Hiring A Virtual Assistant Or Remote Employee As An Indoor Playground Or Play Cafe Business Owner

As an indoor playground or play cafe business owner, you may find yourself overwhelmed with tasks and responsibilities that consume a significant amount of your time and energy. 

Coupled with the difficulty to hire and retain retail employees right now– creating a delegation system to lessen your workload can often seem impossible.

However, there is a lesser-known option you have that can allow you to maximize your productivity and focus on the essential tasks only YOU can do in your business–

And that is hiring a virtual assistant.

A virtual assistant is a remote professional who can help you manage various tasks and responsibilities, freeing up your time to focus on growing your business. You know, those all-important money-making, needle-moving tasks we identified in episode 114 of the Profitable Play Podcast.

Hiring a virtual assistant can be a game changer for your business’ success and help you achieve your goals faster– because it can remove those tedious, repetitive, time-consuming tasks from your list. And, when done right, you can also seek out specialized help with tasks you aren’t experienced or qualified in to ensure everything runs smoothly and gets done correctly.

To summarize, here are a few benefits of hiring a Virtual Assistant:

You’ll See Increased Productivity: With a virtual assistant handling the routine and administrative tasks, you can focus on the high-value tasks that require your attention and expertise– again, those tasks we identified back in episode 114. This will significantly increase your productivity and help you accomplish more in less time, AND save more of your mental and physical energy for what really matters– your family, friends, and loved ones.

It’s Cost-Effective: Hiring a virtual assistant is cost-effective compared to hiring a full-time employee, or even a local part-time employee. You only pay for the hours the virtual assistant works, and you don't have to provide benefits, office space, or equipment. You also don’t need to provide a uniform or the typical extensive training for your other business tasks as you would a traditional in-person employee.

You’ll Have Access to a Wide Talent Pool: Virtual assistants can work from anywhere, which means you have access to a wide talent pool from different parts of the world and are no longer limited to employees in your immediate area. You can choose the best virtual assistant for your needs, and who is specialized in the areas you need help in, regardless of their location.

It’s Scalable: Virtual assistants can quickly adapt to changing business needs, and you can easily scale up or down the number of hours they work, based on your requirements. You can also choose to hire multiple virtual assistants based on tasks you need completed. For example, you can pay one virtual assistant for 2 hours per week of bookkeeping work, and another for 2 hours per week of social media management and graphic design.

You’ll See An Improved Work-Life Balance: With a virtual assistant handling the routine tasks, you have more time to spend with your family and friends, pursue your hobbies and interests, and REST when you need it– which is critical in preventing burnout in the indoor playground and play cafe industry.

It’s Less Risky: There is typically a lower turnover rate for virtual assistants as compared to in-person retail employees, so you can feel more confident knowing you’ll be spending less time hiring and training in the future.

Now when it comes to choosing the best virtual assistant for your needs, I have a few tips:

First, Determine Your Needs: Before you start looking for a virtual assistant, determine the tasks and responsibilities you want them to handle. This will help you find the right virtual assistant for your needs. 

Examples of areas you can hire a virtual assistant for help in include:

• Bookkeeping and financial reporting
• Marketing and social media
• Blogging and SEO
• Content creation and graphic design
• Customer service and correspondence
• Order and appointment scheduling
• Website maintenance
• Calendar management 
• Ad management and maintenance
• Plus more! 

Look for Relevant Experience: Choose a virtual assistant with experience in the area you need help. For example, if you need help with social media management, look for a virtual assistant with experience in that field. In my experience, it’s best to have a fully mapped out strategy BEFORE looking to hire a virtual assistant. The more strategy and direction you need, the more you will end up paying a virtual assistant. Plus, some virtual assistants are not as skilled in strategy as they are with task execution.

Create Standard Operating Procedures: After you create your strategy plan (and if you need help with this go back and listen to episode 4 of my Profitable Play podcast), create SOP’s or Standard Operating Procedure documents for all tasks you are looking for the assistant to complete. I provide examples of these and tips for creating them in my Play Cafe Academy course , but essentially you will want to create a document that outlines the task completion process step-by-step. It helps to have a screen recording of each step as well, so you are leaving no room for interpretation for the virtual assistant. This will allow you to be confident that the quality and accuracy of work produced will be aligned with your standards.

If you are hiring a VA for graphic design and you use a tool like Canva, you can also create branding kits and set limitations to which fonts and colors they can use, which is explained in more detail in episode 162 of the Profitable Play Podcast.

 Check their communication skills: Effective communication is critical for a successful virtual assistant relationship. Look for a virtual assistant with excellent communication skills and the ability to communicate clearly and effectively.

 Test their skills: Before hiring a virtual assistant, give them a test project to determine their skills and work style. This will help you determine if they are a good fit for your business. I would not expect to have this test completed free-of-charge, but it’s helpful to pay for a few hours of work to determine if it will be a good fit BEFORE hiring someone for a set contract or amount of hours on an ongoing basis.

Establish clear expectations: Establish clear expectations and guidelines for your virtual assistant, including the tasks they are responsible for, the hours they will work, and how you want them to communicate with you. For example, if you would like an update every Monday on their tasks, be sure to ask for it specifically. If you would like them to track their time by task, specify that as well. Oftentimes when someone has a negative experience hiring a virtual assistant, it’s more so due to that owners failure to communicate clear expectations and NOT the fault of the virtual assistant. 

Keep Your Accounts Secure: Instead of handing over the credentials for all of your accounts, instead consider using a password management tool like LastPass, or create specific accounts for the virtual assistant to use. For example, if you’re hiring a VA for graphic design and social media, you can add them as a team member in Canva instead of giving them your username and password. If you’re hiring for customer service tasks, create a new email address that will be used for that purpose – so they don’t have access to anything they shouldn’t or don’t need to. Even though turnover is generally lower for virtual assistants, it’s still important to protect your businesses' sensitive information and have a clear security practice in place.

Again, hiring a virtual assistant can be a game changer for your business success, freeing up your time to focus on the high-value tasks that require your attention and expertise.

By choosing the right virtual assistant based on their skills and your needs and establishing clear expectations and processes, you can FINALLY focus on those things you LOVE doing in your business.

Wouldn’t that feel amazing?

If you are interested in Play Cafe Academy or Play Maker Society where I provide all of the employee manual templates and training materials you will need to make this process much easier and less of a burden, just click below!