for what?”

Ask yourself the same thing.

If you want someone who can manage more from the background and speak to each part of the business, that’s where an OBM comes in. Think of an OBM like someone who starts entry level in a typical office setting as an executive assistant or admin. Then they work their way up to customer service, have a marketing stint, and then find themselves tackling AP/AR, tech or operations. 

By the end, they’re the perfect person to be an office manager because you know every part of the business. Ideally, they are the go-to for a team instead of a CEO.

This role is best described as a junior generalist. The difference between hiring a VA and an OBM is typically strategy. VAs are focused on doing, while an OBM looks at the execution, systems and planning. 

Most VA horror stories I hear have the same root issue: unrealistic or unclear expectations.

For example, if you’re looking for a strategic marketing contributor, a VA is definitely not the right hire, even if you think of it more as a support role. Remember, VAs are assistants, so you shouldn’t look to them to be “big picture” marketing problem-solvers. They can post and maybe design a graphic. But they probably can’t write your copy… definitely not copy that converts.

Another common misconception is thinking that by hiring a virtual assistant, you can go totally hands-off. In reality, your virtual assistant still needs to be trained, managed, and invested in. So, if you’re always going to be “too busy” to teach, respond, and guide a VA, it’s typically not going to work. 

Finally, the last heartbreak category is how unclear expectations are born in VA relationships: lack of documentation. 

Sure, you can start without documentation. But that means the first phase of your work with a VA is getting what is in your head (standards, processes, and so on) out of your head and on paper. When documentation and SOPs are addressed up front, working with a VA gets a lot easier. 

But when you expect instant execution with zero documentation, that’s where people get frustrated and feel like they hired the wrong person.

If you’re still on the fence about whether you need a VA, keep it simple. This isn’t about whether VAs are “good” or “bad.” It’s about whether hiring one makes sense for what you need right now.

Here are three questions I want you to ask yourself:

If you know the specifics of the support you need, your budget is real, and you’re open to the fact that managing a person still takes time, then a VA can be a great move. If one of those answers still feels fuzzy, that’s not a failure either. 

In fact, now you have clear direction on what you need to tighten up before you hire someone.

Ready to get started? Great, here’s what you do:

Need a sounding board for rethinking your delegation strategy? Book a free 20-minute strategy session.

👉 Wait, what happens during a 20-minute strategy session?

These dates are official. Keep these in mind while you prepare for the 26 surprise year-end events that were not on the school calendar but require costumes, snacks, gifts, and your impeccable presence. 

Crowdfunding and community ownership. Spirit Airlines is no more…or is it? In the last few weeks, I’ve taken part in different conversations on how to buy organizations and turn them into community-owned companies. And then came the drive to revive Spirit Airlines through a massive decentralized crowdfunding campaign. Would you invest in a business you love, that promises to sustain jobs and services, with a small profit share back to you? With the overhead, union labor, and regulation, I don’t know if a community-owned airline is possible, but the proposed business model is fascinating. As of this writing, 371,000 people want to try.

ICYMI, here are resources you should know about:

Welp, this year, the federal government will need to borrow $2 trillion (yes, with a “t”) to stay functional. While this may sound like a “Washington problem” at first, this will impact us as consumers and business owners, most directly through higher borrowing costs, as well as depressed consumer spending and demand destruction. That means now is a good time to protect your cash flow, get a backup line of credit in place, and stop assuming it’s just a few weeks until somebody backs up the cheap money truck.