What Is A Virtual Assistant?
When your business starts growing (and growing fast), you may find that you’re drowning in work. You may feel like you’re working on your business 24/7 and losing that precious quality time you could be spending with your family, practicing self-care, or even sleeping.
I know that I lost so much sleep when my blog started growing, and it took a toll on my mental health. I felt burnt out and tired all the time, and my drive to do anything was diminishing. It was time to hire someone who could take on a few small tasks and give me that time back.
Sound familiar? If so, it may be time for you to do an intake of all the tasks you work on daily and determine if you’re able to hire a virtual assistant to help you take your time back!
What is a Virtual Assistant?
A virtual assistant is an independent contractor who works remotely from their home office. A virtual assistant, known as a VA for short, can offer a wide range of tasks at a more reasonable cost than hiring an assistant as an employee for your business.
A virtual assistant provides a wide range of business tasks based on their expertise and specialty. A VA’s services could be from social media marketing to basic data entry skills. They are essentially office assistants who work remotely to help you get your business organized and streamline your back-end systems.
When should you hire a VA?
Hiring a VA is a big deal for some business owners because it means that you’ll need to fully trust someone to alleviate your tasks so that you have more free time to focus on tasks that will help advance your business.
This was one of the hardest things for me to do at first because I am very particular with certain things in my business, and I couldn’t give up that control to someone else. I have gotten better and more open to hiring people to help me, but I am picky with the tasks I want to outsource. Because of that, I am entirely aware of how daunting it is to relinquish control over your business. Just take it day by day, and you’ll be fine.
If you’re wondering when you should hire a virtual assistant, then look at this list of problems below and decide if you’re ready to leap.
You’re feeling Task Overload.
When you simply find that you have no time left in the day to focus on your own life, it may be the perfect time to hire someone to help you out. Hire a VA to take on the tasks that just take up too much of your time so you can get back to focusing on working in your business, not on it!
You need help managing your social media accounts.
When you need help managing your social media because you find ourself sitting there and scrolling for hours without getting anything done, it may be time for a VA. And, I get it. We’ve all been there. Now, this doesn’t mean that you’re not meant to manage your social media because you are if that’s something you enjoy. But if it doesn’t bring you joy, outsource it! Also, if your VA has advanced skills to increase engagement on all platforms, it will make your life easier on many fronts.
You feel like you don’t have enough hours in the day.
Waking up at 6 AM to work on your business and continuing deep into the night? Not sleeping because you’re formatting blog posts, creating social media content, or simply creating content? Let a VA allow you to take your time back and get those tasks done for you. It also won’t take away from working with your clients, writing those blog posts, or simply enjoying your life outside of your business! I also need to mention that a VA can work any hour of the day and can be anywhere worldwide, so if you need your business hours to run a bit later than you can handle, a VA will help make this happen.
You need the help but can’t afford a full-time assistant.
Hiring a VA is cheaper than hiring an employee because you won’t need to offer any full-time work benefits. You may only need a few hours per week or even per month, and that usually works well for many VAs because they also have multiple clients they work with at once. They will typically dedicate specific times every week for your work and meet deadlines that you need them to meet. Overall, it’s a significant investment if you need some help but not someone working on your business 40 hours a week.
If you find that your business could benefit from anything I wrote above, then it’s time to start looking for VA. Finding a virtual assistant is easier than ever with the internet but make sure you do your homework. Not all VA’s are created equal and know the same systems and platforms as you do. Be sure to check all references on a VA before hiring them so that you can rest easy knowing you’re hiring a reliable and professional VA.
Need help? Let’s chat.
