Episode Summary

In this episode of the Make Space for More podcast, Melissa Swink will show you how virtual assistants (VAs) can help business owners work less while earning more. You’ll learn how to view hiring a VA as an investment (not an expense) through many examples of the types of tasks that VAs can handle for businesses,  including busy work and strategic tasks. You’ll also learn about the distinction between productivity and profitability for business owners, and why you should focus on revenue-generating activities and delegate low-value tasks. Melissa will also teach you about the four key ways that a VA team can directly help you grow your business’s revenue. 

Key Highlights:

• Transform your business growth by viewing VA support as a strategic investment rather than an expense
• Maximize revenue potential by delegating administrative tasks and focusing on high-value activities
• Scale your client capacity through strategic task delegation and streamlined operations
• Accelerate business growth with professional support for consistent marketing and streamlined project execution
• Amplify your business impact by focusing on what you do best while your VA team handles the rest

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 gonna talk about working less and earning more. How a virtual assistant team can increase your revenue. Yes, this may sound too good to be true, but a VA actually can make you money.

You might be thinking, well, I know that I need to invest in a VA or invest in team in order to grow and scale my company. And you might not necessarily think of that investment as a way that they can actually also help dramatically increase your revenue. You might be thinking, okay, I've got all this busy work that I want to hand off or I have these things that I'm not doing that I want to hand off. And then I

can go out and increase the revenue of my business. And that's certainly kind of door number one for how a VA can increase your revenue. But on the flip side, we also have plenty of things that a VA can do in order to help you grow your business directly. So they're not necessarily the ones stuck doing all the busy work, but they're also on offense with you and helping you work on your business and close more sales and increase your revenue. So we're gonna talk about all of this today.

because I understand that especially if you're just starting out in business or you're just hiring your first VA, this can feel like a huge investment. This can feel like, I don't want to say the word expense because again, it is an investment because ultimately whenever you hire a team member or an employee or a VA or whomever, the goal is to increase the business, not necessarily take from the bottom line, if that makes sense.

I want to just generally speaking give you a couple of examples of how our clients have leveraged our VA team in order to help them grow their businesses, not necessarily just capture the busy work that was keeping them stuck. Now that's super important as well. I talk a lot about that on my podcast, but we're going to shift gears to be on offense mode for a second here. So one example of this, we have a client who does a lot of work with

government agencies. And so when there is a project that is posted for him to bid on, there's an RFP release. So basically, if you're kind of not familiar with the concept, and I don't do a of government work, so my really elementary example of this is just like, hey, there's a posting that says, we have this project coming up, here are the details, and we are accepting bids and proposals through Ex-Date. And then,

The different businesses or organizations that are interested in doing that work, of course, they need to do their research. They need to put together a bid or proposal or estimate, what have you, and get that sent off by that due date. There's a lot of work that goes into that piece. Our client who ran this business, he was working completely on his own. The challenge was,

He had a feast and famine cycle happening in his business. When he was on a project and he had a lot of client work going on, he was heads down and focused on that. He was missing all these RFPs and all these potential projects that he could grow and expand his business. He did not have time to do both the project work itself and also watch for and search for these RFPs or these projects that he could bid on.

So when he first started working with our team, one of the primary things that we started doing is having a weekly review. We go on all these websites, we subscribe to all of these different emails so that when a potential project comes up, we will know about it right away and we can work on putting together a bid or proposal for this type of project. And of course there was some training involved in terms of these are the types of projects I'm interested in.

These are the types of projects I am not interested in. Here's my process for creating an estimate and a proposal for the project. Here's how I need to submit these and so on. There's a little bit of training involved, but ultimately our team was there to help ensure that he did not miss opportunities on new work. So going back to the feast and famine situation that this client was facing was he would be heads down working on project work and then projects would be done.

and then you'd be like, okay, I need to bring some more work in. And just because a project is posted doesn't necessarily mean that project is starting right away. So he would have times where he was super busy with project work and then he was out looking for project work. And so this just kind of helps by having our team monitor this process and assist him with this process that his project schedule stays full. Okay, you with me so far? All right, here's another example.

We have a client who is a leadership coach. We've got a couple of leadership coaches in our client base right now, actually. And she had a brilliant idea for a program that she wanted to roll out. It was going to be very, very impactful. But the challenge was is that she's not very tech savvy, right? She does not want to get far down into the weeds of building a course and...

doing all of the email drip campaigns and all the marketing campaigns that go along with launching said program. So we needed to build it out, but then we also needed to promote it, right? And so that was something that kept her stuff because she's like, I wanna do this, I wanna do this. And she would try and figure it out herself, but get frustrated or overwhelmed and then put it aside. And then pretty soon, six months go by, 12 months go by.

This happens to so many entrepreneurs, so much time goes by because they have this idea, but they just need help executing on it and bringing it to life. And so that's something that our team was able to do, support her with the tech, but then also help her with the outreach piece so that once the new course was live and ready to go, that she had customers who were there to purchase it in the first place. So those are some of the, I would say, offense ways that we support clients.

not just in the busy work that keeps them stuck in the weeds, but also helps them actively grow their businesses. Here's a couple of examples of that. Today, during this podcast, we're going to focus on the cost of doing everything yourself in terms of your revenue and what it takes to really boost your income, what tasks are involved with that, and ultimately,

how you can turn your virtual assistant team or your team members, your employees, whatever, whatever help you have in the business into a growth machine. So the first thing that we're gonna just identify here is this idea between profitability versus profit. Now I just recorded a podcast episode about how Inbox Zero won't grow your business. And I talked at length in that episode about how

I love productivity. I like being able to identify the most efficient ways to get things done. But there's also a point where that gets to be extreme, where we are constantly looking for a productivity solution in order to do more is more is more is more, but more isn't necessarily the answer. More doesn't necessarily grow the business. And so what we want to think about is

First of all, busy doesn't necessarily mean productive, right? Just because we are super busy all day, doing all the things, responding to all the emails, doesn't necessarily mean that we're actually growing our businesses. I mean, I know that I've had plenty of days personally, and I still, I'm not perfect, I still have plenty of days where I get done at the end of the day and I'm like, wow, where did my day go? It's time to get my daughter off the bus from school.

and I feel like I've accomplished nothing. I had intended to get this proposal out or I had intended to follow up with that potential customer and all these things just kind of got in the way. And here I am one more day where something didn't get done. Or I certainly talk to clients all the time, potential clients I should say all the time where they're like, this has been put on the back burner for so long and I don't see that getting better. I need help with this.

How many, we all fall into this trap, right? Where we've been super busy, but we're not necessarily growing the business. Many, many founders spend too much time doing low value tasks. They just kind of are in it. And so the first thing that we want to ask ourselves is what are your revenue generating activities? So what are the things that actually create a new sale?

or bring in a new client. What are those things? So I can give you an example for me. It starts with having consultation calls with potential clients where they're like, I know that I have too much on my plate or I know my team is overwhelmed. We need extra support. What does that look like? Right? It's for me, it's having consultations. Well, what leads to a consultation? It could be a direct reach out and invite to have a call or it's

following up with somebody that maybe was interested in working with us in the past, but for whatever reason, the timing wasn't quite right. And so I need to check in with them again and see, are you ready to continue our conversation? Is now the right time to look at bringing in a VA? It's going to be a little bit different for every business, but think about what are the things that actually create revenue in your business? Maybe it's something like Google ads, right? Like I have a

a client who she has great on Google Ads. Maybe it's making sure that we're meeting with that ad company on a regular basis to do more of what's working so that we can continue to increase our leads and ultimately our sales. Think about what are your revenue generating activities truly and are you actually doing them? Because knowing what they are and actually doing them on a regular basis are two completely separate things.

but we want to make sure that we know exactly where we're at. We want that clarity. So moving on from the productivity versus profit conversation, we want to identify what busy work are we going to hand off so that we make space for those revenue generating activities and know that we are doing them on a regular basis. So high level email is definitely busy work that can suck a huge amount of time away from you.

scheduling, coordinating meetings, especially if we're working with multiple schedules in the back and forth and all this, that's huge. Posting on social media is another one that can take a lot of time. Is the photo crop just right? Is it the right size? Do we have the right hashtags? What time should this go out? All these different things and don't even get me started on creating the content. This is assuming you've got something that you wanna post. There's a whole nother thing related to that.

Data entry, that could be adding a new potential client into a CRM. If you were at a networking event last night and you want to get their information in there. Client follow-ups, again, as I had mentioned, if you're coordinating schedules and you don't hear back for a few days, checking in with that potential client or that group that you're trying to meet with, all these things, billing is another one. You finish up a project, you need to get that invoice out to a client.

Those are all just the busy work that needs to get done, but maybe you don't necessarily need to be the one to do them. So you want to figure out what you want to hand off. I gave you a very high level list of busy work. We have a PDF download on our website, 101 Things to Delegate to a VA that you can grab, and that'll give you many more examples of things that you could consider handing off to your team or virtual assistant. So

when I'm not gonna go down the whole rabbit hole of delegating and cross-training and hiring, like all of that because I have many episodes related to that. Just go ahead and search through the Make Space for More podcast. But I wanna leave you with two other thoughts when it comes to delegation is number one, just because it's easy for you, just because you can do it, just because you like doing it doesn't necessarily mean that you should.

I love, there are some things in my business that I love doing, but it's just not necessarily the best use of my time when it comes to increasing my revenue. So one example of this would be sending out client invoices, right? Like that's super easy for me. I like doing it. I like accounting. I was an accounting major until I switched to business management in college. But anyway, all of that.

We won't focus on that. That's another story for another day. But I love typing in what the invoice is for, what the dollar amount is and sending it off. Just because I enjoy it and it's fun for me doesn't necessarily mean that it grows my business. So keep this in mind. What are the things that you need to be doing as a CEO of your business or organization that really drive the business forward? And the other thing that I was thinking about

in preparing for today's podcast episode is I had a coach tell me recently, that's not your job anymore. And this was related. I honestly do not forget exactly what project we were working on at the time, but I felt like we had a situation where there were too many cooks in the kitchen, where I think it could have been a software transition.

I think it was related to a new software that we were going to be switching over to. And I felt like I needed to be in there and helping to transfer information and help make sure that everything was connected properly. And my business coach was like, that's not your job anymore. You're the CEO. You can let your team handle the data entry and the transposing of information.

You don't need to be jumping in and rolling up your sleeves and doing that anymore. So think about what are some things that you're currently doing that just is not your job anymore, right? So then once we have a clear idea of here are the things that I know I need to hand off in order to free up time to grow my business, let's talk about how a virtual assistant can directly increase your growth. So number one is that they will increase your capacity.

So that means you have more time for sales, networking, strategy, the CEO level things where you're working on your business, not in your business, right? So we've overall increased capacity. The other thing is that depending on what you have your team or your virtual assistant doing, they could even increase your capacity to support more clients, right? If they are handling some of the...

the easier lower level tasks of serving those customers, that increases the company's ability to serve more at a time. So we're increasing capacity overall. The second way that a virtual assistant team can directly increase your growth is faster execution. So I'm giving you the example of our client who is a leadership coach.

who had a program in her heart. She had the design of what she wanted to include in that curriculum. She had an outline for the program. She had that set, but she was not making progress on it for many, many months because she did not have the time or the skill set required in order to handle the tech and all the different marketing components that would go along with it.

So by hiring our virtual assistant team, she got that course built, she got the promotional campaign built and executed on, she has the outreach support from our team in order to enroll clients into that program. So the point is, is that your projects, your ideas get implemented so much faster when it's not up to you to sort it out or figure it out. You can say, would like to roll out this.

type of a revenue stream, or I would like to create this type of a course, and you have people in place who can help make that happen much faster. Because if you're trying to execute on these things yourself, while you're serving your current customers, while you are developing your team, while you are running the business, there's no time left for some of these new ideas and these new revenue streams.

The third way that a virtual assistant team can directly increase your growth is through consistency. So this is especially true when it comes to your marketing, social media, email campaigns, having an updated website. These are all things that contribute to having better visibility when it comes to increasing your business. Because no matter how a client comes to you,

I know for me, the vast majority of our clients come through, why am I blanking on the word right now? my goodness. It comes through referral. That's the word. I'm like retention? No, that's next. But they come through referral. But before a potential client agrees to have a meeting with me or reaches out to me, books a call with me,

you better believe they are checking out my website. They are checking out my social media presence because that's what builds credibility and trust among potential customers. So we want to make sure that we are consistent in these areas. And going hand in hand with consistency, and this is number four, is client experience, right? Because teams can deliver a more polished and timely and proactive service experience to clients.

So going hand in hand with that consistency, if you have a client onboarding process well laid out that your team helps you execute on and they do it in a timely manner every time, every client is going to have the same level of experience that you would like to deliver. It's not up to you where you're sending out a welcome email to a client, but that was delayed by a couple days because you were busy doing this thing over here.

This just helps to ensure a very smooth experience. And also having a virtual assistant team and having some backups can allow you to provide additional customers for. If a client question comes in or if they need help setting up this system or if they need help with anything, then your virtual assistant team can step in and help serve the client and you're not having to drop everything to do that yourself.

or having to have them wait until you have time to do it on your own. So there's a lot of ways that overall a virtual assistant team can actually increase your revenue in an active way. So all of that being said, I am curious, what is one task that you are going to outsource this week? It could be something simple, it could be something big, whatever that might be. Maybe I have finally encouraged you, you know what?

I have a course, I have it created, I just need somebody to take care of the tech so that I can bring it out to the masses. Maybe it's something big like that, or maybe it's, you know what, my social media presence, not consistent, I haven't posted in two months because life's been busy, and that could be hindering new potential clients from working with me because they're not quite sure.

You know, what's going on? Is my company accepting new clients? Are we buried? Like what's going on there? It could be something as big or as little and a first step as that. So I'm curious. Please email me. Hello at melissaswink.com. I'd be super curious. I'd love to know what people are outsourcing these days. curiosity would be great. If you have the time to subscribe to the podcast today,

Would love to encourage you to do so before we leave here. Appreciate your support of listening to the podcast. I am here to support you in every way that I can. And I am always looking for new ways in order to support you in growing and scaling your business and organization in a way that is authentic and aligned for you. So I'll be back next week with another episode of Make Space for More. And I hope that you have a wonderful rest of your day. Bye bye.