Top 7 Ways to Tell You Need a Virtual Assistant
Guest Blogger Angela Wills of StarVA.com is a Virtual Assistant Specializing in Internet Marketing. Visit StarVA.com to grab your free ‘Outsourcing Checklist & Free Tips’ now!
A Virtual Assistant is a self-employed contractor (not an employee) who helps small business owners and entrepreneurs with various administrative tasks such as handling emails, bookkeeping, website maintenance, search engine optimization and much more.
A Virtual Assistant (VA) can live anywhere.
Since a Virtual Assistant works entirely virtually they can be located literally anywhere in the world. I’m located in Canada but the majority of my clients are US based, and it works out very well because everything is done through the internet or by phone.
Who Needs a Virtual Assistant?
Every entrepreneur (or blogtreprenuer) needs a VA! Many business owners will get very far in their business without a Virtual Assistant but there comes a point where you absolutely need help to continue to grow any further.
Here are the top 7 ways to tell you need a Virtual Assistant:
7. You have five different projects going on right now and they all were supposed to be finished weeks ago.
6. You have piles of invoices on your desk you’ve been meaning to enter into your accounting software for about two months now.
5. That press release you meant to send in is now a year out of date.
4. When friends ask you to go somewhere (if they still ask!) you’re response is always ‘Sorry, I have to work’.
3. You get off the computer long enough to grab a shower, eat and go to sleep for a few hours before getting back on the computer to work again.
2. You spend most of your day checking and responding to email and have practically no time left to do any other business activities.
1. You wouldn’t dream of taking a day off and your next vacation is booked for, oh, never!
If any of the above points describe you, even just a little bit, you might need a Virtual Assistant. The important thing to remember is that we started our businesses to have more freedom and if you are not experiencing that freedom then it’s time to make a change.
Recently there has been a lot of talk about Tim Ferris’ ‘4 Hour Work Week’. In it Tim talks about ‘taking yourself out of the equation’ to the point where if you weren’t running your business for a week, or a month at a time it wouldn’t matter because your assistants would be running it for you. Think about how you can begin to take yourself out of the equation a little bit at a time so you can have that freedom that we as entrepreneurs long for and deserve.
