You barely get your blog posts done every week – rushing to finish them seconds before your regularly scheduled posting time.

You routinely forget to send out broadcasts to your lists–leaving them in aweber without hitting the CUE button.

You forget to email back people who contact YOU for coaching sessions.

And yet you wonder why your list isn’t growing, your blog seems to be floundering and your business is going nowhere.

You’ve got a problem.  A serious one.

Let’s keep painting this picture – it’s about to get really interesting.

You hire a VA thinking it’s exactly what you need to get organized and clean up your act.

You tell the person you will do weekly posts and broadcasts. They will schedule your social media messages and remind you to finish your posts.  You want to keep it simple.  The VA is excited that you have a specific set of duties to complete.  You agree on a pay rate.

You’re feeling energized and hopeful that you’re finally taking your business seriously.

But guess what happens?  Do you miraculously start writing posts on time and feel less stress over getting your regular content out each week?

Nope.

Why Nothing Changes Even After You Hire Someone

You continue being late on writing posts and broadcasts and now you can’t understand why your post isn’t on your site when you want it to be – 15 minutes after emailing it to your VA.

You get an email 24 hours later saying the post has been published. You have no idea what’s going on or if work is getting done.

You feel frustrated and confused – thinking – you can get things up and done faster than telling someone else to do it.  This isn’t working!

After a few more failed weeks of submitting posts late, and not getting them done according to your timeline – you let the person go…

So the question here is – who’s at fault for this failed working relationship?

YOU ARE.

So – a lot went wrong in the above scenario…and though I didn’t share every single detail, you may have filled them in a bit with your own!

While it’s a great first step to have a clear list of duties for a VA, it’s even more important to tell them what turnaround you need, how they should communicate with you, and when they should alert you to upcoming changes in their schedule.

And – you can’t forget that you are part of this puzzle.  If you don’t improve your work ethic, get things to your VA when you say you will… things won’t change. In fact, they’ll just get more challenging – because you’ll start paying someone for your inability to focus + deliver work.

It all starts with what you do BEFORE you decide to hire someone.

Here’s a quick list of Do’s and Don’ts to remember when hiring and working with a new hire.

Dos:

1. Prepare a paid test that potential candidates can do + let them pitch you their services.
2. Give a clear end date for all projects – and provide a schedule with milestones to hit – which include your review turnaround time.
3. Make sure the person is a problem solver.  Even if they don’t know every single tool you use, the problem solver will learn.
4. Try to be fast about review turnaround times.
5. Finish those damn posts when you say you will.

Don’ts:

1. Don’t micromanage the HOW
2. Don’t worry if the person uses a different set of tools than you do
3. Don’t NOT hire someone because you think you can do it. That’s not the point. You probably can do a lot of things. Should you be doing something more important?…that’s the question and the reason you’re hiring help in the first place.
4. Don’t hire someone who can’t communicate.
5. Don’t expect the person to be available 24/7

Have you learned a thing or two about managing a team or have you recently hired a virtual assistant?

Need to know more about hiring a team? Check out my Launch Roadmap video all about building your A-Team From Scratch.