As an independent virtual assistant or VA business owner, there may come a time when you want your business to comprise more than just you. So how do you achieve the growth you’re after and scale your business from a solo operation to a substantial enterprise?
That’s what I’m going to cover in this article. It’s practical to break a scaling strategy down into three distinct stages, and I want to walk you through those briefly, to give you actionable insights and help you develop your plans for business growth.
Start With Your Five-Year Vision
You might not be planning on scaling. There’s nothing wrong with continuing on your own and servicing your clients independently – though that’s essentially freelancing rather than building a scalable business.
But if you plan to grow your virtual assistant business, there are distinct phases you need to go through, and you’ll need to consider your resourcing options. I’ll explain these phases and outline how we’ve applied them at Virtual Done Well over our years in the Australian VA industry.
When we launched what became Virtual Done Well, it was a small team. But we mapped out the organisational structure we wanted to see five years ahead. When we reviewed it after seven years, our actual structure matched almost exactly what we’d planned.
Chart Your Structure for Now and for the Future
Why is establishing your organisational structure early so important? Because you need to visualise what your business will look like when it scales. That initial organisation chart had just a few names filling all the boxes.
I was Managing Director, CFO, and handled project delivery. My business partner covered operations, client relations, and business development. We envisioned how it would look with our names initially in all the boxes. Then gradually, other people’s names filled those positions over the years.
So develop that view of what the business will look like and determine your end goal. But what about these three phases I’ve mentioned?
The First Phase: Increase Your Capacity to Serve
Your focus initially needs to be on service delivery. That means delivering excellent outcomes for your clients, growing your client base, expanding client accounts, and building your reputation in the Australian market.
As you scale, you’ll need more virtual assistants. That’s a continual process throughout the life of your VA business. There are several ways you can approach this, such as deciding between part-time vs full-time remote staff.
If you’re bootstrapping your VA business – funding it yourself from cash flow – you want to minimise cash outlay.
One option is to hire contractors initially to help you, then transition them to employees later if that suits your business model. That’s certainly something we did in the early days. You can build your team gradually this way.
In 2024, with the rise of remote work post-pandemic, finding skilled VAs has become easier than ever. The Australian VA market has matured significantly, with more businesses recognising the value of virtual support. You need to bolster your capability to deliver a greater volume of services if you’re going to grow your business. That’s the first critical phase.
The Second Phase: Hands Off the Back Office
The second phase as the business owner is to remove yourself from back-office tasks and stop executing non-value-adding activities.
The lifeblood of a VA business is sales and service delivery. Those factors ensure business survival, and typically, the founder has considerable strength in these areas. That’s why you need to find and hire experts in back-office functions to whom you can delegate.
For admin tasks, when we started, I took on a part-time bookkeeper while handling client invoicing myself. Later, I replaced the part-time position with a full-time accountant, and gradually our admin team expanded.
I started by outsourcing back-office tasks using contractors, then built our in-house team over time. Now we have a back-office staff of 15 people supporting our operations.
The key message: build your back-office team gradually, enabling you to detach from administration and focus on sales, service delivery, and the third growth phase – increasing your marketing capability.
The Third Phase: Build Your Marketing Team
When I entered the VA industry years ago, marketing was expensive and relied heavily on print advertising and networking events. In 2024, digital marketing has transformed how VA businesses reach clients. It’s more accessible and cost-effective than ever.
Start growing your marketing capability in parallel with strengthening your admin team. Again, you can outsource initially.
For my money, outsourced marketing works as a short-term solution. I prefer more control and input into marketing than outsourcing allows, but it’s certainly a good way to start. Use contractors initially, then build your in-house team.
Our marketing team is larger than typical for our business size. That’s because:
- Marketing drives growth in the VA industry
- When marketing works, it delivers consistent ROI in new client acquisition
In 2024, with AI tools and automation, a small marketing team can achieve what used to require dozens of people. Focus on content marketing, LinkedIn presence, and case studies – these work particularly well for Australian VA businesses.
The Three-Component Business Model
Think of your scaling strategy as having three core components: service delivery, administration, and marketing.
That’s how we grew Virtual Done Well. We started with just the founders handling all service delivery, sales, admin, and marketing. Gradually, we’ve built a team of 50-60 professionals. The strategy works – we’ve proven it in the Australian market.
What Are Your Scaling Plans?
To conclude, let me ask: What’s your current team size, and where do you plan to be?
Are you content operating as a solo VA or small team, or do you have plans to grow to 10, 50, or even 100 team members?
The Australian VA industry in 2024 offers tremendous opportunities for growth. With businesses increasingly embracing remote work and recognising the value of virtual support, there’s never been a better time to scale.
If you need help resourcing your business growth, Virtual Done Well can provide experienced virtual assistants to handle those back-office tasks mentioned above. Our VAs specialise in supporting growing businesses with everything from administration to marketing support.
Ready to start scaling? Get in touch with us to learn how our virtual assistants can help you grow your business while you focus on what you do best.
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