Part of my role as a business advisor is to look out for all possible hazards you could encounter while running your business. And to advise how to protect yourself, your company, and everyone else around you.

Let’s face it. We’re all going to die at some point. We humans don’t like to think about it, but it will happen. And because we put off thinking about dying, we can create a messy situation for the people we leave behind.

This article looks at what happens to a limited company if the founder dies and how you can leave shares in your will.

It’s all based on true-life situations I’ve come across with clients and friends, as you’ll see.

Let’s look at how this might end up for you.

Leaving shares in your will if you own 100% of the company

Most of the business owners I work with are the only shareholders in their company. And to be honest, they are the company – if the founder dies, the limited company is pretty much dead, too, as the founder is the one doing all the work.

But the limited company is the legal entity, almost a person in its own right. The company owns everything. You bought your computer through the company, the money is in the company bank account. And the limited company owns debts, including that Bounce Back Loan you’ve been paying off.

So even if you die, your limited company lives on as a separate legal entity.

What happens when you die, and your limited company is still going?

Two things can happen.

If you have made a will, the company goes to whomever you left it to in the will. If you haven’t made a will, then it goes to your closest relative. When you’re married, then it will normally go to your husband or wife, and if you’re not married, this could be a parent, a child or another relative.

There are a couple of points here.

Firstly, if you’re not married but live with your partner

I urge you to make a will and avoid a messy situation. You do not want to be in a situation where your partner expects to inherit your share of the house, your money and the limited company and then finds out that, actually, your mum inherits it all.

As Oliver Asha points out in the video, there is no such thing as common-law wife or husband in UK law. So if you are not married, your partner will not inherit anything at all, including your limited company.

Here’s Oliver Asha, CEO of Digilegal, talking about the messy situation that encouraged him to set up Make a Will Online.

Secondly, even if you are married, I urge you to make a will so that your wife or husband can easily fill out the forms to control the company and the bank account.

And if you intend your children to inherit the company (or one of them), do be clear about this in the will. Otherwise, it might not go to them.

Some business owners will make their partner (or child) a director of the company just to make this whole process easier. But remember that being a director is totally separate from owning any of the shares in a company, so this doesn’t automatically transfer ownership of the business. You need to make that clear in your will.

How I made a will in my lunch break

After I interviewed Oliver Asha about the interesting work he’s doing at Digilegal and Make a Will Online, I realised that my will was now out of date.

So my partner came round to the office for lunch and we spent about half an hour setting up mirror wills. It was so easy, all done. And £90 for both wills, including leaving our respective shares in the limited company.

When one shareholder of a limited company dies

What happens to your limited company if there is more than one shareholder and one of the shareholders dies?

If you have other shareholders, such as business partners, senior staff or even the whole team, you might not want your shares to be left in your will. Or you might not want your colleague’s shares to be left to someone outside the business in their wills.

Avoid this kind of messy situation

A few years ago, I was coaching a company where there were two directors. They owned the business 50:50 through a limited company. Let’s call them Stuart and Fraser.

Over the weekend, Stuart was killed in an accident. Completely out of the blue. He was only 36 and had a wife and young son. Horrible.

It turned out that his wife was going to inherit his share of the company as his next of kin. I never met her, but continued to support Fraser through all of this.

Of course, this situation was awful for everyone because of the tragedy of Stuart dying. That was bad enough. But the effect on the company was made much more difficult.

Poor Fraser had to continue running the company on his own while grieving. And while he managed to keep things going, over the coming months, he had a series of difficult conversations with Stuart’s widow.

He had to explain that Stuart’s salary couldn’t continue to be paid indefinitely because Stuart was no longer doing the work that made the money to pay that salary. And he had to ask her if she was willing to transfer the shares to him so that he could take over the company. She’d never worked in the company; it had all been Stuart’s, and she wasn’t interested in becoming a director.

You can imagine just how difficult those conversations were for everyone involved.

The company was a small consultancy and wasn’t worth that much. It would have been much easier in this situation if the owners had signed a shareholders agreement. This would have shown that they agreed that if either one of them died, their shares would revert to the company or to the other shareholder automatically. Ideally, Fraser and Stuart would have had a shareholders agreement and wills which would have both stated that the shares in the company automatically went to the other person.

Why a shareholders agreement is important

The shareholder’s agreement is important for lots of reasons, not just what happens to the shares if you die. It’s basically a list of all the things that can go wrong when you have more than one shareholder, and you work out in advance what you want to happen, should any of these issues come up.

I’ve written quite a few blogs about shares in small limited companies, and people often consult me about this. I often get people to promise me that they will get their shareholders agreement sorted out. And signed.

When you’re thinking about what would happen to your shares in a limited company after you die, the shareholders’ agreement takes precedence over your will.

Top tips for multiple shareholders in a limited company

1. When you have more than one shareholder in your company, always have a shareholders agreement signed by everyone.
2. And make a will as well
3. Set up key person insurance so that if a director or shareholder becomes ill or dies, the insurance pays out to the company.

How Fraser and Stuart’s story could have been very different

If the co-founders Fraser and Stuart had put in place a shareholders agreement when one of the directors died, their shares would have automatically been transferred to the other director. Saving a lot of anguish.

And if they had set up key person insurance for both of the directors, this would have paid out a lump sum to the limited company when one of the directors died. That would have enabled Fraser to continue paying wages to Stuart’s wife for a lot longer than he was able to, which I’m pretty sure she would have appreciated a lot more than holding shares in the company.

This leads us to the question of…

Can shares be left in my will to my wife or children?

You can leave shares in a private limited company in your will. In fact, if you have a will and you don’t have a shareholders agreement, the shares will go automatically to the person who inherits from you.

Quite often, this means that your shares in your company will go to your husband or wife or to your children.

Fine, you think. They get the house, the car and the contents of my bank account; they should get the shares, too.

But should you leave the shares in your will?

If you own 100% of the shares, or you own the company with your husband or wife, then that’s probably a sensible idea. Unless your spouse is also your business partner, they will probably end up working with your accountant to close down the business and then with the executor of your will to be able to access the company bank accountant. [More on this in a moment.]

Let’s take Gary as an example

Gary set up a company in 2003. He gave shares to some other people along the way, 10% to his wife so she could draw dividends, 15% to a great salesperson who still works there and then another 15% to the person who Gary hopes will take over running the business when he retires.

Gary and the others have a shareholders’ agreement that sets out what happens to the shares in all kinds of different ways. Lawyers love thinking of these sorts of challenges, they put in clauses about what happens if someone leaves, if someone gets sacked, even if they go insane. And what should happen to the shares when someone dies.

In Gary’s case, everyone knows that if Sharon, Paul and Amir die, their shares go back to the company. And that if Gary dies, his shares go to Sharon (his wife).

When we were thinking about the shareholders agreement, Gary and I had a long discussion about whether Sharon should get the shares. She gets everything else in Gary’s will if he dies. However, there was a strong argument for either the shares to go back to the company or to be distributed between the other shareholders.

In Gary’s case, he felt that Sharon could continue being the majority shareholder because Amir would be able to carry on running the company, even if Gary was gone, and therefore Sharon could continue to get profits from the company.

What’s good about this solution for the shares in Gary’s limited company

I like this solution because

1. Gary thought it through properly, including talking it over with me in one of my strategy sessions.
2. He got all the paperwork set up
3. He discussed it with everyone else before signing the paperwork
4. They all signed their respective agreements
5. It fitted his company’s circumstances. Maybe it wouldn’t have worked if Sharon wasn’t already a director who knew about the business or if Gary hadn’t already started to prepare Amir to take over as MD.

You can see that once you have more than one shareholder in your limited company, it becomes more tricky to work out what you want to happen when you die.

Talking this over with me

All of this is a big decision, and some people prefer to talk this over with an experienced business advisor. I regularly do one-off strategy sessions for people who have a big decision to make in their business, and they want to talk through their options.

Book a strategy session with Julia Chanteray

One final top tip

I got this one from a client running a high-end IFA business. He told me that he advised each of his clients to set up a folder for their partner or adult children covering all the practical details of what to do if the person died. Including what happens to your limited company if you die.

I set up my own version of this, and to this day, there’s a folder hidden in my friend’s house labelled “If Julia dies”. It has all the info on how to access my bank accounts and some secret passwords in a code only my partner would know. Plus, my will, my shareholder’s agreement, and practical instructions on what to do next. Including the playlist for my funeral.

Other useful articles

You might also find some of the other articles I’ve written about giving shares in your company away useful, especially if Gary’s story resonated with you.

To be self employed or a freelancer – what’s the difference?

And when you’re working hard on your business, keeping in mind the difference between being a space rocket and a donkey is always a good idea.

My favourite growth strategies for small businesses – are you following these?

Move on up – how to become a better business owner – based on years of practical experience and talking with hundreds of business owners.

The post What happens to my limited company if I die? appeared first on The Joy of Business.

You’ve probably seen the same kind of thing, offering to show you the exact way someone else has built a “six-figure launch” or a “six-figure business” in six months. For some reason, it’s usually six-something.

The story goes something like this

You build an online product, such as a workbook on pricing for small businesses or an online course. You knock this up in a weekend. I’m having a particularly ironic laugh at this, as my Sweetspot Pricing book definitely took more than a few weekends to put together. You build a quick website, throw together some blogs, and add a PayPal link for people to send you tons of cash.

Get a virtual assistant, and she will do a fantastic Facebook ad campaign for you, sending you tons of traffic to your new website.

You sit back and watch a six-figure launch while drinking cocktails on the beach. You never have to work again.

The problem with these passive income myths

You’re unlikely to have a six-figure launch. It is probably more likely to be a three-figure launch.

Most information products take a considerable time to build up. That’s because to make a success from online products, you normally have to have a range of products and cross-sell between them. I call this a product ecosystem, and it’s pretty much essential if you want to make a successful product-based business, rather than a side hustle or tiny extra income stream.

And the other big myth here is…

The idea is that six figures is enough to retire. It’s not. Six figures is just 100,000. Even if you did magic up a six figure launch, you’d probably do something sensible, like pay off a chunk of your mortage, and carry on working, rather than sit on the beach doing nothing.

The trouble with the whole set of myths around passive income is the word passive. It appeals to the lazy side of all of us. Who wouldn’t want to follow a particular recipe and have money pouring in after knocking up a product and not have to do any further work?

The truth about passive income

I’ve worked with some pretty clever and famous people, who have had very successful digital product businesses, and one of the things I’ve noticed about all of them is that they’re not lazy, and they never sit still.

There are always going on to the next product in their ecosystem. In fact, they’ve got a product rollout schedule and they are so excited about what they do, that they’re constantly creating more blogs, podcasts and videos to communicate with the world about what they love.

Maybe I don’t hang out enough at the cocktail bar on the beach here in Brighton, but I don’t think that the Fortune of War pub is crammed on a Tuesday morning with online entrepreneurs celebrating their six-figure launches.

I think that you know that these passive income myths are a load of nonsense because they are too good to be true.

As with just about everything else in business, you can do a rubbish version of this very quickly, or you can do it properly so that people love it, recommend it and will buy more things from you. Guess which one brings sustainable success.

How long does it takes to make a digital product?

Start with your tribe

When I’m advising people who want to sell some kind of online product, we don’t even start with the product. We start with building what I call your tribe.

The tribe is your fan base, the people who are interested in your way of solving a problem they experience. We want to get that tribe engaged and get permission to send them emails.

It’s only when we are clear who our tribe are and we’ve started finding a way to talk to them regularly that we start building the product.

Even if you have got a tribe already, you’re going to need to build it further. This is where you need some sort of lead magnet to bring in new potential customers for you so you can begin to nurture them.

Writing content, building email nurture lists, even testing out your Facebook ads, these will take time, expertise and some love and care.

Why the myth of passive income makes me cross

I get very cross indeed about people who boast to others about their six-figure launches, their passive income streams, and how easy it all was. And I could write in detail about the weird psychology of all of this and why people need to boast in this way to cover up their own anxieties.

The most obvious way to inoculate yourself against these boasts is to ask yourself why these people are bothering to sell you the secrets of their huge success?

If they have so much passive income, why aren’t they just sitting on the beach, enjoying life? Why are they on Facebook, trying to get some of your money if they have so much already?

Most people are building online products because they want to change from a service business, or to just add some more money to their turnover on top of selling services.

It takes time to do this. It takes time, concerted effort and online marketing, so don’t expect to be drinking cocktails on the beach right away.

Well, maybe just one pina colada to celebrate your first sale, but then it’s back to writing blogs and improving your email sequence.

Realistic optimism, not the myth of passive income

I’ve written this to reassure you if you’re ever caught by those people who promise instant results and six figure launches. Or if, like me, you get furious when you see this.

You can of course make a good living (enough to buy a cocktail after work now and again) from a product-based business, while recognising that passive income is a myth. Recognising that building a product-based business takes just as much time and effort as building a services-based business is realistic optimism. You can do it, but it’s never that quick fix.

To find out more about what’s involved in building your ecosystem of profitable digital products and productising your expertise, with a healthy does of realistic optimism, check out Adventures in Products.

Adventures in Products

Photo credits to Piotr Usewicz, Garett Mizunaka on Unsplash; money time, beach, laptop from Pxhere and Giulia Forsyther on Flickr

The post The myth of passive income appeared first on The Joy of Business.

You’ve got something that you want to work on, but you’re a bit blocked. You want to move it up your to-do list and get serious with it. The Jerry Seinfeld productivity technique suggests that you buy a cheap calendar, put it on the wall, and cross off each day that you take action. Or make a scratch on the wall of your cave if they haven’t invented calendars yet.

The idea is to put a big fat cross through each day that you do something on your priority project. The crosses on the calendar form a chain. There’s an incentive to take some action every day, and you don’t break the chain.

Jerry Seinfeld uses his calendar to mark every day that he works on comedy material, and he tries to keep his chain of crosses going, working on writing material every day.

Jerry is one of the most successful comedians of all time, earning $69 million a year, so this productivity technique is working for him.

Keep the chain going.

I wouldn’t mind getting $69m a year, so I gave the Jerry Seinfeld productivity technique a go.

For ages, I’ve wanted to produce more videos, but had a real block to doing this. I stop and start, and never develop any momentum on it. Even though I know that if I can master this, it’ll be a great way of communicating all the zillions of ideas in my head about how to develop a successful business.

I printed out a calendar, put it on my cave/home office wall, and blu tacked a red Sharpie next to it. I knew I had some extra time for a few days, so I thought I could get a head start.

It was great at first – I learned about camera positioning and watched a bunch of tutorials about editing techniques in Camtasia. But a whole day was wasted trying to set up a lighting rig which wouldn’t reflect in my glasses, and I started to get a bit disheartened. Then my partner wanted me to come out of the cave and go for a walk in the sunshine. And then a client needed something, and then something went wrong with the website.

My chain lasted four days.

I felt guilty twice, first for not doing the thing I wanted so much to do, but also for breaking the chain. I threw the calendar in the recycling and did some more research on how to get into action.

A lot more research.

I found this all so fascinating that I’ve been reading tons of books, looking into the science behind habit formation, how our brains work and trying out lots of other productivity techniques.

So why won’t Jerry’s productivity technique work for you?

The problem with the Jerry Seinfeld productivity technique is that it’s one single tactic. It’s a great tactic in itself, but we need more than a calendar and a Sharpie pen to get going when we want to get into action.

In fact, from my research, we also need:

• A compelling reason – the big why
• Other people encourage us and be on our side
• Other people to give us tips and tricks to improve, so we don’t waste all day cutting up bits of shower curtain to stick over a lamp to reduce glare when making videos, for example.*
• A feeling that we’re making progress along the way, which stops us giving up
• To quickly get to the point where getting into action is intrinsically enjoyable – we humans can’t maintain a grind for very long.
• Recognition for our hard work
• A way of protecting some time each day to work on this. So we can permit ourselves to ignore all the other urgent claims on our time, for a little while.
• Bach’s cello suites (optional, but you get my point)

Can you see a theme coming out of my research?

You need other people to reach the finish line.

Projects which involve working on your business rather than in your business work better when you do them with a group of other people with you. If you’re around other people who also want to do the same, you help each other reach the finish line.

It doesn’t matter if one person wants to work on writing new content, while I want to gain momentum on creating videos and someone else wants to make three sales calls a day. What we need is other people to be doing this with us. And then we can make $69m a year/conquer the universe/get some great new clients.

Why we procrastinate

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. One of the things I hear from my clients all the time is

“I didn’t have time to do the client work and to productise, even though I know that this is the best way to scale my business.

Or

“I’ve done A, B and C, but I didn’t get chance to do D” where D is the action that would get their new thing out to the world and make some money from it.

And I’m willing to bet that you’ve said those things as well. Seeing as you’re human and all that. I certainly have.

An invitation to join us

I’m on a mission to bring together business owners and founders who want to scale their businesses and help more people by building product-based businesses. Every few months I bring together a group of people in the Productise Your Expertise programme. Over six months, we work together to build products and develop a tribe of people who will buy those products.

Interested in joining a group of interesting clever people who will help you on your way? And get help and support from me along the way?

Check out Productise Your Expertise

Even if you’re Jerry Seinfeld and cross over your calendar every day, I bet you’d love working on productising with us.

Other useful resources for you

Move on up – eight steps to becoming a better business owner

How to find the best business coach for you – they might be called Julia Chanteray or they might not.

Find your Zone of Genius – I use this technique all the time with my one to one coaching clients and in my courses and programmes. It’s one of my most frequently downloaded guides.

Learn through business stories

Every week I send out a little story by email. They’re based on something new I’ve learned, from a client, from my reading or from running my own companies. People love them.

https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/business-stories-that-really-work/

The post Why Jerry Seinfeld’s technique won’t work for you appeared first on The Joy of Business.

Jane used to be my virtual assistant, and helped me build both the Joy of Business and Adventures in Products.

I often recommend bringing in a virtual assistant as one of the first steps in freeing up your time when you’re a one or two-person business trying to scale. Top tip – the other outsourcing I recommend at this stage is a bookkeeper.

In this video, Jane talks about how a virtual assistant works, and the different ways you can engage them. And we talk together about the different things you can delegate to a virtual assistant, plus how to get the best out of them.

How to use a virtual assistant with Jane de Vos

Video transcript (something else you can use a virtual assistant to organise for you)

Julia Chanteray 

Hello, everybody. This is me, Julia with Jane DeVos, who is my online business manager and does lots of brilliant things for me. And I wanted to talk to Jane today about virtual assistants, online business managers, how it all works, and how those people might be useful for you in your product journey.

So, Jane, first question, let’s start with the virtual assistants. What is a virtual assistant? And how does it all work?

Jane de Vos 

So, a virtual assistant is someone that works remotely, normally, especially in today’s world, and is normally a contractor and does admin and loves all the boring bits. So normally what business owners don’t like doing, the organisation, the admin, that’s where the virtual assistant comes in.

And normally, where they would start is having a look at, for example, diary management, sorting out customer service, if you’re selling or buying products, they could be your customer service person. So that’s probably the normal starting point.

Julia Chanteray 

Okay. And you call yourself an online business manager, what’s the difference between a VA a virtual assistant and an online business manager?

Jane de Vos 

Okay, so a VA normally works with more than one client, it’s very rare that you have a full-time VA on your team when you’re starting out unless when you expand and, of course, you would want to get one full-time. So, a VA has a mix of clients that they manage for themselves. And they work either on a pay-as-you-go basis or a retainer. And they’re very much task-focused. So, like I mentioned about diary management, setting up meetings, creating lead magnets, what we’re going to talk about later. And social media posts. Online business managers focus on projects as a whole. They can look after the teams. So, for business owners, they become the level in between. So that the CEO or the business owner doesn’t have to deal with the day-to-day stuff. It’s what happens in any office environment.

Julia Chanteray 

So would the online business manager be more like an office manager in a traditional setting, they would sort out, in a team situation, when people were going on holiday or post, it’s that sort of thing? But this would be the online version of that.

Jane de Vos 

So, a little bit, so how I work is there’ll be a VA looking like after all the office admin side of it, and then I will focus on the projects and delivering any new products. Yeah, so hiring people, restructuring teams, etc. So it’s more like the hire, project management side of things.

Julia Chanteray 

Okay. So, it would be somebody who is a bit further on in their business journey, and maybe has a team or has quite a lot of complicated things going on and different projects. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Didn’t know that. Thank you. And are there different sorts of virtual assistants or different sorts of online business managers?

Jane de Vos 

Yes. So depending on a person’s background. For example, I work with a VA who specializes in social media. She loves anything to do with social media. So creating social media, scheduling it, creating really fancy leaflets and lead magnets. That’s her thing, she still calls herself a VA. So then you’ve got the other side, where you’ve got a techie VA who could be looking after your website, managing the e-commerce side of things if you’re selling products.

Julia Chanteray 

So there are different specialties definitely, and do they cost different amounts of money?

Jane de Vos 

Yes. So, I would say the average rate in the UK. I think last week, the subject virtual assistants published their annual survey, which is in the 12th year. So the average rate is £27.17. Which has gone up in the last two years, from £25. Normally starting, I would say £25 pounds at the moment for a normal, generic VA. If something more specialised it would be £35 to £40.

Julia Chanteray 

Yeah, that makes sense. And for an online business manager, I’m guessing that’s got more responsibility. So that cost would be at the higher end?

Jane de Vos 

Yeah. So normally business managers start at £55 and upwards, depending on what they have to do.

Julia Chanteray 

Yeah, that makes sense. So, let’s look at the sort of tasks that a busy business owner might want to ask a virtual assistant to do when they’re transitioning to a product-based business. And so a lot of the people that I work with are coming from a services business to start off with, they’re busy selling their time for money. And I might recommend that they get the help of a virtual assistant to free up some of their time in doing that. So that they then get some time to work on their product. And you’ve got experience with that, what might that look like in practice?

Jane de Vos 

Probably everyone’s done their zone of genius exercise with you. Yeah, it’d be a list of things that people have on their “I have to do it, but I really don’t like to do it” list, which normally is sorting out their inboxes, having standard operating procedures, and how things are done. Diary management, contacting customers, sorting out meetings, organizing events, that sort of thing a VA could do very easily without that much background.

Julia Chanteray 

So you could get stuck into those kinds of admin time-sucking things. And in your experience of working with lots of people, how much time would a small business owner, say one person in a business is coming from a services-type business, they’ve got a bit busy. How much time would it save them over a week or a month?

Jane de Vos 

I would say. For anyone starting out, I would recommend doing a retainer. So, anything between 10 to 20 hours per month, to start off with, to review all the activities and then normally get at least a day back a week, when they’re not sorting out their own admin.

Julia Chanteray 

Okay. And what sort of things do people say when you or one of your VA friends goes in and starts to do that work and take it off the shoulders of the business owner, what sort of things do people say?

Jane de Vos 

How much more time they’ve got, that they didn’t know that, sort of like rules could be set up in, you know, Gmail, or Outlook, you know, where things automatically go out of your inbox. So you haven’t got, you’re not looking at 5000 emails each day. You know, you could have labels like this is, Julia, this is for you to action, this is what you’re waiting on. And this is what your VA is sorting out, you know, so you don’t need to see it brings that calm already when you log in, that it’s all dealt with.

Julia Chanteray 

So do you think that helps people with attention management as well, if you’re going through, say their email inbox, or you go through LinkedIn for me, so I don’t have to pay attention to LinkedIn, I don’t even have to look at it. But if there’s something urgent, you can point it out.

Jane de Vos 

Exactly. Yeah. So that saves people’s brains from being used up so they can focus on the bits they need to, and enjoy. Yeah.

Julia Chanteray 

Okay, that makes sense. I like the use of the zone of genius within there as well because there’s lots of things that we’re either not very good at or we’re okay at it, but we don’t really enjoy it. And what you’re saying is that for the things that I don’t really enjoy, or I’m not very good at. There are people out there who do really like that, and they’re much better at it.

Okay, so how might a VA help make the first parts of the product ecosystem, so if somebody wanted to make a lead magnet, and/or a simple trip product.

I think there’s a bit of a myth that people talk about, that I see written on the internet along with all the other internet myths, that you can just set up a products business, particularly digital products business, and you just get a VA to do it all. And I’m not sure that’s really the case, you can just give it all to them.

Jane de Vos 

So I would say that the idea would come from the business owner with a sort of rough outline. For example, a lead magnet or some mini thing that they all have on their website, the VA could then create it either in Adobe or Canva accounts, if it’s like a PDF download or something that’s fillable. And also then be able to put it onto the website. Or using software like MailChimp to start creating the email list. Because they need to build their own audience, basically.

Julia Chanteray 

Yeah. So that technical part of formatting a lead magnet, getting it set up so that people can actually get the lead magnets and get added to the list. Plus setting up the MailChimp or email distribution, you could give all of that to a VA, and you wouldn’t have to learn that stuff yourself.

Jane de Vos 

No. So if you don’t want to learn it, and you haven’t got the time, then there are VAs that will do, for example, a lead magnet package, newsletter package, you know, in their rates even, or you can have as part of your retainer with a VA, one of their monthly or weekly jobs is to do the automation and the lead magnet.

Julia Chanteray 

Right, perfect. So that’s a really good tip on how to handle it, but the business owner still needs to think of the idea and write it.

Jane de Vos 

Yes, or also you could get a copywriter on board.

Julia Chanteray 

Okay. And would a VA help with that? Find a good copywriter?

Jane de Vos 

Normally, yes, I think there are Facebook groups and your networks that sort of work, where I hang out as well, there are VAs that specialize in copywriting as well. So it just depends, I wouldn’t say there’s a VA that does everything amazingly. So you need to make sure that you have the right resources in place.

Julia Chanteray 

So it sounds like you all hang out together and you say, Oh, can you help me on this project and get people who’ve got really good skills, so you bring in other freelancers? Because you can spend hours trying to look for a trustworthy person to do some copywriting or do the technical thing. The time saver.

Okay, when somebody is more ambitious, and they want to scale quickly, would you say a VA could handle setting up multiple lead magnet funnels? Complex automations? Is that a fair thing that your normal VA can do? Or is that a specialist thing? Or is it a particular sort of VA? What kind of help would you need for that?

Jane de Vos 

I would personally get a more senior techie VA that’s got experience in it, because you don’t want to faff about in time if you want to do it quickly.

Julia Chanteray 

Okay. And if you had a VA, who was helping you with admin, would I be right in saying that, if you gave it to them to do it might be asking them to do too much? And they might get a bit like, oh my god, what’s this?

Jane de Vos 

Yeah definitely. Sometimes you can, especially if they’re starting out, if you’re a business owner that’s got, for example, all the procedures documented how you do things. VAs are very good at following what’s there and learning on the job. Because that’s part of why they love what they do because they want to learn all different systems and be able to serve more customers. But I think if it’s more techie, I would definitely go for a more techie route. And you can have more than one at the same time. And there are also people who have agencies where they have all different parts of the team. So then they can call on the person that they need to service that client as well.

Julia Chanteray 

All right, so that would be a VA agency, and they would have specialists. Yeah? Is that more expensive?

Jane de Vos 

Normally, you would get a retainer of 20 hours. But for example, you could go to them and say, I’m setting up a new product, I need to sort out the launch and the marketing. And they would have the whole project plan and they will put in the resources that they need and then give you a quote.

Julia Chanteray 

Excellent, good. And what about the promotion side of things? So we talked about setting things up on your website and if you look after LinkedIn for me, and when I give you stuff to publish on LinkedIn, you do that. Although that’s one of my weak points about putting stuff out there. But tell me about the sorts of things that a VA might do to promote the business and get the word out there.

Jane de Vos 

So depending on where your target customers are, you could have a scheduling tool in place. So something like if it’s more creative, or putting a product-based plan in for Instagram, or smarter cue does all the different social channels so that things are scheduled. So the VA could actually be creating the content in Canva, or other places or taking your photos of products or testimonials, putting them into software, which then you would either approve or if you know how they work, you just go and get on with it. And they can have it all scheduled. And it’s all done.

Julia Chanteray 

So, yeah. So definitely promotion on social media, putting all of that together. And what about other promotions, like networking or finding referrals?

Jane de Vos 

Yep, that’s possible as well. I think there are lots of mainly Facebook groups, and also LinkedIn groups as well, that they have access to, that they could help with. Okay, or setting up a Facebook group and making sure that people are nice in it, and it’s all up to you. So they could be like the moderator or admin on the client’s behalf. So also go in and proactively encourage people to discuss things and give feedback on products.

Julia Chanteray 

Okay, so lots of things. And overall, what would you see as the investment level that somebody might make at different business stages on getting a VA or an online business manager to help them?

Jane de Vos 

So I think initially, when you’re literally starting out, the VA is the first person you’re bringing on board, I would get them to do like all the admin bits. So as I said, you know, start off with maybe 10 to 20 hours per month, just so that you get used to also delegating and giving the work out because that takes a bit of time. And then depending on when you’ve got the product launches, get some other contractors as required on board. And they can be just project-based. So I’ve worked with people, where it’s a three-month stint because we know that’s when the launch is. So I come on board, I manage the team of the contractors, while they’re getting that done, and then I finish and then they carry on with the normal day-to-day.

Julia Chanteray 

And tell us about the money side of that when you’re thinking about how much investment that would be because I know that’s a concern for somebody, especially if you’ve not had a team or freelancers working for you before. You get to keep all the money in your business and you get used to that. And then suddenly, it’s like, oh, well give somebody else money. And you don’t necessarily want to do that. What might that look like?

Jane de Vos 

So I will say normally sort of general VA, I think probably budget anything between sort of £500 to £1000 a month. Initially working with OBM, I would budget £1500 pounds a month as a starter. And that’s like the basic stuff. And then if it’s a project leading up to a product launch, probably inject another sort of 25% on top timewise.

Julia Chanteray 

Right. So that would be quite a lot of involvement there, but you could also just dip your toe in the water and go for somebody at the lower end of the scale and it would be like £250 – £300 a month. Just to get you started.

Jane de Vos 

What I’ve seen for a biweekly newsletter and social media posts. Normally it’s about £250 per month, as a package from a VA.

How to get help from Jane de Vos

Jane has moved on from being a virtual assistant, and is now helping clients as a Director of Operations, working more at a problem and process solving level. Here’s her website.

How to use a virtual assistant in your business

I’ve worked with several virtual assistants and can’t imagine running my business without someone to help in this way. It means that you can move so much faster and get so much more done. Including all the tasks which are not in your Zone of Genius.

Whether you want to be able to concentrate on client work, be more productive or get help with building your product ecosystem, working with a virtual assistant is one of the first steps to building a successful business.

Radical delegation

Once you’ve got a virtual assistant in place, it’s useful to start thinking about what else you can delegate even more to them, or bringing in other people to help get things done. Here’s one story of a client who tried out radical delegation. 

Other great business stories

Every week, I send out a story like this by email. They’re all based on true stories, tips and ideas from what I’ve been learning from clients and running my own business. Lots of great ideas you can apply to your own business.

Some more articles to reflect on your business

Here are a couple of blogs to help you constructively think about your business and reflect on how it’s doing.

Finding the right business mentor for your small business

Are you a sponge?

How to do a time audit

The top business problems my client face

Could your business use some radical delegation?

How to immediately free up (some of) your time

Weaning yourself off over servicing your clients

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