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What is the most common mistake people make when hiring a virtual assistant? Which systems can you create with your assistant to save the important emails and weed out the rest? Can you hire part-time assistants?

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok does a live consulting call with Alisha Sweyd about when to hire a virtual assistant.

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Meet Alisha Sweyd

Alisha Sweyd is a licensed marriage and family therapist in California. She specializes in working with first responders and especially enjoys working with couples in the first responder life. When not building her business, Alisha enjoys reading and spending time with her husband, children, and their dogs along the Monterey Coast.

Visit her website, connect on Facebook, and Instagram.

In This Podcast

Summary

Check the books
What’s on your plate

Check the books

Unless you are starting out fresh with your practice, a virtual assistant will almost always pay for themselves. For many clinicians, working an extra session a week is enough to pay for their virtual assistant.

In some states, however, you need to be on the right page with contracts and so forth, and therefore, you may need to hire an attorney for a fee. Or you can hire a virtual assistant through an online VA company.

You can also outsource someone without having the long-term commitment of saying ‘I’ve gotta find 10 hours a week for this person’. You don’t want to be stuck where your budget is going for something you really don’t need. (Joe)

You can then, instead of having a main assistant who does everything, outsource specific tasks to specific people.

What’s on your plate?

Another big bonus of having an administrative or virtual assistant is having a lot more time and energy saved from not having to do the admin work. You can therefore focus on counseling and building your practice while your assistant takes on the back-end tasks.

However, it is important that when you have hired your assistant, do not simply stop with those admin duties. Create a co-working environment around them and have feedback meetings with them regularly, at least for half an hour every week.

Compile an archive of responses that your virtual assistant can use when responding as you on an email, although they should still sign the email as themselves.
Let your assistant create their own system even though you two work on feedback since they will be the ones using it often and they can keep you informed.
With regards to emails, you can set up various systems with your assistant that best maximizes your use of time and energy.

Having these systems in place will also help you and your assistant distinguish which emails are a top priority for you to respond to and which are the ones that your assistant can handle on their own.

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Meet Joe Sanok

Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners that are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

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