Mary, Mary quite contrary how can your business grow?

So, you have started your own business and are wearing the many hats that you need to run it – the core business tasks requiring your expertise that pay you money, the bookkeeping, the admin, the marketing including networking, the social media, all to keep up to date and your name out there.

My sports therapist told me once that he had been up the night before until 3 am working on emails, and his new year resolution was to allocate a certain time each week.

I do appreciate that there are some things you cannot outsource to a virtual assistant, but my latest client has got to a similar point in his business and after bumping into each other over the last two years of networking, he has made the decision to engage my services as a virtual assistant.  He recognised the fact that his business is growing well but needed to start outsourcing some of the essential tasks so he can continue taking the business in the direction he wanted.

What benefits can a virtual assistant bring to the table?

• Reduced labour costs – there is no salary, tax, or national insurance costs to work out or pension contributions to pay
• Increased productivity – outsourcing the tasks that don’t bring in money allows you to work on the tasks that do
• Flexibility – you may not have enough in your budget for a full-time member of staff or enough hours to employ a part-timer, but with a virtual assistant they just charge you for the hours they do
• Improve work quality – with these tasks outsourced you can crack on with what you are good at and as a by-product this can reduce your stress levels
• Added skills – a virtual assistant can look at what you do and suggest things that can improve workflow, and communication and bring skills that you don’t possess

How do you know that it’s going to work? How do you reassure your potential clients that you are the right person to deliver what they want?

Have a discovery call or informal chat over coffee, a virtual assistant is, after all, a business owner like yourself. Through this process, you should get the feel if you will both be a good fit or not.

During this, your virtual assistant will listen, take notes, and maybe come up with some ideas there and then or suggest where the best place to start would be. Have an idea of your budget so that hours can be worked out in your discussion with no nasty surprises. Everything discussed will be rounded up and confirmed in a proposal.

Virtual Assistants deal with confidential information all the time, there should be assurances in their terms and conditions with regards to this and your property, and they are used to signing NDA’s, therefore protecting everyone all around.  A Virtual Assistant is there to help, it’s in their DNA so don’t hesitate to take the plunge and have a chat today – it’s good to talk.