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How to Build a Virtual Team

Building a virtual team is easier than you think

7/13/2021 | Sam Kabert, Success with Swag(ger)

Building a virtual team is easier than you think … and remember whenever you hear the words “virtual assistant” replace it with “virtual assistants” (plural).

You’re missing the boat if you hire just on VA ;)

First off, a reminder … typical “desk employees” (or white collar if you prefer old school terminology) are gonna run you around $5,000 a month. When looking to hire any employee the justification is to grow/scale your business and take tasks off of your or someone else’s plate. The reasons to hire a VA are basically identical … with the added bonus of being able to afford specialists in specific skill sets. 

Oftentimes, employees become “jacks-of-all-trades” out of necessity whereas when working with virtual assistants, we are intentionally hiring specialists in one specific category. You can easily build a virtual assistant team for less than the cost of one employee and here’s how you do it …

  1. What Do You Want Done?

Surprisingly most business owners don’t know what they do on a daily / weekly / monthly basis. The truth is unless you calendar every little single thing in your business that you do; you probably don’t know exactly what you do and how long it takes you.

We want to get specific … so specific that it’s going to hurt. Well, it’s not that bad but if you’re anything like me you aren’t going to like this exercise.

For 2 weeks (on a more normal’ish week), I want you to write down everything you do - the time you start, the type of task/project it is and how long it takes.

You can grab a template to help you out by clicking this link.

The purpose of this is to get extremely clear on what you do so you can identify what it is you don’t need to do so we can get it off your plate!


  1. Defining the Roles

Now that you know what you want off your plate, it’s as simple as mapping out the roles you’ll need to lay the foundation for the systems we are going to build so that your business will run itself without you.

I like to start with a Project Manager and the reason is because the PM will be the go between the VAs and me. The PM will ultimately be recruiting/interviewing, training and managing new team members. I’m a big fan of Executive Summaries … just give me the high level what’s going on. We don’t need to get involved with the details!

What other roles will you need?

Here are some ideas to get your wheels spinning … customer service, graphic designers, audio/video editors, copywriters, web dev/IT, accounting, research etc.

If you get stuck, look at your time audit from the previous step and just take a moment away from your computer and rip out a piece of paper and start jotting down what comes to mind. From there, you may want to clean it up on a google doc … but remember, the best system is what works for you!

Pro Tip: If you hire a PM first you can share your chicken scratch ideas with them to help bring the Roles & Responsibilities across the finish line.


  1. Objective vs. Subjective 

Objective means it’s something correct or incorrect where as subjective means there’s room for interpretation. For that reason, I recommend starting with tasks/projects that are objective.

Make it easy on yourself and your team to succeed by leveling the playing field to set all of you up for success!

You can do this by starting a new g doc and labeling it “Road Map”, next jot down the projects and tasks that you’ll be assigning to your virtual team. From there go ahead and separate the objective from the subjective then finally re-order the objective and the subjective in order of easiest to most complicated. Voila .. you now have a road map :)


  1. Standard Operating Procedures

Arguably one of the most important parts of the whole puzzle … SOP’s (standard operating procedures). Whether your business has VAs or employees (or a hybrid), you’ll need SOP’s to truly scale and it’s the best way to prepare yourself for unexpected leaves of absence.

I’ve always been a fan of asking my VAs to document the process themselves and to finalize an SOP before moving on to the next project.

You’ll have to decide whether you want your SOP to be a living document like a g doc vs a PDF that cannot be edited or even vs a screen share software much like Loom

That’s it, easy right?!

If you get stuck, feel free to reach out anytime (Sam@SoulSeekrz.com) and if this still seems like too much work then you’re my kind of people and we should talk about Wizard Teams.

To Letting Go,

Sam


Sam Kabert is the creative director of SwagWorx and the creator and co-host of the podcast “WhatUp Silicon Valley!” A risk taker who embraces permanent beta, Sam is leading the transformation of his family-run office supplies business into a promotional products powerhouse. Sam can be reached at Sam@SwagWorx.com.
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