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Do you feel stressed and overwhelmed by your business? As a solopreneur, it’s easy to get bogged down doing everything yourself and lose the one thing you can’t get back: time. Running your own business wasn’t supposed to feel this exhausting.
Imagine having the freedom to focus on what you love—traveling, spending time with family, or watching a movie in the middle of a weekday—without being chained to your desk.
That’s why Streamlined Solopreneur exists. Each week, host Joe Casabona shares strategies for building a better business through smarter systems and automation. With insights from expert guests, and his own experience as a busy solopreneur parent, Joe offers practical steps to make being a solopreneur feel…less solo.
Every episode gives you actionable advice to create space in your business, and your life, and reclaim your time for what matters most.
Intro: Hello. Hello. And welcome to another episode of the Streamlined Solopreneur, Episode 443. As a matter of fact, today, I am going to answer a question I get a lot about how to work with a virtual assistant.
Now, I have been saying for years that a virtual assistant has been life-changing for me, and I think it is super important for any solopreneur who wants to take things off of their plate. I'm a huge fan of automation, but there are simply things that you cannot automate for whatever reason. Either the inputs and the outputs aren't clear. Maybe you have some sort of custom thing built. And while you could write a bunch of custom code, having a VA do it and having their oversight would be good. So that's what we will be chatting about today.
If you want to, get my guide to automating and delegating your business in your life, join my mailing list. You can head over to [streamlined.fm/join]. You'll get my automation database and you'll get lots of tips on how to automate and delegate to create more space for the things in your life that you want to do.
Okay. So let's get into it. The problem here, right, is that while the idea of a VA sounds nice, many solopreneurs get overwhelmed by the process of hiring and working with a virtual assistant. Back in episode 208, I interviewed a guy named Matthew Yahes, who is a virtual assistant and, virtual office manager, expert. And he said, for the type of VA that I currently have, it's going to take you more time to work with them than it's worth. And I don't find that to be true. I think it could be if you do it wrong, and I certainly went through a few growing pains, but I don't think that's true.
So I want to talk about where to start, how to figure out what to delegate, and how to make sure that your VA aligns with your goals. And I should say that this is not going to be a comprehensive guide on virtual assistants. This is how I work with my virtual assistant. I've worked with a couple at various levels, but there are lots of different types of virtual assistants. Right? There's like the entry level. They could be just like basic tasks, English as a second language, or offshored. My experience gonna be a very, United States-centric one. Then there are also executive VA’s, you know, people who are, you know, skilled, and they just happen to not be in the same office as, the person that they work for, virtual office managers, and a bunch of other ones. I'm talking largely about the entry-level side because my VA, Ana, is the one I've had basically since I had my, you know, I've worked with her since I've had my panic attack. There were definitely growing pains. The episode with you know, episode 208 was really helpful for me, but, you know, I did get the sense that he was trying to sell his service and go upscale, or upmarket. So, and I know that some you know, if you're starting out, you may not wanna make that investment.
So, how can we make the most of hiring a virtual assistant? You know, usually, there's questions around where to find them. You can look at Fiverr or Upwork. I went to onlinejobs.ph, and I posted a job description. Just what I would recommend if you do that is to set up a custom inbox or a filter for your email inbox because you will get 100, if not 1,000, of applications. And so what I would do with putting out the application, make it detailed, and an easy way to filter out, applications is ask them to say something specific either in the body of the email or in the subject line of the email, so that you know they're paying attention. Right? That's like an easy litmus test. This is the classic, what was it, Van Halen, right, always, asked for brown M&M's or red M&M's or something. They wanted all brown M&M's.
And people thought that they were being a diva or divas, I guess. But it was a test to see how closely the venue paid attention to the rider, which is the contract for this all the stuff that they want, all the stuff that they require to do the performance because there was a lot of pyrotechnics in there. And they, if they couldn't even get brown M&M's right, how can they ensure their safety? So this could be your brown M&M’s. Right? To put something simple in the application. That way, as you go through them, you can at least easily filter out. I mean, you could, jeez, you could probably use AI these days or, some sort of automation to look for a specific phrase and just delete the ones that don't have it. But that's that's the way you filter out.
Again, there are I mean, I asked ChatGPT where people find VAs, to be completely transparent. It did mention Fiverr and Upwork, but it also mentioned, like, Facebook groups and subreddits, Boldly. You know, there's a lot of resources out there for finding and working with a VA. Right? BELAY is 1 skilled VA is for executive solopreneurs and entrepreneurs. So lots of resources out there is what I'm saying.
Once you do find someone to work with, I think that this simple four-step process will help you get the ball rolling. Right? This is what I did with my VA. Once I figured out, once I figured out what I was doing wrong. So I guess really step 0 well, I guess step 1, clarify which steps, which tasks can free up the most time. This falls in line with my PER Framework of, for each task perform, evaluate, and remove. When you're doing something with a VA, especially like an entry-level VA, you wanna make sure that the inputs and the outcome is very clear. So you wanna say, you're gonna take these things. When you're done, it's gonna look like this, at least until you work with them for a little while longer. Right? One of the failures when I started working with Ana is I asked her to find conferences I could speak at. And I expected her to know what I wanted to speak on and where I was willing to go. I didn't provide a lot of details, but she also provided a lot of conferences that had already happened last year. So, that was not clear, and it wasn't really in her wheelhouse.
Today, she is doing the initial guest research for me. So anytime somebody applies, she gets an email and she knows to look for a few things. My next step in that is is gonna have her I'm gonna have her, like, populate a Google Doc and feed that document into chat GPT so that it could kind of summarize everything she said and the transcripts and stuff. So I get, like, a one sheet. So she has been very effective at the information-gathering stuff. And, like, honestly, if she went away tomorrow, like, I don't, my show probably would never publish. So she does a lot of great things for me.
But clarify what tasks will free up the most time. What's something that you are doing that you absolutely don't need to do? That's gonna be most things. Publish your podcast. You don't need to do that. Right? If you use a website like WordPress, or RSS.com or whoever for hosting, most of those accounts allow you to delegate to a team member now. So you personally don't need to hit the publish button, for example.
Step 2, choose a hiring platform or community. So we talked about a few of those. What I would recommend here is pick 3 to 5 virtual assistants whose applications look good. Give them the same task and see who evaluate who does the best job. So again, this could be something so it could be something that you already know the answer to have already done because then you know what the results should look like. Right? It could be do research on me, create a podcast, get one sheet on me. Right? And then whoever not me personally, on you. And then who kind of whoever does the best job gets the job. Right? So that's what I would recommend there. Pick some tasks, delegate, and do a test task with 3 to 5 virtual assistants and see who does the best job.
Then set up, onboarding, right, with a few simple tools. So something else that I didn't think about that you should think about and that you should find out when you are kind of interviewing these virtual assistants, what tools are they comfortable with? Ana has been fine with me, like, moving from thing to thing. At first, we had, like, a Google Doc, and then I did Airtable, and now she's wearing Notion. But think about the process of creating and delegating tasks to your virtual assistant in a place where communication is not going to fall through the cracks. So Notion is a good one because you get free team members. Airtable does have, like, a free on their free account, you can add, like, an advanced level or something like that, but just something where you can assign tasks to them. I like Notion because of the rich text, so and the comments. And so, like, you know, it's easy for us to communicate there.
I would also say here stick to your guns. So, like, I set up Slack, and then I didn't do a very good job of using Slack. And so when I message her in Slack, it's not very good. We're it's better now. But, you know, if you're gonna say we're gonna use make some decisions early on and then stick to them as to because also, like, you know, Anna's, like, 12 hours ahead of me or something like that. And so, you know, sometimes she's usually working. Maybe it's 8. But, you know, she's working when I'm not working, and so there's a bit of a slowdown in communication. And so you don't want anything to fall through the cracks either.
So set up some tools to make management easier. Trello is an easy one. I'm just throwing out tools now. I like Notion. And, you know, if you if write in at [streamlinedfeedback.fm], if you want to see my virtual assistant Notion template, I can give that to you? Just head on over to [streamlined.fm], [streamlinedfeedback.com] rather, leave some feedback and say I wanna see it.
So, then once you have the system set up, here's what I recommend you do. Again, this is for entry-level VAs. If you're working with someone a few skill levels up from this, right, maybe just a phone call, maybe you have somebody who's more autonomous. But here's what I do for my virtual assistant. I record myself performing the task. I am narrating what I'm doing, and I am doing it on screen. So she gets to watch me do it at least once or twice. And then I tell her to transcribe the video and write out the steps that we're supposed to take to complete the task. And if she has any questions, this is the other thing I would say. Like, make sure that you make it clear that it's okay to ask questions. Right? Because I know some people are worried about having to ask questions for simple tasks. But I told Ana, I would rather you spend an hour on a task, be stuck, and ask me something than spend 8 hours trying to figure it out yourself. I told, you know, I told the people who worked under me at my agency job too. So make that clear.
But, anyway, the transcript, steps, and then you can review those. I reviewed them early on to make sure that they made sense. I don't really need to do that anymore. Now I just tell Ana, like, if it makes sense, go ahead and do it first or go ahead and do it. You don't need to wait for me to approve. But that way, you start to develop a handbook too. You know? Maybe there may be a day where Anna decides she doesn't wanna be a virtual assistant anymore, and she moves on. But I will have a clearly documented handbook for whoever comes in next with videos, with and so, like, the 1st week probably for that new VA, fingers are crossed it doesn't happen anytime soon, I guess, would be reviewing everything in the handbook. And if you have any questions, let me know. Like, these are your core tasks.
So that's what I would do. Clarify what tasks you can, you know, will free up the most time for you. Send out a test task to at least 3 to 5 virtual assistants on whatever platform you're looking at. Create an area where you can easily assign tasks to your VA. Record yourself performing the task, narrating it, and have them transcribe and write out the steps to complete the task.
The last thing I would say here is if everything works out, right, try it short term before committing long term. Let's say you do make it long-term. I check in with Anna every 6 months. I mean, we talk more often than that, but every 6 months, I'm like, how's it going? Do you want more responsibility? Do you want something different? And kinda make that part clear and say, like, hey. I wanna make sure you know, I told her I wanna make sure you're happy and, you know, whatever I can do to help that. So, you know, make sure they don't get bored. Check in with them. See how it's going. Maybe they are struggling with something and they're not sure.
So that is the gist of it. Right? Bringing a VA into your business will free up your time and help you focus on the things that you need to do. But you wanna make sure the onboarding and assignment side, doesn't take up more time than necessary. And I have found that video instructions are the best way to do that. Testing a few tasks and then video instructions are the best way to do that because they are seeing and hearing, and then they're writing it down.
Okay. Joel running to say, would be great to hear about how to handle those tasks that we feel are just too complicated to delegate even though it is indeed possible. Joel, I felt that way about publishing my podcast episodes. I thought, well, she's gonna have to log in to my host and upload it, add everything there, gather the show notes, then she's gonna have to go to WordPress, create a new post, and then do the embed over there. And I've added YouTube to it since. The key is to record, like record yourself doing the task, speaking clearly about what they need, where to find the information they need, and what it should look like at the end. And I, she does that task specifically, the one that I thought was too hard. She does it better than I do now because I'm not checking the document. I'm, like, forgetting stuff. So I would say, show, don't just tell, and they'll be able to as long as they have the access they need, they should be able to do things like that.
And then Eric asks, is there a way to use Notion as a project management tool? Yes. I use Notion as a project management tool. Eric, I know you came to my webinar. So it's very similar to that. I have a VA tasks Notion database. Ana is a contributor or whatever, like a guest on that where she has full access. And there is a person field, and so I can assign tasks to her. I have a status board, so it's like a Kanban board. Stuff I'm thinking about, stuff that she should be working on. We have a priority system. That's the thing I love about Notion is it's really flexible. And so, like, you can build you can build things out in it, and you can give access to your virtual assistant. And as an extra precaution, I do have it so that when I assign, like, when I select her as the person, she gets an email telling her a new task has been assigned to her. And I do that with Make. You can do it with Zapier. But also now I think if you pay for Notion, you can send emails through automation, which is a game changer. So, yeah, absolutely, you can do that.
Thank you both Joel and Eric for writing in with great questions.
If you want to submit a question about anything around solopreneurship, automation, processes, or podcasting, you can go to [streamlinedfeedback.com]. Also, if you wanna see that Notion template, write in and say I wanna see it. Again, that's [streamlinedfeedback.com].
Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you. Thanks to our sponsors. And until next time, I'll see you out there.