Growing A Successful Business Year After Year And The Importance of Delegation, A Founder’s Story with Lauren Gall & Melanie Ammerman

Lauren Gall & Melanie Ammerman, VaVa Virtual Assistants is a boutique Virtual Assistant agency, serving clients worldwide. Our expert-level, U.S.-based team specializes in administrative and marketing assistance, at a fraction of the cost of employing an in-person staff. We handle the back-office tasks so our clients have time to focus on growing their businesses.

Co-founder of VaVa Virtual Assistants, Lauren Gall is a native Midwesterner with over 10 years of experience in the business services industry. As a graduate of The Ohio State University where she studied Strategic Communications, she has excelled in the areas of sales, leadership, and public relations as it relates to business development within her firm. Lauren loves to take on challenges and help business owners find the right solution for the obstacles they come across. In her free time, you can find her hiking with her chocolate lab, Bubba, doing yoga, traveling, or walking the beltline. Co-Founder Melanie Ammerman is originally from Wisconsin and has a background in Clinical Psychology with a bachelor’s from DePaul University and a master’s from Pepperdine University. After spending several years in Chicago and Los Angeles, she now resides in Atlanta. Her main goal was to build a life on her own terms, and along with fellow Co-Founder, Lauren Gall, she was able to do just that with VaVa. She found the perfect fit in her leadership role and is able to utilize her administrative and psychology background to support her team on a daily basis. She utilizes and continues to hone her natural skills of big picture thinking, and strategic planning, as well as understanding and connecting with people on a deeper level. Melanie found such value in creating her own narrative⁠ building a life the way that she wanted to live—and through VaVa, she offers this passion by helping others do the same. Melanie enjoys being outdoors in nature with her pup, Kishi, traveling to explore new places and to see loved ones, supporting causes for animals and the environment, and relaxing at home with her dog and cat.

Lauren and Melanie founded VaVa Virtual Assistants over 10 years ago with the goal of helping small business owners achieve work/life balance and focus on the work they love. Like many entrepreneurs, when they first started out, they did everything on their own. Before they could build a 7-figure business by leading a team of Virtual Assistants and serving clients with an array of diverse needs, they needed to master how to deliver a superior Virtual Assistant experience. They handled sales, winning new clients. They oversaw client management. They even took the role of Virtual Assistants for their clients.

You absolutely need to delegate in order to grow. Our company has grown to 7 figures including a 97% growth from 2016 to 2017 that was triggered by internal delegation. And with that lesson, we learned along the way to create a place that people want to work for. Over the years, we would tend to hire people based on emotion, but a lot of times they were using us as more of a pass-through job. Now that we have defined our mission, vision, values, and culture, we are seeing a huge difference in the people, the retention, the type of client, and our company growth overall.