Why You Should Think Twice About Hiring a Virtual Assistant if You’re a Solopreneur
“Are you starting an online business? Or eager to take your existing business to the next level? If so, you MUST hire a virtual assistant (VA).”
Or, at least, that’s what we were told back when we first launched our company.
At the start of our entrepreneurial journey, we bought into the hype, hired out dozens of administrative tasks, and assumed we were on the right track.
But recently, we’ve streamlined our team and taken over jobs once delegated to virtual assistants, contractors, and agencies. It has been THE VERY BEST decision we could have made for our business.
We call this process “insourcing,” and although we naively thought we’d coined the term, it turns out to be a well-studied business phenomenon.
What is insourcing?
Insourcing is a great option for entrepreneurs and solopreneurs looking to bring services in-house.
It's the opposite of outsourcing, where you would pay external contractors to provide a service instead.
Some benefits of insourcing include:
You can maintain greater control over your services, allowing you to customize and tailor it exactly to your liking.
You won’t need to worry about extra costs such as taxes and added fees associated with outsourced services.
Insourcing has gained some traction in big business over the last decade.
In 2012, the Obama administration held an insourcing forum to discuss policy changes that would encourage American corporations to keep valuable jobs on US soil.
Manufacturers and service firms have been bringing outsourced, overseas labor back home slowly but surely since about 2009, which is definitely good news for the local job market.
But although economic experts laud this trend in the corporate world, few have recommended insourcing as a valuable technique for entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Of course, insourcing on a smaller scale is less about domestic versus international labor and more about determining if you should reclaim your Twitter feed from your VA.
Why Insourcing is Transforming Entrepreneurship
Insourcing can be utterly transformative for solopreneurs and entrepreneurs, especially in this outsourcing-obsessed business climate.
If you’ve spent time online in the past few years—and, obviously, you have—you’ve likely noticed that the Internet is starting to feel mechanized. You begin to feel manipulated as you peruse clickbait headlines and keyword-packed blog posts.
Knowing that a 45-minute free webinar will undoubtedly include a 15-minute pitch for services is frustrating and a little exhausting.
Reading social media updates that are clearly designed to game internal algorithms makes you feel cynical and weary. It’s ugly out there and getting uglier by the second.
At this point, if you have any Internet presence at all, you’re running an Internet business.
If you have an email list, market products via Facebook, or maintain a blog that uses affiliate links, you are, by definition, an online entrepreneur.
There are tens of thousands of businesses out there hungry for advice, customers, and sticky, high-performing content. And other businesses are responding by churning out SEO-optimized drek that imparts only minimal knowledge.
It’s been a free-for-all for decades, but we’re hoping to spark the creation of some self-imposed standards and best practices for Internet businesses.
This is why we’re asking you to consider serious nonconformism today and contemplate taking back work that you once farmed out.
We want to discuss what the Internet can and should be moving forward by cultivating Digital Artisanship.
What is Digital Artisanship and why Does it Matter?
Instead of adding more noise to the online clamor, we encourage creators, coaching and solopreneurs to consider digital artisanship – the notion of cultivating your online life with the same care you use in your offline life.
It’s a bit of a radical idea, but we believe it could catalyze a much-needed sea change.
How Insourcing Ties Into Digital Artisanship
To stem the tide of content that feels scammy, spammy, and manipulative, we need to step back and consider how that content is produced.
In many cases, it feels insincere because it’s generated by a contractor who has only cursory knowledge of the core business and relies on a rubric designed to generate page views.
That’s no way to connect to people or help them feel invested in your services.
Removing yourself from the day-to-day doings of your business has its advantages.
Still, one of the most significant disadvantages is that hollow, forced feeling that your outsourced work takes on.
The current wisdom around online entrepreneurship focuses on delegating tasks to VAs and contractors. Hence, you, the business owner, have more energy for big-picture thinking.
Every message we see leans on this idea, nudging us toward outsourcing and offloading work onto others.
Even emerging entrepreneurs who don’t have a laundry list of tasks that can be assigned to a VA feel pressured to hire out because absolutely everyone is doing it.
And talking about it. And giving tips on how to do it the right way. The outsourcing discussion is ubiquitous and unavoidable.
But no one is asking if this practice is truly necessary or considering the value of handling most of your business tasks yourself.
No one is reclaiming responsibilities from their contractors and owning them.
No one is championing entrepreneurial insourcing. No one is shirking the idea that you’re only successful if you’re running a 12+ person team.
So we’re stepping up.
The Advantages of Insourcing
In no small part because we now know from experience that insourcing work has many truly priceless advantages.
Restores control
Our brand began to drift when we had a fleet of contractors. It’s tough to communicate your core values to someone you’ve never met in person who’s working remotely. They will inevitably put their own spin on your messaging. By insourcing, you regain control and start steering the ship again yourself.
Educates you
There’s nothing wrong with hiring an expert to handle specific technical work. But if you’re paying someone to do something on behalf of your company, and you have absolutely no idea how to do it yourself, how can you be sure it has real value? Insourcing puts your finger back on the pulse of your business in a genuine way.
Saves money
Naturally, doing more things yourself will save you money by reducing the operating expenses of your business.
And if you think you don’t have time to manage your own inbox and social media campaigns? Consider hiring out tasks that don’t need your personal touch: cleaning your house, buying your groceries, mowing your lawn, editing your videos, transcribing your vlog, etc. These are the kinds of impersonal elements of your life and your business that can be farmed out to people (or apps), freeing up your time to dig deep back into your core business offerings.
Outsourcing essential business operations puts distance between you and your business, brand, and values.
Insourcing reconnects you with the core reasons you ventured into entrepreneurship in the first place.
Your business needs YOUR essence infused into it, which often means you need to run it in-house.
It’s time for new markers of success
It’s time to insource, reconnect, and pour heart, craftsmanship, and imperfection into our online content. It’s time for an online revolution.
We believe:
that the things you say and share and teach online should be imbued with intentionality.
that the Internet can be a beautiful and enlightening place.
you shouldn’t write a blog post just because it’s Wednesday; You should wait until you have something useful or meaningful to share.
that you should share imperfect photos, talk about your failures, and be spectacularly honest about your journey.
success should be measured not by Social Media’s faux-engagement stats but instead by the actual engagement, impact, and influence your content has on your audience.
And we’re not the only ones pushing these ideas forward; a handful of reputable, admirable entrepreneurs have also embraced the concepts that fuel digital artisanship. (Read our Digital Artisan Manifesto here.)
This is a groundswell that’s growing, and we’re thrilled to both observe and encourage it.
It’s time.
