The first
30 days
with a VA.

Before day one

Do these three things before your assistant logs on, or you'll spend week one doing them badly in real time:

• Access. Email alias, password manager vault, calendar delegation, tool seats. Never send credentials over chat — set up a shared vault or SSO group before they start.
• A landing page. One document: who the company is, who the key people are, what you sell, the five tools they'll live in, and the three tasks they own in week one.
• A recording. Screen-record yourself doing each of those three tasks once, talking out loud. Ten minutes each is plenty.

Week 1 — Narrow and supervised

Three tasks. No more. Rules-based work with obvious right answers — invoice chasing, calendar management, CRM entry.

Run a 15-minute call at the start of their day and a written end-of-day summary from them. Their job this week is also to write the SOPs from your recordings. That output is your quality signal: a clear SOP means they understood; a vague one means they didn't and now you know on day three, not day thirty.

Week 2 — Widen, with a review gate

Add the inbox in draft mode: they draft, you approve, everything sits in a drafts folder until you press send. Expect to rewrite most of it on Monday and almost none by Friday.

Drop the daily call to three days a week. Keep the written end-of-day summary — it's the cheapest management tool there is.

Week 3 — The test

This is the week that tells you whether it's working. Two questions:

1. Are they asking better questions? Week one questions are "where do I find X". Week three questions should be "this client asked for Y, we've said no to that twice before, do you want me to offer Z instead?"
2. Are things arriving before you ask? The Monday report showing up unprompted is the signal.

If both are yes, expand fast — hand over the whole inbox, add a second lane, give them a project. If both are no after honest feedback, that's a matching problem, not a person problem. Say so early. A good agency replaces without drama; if yours makes it awkward, that tells you something.

Week 4 — Systems, not tasks

Move from "do this task" to "own this outcome". Instead of "chase these five invoices", it's "keep AR under 30 days and flag anything at risk". Instead of "reply to these tickets", it's "keep first response under an hour and tell me monthly what keeps breaking".

Set the standing rhythm you'll keep for the next year: a Monday priorities note from you, a Friday summary from them, one 30-minute call a week, and a monthly written review with one thing to keep and one thing to change.

Delegation isn't handing over tasks. It's handing over outcomes and keeping the taste.

The five mistakes

• Too much, too soon. Ten tasks on day one guarantees ten half-done tasks in week two.
• No written feedback. If corrections only happen verbally, they don't compound into SOPs.
• Hoarding context. Assistants who can see the why make better calls. Put them in the Slack channels.
• Treating them as a resource. Names, birthdays, wins, an actual 1:1. Retention is a management outcome.
• Never re-scoping. The role you hired for in month one is rarely the role that's most valuable in month six. Review it quarterly.

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