How to Onboard A Virtual Assistant in 2026
Zack AllenJanuary 13, 20266:08
You can vet perfectly and still lose it all in onboarding. Here's my first 90 days.
Last year my recruitment firm made 47 placements. My e-commerce business has done $4.2 million in revenue since 2022, and my team in the Philippines runs my operations.
You can do all the vetting, find the perfect person and lose it all in onboarding. Onboarding sets the tone for the whole relationship.
Even an A player needs to be onboarded. The way I run my business is different from how the next person runs theirs, and so is what matters to each of us.
Day zero
Before day one, I set up the tech stack. I don't want to spend day one sorting out LastPass and Slack invites. That's done the weekend before a Monday start.
I also send a small welcome package. Usually a book like Atomic Habits, something that makes them feel like a member of my team, which they are, not a virtual assistant. Plus some research material: YouTube videos from my saved playlists, relevant podcasts, business philosophy and anything specific to the role.
Week one: context
Week one is about context. I want a strong foundation so we can build the pyramid big.
I focus on how their role fits into the whole business: what everyone on the team does, how we make money and what matters to me. Not just "Here's your task list, go."
I start them on low-risk, repeatable work, where it's easy for me to check their work and build trust and confidence on both sides.
Daily check-ins in week one serve several purposes:
- Getting them to ask questions. People hired from countries like the Philippines are often hesitant to ask. So I require at least three questions on every call. It's my job to answer them and help however I can.
- Building rapport. Getting to know them and showing them I'm there to help.
- Building confidence. Hyping them up and checking how they're feeling, so it feels less like a list of tasks and more like being part of something big.
Week one teaches the business, and it also sets how we'll work together.
Month one: the full ramp
I see onboarding as a four-week process. By day 29 or 30, I know whether someone will be good. There's no in-between.
Throughout the month I'm building trust in both directions: their trust that this is a serious opportunity, and my trust that they can do the job.
Compound the knowledge. Don't jump straight into software. Learn the task by hand first ("here's how you enter orders"), then learn the tool that automates it.
Move from SOPs to frameworks. By the end, I want to hand over a project and have them figure out how to get there. That comes from understanding the why. It's harder in the short term, but long term they can do things without me writing a process for everything.
Days 30 to 90: accountability
The two months after onboarding are about accountability. That's what turns a virtual assistant into a team member.
Feedback loops. Areas for improvement, of course. But the one people overlook, and I never do, is positive reinforcement. I aim for two pieces of praise for every area for improvement.
Aligned incentives. However you structure it, if the business makes more money and their role contributed, they should see a financial reward.
KPIs. Whatever fits the role: outreach volume for business development, purchasing volume for inventory. Tracked daily, reported weekly in Slack and reviewed monthly in a meeting on month-over-month and year-over-year trends.
Everyone tracks their KPIs. I'm not dictating the numbers. They tell me what they achieved.
You can have the best onboarding in the world and still not get the best from someone if you're not leading them. That's the forever game.
Transcript
Show the full transcript
Today I'm going to cover how to onboard a virtual assistant in 2026. Last year we made 47 placements in my overseas recruitment firm. I have my own e-commerce business. We've done $4.2 million in revenue since 2022. And I have my own team based in the Philippines that helps me run all my operations. All right. So in terms of onboarding, so you can do all the vetting, find that perfect person, and really lose it all in the onboarding because the onboarding is truly what sets the tone for the relationship, for the engagement going forward.
And so you have to take it seriously. Even though they might be an A player, they still need to be onboarded because the way I do business is different than the way this guy runs his business is different than him and what's important to us. And so we start off with before we even get to day one. Day zero is setting up things like the tech stack. I don't want to be sitting here on day one figuring out Last Pass and inviting them to the Slack.
Like that's done the weekend before if they're starting on the Monday. I do a bit of a welcome package. Usually a book like Atomic Habits, something to, you know, make them feel less like a virtual assistant and more like a member of my team like they actually are. And some research material. So, this will usually be YouTube videos, ones that are in my like save playlist, whether it be podcasts I think are relevant, business philosophy, or more specifically related to the role.
Day one, we'll get started. And week one is all about building the context. I'm a big proponent of building the foundation strong by allowing them to understand the context of my business so that we can grow the pyramid big. And so week one, I really focus on letting them know how their role fits within the whole thing. Like what everyone on the team does, how we make money, what's important to me and the business, not just like, "All right, here's your task list.
Go for it." Because I want them to grow into something more. And I build that right from the start on week one with the foundation. I start off with low-risk repeatable work, things where I can gain up their trust and confidence, not just like, you know, stuff that that is is obvious for me to check, make sure they're doing the right things. And I do for week one daily check-ins. These are multi-purpose.
One of the purposes of the of the daily check-ins is to get them to a ask me questions. I make it very clear that like look, especially if we're hiring from countries like the Philippines, they're very hesitant to ask questions. And so on my calls, I require like, look, you got to have at least three questions for me today. And so I want them to all because it's my role. It's my job to answer and to help you in any way I can.
And so I make it clear like honestly the week one context is not only context on the role in the business, but like context on how I want this interaction to go. And a big part of that is like making sure they know that I'm here to help them. And so the daily check-ins play a role in that. Building rapport between us, getting to know them a little bit, showing them that I'm here to help them. and instilling confidence like being my charismatic self on the call talking like this and it feels less like a task job and they're more like they're a part of something big which they actually are and so I'm able to do that with these daily check-ins like hyping them up checking how they're feeling seeing where I can be of assistance then the whole month one now onboarding I see as a four-week long process that's how I I ramp it up and so by like day 29 day 30 I know for sure if they're going to be good or not there's no like like kind of in between there.
And so month one is the full onboarding throughout this process. I'm building trust their trust in me of like look this is a real like opportunity and my trust in them of being able to do the job right. Compounding the knowledge so not jumping right into softwares but like learning you know how to do the task manually. Here's how you enter in the orders and then here's the software we can use to automate that.
Then really switching from SOPs, so like checklist, step-by-step process to frameworks. By the end, I want to be able to just give them like here's the project, here's the task, figure out how we're going to get there. And that comes from understanding the why. It's a lot more difficult of a route to take, but long term, it means they actually can can do things without me just having to provide a process in SOP.
And after that onboarding, we take on the road to accountability. I would consider this like the focus for the the two months the first 90 days after onboarding. And so this is you know what really turns into a team member and not a virtual assistant. So I get this done through constant feedback loops. Obviously the areas for improvement but one heavily overlooked one that I don't overlook at all is the positive reinforcement.
When they do good work, when they do something that they can be proud of, telling them that. I try to keep it like a two to one ratio. I want to have two praises for every area for improvement. Aligning the incentives. So, however you decide to structure that where if the business makes more money and their role contributed to that, they see financial incentive as a result because that's what's important to me in the business. and tracking KPIs, key performance indicators, whatever those are, whether it's, you know, if it's for a business development role, how many outreaches you did, if it's for a uh sourcing like inventory role, how many how much purchasing we did.
And so on a daily basis, tracking those numbers, on a weekly basis, reporting those numbers in Slack, and on a monthly basis, having a meeting going over the trends, the year-over-year and the month-over-month changes in KPIs. Everyone tracks their own KPIs. I'm not just sitting here telling you what your KPIs are. You were telling me, you were telling me what you achieved for the week data because data is essential in the business.
So that's what my onboarding looks like for a virtual assistant, but you can have the best onboarding and not actually see the best out of them because you're not a leader. And so in the next video, we're going to cover how to lead your virtual assistant in 2026. This is the forever game. This is not management. This is not, you know, being a boss. This is true leadership because that's what actually counts in business in my opinion.
So, watch that video right here. This video is useless if you don't watch that one. So, get that one out of the way. It's the last video in the series.
