Have you ever considered that a virtual assistant can provide you with all the skills, resources, and time needed to obliterate your competition and take over the world? Most entrepreneurs learn far too late in the game that they can’t do everything and build a massive business at the same time.
First, a growing business may not have the funds to hire locally, or provide office space. Next, many businesses in the digital world we now live and work in don’t even require a brick-and-mortar headquarters at all, making a virtual work environment – e.g. Virtual Addresses, Virtual Receptionists, etc. – the most profitable way to run and grow the company. Even if you do run an offline business, there are always things that need to be done, and hiring a full-time employee isn’t always an ideal move for your business.
What does a virtual assistant do, anyway?
The question to ask if you’re looking for a shorter answer is “What can’t a virtual assistant do?” Fact is, virtual assistants come from backgrounds working in almost any field you can imagine including medical, engineering, finance, and more. Those examples are, of course, more specialized fields; most VAs are hired for their online abilities such as:
- Web design & administration,
- Content creation & scheduling/posting,
- Travel planning & scheduling,
- Marketing,
- Accounting,
- Transcription,
- Customer service,
- Administration,
- Reception,
- Outreach,
- Social media-related tasks,
- In other words: pretty much everything else an entrepreneur can dream up!
Let’s take a closer look at what VAs can do to help build your dream business and conquer the world like Richard Branson!
Skills, skills, and more skills
From complex web design to simple data entry, VAs come in all shapes and sizes and can do anything you or I can do and more. Some projects are a one-time thing, and a professional freelancer can cost a fortune when all is said and done. Other projects, such as website admin, scheduling, email filtering and others are daily tasks that at one time required you to hire a full or part-time employee, complete with all the expenses they bring to the table.
VAs bring all the skills you need into your business, and only get paid for the hours they work. Rather than being on salary and sitting around collecting a paycheck, even when there’s nothing for them to do. Saving money on labor, while getting menial, time-consuming and/or complicated tasks done is all possible when you hire virtual assistants.
Full time availability without full time labor costs
To expand on the last point, one of the most frustrating decisions to make as a startup entrepreneur is deciding between a contract worker or salaried employee. Costs skyrocket quickly when you take the plunge and hire someone, and it’s becoming progressively harder to fire bad employees — while ensuring they don’t become a worse nightmare — suing you after you’ve fired them for being late to work 7 out of the last 10 days!
VAs get paid for the hours they work (or projects they complete), can be sourced quickly, are often able to work after traditional business hours and when using a service, it’s easy to get rid of someone and replace them instantly without owing them severance pay or being sued for wrongful dismissal. You also don’t have to pay them overtime, stat, vacation, or sick pay. When you’re a hungry entrepreneur set on taking over the world, the last thing you need is expensive baggage weighing you down!
Ability to identify and fill more weaknesses in your business
It’s easy to get bogged down by details, requests, and fires that constantly need to be extinguished when running a business intent on world domination at all costs. When you’re needed for input on everything, and still required to work 14 hours a day or more on task-related stuff, weaknesses such as missing skillsets or poor processes are harder to spot.
With VAs taking care of all or most of the mind-draining aspects of your business, you can spend more time figuring things out, and finding ways to fill in those nasty gaps in skills or resources that can hamper profitability and growth.
No need for an office
A physical office can be a huge drain on an entrepreneur’s resources in one’s plight for world domination. When you take your business into the virtual environment, with virtual employees and even running your business out of a virtual office, it removes the need for office space, desks, chairs, and the obligation to provide expensive electronics and Internet access to get work done.
Independent virtual assistants work from anywhere, anytime, using their own tools and services. There are also VAs who work for virtual service providers who may also work from their own home, or in an office cubicle provided by their employer. This fact also enables you to work from wherever you please while conquering the world one country at a time!
Task automation equals speedier business growth
Just think of what you could do by adding 16 more hours to the traditional 8-hour work day? Since VAs can be sourced from every time zone imaginable, there’s really no limit to the amount of labor you can add into your business. Genghis Khan and his descendants would never have been able to conquer the known world if they hadn’t had their massive Mongolian army backing them!
Consider the possibilities if every potential customer contacting your business could get prompt service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Or if you could grow your social media presence creating one piece of unique content after another, on auto-pilot? What if you had a well-trained virtual army running all aspects of your business — and what could you do to grow your business if all that stuff was covered? The sky is the limit when all the small stuff is taken care of for you!
Get out there and make it happen!
All that’s left is to get out there and start looking for the right people to add to your team. Research is key before taking the plunge, and it’s important to expect that you’ll have to spend time training your VAs initially, but that investment will pay you back in spades once the heavy lifting is done.
Virtual assistants can be found on online marketing forums, freelancer job posting websites, and also through virtual service providers who manage your virtual employees for you, to save even more time and hassle, and allow you to focus 100% on the things that matter most to your business.
