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Karri

Quick Tip – Looking For a Legitimate Business Expense?

The bad thing about making boat loads of money as an entrepreneur is that you have to pay for it at tax time. Even though the economy is in rough shape right now, you still need to have some legitimate business expenses to help even things out next spring.

It’s wise to watch your spending on non-essentials but you can’t stop spending money all together.

One often overlooked benefit of hiring a Virtual Assistant is the fact that you don’t only get a ton of time freed up in your days, but you also get to claim the expense on your taxes!

How’s Your Hive Buzzing?

I posted this piece to my own blog back in June and never had one comment on it! I was disappointed cause I thought it was a pretty good little post. I would like to share it here because I believe it’s a great analogy.

Enjoy!

Let’s, for a moment, imagine that your business is a beehive and you’re the Queen Bee. After all, the Queen’s the most important person in the hive – her sole job is to lay eggs. Without eggs, there are no bees so nothing else can happen. You are also the most important person in your business – goes without saying if you’re a ‘solo-preneur’. You’re responsible for getting new clients and ensuring all daily operations run smoothly.

The Easiest Administrative Task to Delegate…

For anyone looking to add more time to their days (who isn’t?!), partnering with a Virtual Assistant is definitely the way to go.

Before this process starts, the potential client (that would be you) often has a ton of questions about how it all works. There is a lot of information about this in the blog archives here, take a look and see what questions we may have addressed already.

Get Dozens of Skills With One Virtual Assistant

There are so many benefits to working with a Virtual Assistant. One of those is that in most cases you get a lot more brains than one!

No, Virtual Assistants aren’t two-headed creatures, but most are very well connected through the VA networking forums they frequent.

Let me explain.

If you wanted to hire one employee who could maintain your website, manage your bookkeeping, design brochures, draft up sales letters and maintain your filing how much do you suppose you would pay that person if he or she did indeed exist?

What’s The Worst Question You Can Ask a Virtual Assistant?

Easy…

“Can you send me a resume?”

Even though people ask this question to VAs all the time, as a general group, we don’t like it.

I think it’s because it means we’re being thought of as employees. Remember, administrative assistants don’t get paid very well and often have to take a lot of orders and abuse from bosses. When we leave that world to start our own businesses we want to leave that world far far away! Being asked for a resume is something that happens when you apply for a job, not when someone approaches you looking to hire a contractor.

Make a Plan Before Working With a Virtual Assistant

When you think you’re ready to choose a Virtual Assistant to start taking care of your administrative headaches, there are some things you should do on your end to make things a bit easier for everyone.

The most important thing you can do before you get into a contact with a VA is to clearly lay out everything you would like to delegate so you know what you want done and it will be easier for your VA to dig right in and start working.

What Did You Waste Energy On Today?

I’m willing to bet you did at least one thing today that you either rolled your eyes over or had to take a deep breath to get through. Could have been faxing an email, organizing your receipts, typing up a letter or coming up with content for a newsletter. Maybe you’re the type that hates returning phone calls or updating your blog.

How many administrative tasks did you do today that could have been outsourced to a Virtual Assistant? Or more importantly, how many administrative tasks did you not do today that could have been outsourced to a Virtual Assistant?! ;)

Please Don’t Paint Us All With The Same Brush!

Because Virtual Assistants are a relatively new concept to many people with this industry being so young, there are a lot of challenges we face on a pretty regular basis. Let me share a story with you.

I attended a small tradeshow about a year ago which was sponsored by a local business women’s group. I was walking around doing the networking thing when I noticed there was a VA exhibiting. I thought that was very interesting because at that time, I thought I was the only Virtual Assistant in my province. I was looking at her booth waiting to chat with her and couldn’t help but overhear the conversation she was having with another booth visitor. I heard the lady ask her what she did and she went on to tell her that she was a Virtual Assistant.

The Importance of Personality

Far more important than rates and almost equally important as skill when selecting a Virtual Assistant, is personality.

If you need website updates, assistance with your Internet marketing efforts and database management, you can find handfuls of VAs that provide those services and most will fall within the same price range.

How do you choose after you’ve narrowed it down to a couple?

How Important are Testimonials?

As you browse through Virtual Assistant websites you will find that many of them will feature testimonials received from satisfied clients. That can make it easy for you to make a decision if you are having trouble deciding between the VAs who have made your short list. But, what if someone you’re interested in doesn’t have a ton of glowing testimonials? Should you discount them?

Absolutely not!