Episode Summary

If you are a visionary, “big ideas” type of person, and/or you’ve always wished you didn’t have to get bogged down in all the operational details of running your business - this episode is for you!

Join Melissa Swink as she discusses the importance of getting support for your business operations, especially if you want to grow. She highlights three key areas a virtual team can help with, ultimately allowing business owners to focus on their visionary roles. Tune in for practical examples and insights into effectively integrating virtual assistants into your business operations for improved efficiency and scalability.

Key Highlights:

• Streamlining your business operations is key to growth.
• Virtual assistants can manage your operations so you can get out of the details and stop being the bottleneck. 
• Area 1: Manage, streamline, and execute on repeatable processes. 
• Area 2: Manage vendors, team, and projects. 
• Area 3: Be the first line of communication and answer FAQs.
• You can get operations help without hiring a full-time person.

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 give some love to the operations side of your business. So we've talked plenty on this podcast about

how a virtual assistant can increase your skills or help you scale. And I think it's because naturally that's what we all want, right? Because there's so much freedom that comes from increasing your revenue, boosting your profitability, doubling your sales and all sorts of things where we get really excited about those terms. And it's even more exciting when we can get help from other people to achieve those goals that we're looking for. But I wanna take a step back here and also talk about

the side of the business that really needs to pull up and help with that level of growth, which is the operations side of your business. And this idea came from a couple of conversations that I've had recently with some potential clients. And one person in particular was describing themselves as a visionary, a big picture person, an ideas person, and they just feel like they get...

bogged down by the running of their business. They want to do more of those things that really light them up and excite them and less of the running of the day to day, which depending on where you're starting out, that might be where you're at right now where you really love those ideas. But there's also a lot of the fulfillment and the implementation of those ideas that currently fall on you. So if that's you, or if you feel like maybe you've become the bottleneck of your business where it's like,

hey, I'm out there, I'm networking, I'm marketing, and I'm really growing and scaling my business. I'm really excited about the direction that's gonna go. And I also realized that I am becoming the bottleneck and that my growth or the fulfillment that I'm able to give to my clients and my customers is too heavily dependent on me and that needs to change. So no matter what direction you're approaching this episode from, I think you're gonna find a lot of good ideas that are coming from it.

So I'm just gonna break down today three ways that a virtual assistant can provide operational support for your business. And I will tell you that some of these things kind of go hand in hand, but we're gonna break them down together. Okay, so number one is that a virtual assistant can help you manage, streamline, and execute on repeatable processes in your business. So if you take a look at all the repeatable things that you do for your business on a day-to-day basis,

I'm going to take one example that I have here that's very common for a lot of businesses, which is client onboarding. So when a client decides, yes, I want to work with you, I want to hire your company to do this, that, or the other, what does that process look like? So for a lot of people, that looks like some type of a contract. That looks like billing them for the...

the package or the product or the project that you're going to be working with them on, there may be some type of an intake process, like here's the information that I need from my client in order to get started. And then of course, there's just the overall journey of working with you through that process, that project. So for a virtual assistant to provide support in this area, some of the things that they can do is be that outside perspective because

I can tell you that so many of our clients and certainly myself personally, when I started working with a team and bringing them into working with my clients, everything currently lives up here in my head. It felt really challenging to bring that out into the open and to share all of that knowledge that I had just kind

in the back of my mind, which I'll tell you, spins all the time, right? So it's better to get that out of the brain and into the physical realm of some sort, whether that be into even a Google Doc or even meeting with somebody on Zoom and walking through, here's what I need to do as the next step for this process, like starting to get those things out of your head and into a space where other people can help you execute on them.

is huge. But when a virtual assistant receives that information from you, a great virtual assistant is going to also not only learn and train alongside of you so that they're able to help you execute on those things, but they're also going to be able to provide that outside perspective and help you identify opportunities to streamline and automate some of those things that you're doing on a regular basis.

Another example, when you start getting other people involved in the operational side of your business, they may be able to suggest different systems or software that you could implement in order to remove a lot of the manual work and potential opportunities for mistakes to be made or steps to get missed because we're dealing with humans and humans certainly have errors. There are technology errors, but let's be real.

Technology can be more reliable when we give it a very specific process to follow rather than the human mind that has a rough night's sleep because of a sick kiddo or gets a little overwhelmed because they have too many irons in the fire at any given point in time or what have you. Maybe we're not feeling 100%. There's lots more errors that open up when we're relying on humans to do some of these manual processes.

And so it could be as simple as recommending, hey, what if we look at implementing HoneyBook to do our contracts and our billing and function as our CRM system so that we're able to see where clients are at through the journey of working with us. I'm just throwing that one out there. There's lots of different software that can do these types of things. I know Kajabi's one, but just picking on a popular one for a moment here.

The other thing that a virtual assistant will be able to do when they start learning your repeatable processes in your business is creating communication templates that go along with those processes. So again, going back to our example of client onboarding, you'll certainly, maybe there's a welcome email that comes out or it's like, yay, you signed your contract. Here's what we're gonna do next. Or this is our kickoff meeting and here's the agenda of the things that.

we need to talk about so that we can get this project off on the right foot, we are able to use a virtual assistant to help us create those templates so that we're not reinventing the wheel every time. Yes, maybe you're like me where you go into your sent folder, you're like, I want to say the same thing that I said to that other person. You copy and paste and you just tweak and revise what you need to for that particular project or that particular client or team member.

but we can take it a step further with a virtual assistant and have them build out those communications templates so that again, the guesswork is being removed and it's much more standardized and your clients are gonna get a much more consistent experience of working with your company that way. So that is one way that a virtual assistant can help provide operational support for your business. And there were a lot of little examples mixed in with that one. The other thing is that they can help manage vendors

team members and various projects. So again, I'm going to take a simple example here. Let's pretend you're a website design company and you have been engaged by a client to build a brand new website. Now you maybe are a solo or small team operation. And so you could use the help of a virtual assistant to oversee that website build process from start to finish.

Maybe that involves using a project management tool or some type of checklist where we can make sure that all of the information needed is gathered and distributed to the appropriate team members who are doing various parts of the projects. When are the due dates? What are the milestones? How do we make sure that we are on the right timeline for completion based on what we promised our customer? All of that process can be overseen by a virtual assistant

and they can help with working with the appropriate team members and vendors that you may be bringing in for this project. So for example, if you're building a brand new website for a client, maybe there is a photographer involved with doing some brand photography so that you have quality photos to use on this website. Maybe you're working with a copywriter who's going to write world-class copy that really pops and engages with your client's potential clients.

Maybe there's a graphic designer who's going to be creating some really cool graphics or maybe even updating and tweaking their current branding and logos. Maybe it's time for a refresh for the client. Certainly, if you have a web developer on the team who needs to do the actual website build itself, they're taking the copy, they're taking the graphics and the photos and they're ultimately building this beautiful website that's gonna be unveiled to your client.

Maybe you're working with an SEO team who can make sure that the website is properly keyworded on the backend and on the page and linked up to Google and Google business and all that sort of thing so that your client's website can actually be found by the people who are looking for their products or their services. So you've got a lot of people involved in this process and

Maybe again, if you are working solo or you work with a small team where you're managing all of that yourself, that can get really, really tiring because you are serving as that air traffic controller. A virtual assistant can help you manage the project and manage the tasks and the deadlines that are assigned to all the various people who are going to be helping with this project. Okay, the last example that I have

for a virtual assistant to provide operational support for your business is to be the first line of communication and answering questions. Again, I realize that some of these are fairly broad examples, but we're gonna break them down with some very specifics. So I'll start with me and my business. As my team continued to grow over the years, I found that at one point I was spending entirely too much of my time

answering questions from team members, answering questions from clients, having one-on-one team meetings with various team members, group meetings with different aspects of my business like marketing team or what have you, that communication took a lot of time and energy off my plate. Now, I love my team. I love talking with my team. I love learning along with them. like...

collaborating and learning from their expertise and their experiences. But when you do it all day, every day, it can get really, really tiring. And so I personally got to a point where I implemented a team of senior virtual assistants who were able to be the, I guess, quote unquote, for lack of better term, first line of defense, if you will, for

clients and our team members. Maybe defense isn't the right word. Maybe a resource. Let's go ahead and say the word resource because that's probably more accurate. Where they work very closely with the clients and the team members on a day-to-day basis. They were able to answer so many common questions that we get and are happy to do it. So that was one way that I added operational support for not only myself, but also our clients and improve the

amount of time that they were able to get their questions answered or any issues troubleshooted resolved, but also my team members as well. So it was helpful for me to be removed as the bottleneck for all of those questions and communications, but it also made our team members happier because they weren't needing to wait on me for answers to fairly simple questions, and clients experience the same type of thing.

And so by adding that layer of support, that was truly transformational for our growth moving forward and certainly impacted our scalability in a positive way. So for you and your business, and I realized that if you're listening, you may be working with a product-based business where you've got a retail shop or maybe you are in different lines of work. Maybe you're a video production company or

Maybe you are a law firm and you're starting to grow your team there. Like there might be, well, my point is, that depending on the type of business that you have, this might vary a little bit. But consider bringing in a virtual assistant to help with maybe the inquiries or the questions that come in on a day-to-day basis so that you're not fielding all of those yourself. So for example, my executive assistant, another one just using myself,

She goes through every day and checks our website inquiries for things that have come in. And then she's able to respond to potential clients or potential team members who have reached out to us with the appropriate information to answer their questions and also make sure that they get connected with the person that they need to get connected with in order to continue on that conversation, whatever that looks like. Certainly, again, client communications. If you have a company where

you have some level of customer service where people have a question on the product that you have shipped to them or they have a question about, hey, I just received my brand new website. We love it. Now, how do I post a blog? You know, having a team member or virtual assistant who can address those questions thoroughly and completely and provide a great customer experience. I would even say

external customers or even your internal customers, quote unquote, team members, that just makes it such a better operational experience for them, but then also gives you that support to, again, be more of that visionary, that big picture person, that ideas person, and be able to really grow and scale your company without being bogged down in the running of the business and be that bottleneck for the different things that come up. So one particular way

that a virtual assistant can help you with those inquiries and client questions. We have certainly helped clients build a frequently asked questions library so that when they have somebody who is responding to team members, clients on their behalf, they are able to give accurate information and maybe any issues are addressed in a way that you would want them addressed. And that's very, very clear. So as your client and your

and your team grows, you definitely don't have to be the air traffic controller and fielding all the communications and answering all the questions that are coming in from everywhere. A virtual assistant is a great resource for something like that. So all of that being said, if you know a business owner who spends just too much time running the day-to-day of their business, but they really want to grow, would you please share this episode with them? Because it may give them some ideas for how they can get help with running their business.

without necessarily hiring your traditional part-time, full-time employee, you can have help in very particular areas of your business at your pace as you're growing without necessarily taking on that responsibility and those complications for having an employee. So you can get the help that you need without necessarily all of the overhead and commitment that come with the employment side of things.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope that you found this information help you, that it triggered some ideas of, hey, here's something that I can take off of my plate, or here's what I can take off of my salesperson's plate, and we can get some help with the backend and the support of the running of the business. I appreciate you, and I will be back next week with more tips and tools for strategies for growing and scaling your business. Have a wonderful day. Bye-bye.