Are you on the brink of burnout? Do you wonder why it seems you don’t have enough hours in the day or weeks to accomplish all your work at an optimal level? If your answer is Yes, now’s the right time to consider hiring a Virtual Assistant to maximise productivity and ensure you’re able to achieve your monthly goals.

Getting Started in Hiring Virtual Assistants

Employing a virtual assistant and including them into your company’s growth strategy is one of the greatest decisions you’ll make as an entrepreneur.

Imagine those repetitive tasks that you’re regularly doing; they can be really boring. In fact, you can be doing so much more with your specialisation, but those minor tasks grind away your energy each day when instead, you could be using that time to scale up your business. Sounds familiar?

As a business owner, you never wish to get stuck working with day-to-day operations. Yes, it is helpful at first, but when your business starts to grow and expand, it hurts your business or its growth potential. Outsourcing VA’s is not new for some. We’ve seen companies that turned upside down because they keep their time focused on growing the business instead of operating within it.

If you hire a virtual assistant, your business will take off. Instead of spending time performing a repetitive task, delegate it to your virtual assistant. Instead of learning a skill set that will benefit your business, hire a virtual assistant with the experience. When an opportunity came up, and it’s not within your scope, hire a virtual assistant. Virtual assistant services make things a lot easier and more efficient.

Signs That Now’s the Right Time to Hire a Virtual Assistant

Sign #1. You’re spending a lot of time doing administrative work

Are you spending all day organising your inbox, responding to phone calls, record keeping, invoicing, billing, emailing, booking travels, and doing other repetitive tasks?

If your answer is “yup, more than I’d like to or “yup, more than I work with other business growth tasks”, then it’s time to outsource to the Philippines. Doing so is the opposite of growth. Since when did managers, business owners, or entrepreneurs spend a lot of their time working out repetitive tasks? All the greatest minds in business and data report that you should spend 80% of your time on high-value business growth task to be successful. It would be best to hire a virtual executive assistant to work with the repeatable and occurrent admin task.

Besides, it’s hard to add value to your business’s growth when most of your time is spent with admin task. It’s necessary from the start, but through time it often distracts you from contributing your highest value by doing the thing you do best.

Sign #2. Your business needs a certain skill set your team doesn’t have.

Do you need someone to help you with taxes? Do you need someone to help with your marketing campaigns? If you know nothing about business loans and certainly not a graduate of any marketing degree, hiring a virtual assistant can be the answers you’re looking for. If you hired a virtual assistant with a background in tax laws and a certified marketer, you’d never look back.

Sign #3. You keep on missing important family events because your business is holding you hostage.

Did it come to the point when you had to decide between your work and your family? This is one of the major signs that your work/life balance isn’t sustainable. Yes, entrepreneurs and business owners have to make sacrifices by putting their business first. But this only leads to an imbalance between work and life, which can interfere with your family relationships and, worse, your health.

Again, this is a sign to look for a Virtual assistant for hire. Consider a virtual assistant as a helping hand so you can control your life and your own time.

Sign #4. You start to feel stressed and notice your health begins to suffer

Stress is a major indicator of how much you need help in managing your business. Have you constantly feeling migraines or losing your temper quite a lot? It’s a sign of too much working. If you think you’re working a lot and feeling you have so little time to accomplish it all, you’re at the point of stressing out. And if you take it for granted again, stress will eventually take its toll. Not being able to work is the last thing you want.

This is the reason why you have to cut yourself some slack and relax. From time to time, give yourself some free space to not think about work. Focus on your family first. Yes, of course, your business operation doesn’t have to stop with you. It must go on. This is where the value of virtual assistant from the Philippines becomes more important than ever. And hiring one is the help you can immediately get to deal with stress and other potential health problems in the future.

Sign #5. You miss high-value opportunities because you’re spending a lot of time operating your business.

Do you invest the majority of your time working with administrative tasks? Then you’re likely to be missing out on some high-value opportunities that lead to business growth.

You can delegate that to virtual assistants from the Philippines. It would be best if you had the focus to really grow your business. And for your business to succeed, they need a leader, not an administrator. Think about a highly successful business or company; the unique talent is being able to lead. Leaders reach out to prospects, building a network on business events, and attend a conference.

As a business owner, your employees need you to lead, and they need you to steer the business towards progress and success. Your role is the captain of the ship. Yet, you can’t be a captain and engineer altogether. Engineers work with the ship’s engine, making the mechanics run smoothly.

As the captain, your responsibility is to make sure you trust your personnel doing their jobs properly so that your ship thrives on the right path. If you deal with every detail, and every minor aspect of operating the business that you no longer have the time to do what business owners should do, then it’s a sign that you need to look for a virtual assistant for hire.  

Sign #6. Those big ideas keep slipping down on your to-do list.

It takes a lot more than working a day-to-day task to build a successful business. Bringing success to your business in any industry means looking for opportunities and formulating great ideas to expand it. And you fail to do that if you don’t even have the time to do your regular high-value business process.

Many first-time entrepreneurs are eager and so full of ideas. However, once the workload begins to pile up, and they are overloaded with papers and administrative tasks, the spark that ignites enthusiasm and excitement to run their business gradually evaporates. Sooner, the ideas they always have slowly diminish, never coming to life.

As said earlier, successful business owners should have the time to lead their business instead of operating within it. And more than that, they should also be dreaming and coming up with fresh ideas to help their business grow and move forward. But it’s tough to lead and think up innovative ideas if you’re constantly working with minor details of your business process.

If you have a handful of ideas you want to work on but can’t because your time is allotted to complete daily business routines, you may want to consider hiring a virtual assistant.

Main Qualities Every Virtual Assistant Should Have

So, you’ve decided to hire a virtual assistant (VA) to help grow your business. But what exact qualities does your VA need to have to get the work done? Here’s what to look for.

#1 PROFESSIONALISM

To grow, you need to be able to rely on your VA to get the job done. Remaining professional in this kind of role requires the VA to be skilled in areas of business communications and organisational awareness. Essentially acting as an extension of your team, the goal here is to help you grow whilst comfortable with the idea of relying on a team that represents you in the best positive light.

#2 INTERGRITY

One of the fears of hiring a VA is working with a dishonest individual, hence ensuring that the VA maintains a high level of integrity. Honesty and keeping to commitments whilst maintaining alignment to organisational values are extremely important. As VA’s are located remotely, time management and reporting tools are critical in delivering accurate information on the activity and tasks worked on. You want honest individuals and represent themselves with a high level of integrity.

#3 RELIABILITY

You need to find a virtual assistant who you can depend on. Someone who can complete tasks whilst you focus on other areas of the business. Someone who can deliver high-quality work under tight deadlines. Someone who can provide constructive input based on the project or work they are assigned. A reliable VA helps drive productivity improvements and can be seen as a strong team member to getting things done.

#4 FLEXIBILITY

VA’s can create their own schedules and work in surroundings of their choice. Their ability to demonstrate how flexible they are in terms of hours, geographical location, and project-based work are important. Whilst this represents timing, consider the workloads to be assigned, whether or not they have the skillset to complete it, or deem it a learning opportunity to expand their horizon.

#5 RESOURCEFULNESS

Hiring a VA is easy. However, they may have internet connectivity issues, software compatibility challenges, and scheduling problems (based on timezone) to cater to your needs. Such VA’s can get through the day by being resourceful when necessary to get the job done. They have full control of the output they deliver.

All business owner only wants one thing: for their business to be successful. But most of the time, it’s impossible to grow your business and cross off everything on your to-do list. That’s why hiring a VA is a great solution to maximise your efficiency while also giving your other business tasks the time and attention they deserve.

Hiring an experienced virtual assistant can minimise your expenses while benefiting from increased productivity. Altogether, hiring a virtual assistant is a wonderful solution to grow your business with less stress.

If most of your answer is yes to the signs above, then maybe you should consider delegating your work to virtual assistants. Or at least consider trying out to hire one because you really want some free time and move forward. You can always give it a try, and if it’s not working out, you’re free to move on. Remember, you can’t keep doing the same stuff all over and expect a different result.