Then the seller left, the office manager followed, and the phone started ringing to your cell. The first 90 days after close decide whether you own a business or a job. A trained VRA virtual assistant takes the calls, the paperwork and the follow-up — for $1,500 a month, without putting anyone on payroll.
Every acquisition has the same few weeks in it, whatever the industry.
Every new VRA client starts with a Needs Assessment — a two-minute breakdown of where your hours are actually going. After a close, that is usually the first honest look anyone has taken at how the business runs.
Two minutes, no call required. It maps the work that is eating your week and the gaps the seller left behind.
Candidates are screened with a DISC Assessment and a Keller Personality Assessment, and matched to the work the assessment surfaced — usually about a week to put people in front of you.
Once you pick your assistant, they can start the next day — and we check in at 14, 30, 60 and 90 days, which lands right across your first quarter of ownership.
The reason acquirers reach for an assistant before a hire is rarely the work. It’s the commitment.
Most people who buy a business aren’t planning to stop at one. The back office you build for the first acquisition becomes the system you bring to the second — and the owner stays free to go find it.
Building the back office for owner-operators is the core of what VRA does — across sales and service firms, accounting practices, title and compliance, and hospitality. A business you just bought is the same problem with a different phone ringing.
A nationwide services firm runs a 10-person VRA bench across outbound sales and client case support. See how sales and service teams use VRA.
A CPA and partner at an advisory firm, 30 days in: his assistant makes sure “things that have been falling through the cracks no longer fall through the cracks.” See the accounting page.
An escrow operations president who advises Texas title agencies on compliance started with a single VRA assistant, grew to three, and has referred clients of her own. Read the case study.
What to delegate first, what it costs, and how it works alongside the staff you inherited.
The phone and the follow-up. In most acquisitions the seller’s office manager leaves within the first few months, and calls start going to voicemail or to your cell. A VRA assistant answers and returns calls during your business hours, books work into your scheduling software, chases the invoices nobody has chased since close, and keeps customers and vendors updated — the work that quietly loses revenue while you are busy learning the business.
That is exactly the moment an assistant earns their keep. As they work your inbox, your calendar and your customer list, they write down how things are actually done — who the suppliers are, which customers are on recurring service, what the quoting process looks like — so the process ends up in a document instead of in a departed owner’s memory. VRA assistants are trained in administrative documentation and SOP work as part of the program.
You can, and eventually many owners do. The difference in year one is the commitment: a full-time VRA assistant is $1,500 a month, flat, with no payroll taxes, benefits, equipment or recruiting spend, and no severance if the business turns out to need something different. If you are servicing acquisition debt, that difference shows up directly in your coverage ratio.
No, and it usually shouldn’t. The common pattern is an assistant taking the administrative load off people you need doing the actual work of the business — the technician who is answering the phone between jobs, the bookkeeper buried in scheduling. If the seller’s admin person has already left, an assistant fills that gap without a hire.
It is the normal situation after a close, and it is why every new VRA client starts with a Needs Assessment — a two-minute breakdown of where your hours are actually going, before anyone talks about hours or scope. Most owners start with one part-time assistant on the obvious work and expand once they can see the shape of the business.
Yes. $800 a month for 20 hours a week on a 6-month agreement, or $1,500 for 40 hours on a one-year agreement. You can revisit hours and scope at renewal, or switch between part-time and full-time as your assistant’s availability allows.
Often, early on. Your assistant is dedicated to you rather than shared across a pool of clients, so how their hours are split across your entities is your call. As volume grows most owners add a second assistant rather than stretch the first — and because the processes from the first business are already written down, the second assistant starts from your playbook instead of from scratch.
Matching typically takes about a week to put candidates in front of you. Once you select your assistant, they can realistically start within 24 hours.
Hours and scope can be revisited at renewal, and many owners use the slower season to get their assistant fluent in the workflow so the busy season is already covered. VRA assistants work U.S. business hours, Monday through Friday; VRA does not staff nights or weekends.
They work in whatever you already use. VRA assistants are trained on transferable fundamentals rather than one vendor’s product, and we guarantee your assistant reaches 90% proficiency in your systems within 5 business days of starting with you.
Every assistant completes a mandatory 4-week, instructor-led training program before touching client work. Exceptional English communication skills are a requirement to be hired at VRA. Only the top 1% of applicants make it through screening, hands-on training, and a final evaluation — in our most recent cohort, 1,800 applications produced 16 graduating assistants.
You can swap in a different assistant at any point, at no extra cost — no trial window, no fine print. VRA also checks in at 14, 30, 60, and 90 days, and if a check-in surfaces a skill your business needs, we train your assistant in it rather than replacing the person who already knows your operation.
Yes. VRA carries a $1 million Errors & Omissions insurance policy.
VRA trains virtual assistants across industries — explore what a VA looks like for your line of work.