Are you prepared for any eventuality in your VA business? For many new VAs, this isn’t something they really pay much attention to. However, if you want to protect yourself and your business, you need to have these essential elements in place.

This is why it’s one of the core modules with the VA Mastery Course. It’s so important that you ensure you’re protecting yourself and your business. Here’s what you need to know about doing just that.

What lessons have you learnt about having your own VA business?

Things can go wrong in your business and things can go wrong outside of your business that will negatively impact it. That’s why it pays to understand what lessons you’ve learnt from running your own VA business, so you can implement contingency plans to overcome any obstacles you may face.

For example, have you had a problem with your PC or laptop? If so, how do you overcome it? What did you need to do? Maybe you had a fire and lost your documents and client records? What can you learn from that, to help you minimise the impact of it happening again and what you can do if it does?

What measures you need to put in place

This is where you move onto the measures you need to put in place. All of those lessons come in handy here! You need to decide what’s important to you and what you can do to protect those things.

Take the example of a fire destroying your client records. You could minimise the risk of that happening again, by installing fire alarms. You can protect your client records by storing them in a fireproof cabinet or getting rid of paper copies and storing everything on cloud storage.

With the laptop or PC problems, you could have a spare laptop for emergencies, or use online storage and computing programmes, so you can work from the cloud on any computer.

Disaster Relief Plan

Creating your own Disaster Relief Plan is a way to ease your worries over those things that could happen to negatively impact on your VA business. It’s like a solutions list for you, one that highlights what you need to do in the event of something unexpected, so you don’t have to worry whilst you’re in the midst of a panic. It’s a resource that highlights how you’ve got everything covered, whether you need a plan for it or not. It’s peace of mind for you. We cover how to create yours, within the VA Mastery Course, so you have it in place, right from the start of your new VA business.

Working with associates

This can be an awesome way of covering yourself for all eventualities. Take holidays and sick days, for example, if you have someone who can step in when needed, you’re more able to step away from your business, when you need to. You know your clients are going to be well catered for and you can take the time you need, to rest and recover.

Working with associates is the perfect way to grow your VA business too. It enables you to expand past the available hours you have and gives you a way to offer services outside of your own range of expertise. We cover working with associates, within the VA Mastery Course, so you can learn how awesome it can be, to build your own team of associates!

Operations Manual for you VA business

An Operations Manual in plain speak is a manual that provides you with guidance on how to do your job. It comprises all the checklists and templates you use, along with workflows and step-by-step instructions on how to do everything in your business. This is an awesome document that grows with your business. As you add more services to your business, you add their workflows and instructions etc to the Operations Manual.

So why might you need this manual? Not only does it help you, by negating the need for you to remember everything, but it also helps you complete your tasks faster. It also helps you keep the consistency there, as you’re following the same process every time you complete the task.

But more than that, it also helps you further down the line. For example, if you’re looking to take on associates, you can hand over the workflow that you want them to follow. And if you’re looking to sell your VA business later, you have your entire business inside that manual, so the new buyer can hit the ground running with a readymade business.

Preparing for every eventuality isn’t just about preparing for disasters. Some of the documentation you create will enable you to work better, more efficiently and faster. They help you feel more secure and professional too, as you know you’ve got everything covered. And finally, they also enable you to put a greater value on your business, if you’re ever in a position to sell it. 

So if you’re looking for help preparing for every eventuality in your VA business, and would like support to get the right structures in place, why not check out the VA Mastery Course? You’ll get everything you need to get your VA business off to the best possible start, as well as guidance on how to create the structures and systems you need to ensure it’s a success. You can find all the details of the VA Mastery Course, here.