Lesson 1 of 9 · 3 min
Who this is for, and where it comes from
You run a Shopify store and the operational work has grown past you: the orders that need checking, the tickets that need answering, the listings, the suppliers, the weekly numbers. You have decided someone else should do it. This course is the whole of that decision, from the hour before you post a job to the Friday review in month three.
It is for a founder hiring their first virtual assistant directly. If you already have one and are adding a second seat, lesson four has a short note for you. If you would rather an agency did the hiring, lesson three sets out plainly when that is the better trade, and then the course carries on as if you are doing it yourself, because most of it applies either way.
Where it comes from
The nine guides on the Hiring a VA shelf of this site, written by ScaleWise VA, an agency that has hired and onboarded Shopify VAs for its own team and for clients. That is a real basis and it comes with a conflict of interest: the agency sells VA services. So this course does two things the guides do not. It leaves every sales pitch out. And where a guide states a figure without a source, the course says so rather than passing it on. You will see those notes in blocks marked Checked, eight of them across the lessons.
Checked One number from the source is not in this course.
The complete hiring guide opens by saying a structured pipeline produces a 70 to 85 percent success rate instead of the usual 30 to 50 percent. It cites nothing for either figure. They may be true of the agency’s own hires; they are not something you can check, so they are not here. The pipeline itself is, because every step of it can be judged on its own.