You’ve made it! Hooray! Getting set up to work with a VA subcontractor is no small process, so let’s do a quick recap of all that you’ve accomplished so far:
- You’ve made the decision to use a VA subcontractor
- You’re created/updated/perfected ALL of your business procedures
- You’ve recorded all of your procedures to make them even easier to follow
- You’ve drawn up a contract and taken all the necessary financial considerations into account
- You’ve conducted an intensive search for the perfect VA subcontractor
- You’ve chosen the VA that is a good match for both you and your business
- You’ve conducted a fake trial run
- You’ve dealt with the results of the fake trial run
- You’ve made all the preparations required for actually going away and handing your business over to your new VA subcontractor
And hopefully, you’ve actually gone away on your holiday and not thought obsessively of work!
Before you give yourself that well-earned pat on the back, there are a couple final tasks that you should take care of with regards to your VA subcontractor.
First of all, take care of the little-bitty things that you had set up before you left:
- turn off your email autoresponder
- set your computer’s energy saving schedule back to normal again now that it’s ok for it to go to “sleep”
- change your password for the remote login that the sub was using
Next, and do this before you have the scheduled follow-up meeting with your VA subcontractor, go and take a look at the results of the tasks that you had assigned to your VA. For example, if you asked them to submit some articles, go check that the articles have indeed been submitted and that they look ok; have a look at any emails that have gone back and forth, if possible; double-check the spreadsheet that they were updating; etc.
Also, if you have time it may be a good idea to contact the client(s) that had the tasks performed and ask them how everything went. If the tasks that were done just happen in the background automatically this probably isn’t necessary since they won’t know exactly what is happening when anyways, but if your VA subcontractor has had any contact with any of your clients while you were gone, go ahead and check-in and see how things went.
And third, keep your scheduled follow-up meeting with your VA subcontractor and discuss all of your findings. Did everything look good? Tell them that! Did you notice anything that was missed? Discuss that too. Get your VA subcontractor to talk about what the experience was like for them – were the procedures you provided them with clear enough? Did they come across any issues that they couldn’t resolve? Etc., etc.
Chances are everything has gone smoothly, the two of you can touch base and swap any files that have been updated, and you can share some holiday stories!
If everything has gone well please make sure to tell your VA subcontractor what a good job they’ve done – they will appreciate any feedback you can give them – and ask them if there is anything else you could have done to make the process easier for next time.
And voila – you’re done! Congratulations!
Imagine the peace of mind that you will now have whenever any future holiday opportunites come your way, or when any emergencies arise – you now have a VA subcontractor that knows your processes and is able to take over at least a part of your workload. Whew!
I hope you’ve found this series useful and entertaining, and I’d love to hear any comments or suggestions you might have. Thanks for reading!