You’re a business owner, you work hard, you have a family and outside interests and there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Whether you are a one-man-band or you have a small team of people to assist you with the obvious tasks such as finance, operations, marketing etc, chances are that you are still undertaking a myriad of tasks which take up too much of your valuable time and drain the life from you on a daily basis.
So, what can you do about it? You could delegate some of these mundane tasks to other members of your team and spread the load a little. But what if they don’t have the skill, the know-how or indeed, the time, to assist you? Looks like it’s back to you again…
But it doesn’t have to be!
A Virtual Assistant could be just what you / your business needs. Someone who is multi-skilled, has the time to undertake your tasks and can add significant value to your business.
But what tasks could/should you be handing over? Arm yourself with a pen a paper and make yourself a list. This will be different for every business owner but as long as you’re comfortable passing the baton with certain tasks, anything goes.
Tasks You Hate What tasks do you dread? Perhaps it’s something time-consuming, something you don’t enjoy, or something that you just aren’t good at it. Ta-da! This is the first thing on your list. You will immediately feel better knowing that you no longer have to complete this task that your list will take on a life of its own from this moment forward.
Repetitive Tasks
Are there tasks that you do time and time again? Jobs that must be done, but don’t add any value to your business. Put these on your list as quickly as you can. Even if it only saves you ten minutes a day, that adds up to almost an hour a week that you gain.
Diary Management
Knowing that someone else is keeping a close eye on your diary and knows exactly where you should be on any given day can be a very liberating experience. Someone who can remind you in advance of things you need to prepare and can sort out your transport to get from one meeting to the next - you'll wonder how you ever managed without this assistance! And if they're also tasked with your personal life too, you'll never miss a birthday or anniversary again.
Gaps In Your Knowledge No-one can be good at everything. There are bound to be many things that you will never call yourself an expert in, so why not outsource these tasks to someone else? Virtual Assistants can’t do everything either but they usually have wide ranging experience from other clients they work with that gives them an edge. And if they can’t turn their hand to certain tasks, they can certainly find you someone that can!
Sending and Answering Emails Reading and responding to emails can be a real drain on your time and can also be distracting to the more important tasks to be completed. A Virtual Assistant can make quick work of controlling your inbox getting rid of the day-to-day queries, leaving only the important emails for you to deal with.
Social Media Management A Virtual Assistant can research, write and respond to your business social media activity. Not only will this save you loads of time, it will also prevent you from wasting further time by getting dragged into your personal social channels.
Newsletters Newsletters can take a long time to produce. If you outsource them to a Virtual Assistant, they can spend their time finding content, writing articles, searching for images, and then inputting into your template. You just need to approve what your VA has put together for you.
OMG, how simple is that?