Top 10 Questions Business Owners ask!

I’ve decided to create a monthly recap of the Top 10 questions I see business owners asking for support on. Many of these questions are asked over and over and sometimes with a unique spin on the question.

My goal is to provide support and resources to business owners at different levels and stages of business. The companies I work with range from 500k to 40MM in revenue with 3-50 employees and I have found that no matter how long you have been in business, there are business foundations you need to have established to create massive success and maintain sustainable growth. Here’s the recap of February 2024.

Q1: What makes a good Virtual Assistant?

Tbh, I kinda chuckled at this question because what makes any of us "good"? 

All jokes aside, when looking to hire a VA into your business you need to decide what kind of person you are looking for. You also need to have clarity on the kind of culture you want in your business. 

Are you micromanaging and trying to control everything? 

Are you creating space for innovation and creativity? 

Do you want someone to be an order taker or do you want someone who can think for themselves? 

There are THOUSANDS of really good VA's out in the workforce. What makes them good or great is uniquely determined by what you need and how they show up. 

For me, I want someone who I can give a task to and they'll follow it to my instructions, BUT I also want them to make sure there are no errors or issues based on what they know about my business. They operate with integrity. They know my standards and ethical practices and their own are in alignment with mine. I want someone who is detail oriented and will go above and beyond. 

I don't want to micromanage anyone because I have other tasks and projects that I am focused on. 

I want to be able to trust my team to do the work and bring up any red flags or issues to me when they run across them. 

I want my team to be willing to ask questions if they are unclear or unsure. 

I give my team a ton of autonomy, but I also wrangle them back in when they get a little wild and start coloring too far outside the lines of our strategy.

Q2: What’s your #1 piece of advice for bringing on new software for newbies?

My #1 piece of advice is understand why you bought into the software in the first place. That way when you either start to work in the software and get frustrated or you hire someone to develop your systems out you are super clear on why you invested in this particular piece of software. 

Second piece of advice, if you are not tech savvy OR if your time is better spent completing tasks that generate income then hire out to a specialist who can handle building out your software for you. Be willing to invest, so that you can focus your time and energy where it is better spent.

Q3: How do I create an onboarding process?

Not only do I have a download that you can grab, but here is the 30,000 foot view of onboarding a new client. 

1) Contract signed and payment collected through whatever docusign software you use 

2) Contract signing and payment triggers workflow to request onboarding docs you need to collect and an onboarding call 

3) Contract signing and payment triggers client folders to be created in your hub (Drive, Dropbox, etc) 

4) Document uploads in your hub trigger an email notification to you 

5) Contract signing and payment triggers any additional information requested that you need to get started. We have a form the client needs to complete and instructions on how to safely and confidentially share credentials with our team. 

6) Onboarding Call Complete! You're off and running. 

The key here is to have your Contract signing and/or your payment to trigger the next steps that you need in each part of your onboarding process. You need to identify what you want to specifically look like in your business and then you can build it.

Q4: What is the one tool you could not live without in your business?

LastPass is a tool that I use every day in my business. Having a password manager keeps my business, my personal info and client info safe and sound. I appreciate knowing that LP takes massive steps in securing our information. Having a password manager is a tool that I recommend all of my clients have and utilize to protect themselves and their own clients. I have literally walked into clients offices where they have a notebook of passwords sitting next to their computer. That is a HUGE no-no and we work quickly to resolve that issue. Use a Password Manager!

Q5: Who were the first 3 people you added to your team? If you started again, would you change anything?

Let me share the order I hired all my team members. I added a VA first who could do a lot of general tasks and projects. ➡️ Then I hired a bookkeeper. ➡️ Then I added my Ops Manager as I needed a specialist to offboard more client work to. ➡️ Then I hired my branding team. ➡️ A marketing specialist. ➡️ Next I hired a graphic designer to carry on the work on the branding team once they were done with their projects. ➡️ Then I hired a PA/VA to handle more sensitive/personal matters. 

I wouldn't change this in anyway.

Q6: I don’t know how to hire a new team member, where to look and how much it will cost. How can I trust my new hire when I find the right person?

I often see posts from business owners looking for support in determining when, how and who to hire in their business. 

Oftentimes it's a scary prospect to bring someone into your business especially if it's the first time you are doing it OR if you have attempted it before unsuccessfully. 

The biggest questions about expanding your team revolve around money/cost, time, delegation and skill set. 

Let's dig into some of these... 

1) How much will it cost me to hire a new person? And how much time do I need to hire them for? 

Well, that depends on a lot of factors. 

• Are you hiring a specialist or a generalist? 
• Are you hiring someone hourly or per project based? 
• How many hours does that person need to work to complete the task/project if you are hiring them hourly? 
• Do you really, really need someone 40 hours a week? 
• Maybe you only need them 5 hours a week or 10. 
• Maybe you just need someone to come in and do a one off project. 

You can determine the cost based on YOUR budget. What can you afford? What do you want to spend? You are the #1 determining factor in this question. 

Here’s what I did in my business.

1) My first hire was a VA who was a generalist. I hired her for 5 hours a week and quickly increased her to 10 hours a week within the first month. I started her hourly pay at $15/hr and by the time she was done working with me two years later, I was paying her $25/hour for 20-25 hours a week of work. 

I currently pay most of my team hourly and they have set hours by week, month or project depending on what we are working on. 

2) How do I know what work to give them? 

This my friend is a great question! I have a process called Love. Hate. Delegate. that helps you identify all of the tasks and projects you are working on daily, weekly and monthly and walks you through how to evaluate what you can delegate to your team and when. 

Before you ever hire someone you need to have clearly worked through this process to make the assignment of duties, job descriptions, scope of work extremely clear to your new team members. 

Once you have the work identified that you will delegate then you will want to create SOPs (the process of how to do the work) for each task or project so they can confidently and efficiently begin working. 

3) How do I find someone that is really good? Basically, how do I find a unicorn? 

Once you have figured out how much you are willing to pay, how much time you think you need and the scope of work that needs to be accomplished you can determine if you need to hire a generalist or a specialist. I personally have 2 specialists on my team and 3 generalists that have some specialty skill sets. 

Where to find these people is wide open. You can put feelers out to your current circle of business friends and acquaintances, you can work with a recruiter, you can post on any job board. There are literally a hundred ways to find team members. 

My most successful way of filling my team is from referrals from my current circle of connections. I personally don't ever post on job boards or post publicly on social media because I don't have time to sift through the applicants that are applying for everything they can apply for. The last thing I want to do is sift through 200+ posts or applications.

Q7: What is a process or framework that made you more efficient?

I think SOPs and having a Project Management System are the key ingredients to maximum efficiency. 

Let's talk about SOPs first.

A SOP is a Standard Operating Procedure - meaning it is the step by step, how to process of each and every task that you complete in your business. 

That's the simple, simple breakdown. 

Pick one task in your business and think about the steps that it takes from inception to completion. Now write those steps down and while you are doing that, you want to think about and document WHO is responsible for those tasks, what is the timing to complete the task, what tools or resources needed to complete those tasks, is there a spot (hub or home) in one of your technologies where this task will be built and executed from. 

These are all things you want to think about when building an SOP. Once you build your first SOP, you now have a framework to build an SOP for every workflow and process in your business. <<<----- Again, super simplified, but it gives most business owners a really easy place to start from. 

My other favorite tool is a Project Management System (PMS).

There are so many options to choose from. There are general ones that most small business owners are readily familiar with like Clickup, Asana, Trello, Teamwork, Monday, 17 Hats, etc and then there are industry specific PMS that you can look into especially if you work in a highly regulated industry like healthcare or finance. 

Having a PMS system that your team works in creates increased efficiency especially when team members are collaborating and supporting each other on different projects and tasks. 

This also allows you to manage dependencies and to identify where and when projects or tasks get blocked and by whom. Having a PMS running at max efficiency will show you the depth of your business and where everything is moving in both a big picture and minutia view.

Q8: What are the best ways to automate business?

This got me thinking about what we do internally in my business and then what we have done for clients. 

Here is my top automation in business that I believe is the most effective for most business owners: New Lead Inquiry.

This can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it, but the key is to have a place for new leads to provide their information. 

The process/workflow could look something like this: 

1. Create a form. 
2. Lead completes form. 
3. Directed to thank you/Booking page. 
4. Tags Added. 
5. Lead identified/moved to CRM. 
6. Email follow up. 
7. Confirmation emails. 
8. Reminder emails.
9. Lead nurturing. 

⬆️That is SUPER simplified, but it gives you a quick glimpse of how you can remove all manual steps and have the entire process automated. Think of the time you save! The key is to create a workflow that is easy to understand for your team and provides a clear journey for your client to move through.

Q9: Should I hire someone who has experience in my industry or not?

When you are looking to hire someone to work in your specific niche or industry, you want to pay attention and think about who you are hiring and what level of work you want them to do.

I’ve seen a variety of questions from business owners of who they should hire, what work to delegate, what rate to pay, etc, etc.

These are things that you are empowered to think about and make decisions on. If you want to hire someone whether it be an employee or contractor, you need to decide what the role and work load will be.

I call it their scope of work which is different from a job description. Every time I hire someone, I determine what work I want them to do, what their authority level is, who they report to, what access they have to the business and clients and that informs me on the type of person that I want to hire and how much I want to pay them.

Now that you have this information defined, you can determine whether or not your team member needs to have industry/niche experience or not.

One thing to keep in mind, skillsets are transferable between industries, so based on the work you want them to do will impact whether or not they need to be experienced and knowledgeable about your specific industry.

Q10: Will you share your contract(s)/contract model with us so we can create our own contracts?

This question always makes me pause because I would never want to use someone else’s contract without sound legal advice. 

When you are new in business it can be challenging to get all of your legal affairs in order, but it is vital to your business. 

I've seen business owners share and copy contracts from other businesses and use them in their own business without ensuring that their contract is legal in their city, state or country. 

There are lots of legal agencies that are also small business owners who share their services and sell their legal documents. If I was on a tight budget, I would work with a business owner like that rather than just copying contracts from other businesses which you know nothing about. 

Don't cause yourself legal issues right at the beginning... There are affordable legal resources you can access as a small business owner.