Goals and checklists are good, but if your day is not enough to fulfil all your tasks and responsibilities, you end up delivering work that is not at par with the quality expected or you suffer from burnout, fatigue and other illnesses. Managing time and obligations is one of the biggest challenges of entrepreneurs. Some of them turn for help by hiring virtual assistants who can do certain jobs on their behalf. It is an option to unload one from mundane work to focus more on urgent matters in the business.
What is a VA?
A virtual assistant or VA is someone who provides backend support to your business or personal projects online. They manage things remotely based on what you assign them to fulfil. Mode of communication is through e-mails, messaging apps and online meeting platforms.
There are different kinds of virtual assistants. Some operate solo, while others belong to a group. A VA can be a digital nomad, transferring from one place to another, or based in one location alone. You can choose the capacity and expertise you need from a VA as some are more adept on administrative work, while others act more like consultants and business managers. They need to have some level of skill and proficiency because they can handle things themselves with less supervision.
What does a VA do?
There is a wide range of things that a VA can accomplish, depending on your needs. A VA can answer your emails, set up your schedules, coordinate your travels, create reports, manage your social media accounts, do clerical work, and other tasks that you can delegate. If you are hiring a VA based on expertise, you can designate your VA to do sales and marketing, bookkeeping and accounting, copywriting and content generation, or other specialised jobs.
What are the benefits of having a VA?
Before you consider hiring a VA, examine first if you need a VA or not. It is not a guarantee that getting a VA will not pose any problem to you or your enterprise. It may either work for you or not. That is why it is understandable if you have apprehensions of getting someone from a remote location do things for you. If this is the case, talk to other business owners who have done it successfully. EO Melbourne is one venue where you can seek answers to your questions through the experiences of entrepreneurs who have benefitted from having a VA.
For a start, take into consideration the advantages of a VA before you discard the idea.
Time-saving and faster output
Spending half a day going through your e-mails and replying to them can be draining and less productive. But if you have someone who can organise your correspondences, showing you only what’s urgent, then you can devote your time to more important matters in your business. With a VA, you can delegate tasks that may not require your immediate attention, saving you time and enabling you to produce outputs at an accelerated rate.
Focus on essential tasks
If you review your checklist of tasks and rank them according to urgency, you’ll find that many trivial things take your mind away from your big roles. Organising your contact list, sending out invites, following-up people and similar activities can often blur your concentration on decision-making responsibilities. A VA can take over some of those tasks so you can focus on more essential things that can allow you to steer your business towards your goal.
Quality work
Having a busy schedule is not a sure-fire formula to success. If you’re too hands-on in every aspect of the venture and you’re all over the place, you may miss out on important matters or deliver haphazard service, which can cause your business to suffer in the long run. You need someone like a VA to help you carry the load and enable you to produce quality work that can appeal to your clients and customers.
Fills in gaps
A VA can help you fill in the gaps and take care of the details that you might have missed. With all the action items you need to tick off, it is inevitable that you’ll forget or overlook something. Cover all bases by getting a VA that can make sure that nothing slips through.
Flexibility
When you know there’s someone who attends to your business while you are out of the office, you can go to a client meeting or sales call or spend a vacation with your family with some peace of mind. The VA can do the work you assigned on specific periods or as needed, so it allows you to be flexible in your business as well.
Efficient use of budget
Since the VA does not occupy office space and use supplies and equipment, you get to save on your budget. Also, it is more cost-efficient to maintain a VA than a physical office secretary. The VA takes care of filing for individual taxes and benefits. It’s also value-for-money to have someone do things for you than you doing things on your own, which may make your operations suffer along the way.
Where and how to find a VA
If indicators in your assessment point to more advantages of hiring a VA than not having one, then you have to find a person that fits your requirements. First, list down the qualities you are looking for in a VA. Then write the tasks you need to delegate to this person. The hunt begins when you have determined the kind of VA you want.
Freelance websites like Upwork, Freelancer, Guru, Toptal, Peopleperhour, VAnetworking, and TaskRabbit, to name a few, can provide you access to millions of prospective VAs. Check out other sites and consult with other entrepreneurs where you can mine great talents for your business.