Episode Summary

In this episode of the Make Space for More podcast, Melissa Swink discusses three key strategies for scaling a service-based business with the help of a virtual assistant (VA). Each of these concepts can be modified if your business sells products. Melissa walks through how to invest strategically in a team, how to turn services into products, ways to replicate successful systems, and how to reach the goal of doubling your revenue. Tune in for actionable insights for business owners looking to grow and scale their organizations.

Key Highlights:

• Investing in a team is crucial for scalability.
• Turning services into products can create passive income.
• A virtual assistant can handle tech and marketing tasks.
• Standardizing processes helps replicate success.
• Documenting standard operating procedures is essential.
• A VA can assist in hiring and onboarding new team members.
• Increasing prices can lead to higher revenue.
• Outreach to potential clients can be streamlined with a VA.
• Creating a course can diversify income streams.

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Hi everyone, welcome to the Make Space for More podcast where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink, and in today's episode, we're going to talk about three ways that a virtual assistant can help you scale your business. So we are going to look at particularly for service-based business, although if you are a product-based business, you may be able to modify some of these concepts as it makes sense for you.

but we're going to talk about how you can leverage the help of a virtual assistant to scale by the following strategies. So of course, just generally speaking, The number one way to scale a business is to invest in growing your team. So if you are a solopreneur and you build up your business to the point where you reach your capacity, you're full, you can't really work with any more clients or you can't do any more things, it's time to look at

investing in team to help you and help keep you moving forward. This also helps you to escape that trading dollars for hours model. Even if you're not necessarily charging by the hour, if you are ultimately restricted by the amount of work that you can personally do, your business is not scalable. And the number one way to make it scalable is to get others involved so that you can serve more customers and continue growing and so on. But that being said, today we're going to

talk about a couple of strategies that maybe are less known or kind of deviate a little bit from that primary path to growing and scaling your service-based business. And so the number one way that we're going to talk about is to turn your service into a product. So for example, perhaps you are a bookkeeper and you are working with clients on a regular basis to help categorize their transactions, keep their books up to date,

You reconcile their bank statements and credit card statements. Maybe you're invoicing customers on their behalf. Maybe you're paying bills and paying vendors, things like that. You're doing the day-to-day work in the business. And perhaps you've even decided to add team members to serve additional clients that you personally don't have the time to service. And you've been growing and scaling that way. That's fantastic. And you may be getting to a point where maybe you want some passive income

Or maybe you would like to take on additional work that doesn't necessarily require you to touch every aspect of the client's business. And so in that case, turning your service into a product could look like creating a course or a program of some kind. And so if that is the direction that you're interested in heading in the coming year to increase your revenue and continue to grow and scale your business, a virtual assistant can help you with the tech and the marketing side of that thing. So.

perhaps you've decided to release a course for brand new businesses, how to set up their accounting. So you are able to create some of the bare bones of that course. You could maybe outline the things that you wanna talk about and your virtual assistant can help you potentially write that content or write the script for the course that you are about to create. They are able to take that information, whether it be videos or written content.

and put it into a system where a potential customer can purchase that course and receive access to that information, setting up all the tech side of things. Maybe it's think if it, maybe it's teachable. There are so many different course programs out there, but you get the idea. A virtual assistant can help you set those things up. So you are the genius. You know the work that needs to be.

done by those brand new businesses in order to set up their accounting systems for success. It is your knowledge, it is your expertise, and a virtual assistant can take that information from you and put it into a physical form where a client can purchase it and receive that information from you. Now, if you have created that course or you've created a program of some kind, then there's also the promotional aspects of it, right? We want to make sure that people know that this is available for purchase.

And so they can help you with that promotional campaign and setting that up as well. Maybe that involves adding a landing page on your website. Maybe it involves a social media campaign or an outreach campaign of some kind to new businesses that are starting up in your area, things like that. Your virtual assistant can help you with those things so that you can continue to service your customers on a day-to-day basis and be actively creating this product.

for your business as well without getting you slowed down. And I don't know about you, but I feel like in my business on a day-to-day basis, I get pulled into different things and there's always something more pressing than say creating a course or a program. And so I feel like when I get other people on my team involved or if I hire a coach or a consultant or some type of service provider to help me with a very specific thing, the momentum happens just so much faster. And that's also what you get.

when you work with a virtual assistant and other service providers in order to launch some of these things. Okay, now the second way, this is somewhat similar to number one, but the second way that a VA can help you scale your business is to replicate your recipe for success by leveraging systems. So I'm not saying bottle up your recipe and give it away for the world. That's not what I'm talking about here.

but maybe you have a signature process that really gets great results for your clients. So for example, maybe you're a branding consultant and for many years you have been working with your clients one-on-one and you have this way of working consistently that your clients are just getting the great results that they've been looking for and you're having similar conversations.

over and over and over again, maybe your client journey is very similar where you have some specific steps that you're working through on your one-to-one clients. So a virtual assistant in that case can help you maximize your time in doing the work with your clients by really helping you to standardize and map out that client journey. Maybe that involves documenting some standard operating procedures so that this process becomes repeatable.

and others are able to follow it as well. So when you get to that point where maybe you want to hire on, in this example, a second branding consultant, or you want to get other service providers involved with aspects of this work that you're doing with your clients, the quality and the end results are still there that you're looking for, but you're not necessarily doing all of these things from start to finish A to Z with every client that you're working with. Now, getting an

virtual assistant involved with that standard operating procedures or mapping out that client journey or those workflows that go into servicing your customers also gives an opportunity for a virtual assistant to help you identify what can be automated through this process. Maybe it's as simple as creating some type of an intake form, or maybe it is creating a checklist in a project management system so that everybody knows

where this client is at in the process. It's easy to communicate with team members as you start working with them in the future. It's easy to know exactly what needs to go in to this work that you're doing. Okay, the last example that I have here for you in ways a virtual assistant can help you scale your business, really, generally speaking, is to help you double your revenue, right? Who doesn't want that?

And if you're actively growing and scaling your business, doubling your revenue is probably something that is in your sites. You wanna increase your revenue. Maybe it's not double, but increasing your revenue when you're growing and scaling your company is definitely up there. And so I realized that this one is a little bit more general, but really a virtual assistant can help you serve more clients and or increase your offerings. So obviously there's three ways to make more money. There is to,

sell more, which means just increase the overall number of clients you're working with or the overall work that you're doing, or to sell different, which means maybe you are going to be packaging your services differently in the future, where maybe you have been doing one-on-one business coaching, for example, and you've decided that you do appreciate the one-on-one, but you can work with more clients and have a bigger impact on the businesses and the people that you're working with.

if you change over to more of a group format and to standardize some of the things that you are teaching, just for an example. So that package would look a little bit different. Similarly, if you are a brand photographer, for example, maybe you are packaging your services a little bit differently where there's some strategy involved and then maybe there's also some content creation involved in addition to the photos that you're taking during the photo shoot and editing and delivering and so on.

Maybe it's packaging things differently. Or then the other option is too, is increasing your prices. Maybe you've gotten to a point where you've got several years of business under your belt. You have client wins that you can demonstrate and prove that you know what you're doing and you can help them get results faster. Maybe it's overall increasing your prices. Maybe last year, your average price point for your package was $500 and this year it's going to be jumping up to a thousand for new clients coming on board.

making more money, there's ways to have a virtual assistant help you do that. So a couple of examples here, if you are growing and scaling your business by surely increasing the amount of revenue and the work that you're bringing in. For one example could be having a virtual assistant help you hire and onboard additional team members to support you and your clients. So maybe you are going to be growing your business by maybe adding another service provider.

to your team. Maybe, let's say, an example would be a realtor and this person is super busy and they want to grow and scale and be able to serve more customers in the coming year by hiring another agent for their office. So then there's two of them available to help their clients. A virtual assistant can help you. You may be put together the job description, do some recruiting, help you pre-interview or even came up with

interview questions to ask, help you with that hiring process. A VA can help you with those things, especially on the admin side of things of reviewing the applications and things like that. Now, I'm not going to venture as far to say that a virtual assistant has an HR background that would be able to help you with some of the legal aspects and the, I would say the taxable aspects and the insurance aspects of hiring a team member, but they could definitely help you manage that process.

Maybe it involves them sending an outreach message to them, either like email or on say LinkedIn, for example, and say, hey, I'd love to reconnect. I have something really excited to share with you and so on. Maybe it involves, again, creating a landing page on your website or even updating your website in order to reflect the services that you wanna be offering in the coming year. There are many different ways that a virtual assistant can help support you.

when you're already kind of at capacity and you have enough on your plate as it is, and then you're also looking at how can I do more? A virtual assistant is a great way in order to bridge that gap between I am full in a capacity and yet there's more that I wanna be doing, how can I get some extra help? This might give them some ideas of how they can leverage the help from others in order to keep these things moving forward.

I really appreciate you listening to the podcast episode today and I will be back next week with another episode of Make Space for More where we have tips and tools and strategies for growing your business beyond you. Have a wonderful day. Bye bye.