Are you a solopreneur that is spending a lot of hours on mundane tasks such as booking meetings and appointments? Are you spending most of your days replying to emails or creating content for social media?
The time you spend doing all of these tasks would be better off spent on networking, building your brand, and selling!
When you have someone in your business that you can delegate tasks to, you can focus on scaling your business. In this guide we will tackle on finding the best Virtual Assistants to hire.
What Is A Virtual Assistant?
According to Wikipedia “A Virtual Assistant (typically abbreviated to VA, also called a virtual office assistant) is generally self-employed and provides professional administrative, technical, or creative (social) assistance to clients remotely from a home office”.
A Virtual Assistant is like any other assistant, the difference is that they are working remotely and all communication is done virtually. There are multiple types of Virtual Assistant, which we will tackle down on the next sections. But just to give you a brief overview, you can hire just about any type of Virtual Assistant ranging from design, development, marketing, and even personal stuff like booking you a flight or managing your email.
Virtual Assistants reduce your workload and can help you focus more on working on your business and not working in your business. When you offload your tasks to a Virtual Assistant, you can work on scaling your business instead of creating that social media poster, or researching stuff on the internet which takes quite a while of your precious time.
Types Of Virtual Assistant
Virtual assistants can do just about anything for your business. As an entrepreneur your time is very expensive. You can’t afford to lose your time on menial tasks that take you more time than hiring an experienced VA to do it for you. Entrepreneurs that are very successful are an expert in delegating as much as possible so they can focus on the really important aspects of growing a business.
General Virtual Assistant
A general virtual assistant is one of the most common types of virtual assistant. This type of VA is best suited for handling your daily tasks and processes that are important for your business. Examples of tasks like these are managing your social media, replying to messages and emails, doing research for you, creating documents and spreadsheets. General VA’s handle repetitive tasks that you have no time for but are still relevant for your business.
Specialized Virtual Assistant
A specialized virtual assistant has a more specific skill that either you have no expertise on or have no time to do. A specialized virtual assistant tends to have higher rates than a general VA because of their expertise. These tasks could include bookkeeping, video and image editing, human resources. They can still do the tasks that general VA’s do but they have a much more specific skill set.
What Are The Benefits Of Hiring A Virtual Assistant?
Outsourcing your workload to a virtual assistant can significantly increase your productivity and the growth of your business. Virtual assistants exist to minimize your workload so you can focus on the more important parts of running your business. The difference between a personal assistant is the cost. Virtual assistants cost much less and they work remotely which means you don’t have to pay for an office space.
You can also hire virtual assistants that have a skill that you need but have no time in learning yourself. A great example would be growing your social presence on multiple platforms using video, a VA with video editing skills would be a perfect fit for what you would need.
Virtual assistants can return your precious time to you and makes it easier to balance your work and life relationship. Time is a currency that we cannot gain, so it makes perfect sense to offload the tasks in your business that are taking most of your time. So you can focus on the more important things in your business and in your life.
Here are a list of the benefits you will have when you hire a virtual assistant:
- You won’t need a physical office.
- Virtual assistants are more affordable than hiring regular employees.
- You are not limited by a local talent pool.
- Preventing you from burning out.
- Spend your time on your strengths.
- Direct your focus on income generating tasks.
Choosing What Tasks Or Process To Outsource
Every entrepreneur has a number of daily tasks or processes. To choose the ones that you need to outsource, you can categorize all of your tasks.
- Tasks you should do – These are the tasks that are high value and you enjoy doing.
- Tasks you should not do – These are low value tasks that you either love to do or not.
- Tasks that you don’t want to do – These are the tasks that you constantly procrastinate on.
- Tasks that you can’t do – These are the tasks that you want to do but you have no skill set for them.
When Is The Right Time To Hire A Virtual Assistant?
If you are reading this article now would be the perfect time to hire a virtual assistant. There are a lot of reasons why you need to hire a virtual assistant as soon as possible.
Losing your time on repetitive tasks.
If you are spending time working on daily tasks. A perfect example would be social media engagement, where you are posting on your social media accounts and engaging with other people on groups or forums.
You have no skill or experience that is needed for the task.
When you want to add something new to your business, like video marketing and you lack the necessary skills on editing the videos. It would probably take you more than a month to learn video editing and even by then your skill as a video editor will still be insufficient. So it also makes perfect sense to hire a virtual assistant with a video editing specialty.
You are overloaded.
If you find yourself getting more tasks on your to do list than checking them off the list then it is a perfect time for you to hire a virtual assistant. Being in this situation can often demotivate you, so it is necessary to hire extra help to keep you back on track and focus on tasks that are more valuable for your business.
How Can My Virtual Assistant Increase My Productivity?
Virtual assistants can do just about anything you need them to do for you and your business. By offloading your tasks to virtual assistants you free up your valuable time and you can spend it on tasks that generate you more income and scale your business like talking or meeting with leads and closing sales and generating revenue for your business.
Virtual assistants can give you a lot of your hours back by alleviating tasks that are necessary for your business. If you have additional time back during your work week, it would make you a lot more productive because you get to do the tasks you love doing inside your business.
Conclusion
Virtual assistants are one of the greatest investments you can make for you and your business. They give you your time back and take away tasks you hate doing. When hiring the best virtual assistant for you, you can focus on your business’s growth thus generating more revenue for you.
