Avoid This Mistake When Hiring Your Next Virtual Assistant (Outsourcing vs. Delegating)

As you may know, one of our flagship services is a program we call Global Vetted VAs, which helps business owners get matched with high-quality and trustworthy overseas virtual assistants. We're on a mission to make it as easy as possible for business owners to find, hire, and keep rockstar virtual teammates. 

And the more entrepreneurs we help, the more we've seen the same mistake being made over and over again. If you want your business and your team to be set up for success, then you'll want to avoid making this mistake yourself. 

This dangerous mistake really boils down to the difference between DELEGATING and OUTSOURCING.

Don't confuse DELEGATING with OUTSOURCING.

You might think these words mean the same thing. But trust us, they are entirely different in the VA and team-building world!

In this blog post, you'll see why it's far more important to DELEGATE in your business than to OUTSOURCE — and why the focus should be on the former as you search for your next virtual assistant.

What makes outsourcing so dangerous?

Outsourcing, at the end of the day, is throwing money at your problems. When you outsource, you hire someone to come in and fix something because you are unwilling to deal with the problem yourself.

To be clear, not all outsourcing is bad! There is certainly a time and a place for it.

But more often than not, the “problem" you are experiencing and resisting is most likely needing you to learn a lesson or develop an essential skill required for your business. By throwing money at the problem, you will not learn the required lesson or the skill. So even if the problem is "fixed" by some expert, the solution is only as good as your last payment.

As a result of outsourcing, your business is now dependent on an outside hire every time you face this problem again.

And this is why outsourcing can be such a dangerous and costly mistake. Not only do you have to keep paying that outside expert to fix your problems, but you will find yourself back at square one if you ever lose that relationship.

It is far more effective to build processes and systems inside the business. It is by internalizing these essential skills — especially when it comes to marketing and sales — that actually what makes your business so valuable. On the other hand, thinking you can just outsource it because you don't want to learn it is like saying, "I'm going to hire a stranger to be responsible for 90% of my business, but I want the all the rewards."

What makes delegating so powerful?

Unlike outsourcing, delegating is when you assign work to a teammate based on your solutions and your in-house processes.

The truth is that, as the owner of your business, YOU need to to develop certain fundamental skills in-house (marketing, sales, financials, operations) and to build systems and process around them that YOU own. Period. When you commit to delegating, you agree learn it first (or at least learn it together with your team). You develop your own responses and processes to the big problems facing your business. This makes your business far more resilient and less dependent on others.

Now, if it makes sense, sure, buy a course or work with a consultant. Investing in the ability to resolve issues yourself is very different than throwing money at the problem by outsourcing.

When you start delegating, you will unleashed your ability to more effectively work with others to get things off your plate. This way, you will no longer be coming at your problems from a reactive, urgent, and likely financially irresponsible place.

If it's helpful, this chart shows examples of how you can choose to delegate instead of outsource when your business is confronted with a big problem.

Here's the big takeaway.

THE MORE YOU DELEGATE INSTEAD OF OUTSOURCE, THE STRONGER AND MORE VALUABLE YOUR BUSINESS BECOMES!

Again, there is a time and place for effective outsourcing.

But when it comes to building a strong virtual assistant team to support your business, keep the focus on DELEGATING over OUTSOURCING.