My Messy Desk, by Ally Aubry. Modified with permission.
Felix Tarcomnicu is an entrepreneur, inbound marketer and Creative Plus Business friend. Here, he explains how a virtual assistant can help creative businesses boost their income.
A Virtual Assistant or VA is an independent contractor who provides administrative services to clients; both companies and individuals, from a remote location. The Virtual Assistant has come a long way since its earliest incarnations in the late 1970’s and mid-1990’s where they were primarily tasked with secretarial duties and personal assistant services. The evolution of digital technology, the increasing popularity of the Internet and the proliferation of social media and online job market platforms have likewise revolutionized the definition of the Virtual Assistant.
Today’s virtual assistants are no longer confined to administrative work; secretarial duties and personal assistant services. There are VA’s available for every task, responsibility and job description required by businesses. We have VA’s who specialize in accounting, transcription services, social media marketing, website design and development, market research and content creation just to name a few. The advances in digital technology have allowed VA’s to function efficiently and effectively despite the absence of a brick and mortar location. Virtual work centers like Asana, cloud based file sharing programs such as Drop Box and virtual conference rooms provided by WebEx have made virtual work management easier, more convenient and highly productive.
When do you need to hire a VA? It could be a host of factors but generally the symptoms are as follows:
- You feel overwhelmed at work.
- You feel overworked, stressed out but there in not much income coming in.
- There is a backlog in the number of unopened e-mails.
- There is a pile of unopened envelopes where there used to be a coffee table.
- You know you need assistance but are financially incapable at this time to hire another person.
If you can relate to at least one of these symptoms, hiring a VA is a viable option. In fact, it is your only viable option!
In addition to being proficient and competent in specific fields of expertise, virtual assistants are generally well-organized and detail oriented. You’d have to be with all of the technology at your disposal, having to manage other clients and a multitude of projects to accomplish. Lastly, hiring a VA will cost you much less than hiring a full-time employee. The management fee of a VA averages $7 to $10 per hour; much less if you are recruiting from a remote location like the Philippines or India. A regular office employee will cost $20 per hour plus benefits.
By hiring a VA, you can boost your income in three (3) ways:
- Better time management. Despite the advantages of technology and its influence on the speed we do things, it has no power to change time. Regardless of how advanced technology is, we will always have 24 hours a day. In business, time plays a vital role in being able to capitalize on opportunities.
With a VA, you can finally divest yourself of the non-essential tasks such as e-mail filtering, calendar management, appointment setting and back office responsibilities and free up more time for essential tasks or those that require your expertise. You can focus more on items on the daily agenda that directly contribute to productivity while the VA can ensure your business is well-organized and runs efficiently.
- Greater flexibility. By hiring virtual assistants, it is possible for you to have your business run for 12, 16 or 24 hours without incurring significant costs. You can hire a VA from your own time zone to run the business with you during regular office hours. If you cater to an international clientele, you can have your business accessible by taking advantage of time zone differentials when selecting your second or third VA.
If your business is based in New York, you can hire virtual assistants from the Philippines who can work the 6:00am to 2:00pm and 2:00pm to 6:00pm shifts which will cover your hours from 6:00pm to 6:00am. These VA’s can attend to all incoming e-mails, phone calls, chat support plus do other work such as social media management or blogging.
This way, you have all opportunities covered and attended to right away.
- Capitalise on their expertise. As mentioned, the VA is no longer a confined role. There are several VA’s who have highly specialized skills and abilities that you can utilize for your business.
For example, every growing business must continually invest in Research and Development. There are VA’s who have been specially trained and educated to create comprehensive and reliable market studies, marketing briefs and project feasibility studies. These are time consuming; a luxury which as the business owner is best allocated to areas with your core competence.
The best way to describe the contribution of VA to your bottom-line is that a Virtual Assistant is a “double-edged” sword. A VA lowers your cost of operation while contributing to your stream of income.
A VA is more than just a Virtual Assistant; he or she is a Valuable Asset.
Felix is a virtual assistant at Outsource Workers.com.au. He enjoys writing content and in his spare time he tries to work on some solo projects. You can connect with him on Twitter.
Do you need help with your creative business? Check out Happening Admin for more!