Why hire a Virtual Assistant?

So you’re a small business owner who does every single little bit of work themselves. Why? Because you can, I suppose. That’s true, you can do all the work yourself… but should you? Absolutely not.

Let’s think about your business. For example, let’s say you have started a cake business because baking is your passion. How exciting! Now, how much of that business is actually spent baking. Wow, not a lot, it seems! Yes, that’s your product, it’s the forefront of your business, obviously that’s what you’ll be spending your time doing right? Sure, but what about all the admin, paperwork, marketing and legalities of business?

You’ve got banking, invoicing, advertising, emailing, client accounts, and all sorts of other admin to do also, not just bake the cake and sell it! This is when you realise that most of your time is spent doing things you don’t love to do. Of course, you’ll have to learn it first. It’s a ‘learn as you go’ type deal when starting a business. Maybe you want to figure out how to invoice people and keep the records - quick jump over to YouTube and find a tutorial on this, oh and while we’re at it let’s check how to make those cool Instagram Reels everyone does! Oh but wait, I need to create my Instagram first and build a following… How do I make my profile more intriguing? Maybe there’s a tutorial on that too. Aaaand, now it’s 1am. Let’s check it all out tomorrow instead.

This is when you start to procrastinate because you don’t enjoy doing it or it’s just simply too overwhelming! On top of trying to get the orders done, you’ve to figure out your banking, or you’re trying to become more efficient. Ultimately, you hit burnout and start to lose sight of why you started your business in the first place.

UNLESS… you gave that work to an assistant! Outsource those boring jobs to a virtual assistant and you’ll then have the time to do the tasks that actually make you the money (and make you happy!).

But, what even is a virtual assistant? You don’t want to hire someone full time, the business is still small! A virtual assistant is someone who provides a whole range of services to business owners from a remote location. Traditionally, they are self employed, contracted to however many hours per week that you decide with them, and traditionally, they specialise in one area of expertise.

But with this industry growing, many offer a full range of services, so they come in handy for most things! Services can include:

- Administrative tasks, such as calendar management, to do lists, writing, invoices, etc.

- Social Media and Marketing. They can run your social accounts, help with content curation, email marketing and engagement.

- Customer support, maybe they can help with customer complaints, feedback and surveys.

There’s many different reasons to hire a Virtual Assistant, the main one being that you’re finding yourself overwhelmed or burnout. There is no reason to stay in the situation you are in if you aren’t happy. You could also just want more free time to look at expansion (something a VA can help with also), or looking for new streams of income/new ventures. Hiring a VA does the following for you:

- Gives you back your time to be the creative genius that you are.
- Gives a fresh perspective into your biz to help scale it without having to hire a full time employee.
- Allows you the peace of mind that a skilled professional is taking care of those tasks in your biz that you don’t enjoy.

You might be thinking, “If I'm serious about taking this business to new heights, can’t I just hire a full time employee to help me and only me?” Sure, you could, but think about all you would have to offer a full time employee:

- holiday days.

- benefits.

- equipment supplied by you.

- weeks of training.

- potential long term commitment.

A virtual assistant is already trained and up to speed with all the ins and outs of running a business, it’s our livelihood too! You’re looking at someone more professional, more equipped and whose passion is literally helping you be amazing! 

Think about what you could be gaining, more time to focus on baking those cakes (or whatever that passion may be), more time spent looking into new business ventures and GROWING your biz, or even just those well deserved extra days off!

What is your opinion on Virtual Assistants? Let me know in the comments below. And if you’re looking for one? Head over to that ‘Contact’ page and give me a shout!