.jpg)
A founder contacted me in January due to an increasingly unsustainable situation. He worked seventy hours per week running client relations, doing backend tasks, finding/contracting vendors, and developing strategic direction for his business. Although revenue grew to $1.2M annually, the only way he could grow revenue was by having direct control over all aspects of his business.
Prior to reaching out to me, he attempted to hire a virtual assistant (VA). The person he hired would manage his calendar and do basic email triage. Two weeks into the project, he realised the person did not have an understanding of his business's priorities, was missing critical communication from key clients, and created additional workload through uninformed decision-making.
He'd concluded that outsourcing didn't work for his operation and resigned himself to working the seventy hour weeks as the cost of business ownership.
In reality, he simply experienced poor hiring and integration of his VA vs. the idea that outsourcing is inherently bad for business.
How this will get resolved
The primary difference between VAs that fail to meet expectations and those that succeed lies in how the founder views the structure of the position. Most founders view VAs as "task" workers who execute whatever administrative task needs completing each week. As a result, the founder retains full responsibility for all decisions related to the business. Therefore, the VA never has the ability to develop a sense of ownership and cannot act proactively.
We completely changed the paradigm for how our founder viewed his relationship with his VA. Rather than ask the VA to complete whatever administrative task appeared most pressing for the week, we identified exactly which decisions the founder made weekly that could be systematized or delegated. While calendar management was clearly an area of concern for our founder, the true problem was he was making dozens of micro-decisions regarding scheduling each week that did not require his input when proper criteria existed.
We developed a decision framework outlining which types of scheduling decisions our founder should be involved in and which the VA could make independently based on established guidelines. We also outlined email types that warranted our founder's attention and those that the VA could respond to via pre-developed response templates or by delegating them to relevant team members. Lastly, we established expense approval thresholds where any expenses less than a predetermined amount could be approved independently by the VA.
By transferring decision-making authority directly, rather than passively assuming the VA understood which issues were most important to him, we created a much stronger and more autonomous VA relationship.
Results after restructuring
After implementing these changes, our founder’s calendar was re-organized to group together similar meeting types allowing him to block off large chunks of uninterrupted time to focus on deep work. Our founder no longer reviewed all emails personally; now he reviews only those flagged as truly needing his consideration. Standardized processes for client onboarding reduced administrative bottlenecks allowing our founder’s VA to perform routine tasks independently.
Our founder’s weekly work hours decreased from seventy hours down to forty-seven. In addition, revenue rose to $1.4 Million in six months as our founder had ample opportunity to pursue new opportunities for growth and strategic planning versus getting bogged-down in operational minutia.
The VA was able to resolve problems by consistently executing tasks according to predetermined frameworks, allowing our founder to stop spending time thinking about them.
Why is this sustainable?
Most founders and VAs struggle because the founder views the VA as nothing more than a task worker. To create a viable partnership, one must build the necessary infrastructure for effective delegation. One can’t delegate unless you document decision criteria. One can’t guarantee quality unless you define what quality is for each type of task. Finally, one can’t sustain alignment unless you regularly review and adjust based on changing priorities.
Founders who utilise VAs to free up time first establish systems that define what delegation means specifically for their business. The VA then operates autonomously within those systems – rather than constantly asking permission.