A virtual assistant is the wrong first hire for your online business. It’s normal to think that an offshore general virtual assistant should be your first hire. Many of the online business gurus tell you that. When the online business gurus and influencers hype VAs, they make it sound like a single offshore VA will be an expert in everything your online business needs, things like tech, content, editing, social media and ads, and willing to work for $5.

They also make it sound like all you have to do is hire the VA and it will take on all those things within days of starting. Oh, if that were true.

But look at James Wedmore, Amy Porterfield, and Pat Flynn or others that you follow. They don’t rely on a single, general virtual assistant to run their business.

If just hiring a virtual assistant was all it took to be successful, then all the solopreneurs that started with VAs would be successful and we know that’s not the case.

If you have hired a virtual assistant, I’m willing to bet that their capabilities were a lot narrower than you were hoping. I’m also willing to bet that training and managing your VA takes a lot more time than you thought it would.

Finally, while your VA is probably a smart and well-intentioned person, their output outside of their specific area expertise is probably average at best, making them no different than any of the rest of us.

What Successful Online Entrepreneurs Do

So let’s look at what the successful online business owners you follow actually do. They’ve established virtual teams of generalists and specialists, VAs freelancers and experts. Most importantly, they don’t manage the team directly on a day to day basis. Instead, they first hire a critical role, an integrator or virtual chief operating officer.

Inspired by the visionary and integrator model outlined in the book Rocket Fuel, they’ve established their integrator role in their business as the person responsible for managing the day to day operations.

Founder or CEO, which is you, is the visionary and sets the direction and stays in your zone of genius to create content products and serve your customers. The integrator is responsible for leading the execution of the strategy. The two work together to define the work and priorities. Then the integrator builds the team and roles to actually do the work.

The biggest distinction is defining the right work and building a team with the specific skills and expertise needed. The end result is much greater than having a generalist VA try to do all. Now, you may say it’s not fair to compare a single VA versus a bigger team of generalists and specialists.

You’re right, but there is a similar team model that most people don’t know about. That’s what I call the fractional expert team. Imagine a full team as described with an integrator and a supporting team of experts and generalists in all the key areas of online business. Then imagine taking that team and sharing it between five online business owners.

It’s often possible to get all the benefits of that larger and more skilled team for the same or less cost than one full-time virtual assistant.

Next Steps:

So if you’re at the point of thinking about hiring your first team member, even if part-time and we’re thinking that a general VA was the way to go, then check out my free, team model assessment to see which type of team is best for your online business.