September often feels more like a new year than New Year does. It's a perfect time to make a new start with your business and outsource all that admin that's taking up too much time. But if this is the first time you've delegated work it can feel really scary. After all, you've spent time building up your business, you have your own ways of doing things and have high standards that you don't want compromised.

How do you know that the person you outsource to will care as much about your business's reputation as you do, do things the way you like and produce work to your standards?

Processes, procedures, SOPs. Whatever you call them, we all have them in our business. Ideally we have written them down and have a process manual for reference or to enable us to delegate tasks easily with minimum hassle. However it's important to recognise that processes are not static and evolve with your business and it is vital to review and update them regularly to ensure that they remain fit for purpose.

If you don't have your processes written down, take a look at this blog post for some quick and easy tips on how to do this. If you've taken this step already then read on for tips on how to review and optimise your business processes.

Burnout. It's a watchword for small business owners. Most of us have experienced or come close to burnout at some point in our business journey. When we start out finances are usually tight meaning that we have to cover every aspect of running our business. As the business grows and more time gets taken up delivering to clients it gets harder and harder to be everything and we can find ourselves heading for burnout.

Working with a VA can take the pressure off you and alleviate the stress associated with being a business owner. Here are five ways that a VA can help you avoid the path to burnout…

"You're a VA? What kind of things do you do for your clients?"

For VAs providing admin and business support services it can be surprisingly difficult to articulate what we do. Our workload encompasses a huge variety of tasks and no two days are the same. At Helen Leach VA Services we save our clients time, streamline processes, and help small businesses to run more smoothly - but what does that actually look like?

Read on to learn about a typical day in the life of a VA.

Recently this blog looked at how to find and work with the right VA for you. An area that gets less focus is what to do if the working relationship with your VA isn't, well, working.

There could be a number of reasons you feel that it's not working out - perhaps your VA isn't meeting deadlines, work isn't to the required standard, you've got more work to give them than they have capacity for or you just feel uncomfortable with how it's going. Whatever the issue, it needs to be addressed. Here are some important things to bear in mind when tackling the situation.

The role of the virtual assistant has become much more familiar to all of us in the last few years. With the rise in remote working since the pandemic the realisation that small businesses can get the support they need without having to employ a full-time, office-based admin has led to more solo business owners looking to delegate their admin work.

But how do you know if you are hiring the right virtual assistant for your business? If you are a solo business owner and delegating for the first time this process will throw up all sorts of questions and anxieties. This month's blog guides you through the process so you can find the right VA for you.

You've decided to take the plunge and hire a VA. You know what you want to outsource (or you at least have an idea), you've got recommendations for potential VAs and you're ready to set up some discovery calls. But how do you know if you're taking the right decision? You may never have worked with a VA before and have no idea how to approach a discovery call. You may have had a dreadful prior experience with a VA and are nervous about history repeating itself.

The discovery call is key to finding out if you and the VA are a good fit and establishing basic ways of working.

Here are 6 key questions you should be asking when you outsource your admin.

You've put in the hours networking, followed up with one-to-ones, explained brilliantly what you do and your potential client has confirmed that they want to become an actual client.

What do you do now? Dive right in or make sure that you have all the necessary information in place to start working effectively from day one?

The onboarding period is your new client's first experience of working with you. It's crucial to get the process right and to make it as easy for them as possible to start that working relationship.

Here are a few dos and don'ts for creating that all-important client onboarding process.

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one." (Mark Twain)

These blogs have focused a lot on process so far this year - why you need them, the benefits, and which ones you should have for a small business.
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This is all well and good but if you've never written a process before it can be difficult to know where to start. Fear not! Read on for my guide on how to write a process…

In last month's blog I looked at how implementing processes can create thinking space, reduce your workload and lead to less repetition for small business owners.

If you've never recorded a process for your business it can be difficult to know where to start. Here are 5 processes every small business owner should be using.