I think it’s a general consensus that as business owners, we all wish we had more time. 

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, or what you offer, or even how long you’ve been in business…time is a currency we’re all eager to get more of. 

But the irony is that even though we’ve got full schedules and jam-packed days, we’re still reluctant to hand over control. 

Maybe you’ve never thought about hiring a virtual assistant because you think you don’t have the budget for it. Maybe it’s because you aren’t sure if the initial training period is worth the time and effort. After all, couldn’t you just do it yourself?

Sure! But you’d be hurting your business. The longer you wait to hire help, the longer you take to start showing up. 

That means it’ll take longer to improve your products and services, find the right clients, and close the sale. And I’m willing to bet none of that is on your to-do list.

By delegating the tasks you don’t enjoy and don’t have time to do, you free up more time to focus on your business. You have more time to be the CEO!

But if you still aren’t sure a VA can help you,  keep reading to the end before you decide hiring a help is off of your radar. 

Email Management

Emails are those small but oh-so-sneaky tasks that end up being a time suck for us all. 

You’re probably one of two people when it comes to inbox management  — the one who ignores all their emails, wishing they’d go away (and ultimately wastes time thinking about it), or the one who very easily underestimates how long it will take to clean out their inbox every morning, spending hours on them without realizing it.  

Whichever one you resonate with, a VA can help. We’ll save you the hassle of sorting through a three-page long inbox every morning and missing important messages. 

We’ll not only organize your emails, but filter through and organize them, delete the spam, and unsubscribe you from unnecessary subscriptions.

Scheduling

Scheduling appointments and coordinating with other people’s schedules is another huge time suck. 

While some business owners don’t do too much face-to-face communication — such as commerce businesses — service-based businesses will more than likely need a consistent flow of meetings.

It’s a VA’s job to make sure you protect your time, so we’ll take a look at your calendar and your to-do list each time you need to book an appointment. No more double bookings! We’ll make sure what you have in the pipeline is a match for your schedule and coordinate with others when it’s not. 

Customer Relations Support

Communication is something that a lot of business owners don’t account for in their time management, especially creatives. They tend to be zeroed in on how much it will take to complete the deliverables, rather than looking at it from a broader perspective to see all the moving parts of the project. 

But the thing is, your project is more than deliverables.

You have to also take care of communications. Coordinating feedback and project edits. Communicating about the logistics of getting the deliverables. Sending contracts and proposals. Answering questions about your systems and workflows. It all takes up more time than you think. 

Virtual assistants can handle all of your client and customer relationship management, not only by replying to customers’ emails but also by answering questions or following up with clients when they forget to send off an invoice. 

Bookkeeping

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you probably don’t enjoy doing bookkeeping. The majority of small business owners don’t. Most of the time though, this is one of the last things to be eliminated from their plates when hiring a VA.

Finances can be intimidating, but what’s even more intimidating is working a 50-hour week and having to do menial tasks like chasing invoices. I dunno about you, but that seems pretty darn overwhelming to me. 

I get wanting to keep control over your business, especially when it comes to the money. I’ve felt that way too. I’ve had to hire help in my own business, so I understand where you’re coming from!

But a VA can save you the frustration that comes with bookkeeping by making sure you have all your checks and balances in order (note: not every VA is also an accountant. Most will just ensure everything is where it needs to be for the accountants).

We can help by managing your business accounts, sending invoices to clients and customers, or tracking expenses. This ultimately helps you create more time for you to focus on getting more clients/customers to send the invoices to! 

Social Media Marketing

Let’s be honest…we all know content creation can be a time suck if you’re trying to be the CEO too! A VA comes in handy when you need some extra help running your social media accounts. We can create posts for you, schedule the posts to go out, and can even write the captions for you!

Because when you’re spending less time trying to pump out great content that converts, you have more time to focus on the services that you’re selling. You can better promote your business because you aren’t spending time researching what to post, creating the post, and figuring out the best time to publish it.

Blog Posting

Blogs are important for getting found on the world wide web, and there’s a lot that goes into them. Google also wants to see that you’re posting consistently so it knows you’re still an active website. If you aren’t blogging yet, you may be missing out on a valuable opportunity to get discovered without all the headache of paid ads. 

If you aren’t in a place to outsource a copywriting agency, a VA can supplement those services. We can take care of the research and outlines, the writing, the editing and proofreading, or all of it and make sure it’s always full of all those wonderful SEO best practices. 

How a VA can help in the long run

Maybe you’ve considered hiring a VA before, but the thought of training someone else didn’t sound too appealing. I totally get that. 

When you are the day-to-day of your business, when you’ve been doing it all for so long, it can be hard to imagine passing off even the slightest bit of your workload to someone else. But there’s one thing I know for sure — if you’re feeling overwhelmed and burnt out, you won’t be able to do things the way you’ve always done them for long. 

It’s not sustainable, friend. A match burning on both ends eventually fizzles out. 

Even though hiring a VA will require a little more work from you upfront, the long-term benefits are worth it. And I’m not just saying that because it’s what I do — I’m saying it because I know it works from doing it in my own business. 

Taking that first leap of faith and trusting someone to take some of the burdens of business away doesn’t make you incapable of doing your job. It’s not a frivolous expense nor is it you taking the easy way out. It’s a tactical, strategic, business move.

The bottom line is…if you’re running a business, you need help.