To grow your independent location business and earn the income you need and want, you need help. Even if you can somehow do it all, that doesn’t mean you should. Instead of dedicating every hour to business building and burning out, focus on building a work-life balance and business you actually love.  

Aside from the risk of burn-out and overwork, you also need time off as a business owner. Whether you’re building on maternity leave or vacation, you’re going to need help to keep it all running. So, the question is: how do you create a business that can function without you always attached to the digital helm?

Hiring a Virtual Assistant to Get Your Business Going

When you’re just starting out, you may not always know what to outsource and what to DIY (I’d recommend you look into hiring a virtual assistant or virtual personal assistant). I built my team to include talented Virtual Assistants that can handle research, scheduling, project management, and administrative details. I also hire copywriters, graphic designers, and other experts. Some business owners might hire VAs to do these tasks, especially if it’s creating light graphics in Canva or social media copy.

Your goal is to free up time and resources to work on your business and grow your bottom line. If you can pay someone $15 to $30 to spend an hour sorting through emails or arranging your calendar, it’s probably time well-spent while you stay in your zone of genius or get some well-deserved R&R or family time. 

Hire More Help to Expand Your Business

Are you turning down work because your time is maxed out? Do you see potential for additional income streams in your business but can’t find the time to grow them? Step into a more strategic mindset about who to hire to keep you in a visionary role of your company. Your goal is to stop being the “doer,” except on tasks you love doing or require your expertise.

Start the hiring process by figuring out where you drop the ball. Maybe you like working in Canva, but is it dragging down productivity and growth? Hire someone to create templates for your social media channels that you can easily customize as you go. Or hire a talented salesperson to pre-screen clients and walk them through a discovery call so you can step in with a personalized proposal and close the deal.

Some business owners seem to feel they need to be experts in their entire business. But if you’re not a bookkeeper, why are you trying to slog through your books every month? If you’re not a copywriter, why are you up until all hours of the night to make something sound polished? Your expertise can be in your leadership or vision. Or it can be in one area of your business, like building a marketing strategy and having others execute on it.

Hiring a virtual assistant is a win for your business if you focus on their natural strengths that complement yours. Be careful not to hire out the tasks you love the most. If you launched your own business because you want to spend all your time editing videos for clients, then embrace that work. Outsource the pre-production, delivery, and client communications instead. 

When you focus on what you love doing and where your expertise lies, you’ll quickly see tasks are left. Work on outsourcing those areas to Virtual Assistants whose zone of genius is helping you stay in yours.

What Do You Want Your Future Life to Look Like?

Creating a freedom business that allows flexibility requires looking ahead. It’s challenging to scale a business, if not impossible, if you leave it all up to chance and simply react to what’s going on around you. Instead, build a strategy that creates a roadmap to your goals.

Here’s an exercise that helps clarify what you really want. Ask yourself, “Who is my future self? What do her business and life look like? And what kind of help does she have that I’ll need to hire to create that future and make my future self a reality?” When you honor your future self and identify her goals, you can work backward from that goal to put the strategy and stepping stones in place to get there. 

The best hires you’ll make this year are the ones that free up your time, grow your income, and keep you as the visionary in your business. By hiring a Virtual Assistant or a Virtual Personal Assistant, you can build your business as quickly or slowly as you need. Just make sure to focus on growing your business that aligns with your goals for freedom and income. Otherwise, you could end up creating a job for yourself instead of the dream business you set out to build.

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