Entrepreneurship is not for everyone! Hard work and long hours are required, especially in the initial stages. Then, as success starts to become more frequent and the next level becomes clearer, outsourcing or delegating becomes almost essential. After all – no one can do everything – not well anyway!

At this stage, depending on the size of their business, many entrepreneurs may look to outsource to a remote team – a Virtual Assistant.

A Virtual Assistant

Invaluable support for you and/or your business,
from a person you trust, but may not have met face to face.

Working remotely with a Virtual Assistant can have its own challenges and, just like entrepreneurship, may not be for everyone. From our experience, the most successful partnerships with remote teams display the following entrepreneurial traits.

1. Organisation – Yes, many entrepreneurs may lean heavily on the support team to keep them organised, but they must also follow the structure to maintain success. This include prioritising tasks to ensure workflow continues without delay. They should also utilise good systems so all members of the team – remote or not have access to the material needed to complete the tasks at hand.
2. Communication – Entrepreneurs need to be able to verbalise their goals, ideas, plans, likes and dislikes – and in a reasonable time-frame. Successful partnerships are centred on clear communication. With clear communication, your team (remote or in-house) will become clear with expectations. Communication is two-way, but being contactable and responding timely is also critical for your message to be effective.
3. Decisive – When it comes to making decisions, a successful entrepreneur cannot procrastinate. As the saying goes – Time is Money – by delaying decision making, opportunities can be missed. In the same way, indecision can put a hold on progress while waiting for the ‘green light’ to continue. If you need more information to make your decision – seek it out but don’t delay your decision.
4. Empowerment – Being the leader of a team, even a small team, some level of responsibility or ownership needs to be shared. If the team working with the entrepreneur is required to ‘check-in’ at every decision-making stage, valuable time will be lost. Allow your team to have levels of decision making to allow your workflow to continue within these boundaries.
5. Respectful – Showing respect to others goes a long way to building ongoing successful teams. Entrepreneurs who set and abide by boundaries, stay true to their word. If you commit to being available at a certain time, be available at the agreed time. Another example is to ‘pay on time’. It may be a simple step, but it goes along way to display the respect for the partnerships that supports them. The same reverence is repaid by those who received respect.
6. Flexibility – Entrepreneurs are treading an unfamiliar path, and therefore need to adapt as situations and circumstances change. They need to adopt an open mind and be willing to change as needed.  If they are smart with building their teams around them, they will have a lot of knowledge and experience to draw from. Tap into that knowledge and if necessary, adjust to improve your business.

Entrepreneurs who are successful are also driven, and can see the end goal when no one else can. Partnering with a suitably driven team with experience and knowledge (mentioned above) will help them achieve that goal.

If you can see yourself in with these traits and are looking for a remote team to support your business contact us to have a chat about our compatibility.

Suggested article – You’ve partnered with a VA – What next?

by Sam Spence – Owner & Executive Virtual Assistant, Executive Virtual Associate.