024: What Can a Virtual Assistant do for my Subscription Box Business?

Are you still doing all the jobs in your business? Are you ready to take some things off your plate? A virtual assistant is the answer. Join me and my VA as we talk through what this could look like for you and your business. I'm so excited. Come, come listen. Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams. Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I have a super special guest today and I'm very excited. I had to pull a little bit of teeth to get her to show up on this podcast with me today, but I have my VA, my very first VA, my head VA because I have multiples now, but I have Allison Risegard here with me and we're going to talk about what subscription box owners could hire a VA for and what that process looks like. Alison, say hi to everybody. Tell them why I had to pull some teeth to get you here.

Um, this, I'm behind the scenes. I don't come forward and do the interviews like this or anything like that. I like to be unseen.

Alison was like, I don't know about this because I'm the behind the scenes girl. And she's amazing. Like when you hear her talk today, you're going to understand how knowledgeable she is. Is, how smart she is. She's amazing, but she's a behind the scenes kind of girl. And that's why she doesn't show up on camera and do the things that, that, you know, entrepreneurs do every single day, like us, like front-facing entrepreneurs. She's a behind the scenes entrepreneur, but she has just been— I don't, I can't even explain it, Alison. You've just been the most amazing piece of my business. And it started a few years ago. And it's funny because we were kind of chatting about this before we got up on the recording for the podcast, but we kind of started off when our businesses were a little small and it's amazing how much we've grown together over the last few years. I hired Alison because I was at a stage in my business when I wanted to do some more marketing in different areas. But at that point, I, I had one or two employees that worked with me physically every day, but I was doing so many of the jobs and I knew that I wanted to blog. And I knew that I wanted to be on Pinterest and I had wanted that for months, but it just was not happening because I didn't have enough hours in the day to take on these new things. And I finally just decided, like, if I'm going to do this, I just got to hire someone to do this. I don't have the capacity to learn more things and I don't have the capacity to take on more things without some help. And so I found Alison through Emily Reagan. Alison, what is Emily's program called?

Virtual Assistant Crash Course or VA Crash Course.

Okay. I knew of Emily from a different, from a different course that I had taken. And so I reached out to her and said, hey, I'm looking for a VA to do blogging and Pinterest. Like I was very specific as what I needed. And I think that's really important when you hire a virtual assistant, but I was very specific in the need that I, what I needed to fill in my business. And so she set me up with a couple interviews. She had me fill out kind of this form. What was my business about? What I was looking for? And then she gave me some names and she said, here's some names of people that have worked in my program that I think would be a good fit for you or that are interested. I don't even know that she played the matchmaker. I think she maybe put it out there and you said you were interested in my business. Is that how it went, Alison?

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. And then I got to interview Alison and, and I think we were both nervous. Like I had never really, you know, interviewed a VA before. And so I didn't know what to expect. I didn't even know what to ask you for. Um, and you were new in setting up your business and we just kind of figured it out together. And so, um, she's here now and we've got mega business going on. Uh, Allison does way more than blogs and Pinterest for me now. And we're actually in the process of hiring some more VAs to take things off my plate, to take things off Allison's plate so she can take more off my plate and all the things. But let's just go back. A little bit, Alison. Why don't you tell me what a virtual assistant is and what they can do for, for us business owners?

Well, we're independent contractors or workers. And so that's a little bit different than an employee. We're able to have flex schedules, or you have less commitment as a business owner. Where, you know, we have like a set amount of hours and then we kind of finish those on our terms or your terms versus having to like have a full weekly commitment for an employee.

And the benefit is that you get to work wherever you're at, right? So I don't need you to come to work at my warehouse and it would kind of be impossible for you because I'm in Texas and you're in Washington State, but you get to work virtually for people and you're a contractor. So I get to hire you for a certain number of hours or tasks every single month and you work that into your schedule. So I just, I love the flexibility of it on both my end and your end. Cause you know, I have, I have about a dozen employees or, or virtual employees, I would call them. Not everyone's like a W-2 employee, but I have 6 here in my physical location that are, and then I have 6 virtual team members. And so being able to work on my things in your own schedule and around your own things is really, it's kind of awesome, isn't it?

I mean, it's amazing. It's why it works for me. I'm a military spouse. And so we won't always be in Washington. And so it does give me that flexibility. We can keep developing our relationship and continue to grow our businesses together, but I'm allowed to do that from where, whatever state I'm in.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. So let's break down for— I have mostly subscription box owners that listen to the podcast, Alison. So let's break down some things that VAs can do for subscription box owners. So if you're listening right now, maybe you've been solo entrepreneuring it this whole time and you're like, Sarah, I got a handle on things. I'm, I'm the shipping person, I'm the receiving person, I'm the box packer, I'm doing my social media, I'm answering my emails, I'm the janitor. I'm like all the things in your business. And I was too. And so there, you might not know what things can be taken off that plate for you by a VA. And I really kind of put them in 3 different buckets and I call them admin tasks, creative tasks, and kind of tech tasks. Allison, let's start with the admin tasks. Like what admin things do we do every single day that a VA could do for us?

Um, it can be so VA, is really, really broad. A lot of us can niche down and stuff like that. So when it comes to administrative, you can find people who will manage your calendars, or even some do bookkeeping. And then as simple as your email marketing, I know that that becomes like your daily administrative where you're— I guess it's less marketing, but more customer service. I know that you have a customer service assistant and it's that daily answering all the emails and all that kind of stuff that you really shouldn't be spending your time on.

Yeah. There's, there's a lot of tasks that I even still spend a lot of time on that. Um, I've been trying to get them off my plate because you think as the entrepreneur that, oh, I can do it. It doesn't take me very long. And that's been my mindset for a very long time. Alison will probably tell you that too. I feel like she has to beat me over the head sometimes. Times to let me lose control of something or let go of control, not lose control, but let go of control. Um, because you think, well, I can do that. It's no big deal. It takes me 30 minutes. But when you look at your day and you think about all the things that take you 30 minutes, it adds up to your entire day. And if you're spending all your day on those admin tasks, you're not being creative. You're not working on your marketing. You're not working on your contents. You're not working on the big picture things because your day is so consumed with those those tasks that really someone can take off your plate. And honestly, sometimes they're better at it than you are because they're not so close to it.

I mean, they're able to really focus in on it, right? Instead of you being pulled in a million different, you know, directions, we're able to really focus in on those tasks so we can get them done faster or more efficient. And we probably know the systems a little bit better just because We're doing that every day.

Yes, I think of—

We did just sit down and we had to have a conversation between you and I about, okay, what other tasks can we take off of your plate, Sarah? Because at a certain point, even you're still being pulled so many different directions and it is hard to give those up.

It is hard because you've built this thing that's your baby and you've had your hand in every single one of these pieces from the beginning. And it's not that you think someone else is incompetent of handling even the simplest thing, but you just say, well, they're not going to do it the way I do it. And so if that's in your mind, then you're never going to be able to let it go. But what happens is when someone takes that over, that really, like Allison said, focuses on that one particular job, they actually can do it better than you did anyway. And so one, it makes you feel good because the out— the outcome is good. 2, it makes you feel good because you're not having to do those things anymore. And then you can really focus on the big picture of your business. And when I talk about admin tasks, I had a couple suggestions. So one of the best things I hired for was customer service. And we've talked about this on a previous episode about cancellations. Cancellations for subscriptions are really hard. They're really hard on you emotionally. And every time one of those would come through, it was this instant feeling of like, What am I doing wrong? Shut it all down. We're ending this thing. Like it was always the end of the world thing. And that was really one of the first things that I took off of my admin plate was handling the cancellations, handling the new subscriptions, making sure that they were on our, our monogram list. They were on our spreadsheet and just organizing all of those subscriptions because it was a daily thing that we had to change someone's size. We had a cancellation, we had a new subscriber and all those things, they seem so small and they only take minutes, but those minutes start to add up. So it was handling the subscription data, customer service around all the orders and subscriptions, and then billing. When you start to get into hundreds of subscribers, you're going to have to deal with bounced payments. You're going to have to follow up with payments. People need to update their cards. People want to change payments. All of that stuff adds up a lot. And that is something that an admin or that a VA can take off your plate almost Instantly, right?

And another thing that I see kind of floating around in Launch Your Box with questions from members is that when, when you're onboarding or when we're getting new subscriptions and they're like, well, how do I find out the t-shirt size? How do I find out the monogram and stuff like that? And a VA can take that information and put it in your spreadsheet, put it in your systems and stuff so that you have all of that ready when it comes down to packing day and production day and everything too.

And that was happening to me, Alison. Like, I was handling all of that for a long time, and then it would be like, okay, we have to start monograms today. Well, I haven't logged everything on my spreadsheet, so now I got to go spend 2 hours catching up with all the new subscribers and all the changes that I couldn't even get started on the monogramming part of the subscription because I had to do the admin side. I had to get it all in the spreadsheet. So if someone is just doing that task, and it doesn't even have to be every day. So my, my assistant that does this stuff, she works 3 days a week and she handles the the billing and the customer service and all that stuff, those days, it doesn't have to be every day, but if someone's keeping up with it, then you're not having to do it when you're getting ready to actually make the thing or personalize the thing or, you know, pack the thing, you know, that you don't have to do it in that moment. It's been handled for you all month. Let's talk a little bit about the creative things that a VA can do for you. And when I say creative, I'm thinking like, not only graphics, but I'm thinking photographs, and I'm also thinking about different marketing things. Alison, let's, let's talk through some of that.

So obviously I do a lot of the graphics and everything, and so you don't have to worry about those, but also the worksheets, any ebooks or anything like that all fall into that line, or inserts for your subscription box. I know, um, that's just a task that a lot of people don't want to take on. It takes a lot of time sometimes to get everything together and organized. And so that's an easy one for a VA to take over. Um, but creative also is— it can be your email marketing, it can be your blogs. Um, and that's a big time suck for a lot of business owners, but it's so important too because that is your marketing. Um, because the blog is the content that you can put on your social media, it's the content you're putting on Pinterest and everything to really get you know, your box is seen and everything.

And I, I think, you know, some people don't start blogging at first and that's totally okay. And I, I wasn't there for a while. And I knew that I couldn't take that on without having someone that had knowledge behind that, because I didn't know, and I didn't have time to take a blog course or anything like that. And so that was one of the things that you and I talked about that was really important to me. I wanted to start blogging so that I could start Pinterest because I think they go hand in hand, but I didn't know a lot of SEO and you knew that you had that knowledge. And so when we first started, it was okay, let's, let's, here's how I found your blog topics. And then obviously I know the content. So I'm going to, I'm going to give the content, you're going to make it pretty, you're going to make sure it's SEO ready. You know the content now because you've had to read through it several times. You're able to then focus on what could be put on Pinterest, what other social media graphics we could use around that content. Like that one piece of content is really spread all over between all the platforms, social media, Pinterest, everywhere is that, that one blog. And so being able to be at the hub of that, you then knew my next steps. I didn't know my next steps. But you knew that because you've been trained in that. And that's why it's important to have a VA that's trained in the areas that you need them for so that they have more knowledge than you. She had more knowledge than me. I knew about the content, I knew what I— about my, my products, and I knew what I wanted to do. But she was able to give me suggestions. And And we still, we meet every 6 or 8 weeks. We talk about what things are being hit on, you know, the searchable words and things like that. And we brainstorm together so that we can come up with my future content and that helps her, it helps me. And then it just makes all this content that we're creating into this one hub that she then helps with the graphics. And, you know, I did my own graphics for a long time. I wasn't bad at them. I didn't, I thought I was pretty good at them, but then here comes Alison along who has just this eye for branding and graphics and anything that I make looks like a kid made next to her stuff. So I'm like, I don't even want to do it anymore. Yours looks better than mine. So having someone that can take on those, those roles that are better than you is not a bad thing at all.

Well, and I, Touching back on some of the things you mentioned, really, when we first started out, we didn't know what content we were even going to make at first. We were brainstorming without a plan or any analytics to work off of or anything. But as we've grown together, I've been able to go and help find content ideas, which I think is not even just time-consuming, but it's like it takes a lot of brainpower for a business owner to then shift from creating boxes and all of that to then, okay, well, now I have to come up with, you know, what am I actually going to put online, you know, and stuff like that. And so the fact that I'm able to sit down and bring you ideas for what we should be talking about for the next quarter and stuff like that and come up with a content strategy, um, I think is just for me, I think that's where I see a lot of people getting a lot of relief is somebody like content planning.

Because we, for us, for subscription box owners, the contents for us is what's in that box. But the content for you, Alison, as the VA, and you're doing a lot of my digital marketing here, the content is not only what's in that box, but it's what we can do to serve our audience in a different way. And so That content looks like 4 ways to style your t-shirt this month. That content looks like whatever our audience is interested in. And I might not see that, but you can see that because you're trained in that and you have experience with that. And so, you know, those SEO words to use, you know what people are searching for. And so we're able to come together. I have the content knowledge of what's going in those boxes and you have the content knowledge of what needs to be distributed digitally. And so that's why it makes a good pair because Sometimes we're so close to our businesses that we can't see these things and we don't understand them. And so I love, I love that. The, the other bucket that we've talked about is the tech, the tech piece of having a VA. And I think that's where a lot of my members inside Launch Your Box, um, really struggle because a lot of us are creative. A lot of us are the creative person. We're makers, we're doers, um, we're product sellers, but then we have all this this tech stuff that's like, oh gosh, I have to have that. Yeah, you gotta have the tech figured out. So let's talk a little bit about what, what kind of tech things a VA can do for us.

Well, and a lot of people don't realize that VAs can even do tech. They think that they have to go straight to a web developer, which obviously we still need web developers. I'm not, I will never claim to be a web developer because there's days where I'm calling him up and being like, hey, Hey, okay, we gotta figure this out, you know? But when it comes to landing pages or setting up, like if you're using the WordPress subscriptions plugins and stuff like that, we can help set up plugins. We can help maintain the backend of the website to make sure your plugins are up to date and working properly. Your sales pages. We can go— like some of us do copywriting and that really helps with building those landing pages and stuff. And even just, just out of the gate, your waitlist, the whole flow of your waitlist, integrating it to your email marketing and setting up the email flow for your waitlists and everything. Just have that done and out of your mind.

You know, I think that's like the biggest peace of mind for anyone. Like having someone that you can call and say, I need to set this up. And honestly, the time it would take for you to set up a landing page for me, it would probably take me double the time because you are doing that in your everyday life and I'm not. And so, you know what, I can give you the copy, I can tell you what I want and you can set it up so fast. It's like, why am I even wasting my time? But really when we talk about the tech pieces, we can even get You know, we've talked landing pages, sales pages, email integrations, Shopify integrations. They can set up like your recurring payment apps in there. They could also— and this could— this is like an everyday. So my in-person assistant here, she loads in all the products that we sell. She puts in all the descriptions, the pricing, the shipping. Like, she handles all the back end of the website for the everyday products we sell, plus the subscriptions. So that's something very easy that a VA could do for you as well. It's just, it's one of those task things, like those repetitive task things that you could take off your list.

I mean, as a business owner, you hear me tell you all the time, you shouldn't be doing that. At a certain point, I don't want you focusing on that. Because when I come to you at the beginning of the week and I'm like, hey, you know, I need this and this from you. I want the content so I can turn it into something and do all of these things for you. I don't want you wasting your time on product, product descriptions and putting all the images online and stuff because somebody else can be doing that for you. And it lets you focus on like the bigger picture. Really, we're here so you can focus on the bigger picture. We want to take all that small stuff that's eating your time. It's a way because it's just eating so much of your time to get all those small things done.

And I think it's, it's the, it's the realization that you don't realize how much time is being wasted in your day by these repetitive tasks that someone would very easily be able to take that from you. And you may not think that right now because it requires them to have backend access. It requires them to know your customer, requires them to do a lot of things. But if you just sat down today, if you're listening here today and you're thinking, gosh, I need a VA, I really need a VA. What I want you to do is I want you to spend the next 5 to 7 days with a notebook, and every time you start to work on something, I just want you to jot it down and how many minutes it took you. And then what I want you to do is go back to that notebook and look at those things that you— that took time, whether it's 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there, 10 minutes there, that could someone else do for you. And it doesn't have to start You don't have to start big. Like when Allison and I first started, you know, we just agreed on like 10 hours for the month, 10 hours. Like, think about that. Like you can really baby step into this. And so if you said, if I had a person that could work 10 hours for me in a month, what would I want them to do? And so you just, you start with that. Now Allison works more for me, quite a bit more for me. Um, but you start with what you're comfortable with. If you have a VA, say, and on average, you know, VAs cost different amounts of money. But if on average you said, okay, a VA is going to cost me $20 an hour and I paid them 10 for 10 hours this month, that's $200. Can I absorb $200 into my business to have help? And if that means you can work on different things, awesome. If that means you can leave work earlier and not have to work all day and all night on things yourself and you have a better home life, or you have better, more time with your kids, totally worth it. So you just have to figure out what's worth it for you.

Oh, so we, so when we first started out, like we said, I think we started with 10 hours here and there, and then it quickly grew to 20 because it was Pinterest and blogging. But any VA, I don't want anybody to think that it has to be a monthly contract either, because there's different sides to to virtual work where Sarah's need was those daily tasks and we were trying to take on, like, grow. And so we were trying to take on blogging and Pinterest so that we could have more content to put out there and be seen more. But some people only need a waitlist setup or only need— they think they have everything else set up. So I feel like if you you can take on project-based too. And so if you said, I have a project, I really need a launch right now, and I need assistance with the launch and stuff, you can start with just, you know, 10 hours for a launch, get a project done, and then you've already had that relationship with that person. And you can decide then, like, if you want to continue, you can discuss it with your assistant on if you want to do a monthly, hourly by then or not. You know. And so don't just think you have to do monthly contracts. You can do project-based contracts too.

You could even do— I know a lot of virtual assistants have like a package. So if it's not like hourly based, it could be on X number of pins or X number of blog posts or X number of social media posts and things like that. So you could set up a package so that It doesn't matter how many hours you work on that as long as it's getting done. And then you don't feel like you're having to watch over them all the time with their hours either. So you could do it hourly, you could do it project-based, or you could do like a monthly package. And then you could grow on that. And the other thing I really wanted to touch on was that not every virtual assistant is going to be the right fit for you. And you may have to search for them. And the first one you hire might not work out because it's a combination of not only skill on their part, but it's personality-based too. And so if someone that you hire doesn't really fit with your personality or respond with your personality, to your personality, or able to work with someone that, that is like you, or that can work with someone like you, like, that's not always a good fit. And that doesn't mean that it's a failure. And that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try again. It's just, it's the same with hiring employees in person. Not everyone's going to fit in with everybody around here. Not everyone's going to be the greatest fit, but we try. And I'm not going to give up on hiring. If someone doesn't work out, we figure out what it was that didn't work out. And then we look for something different on the next hire. And so I think that's really important when you start. Don't think the first person you're going to hire is going to be Allison, like me, like she was my first VA, and it's worked out amazing. That's like the Cinderella story, right? It may not, it may not be that fit.

And sometimes it takes a a little finagling at first too. A lot of people get turned off by these startup processes because like you mentioned before, I don't have your logins, I don't have your voice yet, um, if I'm writing for you and everything. So I would say give everybody a fair chance because we want to learn your business and we need to learn your processes. We need to learn your website. We have to learn what plugins you're using and how they integrate together and everything. So there's a lot of back and forth initially for those beginning setups and you feel like it's a waste of your time. You want someone to come in and take that time off your plate. But push past that setup and then start to see how you guys click together and everything. But really, not every shoe fits and we have to be okay with that on both sides. Like that's coming from us too. As a VA, I've had to say, you know what, this isn't gonna work, you know? And it's like nothing to do with the person or the business, but sometimes work, like our work styles don't click or something like that. And I personally need someone who's gonna let me work in the middle of the night.

Yes.

And so it's— Sarah knows my schedule.

I love it. It's like my— I send something during the day and I wake up and there it is. It's like my overnight fairy has delivered what I need. It's amazing. I love it. So, and yet you're right, if somebody— and if you need something from somebody and they don't respond in the middle of the night, and then it's like, it's like, you know, I relate it to like sourcing from China. I have to— we have to talk to them in the middle of the night because of the time difference. Um, and so sometimes that can create like a barrier of time because it may take 2 days before we get it sorted out because we're on different time things. But, um, just being able to have that conversation, and I think it comes back to setting expectations. And I think the VA me is just as much responsible as that as the business owner is. Because when I go into this and I have a certain expectation about how this is going to go, and just so you know, in the beginning I had no expectations because I did not know what to expect. But now I'm getting ready to hire another virtual assistant for social media and I have expectations. So for me to be the, the best business owner in this equation, I need to lay out my expectations so she knows exactly what I want her to do. And then there's not this gap of, well, she didn't do that. Well, I didn't set that expectation that that's what I wanted. How can she read my mind? And I think a lot of times that we get upset about something, but we haven't made our expectations clear. And if you don't know what to expect, like I didn't know what to expect in the beginning with Alison. Alison knew I can do one blog a week for you. I can do X number of pins from you. Let's try that out and let's go from there. And that was the expectation in the beginning. She knew what to expect. I'm like, I don't know. I just know I need help. And I know that I can't do this. So having those expectations clear in the beginning will help those feelings of, well, she's not doing what I want her to do. Well, she might not know what you want her to do and that, that's on you and that's not on her. And I also love how you said, Alison, to give it time. Um, I kind of have this rule in my brain that anytime I hire someone, whether they're in person or online is that it takes 90 days. It takes 90 days to get to know someone. Um, and so if things don't click in the first 30 days, I don't want you to worry about that too much. Things will start to happen. And if you feel good at the end of 90 days, then that's, that's your measure. Like, okay, we got that. And the other thing is like, don't try to give them a whole bunch of stuff at Start with one thing. Let them master that before we start to layer on all these things. If I would've hired Allison and said, okay, Allison, I need you to start a blog for me. I don't even know where to start. I don't have a Pinterest account. I'm going to want you to make all these graphics for me. I'm going to need a landing page and a sales page. And can you teach me how to use Klaviyo? And she would've been like, I don't even know where to begin. It's too much. And then And she would be frustrated. I would be frustrated because I'm not getting the results that I want because she's trying to figure out too many things for my business at once. So if you could hire someone for one or two specific jobs, let that, let them handle it for 90 days. And then if all of that is going well, start to layer in some more pieces. Do you have advice for that?

I mean, I really agree. I, I love to grow with the company. That's something that I really love to do. Not only does it make me, um, like, I feel like we've really built a relationship together because of it. Um, and, but I, I, I really love the growth with companies because, um, like you said, neither of us were overwhelmed at first when we had our initial conversation. We were very straightforward on, I don't know what I'm doing with this. I need help with this. And I was pretty straightforward. Well, Like you said, I can only accomplish this for you every week and, um, and whatever else we discussed.

Yeah, it's exactly about setting those expectations and not getting overly like over, overdone. You know, like right now there's a lot on my plate that we want to take off, but with this new hire that I'm hiring, I'm focusing on social media because if she can focus on that one thing and we can take that off my plate, I have no doubt that she's going to be able to take more off my plate, but I'm going to give her 90 days to work on that social media first. And if things are just clicking and running, then, then, and she's ready to take on more, then we can take some more off my plate. But just having them start with one thing is super important. It'll, it'll help you, but it will also help, you know, your VA as well, because they'll be able to really hone in on that one thing, make it really good, get their processes down, and then they can move on to the next thing for you.

Yeah, I think so. And I would just ask a VA when you're having that initial conversation with them, what they don't do. Because I think some of us really love to like grow into a little bit of everything and stuff. But if you want that relationship with someone who is going to kind of handle a little bit of all the things for you and everything, I would try and make sure upfront that they are kind of aware of that too. Just because some of us don't touch social media, some of us don't touch ads, ads. Some of us don't do copy at all. And so if that's something you're going to want later, it doesn't mean that that person's not a perfect fit, but then in the back of your mind, you're, you're not going to ask them to do a task that they're not capable of doing or wanting to do. Um, but also you'll know, um, down the road that that might be the next task you want off your plate to find another VA for. And your current VA might even be able to help help you find those people because we're in our own circles and we like to network, um, and stuff. And so I know I've given quite a few suggestions for the tasks that I don't complete.

Yeah, I like that. And if you start requesting that they do a bunch of stuff that they don't love doing, they're, they're going to work themselves out of your business is what's going to happen. You want them to show up and do what they love. And if somebody has to show up and do something they don't like every day, they're not going to show up for very long. And I'm thinking about that as I'm having Alison up and do this podcast with me that she really didn't want to do. But she's been great. And I just, I just wanted her here because she's just done so much for my business. And I, and it's just important that you should start somewhere when you're ready. And not everybody is ready right now, but you're going to get to a place where you're going to be ready. It's very easy just to start with a few hours and one person. And when you keep building on that, then you're going to have this great team. Like, you know, I have someone sitting out here doing customer service right now, and that's all she does. I have another one working on stuff for our next box, like the inserts and the, and the, um, the prints and, and the personalization for that. I have Allison here that's working on some things that we're doing in the membership that we're getting ready to launch. And so having these team of people that can just keep all those gears running for you, because it's a lot. And when you grow I know the way that I've grown that you're just overwhelmed with it. And so you need to get some people into the equation while you maybe have 300 or 400 or 500 subscribers, because by the time you have 3,000 subscribers, it's a lot. And then you can keep growing your team as you keep growing your revenue. And it's just important to build that into your budget as you go. Someone's listening, Alison. We're just going to tell them straight out, you're full. Sarah's using me as much as she can. Um, but how do we find, how do we find our very first VA? I know I've done training about the way that I found you and there's resources on Emily Reagan's program inside our membership, but what's your advice for someone to go find a VA?

Right. So I obviously love Emily Reagan and everything she teaches. And so So that's my first place to go. If I'm looking to hire someone who's gonna work with me on a team or something, or to help someone hire that person, I go to Emily Ragan first because I trust their skills. But I know that that's not always available. People get booked out really quick. It's a small pool of people. And so I'm a part of Facebook groups for specific parts of my business. So I'm on a Pinterest Facebook group where they just talk about all things Pinterest and the management side, the marketing side, and that's VAs and business owners or just people who are only bloggers or business owners. You know, everybody's in there. And not only, am I in there for like learning opportunities and staying up to date on all the changes? Because tech changes, all this changes, and I feel like it's part of my job to stay on top of all those things so that you don't have to. But inside of those groups, us VAs linger, right? Like, so we're in there and stuff. And so I think it's a great resource and we see it all the time where someone's just like, hey, I need help. I'm at the point in my business where I need to expand this or I need to get this off my plate. And so then VAs can reach out to you depending on the group you're in. If you've asked for help, we're allowed to reach out to you and there's some really good resources in there. We use Kajabi and Kajabi has their own Facebook group and I see it all the time in there too. Like, I just need a landing page set up. Set up. And I'm not going to learn this by the time I need my landing page set up because I have a deadline. And so who can I take on a project base or who can just do the email marketing for me? Go to that email marketing Facebook group. And there's, you know, not only does Klaviyo have their own Facebook group, but I'm sure they have like a more of a for beginners and tech learning side of things. And that's where I would to and find some people.

It's so smart. And it's so smart that VAs like you are hanging out in those rooms, not only to learn, but there's opportunities there for, you know, to hire some people. And I'm thinking about like a Shopify Facebook group, a WooCommerce Facebook group, Klaviyo. Like if you need help with those tech pieces, go find the Facebook groups for these platforms, because a lot of people are going to be in there. One, you're going to learn. Two, you can ask questions. And three, you can probably hire someone in those groups. I see it all the time in the groups that I'm in. And I think it's a great way to find someone specific to your first need. And then if that's your first need, maybe they can do more for you. I know when, when you came on for me, you didn't know Kajabi then, and we, you kind of learn it with me. And I think that's another important piece of finding a VA. Are they willing to learn? Are you willing to dig into stuff and learn stuff with the business owner?

And I think that's a really good point. As a business owner, if you want to grow with somebody, I wouldn't expect them to know everything. There's so many platforms, there's so many apps and everything. But if you find somebody who's eager to learn and figure out for you, then you don't have to figure it out. Um, but you know, we can take it off your plate at the same time.

Yes, yes. Allison, this has been awesome. I hope that if you've been feeling like you need a VA, that this helped you understand what you can look for and what they can really do for you. Allison, where can they find you at?

Um, I'm only on Facebook right now because I'm so busy in other people's businesses. Um, just Personal Ally. So if you go to Facebook at Personal Ally, that's where you can find me. But like Sarah said, she's got I got her.

And if, if she comes up with any extra hours every month, I got those too. So don't even worry. But what we're here to tell you about is how you can find your person. Because when I found Alison, I knew that she was my person, that she could grow with my business. And I want you to find your person too. So get on it, figure out what tasks you need to get off your plate and get someone hired to help. And I'll see you back next week. Week on the next episode. Have a good day. Make sure you subscribe to the Launch Your Box podcast. I'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review it. Let me know which episode is your favorite so far. Don't forget to join me next week right here.