Should You Hire A VA Or A Design Assistant First?
Let's start with the basics...
VAs are virtual assistants who are available to help you with anything from administrative tasks like invoicing, data entry, and communicating with vendors, to following up with leads. It could be a marketing VA who helps you with your email marketing or Instagram.
A Design Assistant is someone who can help you with your 2D and 3D work, space planning drawings, construction drawings, 3D rendering, etc. It could be someone who helps you put your presentations together.
If you're here, it means that you know that delegating is essential if you want to grow your business. This is because doing everything yourself isn't sustainable.
You work on the weekends, in the evenings, and, as a result, you're not setting time aside to build a sustainable and scalable business. Reviewing everything that is happening in your business on a regular basis is key.
01. WHAT IS YOUR ZONE OF GENIUS?
Your zone of genius is everything that you love doing and are really talented at doing and, most likely, people pay you to do it. For a designer, it probably is your design style; clients work with you because they have seen spaces you've designed and your style really speaks to them. On the other hand, you don't need to be the one doing the technical drawings; any cad expert can do that for you based on your design proposal.
Ideally, as you grow, you want to stay in your zone of genius and do less and less of the rest. By freeing up time, you leave room to feel more inspired and creative, hence improving your skills within your zone of genius.
02. LIST WHAT YOU ARE INTENDING TO DELEGATE
Think about all the tasks that you either are not skilled at doing or that you absolutely dread doing. It could be administrative tasks or construction drawings. I have clients who used to spend so much time drawing in Sketchup or FloorPlanner and were not happy with how difficult it was for them to get drawings done in a program that simply isn't accurate. Delegating this part to a design assistant who is faster and more qualified using proper CAD tools not only is a time-saver, but it also removes a big part of the stress too!
03. WHAT'S TAKING UP TOO MUCH TIME?!
What are some tasks that, if you delegated them, would cost a fraction of your hourly rate. The goal is always freeing up more of your time so that you can focus
on working on your business rather than in it and have enough time to do the tasks in your zone of genius.
Now, let's do a little exercise with the three types of tasks we just discussed:
Tasks that belong to your zone of genius
Tasks that you aren't skilled at doing or hate doing
Tasks that take up too much of your time
List everything that needs to get done in your business, from admin tasks to technical and design tasks. Put a number next to each task (1, 2 or 3) based on these types and start to think about what you might want/need to delegate.
On my website, I also have a free outsourcing checklist that will help you with these points. It will help you figure out what you should still be doing yourself versus what you should start delegating.
Lastly, I want you to start looking at your finances because you may be part of one of these two groups:
- There are people who make rash decisions without really thinking about what it is that they need the most. I was one of these people who thought the right thing to do was to hire a VA but it was not the right thing for me at the time; what I really needed was an operation manager.
Take some time before you decide who you need to hire right now to get to your next goal - this is especially true if you have a limited budget.
- And there are people who think that they can't afford to delegate yet so they keep doing everything themselves. Without looking at where your money goes (and how much comes in!), your scarcity mindset might just be telling you that whatever money you're making, you can never afford to delegate.
See you next time!
Kristell Valentina Mouriès
Director, KVM Design