Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant
Pete Kennedy, the cofounder of Main Street ROI, was angry at work due to workload. He shared his experience on Huffingtonpost,
“A few years ago, I felt a flash of tightness in my chest from anger as I was sitting down to do work I really didn’t want to do. That was a wake-up call that I needed to delegate more tasks and focus on work that I actually enjoyed doing.”
And he further added,
“The best part is that the assistant I hired was thrilled to be doing this type of work, so it was a huge win-win for both of us.”
Like Pete Kennedy, my friends, Rebecca, Mary, and Matt, they all have made their lives easier by hiring virtual assistants.
So what are the main benefits of hiring a virtual assistant?
Here is the list of the top 5 advantages of having a virtual assistant on board.
1- More Time for Your Family and Friends
As explained in the previous chapters, how my friends, Marry, and Ben managed to find time for their friends and family members by delegating tasks to a virtual assistant.
Nick Loper, the owner of Virtulasistantassistant.com, rightly pointed out the same thing in his post,
“By offloading your routine, time-consuming tasks, a virtual assistant can literally add hours to your day.
Imagine using those hours to meet new clients and explore new business opportunities, catch up with friends, or spend more time with your family.”
You are the owner of your business. So you should run the business, not the business should run you.
Delegate non-core business tasks to a virtual assistant and find time for your family and friends.
Spencer Rascoff, the CEO of Zillow, always spends time with his family on weekends. He was quoted saying on Forbes,
“Even if I’m on the road on a Friday and have to be back in that same city the following week, I always come home no matter what.”
Hiring virtual assistants, find some free time, and go for a vacation.
2- Reduce Operating Cost
Without any doubt, virtual assistants are a great way to reduce operating cost.
Felix Tarcomnicu, rightly said in his article on Entrepreneur,
“Compared to a regular or full-time employee, a virtual assistant costs less because the business owner does not pay benefits.”
If you compare the cost of hiring a virtual assistant with a regular employee, you will be really shocked. You can hire a virtual assistant from India for $5-$7.
And the best part, you will not have to pay any sick leave, casual leave, or any other retirement benefit to your virtual assistant. You just pay for the time your virtual assistant works for. No work means no money!
In my blog post – Virtual Assistant Vs Employee: What Successful Entrepreneurs Choose, I have provided a detailed comparison between a virtual assistant and a regular employee.
3- Increase efficiency
As an entrepreneur, you are bound to lead your team by your actions. If you want to gain the trust of your team members, you should be doing challenging tasks rather than non-core tasks, such as making arrangement for travel, sending invites for a meeting, sending newsletters, handling customers’ queries, and more.
Hiring a full-time employee for these tasks is a sheer waste of money when you can easily hire a virtual assistant for these non-core business tasks.
Dave Nevogt said in his article Top 5 Reasons to Hire a Virtual Assistant,
“A good virtual assistant can be the difference between a productive a non-productive small business. By outsourcing administrative and non-core tasks through a virtual assistant or BPO, small businesses free up its time to maximize business efforts.”
By delegating non-core tasks to a virtual assistant, you can save a significant amount of time in which you can focus on the core business activities, such as making marketing strategies, searching new markets for your products, and more.
Mindtools stated rightly,
“Time is the one resource that we can’t buy, but we often waste it or use it ineffectively. Scheduling helps you think about what you want to achieve in a day, week or month, and it keeps you on track to accomplish your goals.”
You should always spend your time on challenging, productive tasks. And delegate non-core tasks to a virtual assistant. Successful entrepreneurs always hire virtual assistants and spend their time only on growth hacking activities.
4- Strengthen Weak Area
With virtual assistants, you can bridge skill gap in your organization. Gone are the days when virtual assistants used to be only simple remote workers. Now, they are skilled professionals and can do a wide range of tasks. Whether you need someone to manage social media or you want somebody to conduct Internet research, you can easily hire a virtual assistant for the same.
Martin, 36 years old, is the owner of a small law firm. Though well-versed in different sections of the criminal law, Martin always finds it difficult to manage social media accounts of his firm. He has got peace ever since he hired a social media virtual assistant to manage the social accounts of his firm. And the best part, he pays only for the work of 90 hours per month.
Hire a virtual assistant and fill skill gap in your organization.
5- A Safe Option to Scale up Business Operation
As explained in the previous chapter, my friend Ben scaled up his business operation by hiring a virtual assistant.
You cannot just fire an employee when there is less/no work. But you can end the contract with your virtual assistant abruptly without any legal problem.
The point here is it is easy to scale up with virtual assistants. And if you hire a virtual assistant from a different time zone, your business will be 24/7 online. As virtual assistants are skilled professionals, you will spend less/no time on training. They will start working for you the moment you hire them.
So, the next time, there is a need for scale up, hire a virtual assistant.
Conclusion:
Virtual assistants, if hired intelligently, can help you find more time for your family, reduce operating cost, and strengthen weak areas in your organization. Virtual assistants will also increase your efficiency.
And if you need to scale up your business operations, virtual assistants are a safe option. In the nutshell, virtual assistants are your secret weapon.
