How My Team Structure Has Evolved Over the Years

IN A HURRY? HERE’S THE BOTTOM LINE

When I first launched my virtual assistant company, I worked alone. But I realized that in order to scale, I needed a team. The second phase of my business involved bringing more virtual assistants onto the team, to deliver client work. I was still the project manager on all accounts. Today, we’ve evolved even further, and my team members are empowered to be Lead Virtual Assistants on client accounts, overseen by my Senior Virtual Assistants, so I can spend my time growing the business. 

GOT A MINUTE? HERE ARE THE DETAILS TO CONSIDER

Every business goes through evolutions and transformations, and Melissa Swink & Co. is no different. If I hadn’t learned to lean into these adjustments, my business would not be as successful as it is, today. 

I encourage you to embrace change and be open to new structures within your business! Here’s what that looked like, at my company:  

Phase 1: Solopreneurship

When I launched my virtual assistant company in 2012, I primarily worked on my own. For the first six years, I was the face of the company and handled nearly all client tasks, except a few outsourced marketing tasks.

Phase 2: Behind-the-Scenes Team Members

My first big evolution happened in 2018 when I was feeling drained and burned out. I could not possibly take on any more clients or grow the business without help, so I began to build a team. That’s when I brought on my first two team members to help take over some of my client work, and I continued adding more and more top-notch virtual assistants and specialists to my team for the next few years. 

During these first few years of adding more virtual assistants to the company, my team only worked behind the scenes. I mainly outsourced client work that I didn’t love to do myself or wasn’t particularly good at, and I built a deep bench of assistants and specialists who could provide services to my clients. For my own business support, I started getting help with posting consistently on social media.

Phase 3: Client-Facing Team Members

After a few years of building out this team, my business was growing, but now I struggled to remain the sole point of contact for my clients and team members. While it was a blessing to have other talented people helping me produce great work for my clients, and I was doing less and less client work myself, I was spending more and more time in meetings and responding to emails and questions. 

In order to continue growing my business, I could no longer be the bottleneck. I didn’t need to be the person in the middle, sending work from clients to team members and back again. I made a bold decision to bring my team out from behind the scenes, and established a Lead Virtual Assistant for each client’s account. This allowed my clients and team to work together directly, thus dramatically increasing efficiency.

Phase 4: Senior-Level Team Members

As my clients became increasingly comfortable with working directly with my team, the bulk of my time was then spent doing team and project management. This still took up a lot of my time, and I realized that as the CEO of a quickly growing company, I needed to prioritize business development, sales, and finance. My daily schedule needed to prioritize bigger-picture projects, not day-to-day tasks. 

This is when I promoted two of my top-performing virtual assistants to become Senior Virtual Assistants. They took over all client and team management. At this stage, I also increased the support for my own business by getting more marketing help and hiring an executive assistant.

You can read more about the current structure of my company in this blog.

I believe that every business can uncover ways to be more efficient. At Melissa Swink & Co., it took some intentional work on team structure to really hit our stride. As we look ahead to the new year, what structural changes can you make to your business, to support its growth? How can you look at your current status quo and challenge it, turn it upside down, and improve it? 

If you’d like to get some support in this area, I invite you to schedule a complimentary, no-obligation consultation! If you’re a current client of Melissa Swink & Co., please feel free to reach out to me via email. We offer VIP Strategy Sessions, virtual assistant services, and fractional team members to support busy businesses.