Why I Hired a Full-Time Administrative Assistant
Welcome to the first real post in our operations community, called the Operations Room. Before starting, I want to explain the structure for this newsletter.
Operations are complex, and most topics could be discussed and debated for days. To keep content in bite-sized, digestible parts, I intend to publish various series where each post discusses one component of the larger topic, with all posts archived and searchable alongside the other posts within our website
The first series will cover a topic I’ve received numerous questions on lately: Hiring and Task Delegation.
This series will be four posts, outlined below, with one published each week:
Part 1: Why I Hired a Full-Time Administrative Assistant and not a Part-Time VA
Part 2: How to Delegate Tasks: Documenting processes and procedures in your CRM
Part 3: How to Delegate Tasks: Using an Internal Learning Management System to document every step of every workflow or task
Part 4: What I Love and What I Don’t Love About My Current Situation
Without further ado, on to Part 1: Why I Hired a full-time Administrative Assistant (and not a VA)
As a solopreneur, everything falls on you. All phone calls, emails, tasks, workflows, and planning work. My true north, or what drives me, is living a life creating memories with my family and friends. At this point, I value time and freedom more than money; I would rather have more free time (i.e., more opportunities to make memories) than more money. But I can’t maximize my free time, my true north, without some level of delegation.
I realized I needed to act. I realized it was time for me to use firm revenue to buy time by outsourcing.
Three ways to Outsource
There are three primary ways to delegate in the financial services industry: Hire a company to handle specific tasks, (back office support, hire a TAMP), hire a Virtual Assistant, or hire a full-time team member.
Why I didn’t hire, or partner, with a company
I could have hired a TAMP to handle the day-to-day investment tasks or a back office company to assist with custodial paperwork. But I would still retain ownership of each and every process. I was still going to be the guy. I still always had to be on. I didn’t want that. Plus, I felt I needed to either hire multiple companies to achieve the true level of freedom I desired or I needed to partner with a roll-up organization of some sort. Neither felt right for me for various reasons.
Why I didn’t hire a Virtual Assistant
Upon interviewing two companies and after identifying costs and scope of work, I determined that a Virtual Assistant did not fit in my long-term goals because:
The list of delegatable tasks was limited in scope. Each company was different, but I could not find a Virtual Assistant offering where I could delegate all custodial paperwork, the categorizing of transactions in QuickBooks, booking travel, and sending new client welcome packets. This meant too many items remained on my plate, which defeated the entire purpose of hiring as I was not achieving my objective of maximizing flexibility to step away from my practice.
Suboptimal productivity and efficiency relative to cost. A Virtual Assistant can cost $50 per hour with hourly minimums, commonly 10 hours per week, for a rate of $500 per week and $26,000 per year. Is it really that much cheaper than a full-time (or .6 or .8 time) employee
Before delegating a task, I would think to myself, “is this worth paying $50 per hour to complete?”. Be honest with yourself. If you had to think about money before delegating something you’d probably keep things on your plate that you shouldn’t. I know I want. By having a full-time person, I do not think twice about delegating items as long as they have the knowledge and time capacity to complete the task at hand.
Turnover can be high. I’ve had peers tell me they cycle through a new VA every three to nine months. I’m sure someone reading this has worked with the same VA for years, but in my experience that appears to be the exception and not the rule.
A Virtual Assistant seemed like a stepping stone to hiring a full-time team member. It felt as if I was making a short-term decision in an attempt to solve a long-term issue. It didn’t feel right.
Sidebar: I would have delayed hiring, grown revenue, and then revisited hiring if I had the revenue to hire a Virtual Assistant but not a full-time team member.
Why I Hired a Full-Time Administrative Assistant
Assuming the task is procedurally straightforward and linear, there are no limits (excluding various compliance-restricted items) to what can be delegated to a full-time employee.
This route allows me to delegate everything I want.
I can delegate the traditional items, such as custodial paperwork and administrative tasks, but I can also delegate anything else that I can teach someone to do. I can delegate monthly compliance questionnaires, weekly investment drift reporting, and QuickBooks categorization. I can delegate any task which I can create a linear, rules-based process for. Almost all tasks that are not client facing fit into this category. I can delegate almost anything.
This route granted me the possibility of true freedom and to escape always being on or being the guy. Remember, my objective was to use firm revenue to purchase freedom and flexibility.
I’ll admit hiring and training weren’t smooth sailing from day one. It took us about seven months until we fully clicked. Or as a subscriber to Extreme Ownership, it took me seven months to master our internal processes and procedures to provide my assistant the infrastructure to succeed.
It was hard. It was the most challenging activity of running my firm to this point. More challenging than a large firm-wide fee increase or implementing Surge meetings. But now we are a well-oiled machine.
Next week, I’ll dive into Part 2: How to Delegate Tasks: Documenting processes and procedures in your CRM, where I’ll cover how we document processes and procedures for all tasks and workflows (and everything I delegate) in our CRM. Then in Part 3 we will explore the Learning Management System, or “giant database of how Drost Financial actually does everything” that serves as the resource library to provide additional guidance for all tasks and procedures.
Until next week,
Steve
