Being an entrepreneur often means wearing many hats, especially for a small to medium-sized business. You could be the marketer, the lead salesperson, the customer service agent, and everything else in between. It can be exciting, stressful, tiring, and rewarding all at once.
However, being an entrepreneur is about making as much money as possible while investing as little as possible in time and money. Outsourcing certain tasks and business functions can help with that. One of the best things you can do for yourself is to hire the services of a virtual assistant.
What is a Virtual Assistant?
A virtual assistant is someone who handles all of your administrative duties for your business but does not actually work in the office. They usually work from home, and may even have several clients. They can manage your calendar, appointments, bookings, phone calls, and really anything else that can make your life easier. With an in-house assistant, they may go hours on end without actually doing any work. With a virtual assistant, you can have all of the benefits without paying for downtime. Here are some of the ways that a virtual assistant can help you with your business and make you a better entrepreneur.
They Handle Non-Essential and Repetitive Tasks
As an entrepreneur, your time is valuable. You don’t want to spend a lot of it doing tasks that you don’t need to. Imagine how much time you spend filtering through your email or checking phone messages. Doing these things are necessary, but they are not a big part of growing your business. By hiring a virtual assistant, you can be free of those repetitive and tedious tasks so that you can focus on building partnerships, making sales, and doing any number of things that will help increase your revenue.
Process Implementation
As your business grows, you will have to start implementing processes and procedures that reflect your status as a legitimate enterprise. You will no longer be flying by the seat of your pants and doing everything yourself. However, implementing processes can take a lot of time and effort, including planning them and training your staff. A virtual assistant can take care of this work for you. They can implement your needed processes and keep your team on the same page through communication and training. You will be provided guidance just like everyone else, and won’t have to think much about it other than for feedback and suggestions.
Keep You Organized
Not everyone has a mind for organization and administration. The skills that make you a great entrepreneur are not necessarily the ones that keep your office life in order. A virtual assistant can help keep track of all of your calendar events, tasks, and files so that everything is where it needs to be and you are up-to-date. You can remain focused on your core business while still knowing that your obligations are being met and that you aren’t missing anything important. Finding information or documents will never be an issue since someone will have it set up for you already.
Communication Filtering
As an entrepreneur running a business, you no doubt get a lot of phone calls and emails. Some of it is important, and some of it is spam. An assistant can help you filter through those communications to make sure that only the ones that need your direct attention make their way to your inbox or voicemail. They can respond if necessary and they are able to some of them and delete others that are not important. Again, this leaves you able to focus on what truly matters, and never waste time with something that doesn’t.
Social Media
Social media is an important part of any business, perhaps more now than ever. However, when you have a lot of competing responsibilities, keeping up with them can go by the wayside. A virtual assistant can post on your social media, and respond to audience comments and reviews. They will bring anything urgent to your attention, but for the most part, make sure that your social media presence is strong at all times.
Event Organization
Are you planning on having a big sales event or a grand opening? These can be incredibly time-consuming, and you must be on the ball to make sure that every responsibility is met. A virtual assistant can make all of the calls, hire contractors, take bookings and RSVPs, and give you and your staff your assignments. All you will have to do is possibly store some materials at your site and show up when you are told.
As an entrepreneur, the more you can focus on your core business, the more income you will be able to generate. That’s what makes a virtual assistant so valuable. They can remove many of the responsibilities off your plate that are either not within your skill set or that are unnecessary for you to manage, freeing up your time for money-making.
