You have so much to do that you are only doing bits and pieces of each thing and accomplishing nothing. You aren’t alone.

Many business owners believe they have to do it all rather than ask for help, not realizing if they could better manage their time and delegate tasks they could actually save money. I was as guilty of this as some of my clients. It’s doesn’t have to be a difficult step to actually outsource some tasks you really don’t have the time nor the expertise.

Not knowing how to do everything for your business is nothing to be ashamed of. There isn’t a business owner alive who can do it all. In my case it’s bookkeeping. I would like to think I can take care of invoicing, accounts payables and accounts receivables but when I was faced with a controversy with a client I found that I hadn’t kept track as well as I thought I had. Working with a bookkeeper right from the start could have saved me hours of stress that could have been better spent in building my business. I now know that bookkeeping is not one of my strengths. However, I am good at many other things involved in my business and now spend my time on those rather than wasting my time on things I should outsource.

What can a Virtual Assistant help you with?

1.  Managing your schedule – tracking appointments, goals, and tasks.
2.  Screening emails, responding where possible and prioritizing the rest.
3.  Invoicing your clients and taking care of following up with unpaid accounts.
4.  Manage your website updates, blogging and your client lists
5.  Customer service issues – responding in a timely manner
6.  Correspondence – write letters, memos, etc. – ready for signature
7.  Create company forms, marketing material or manage to have it outsourced
8.  Writing a business plan or marketing plan – establishing goals.
9.  Order supplies and arrange for delivery.
10.  Project Management – ensure projects are managed properly to completion.
11.  Design a newsletter and create a monthly campaign.
12.  Establish a social media networking campaign, setting up social networks, posting and setting up a schedule for your involvement.
13.  Creating your logo, business card, stationery and brochures
14.  Manage your affiliates
15.  Help you create a company “Brand” with your signature – establishing an online presence.
16.  Write and publish press releases

The above list is obviously just a small sample of things a Virtual Assistant can do for you while you are operating your business. Remember a VA is virtual and they supply their own work space, equipment and also pay for their own benefits. You only pay for the actual work done. I think it’s pretty obvious that you can only benefit by the assistance of a VA. Quit wasting your time!

                          

It’s really simple if you think about it. While a client is actually paying a Virtual Assistant for their time, and a job being worked on, the client will actually start making money in the process. Okay, how? Let’s say client “A” has a business, his or her focus would be to generate sales for whatever the business is. However, how can client “A” generate these sales when everything else needs to be in place first, and even more than that it is continuous work.    To elaborate further, a VA will insure that a web site is up and running, search engine optimization has been done, a press release has been written, social media marketing is done on a daily basis, a blog is live and active and the list can go on. Who is going to operate all of these things while client “A” is trying to generate and make these sales?

Having a business online today is not exactly the same as it was years ago. Years ago we created a web site and hoped that people would visit us. Of course there was still some prep work that was needed to be done, but today what is needed to get done far exceeds what was needed to do back then, which of course equals to time. Who has that kind of time?  Just looking at the to-do list alone is tiresome all by itself!

So you set out to find your perfect Virtual Assistant to do all of the above, plus more, while you generate those sales that you need to keep your business running; to keep you sane, and also to pay your VA for all of his or her hard work. But remember one thing:while your VA is working the set amount of hours that they’ve been hired for, could be per week, per day, two hours a day, etc, they are alleviating you from doing all of this work that you’d be stuck doing and probably would be taking much longer to do at that. A Virtual Assistant is huge reprieve in the business day when it comes to this extra work that is essential to keeping a web site active.

Think of it as a team effort if you will. Client “A” tells his/her VA exactly what needs to be done, the leads and traffic starts making its way to Clients “A” site.   One sale alone, in some cases, can pay for your VA’s salary for the day, and two sales can bring home the bacon. Now obviously it all depends on what is being sold, but little by little that VA’s salary will be paid for completely by the business over time, plus you will see an increase in traffic and those much needed sales.

Is there a guarantee of sales? There aren’t any guarantees no matter what you do or what business that you are in; however, with two people working on the same goal, just in different capacities, any client has double the power to get on the online track to success.   Double the power might mean double the sales and in most cases more than that, as traffic is generated from all kinds of venues. So don’t think of hiring a VA as an extra expense, think of it as added exposure which leads to income!

                          

Print this list off and tape it to your desk. You just never know when you might have to turn down another opportunity to grow:

1. I’m really not a planner. If I hire a virtual assistant I will have to think about why I have a business and what I want to achieve this year and even 5 five years from now. Otherwise I’m just wasting her time and my money. And that just wouldn’t be fair to either of us.
2. How can I trust a VA with my business? I mean, I’m over here and she’s over there, way over there. How these VAs get any work done without someone looking over their shoulder is beyond me. It’s just not good management. Besides, if I can’t micromanage the details what will I do all day?
3. No one could possibly do it as well as I can. (And the way I do it is quite unlike anything you’ve ever seen.) I started this business because I have something unique and special to offer my adoring public. To think a virtual assistant could step in and competently assist with anything related to marketing or administration is, well, it’s crazy talk.
4. I don’t have time to explain everything to a VA. I’m too mired in paperwork and marketing and answering emails and God-knows-what-else to actually waste an hour or two a month with something as tedious as delegating. And like I said, what I do is complicated. Mysterious in fact.
5. I can’t afford to hire a virtual assistant. Nope, not a single dollar left in my budget for getting the right things done at the right time. Heck, this computer system alone cost me thousands. I’d be nuts to spend another three hundred bucks this month on administration when I could just do it myself for nothing. I mean, the sales aren’t exactly pouring in right now. (Though I’m not sure why.)
6. Bonus Excuse: Maybe next year I’ll think about hiring a VA and getting ahead with my business. Right now I’ve just got too much to do.

There you have it. Six of the most widely used and abused excuses for not outsourcing all the crap that’s getting in your way. Why choose silly things like productivity and purpose when you can defer to much easier choices like chasing your tail and working yourself to the bone?

Don’t let a VA stop you from getting what you really want out of your business. It’s just not worth it.

                          

• Will your outsourcing strategy change? Should it change? Are you missing out on something here?
• What’s more efficient? Crowdsourcing? Outsourcing? Hiring in house? Some combination of the above?
• Is not the traditional “RFP” crowdsourcing? Or does it depend on what community is being targeted?
• Is it crowdsourcing only if it’s online and involves a social community of some sort?

I haven’t read the book (yet!), but perhaps a true “crowdsourcer” is one who will not necessarily go actively looking for a specific type of VA; instead, crowdsourcers might prefer to just throw a post up on Ping.fm once a week and see what comes back.

Although Pinging isn’t really targeting an identifiable crowd, is it?

There are more questions than answers, at least for me, at this point.

There are obvious drawbacks to the throw it at the wall and see what sticks approach. While the response rate may be higher, versus submitting an RFP to VAnetworking.com for example, what will the quality of those responses be?

On the other hand, it might be argued that crowdsourcing will create a sort of self-selection process where the cream rises to the top, because who really knows what the competition is like except that they all follow the same person on Twitter? Or Facebook? Or even subscribe to the crowdsourcer’s blog feed?

Then again, marketing is marketing. As such, like attracts like and maybe crowdsourcing has been here all along but under a different name: outsourcing.

What do you see as the fundamental difference between crowdsourcing and outsourcing? And how will it impact your business as a potential client of Virtual Assistants, if at all?

                          

Semantics is a funny thing in business because on the one hand it’s, well, just semantics. But on the other hand, perception is everything when it comes to how a business is marketed. So, the big question is then: are you more interested in working with freelancers or virtual assistants? If you go searching for one, will you possibly find the other? And if so, is that okay as long as they serve up what you asked for? (And hopefully a little bit more if they’re real keeners.)

Personally, I’ve never paid much attention at all to what my subcontractors call themselves. For the most part, as long they perform the job they tell me they can within the standards I have set, it’s all good. And when it’s not good, well, it’s usually got less to do with the title and more to do with the person, if you know what I mean.

Nevertheless, I was curious how the two might be differently defined. So I hopped onto Google and did a couple quick searches. Note that the definitions I list below are exactly as I found them online:

Googling “what is a virtual assistant” brought up a link to this information:

• A Virtual Assistant is a temporary worker who works for businesses over the internet. The employer may be at a great distance from the assistant. …
  www.cybercitymommies.com/Glossary.html
• A Virtual Assistant (or simply VA), is an independent contractor providing administrative, technical, or sometimes creative assistance to clients …
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual assistant

And Googling “what is a freelancer” brought up a link to this information:

• a self-employed translator or interpreter who works independently directly with the clients and might as well do projects for translation agencies.
  englishrussiantranslations.com/resources/glossary.html
• (freelance worker) is a self-employed person working in a profession or trade in which full-time employment is also common. …
  egjug.org/outsourcing_definitions
• The Nomad ships in-game are comprised of a light blue organic polymer, and then physcially struck produce a strange drum-like reverberating noise.
  www.bionity.com/lexikon/e/Bioship
• Default class. Unlike the Onion Knight in the Famicom version, able to use a wide array of weapons, but can only use level 1 black and white magic.
  www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Final-Fantasy-III-(DS)
• a writer or artist who sells services to different employers without a long-term contract with any of them
  wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• A freelancer or freelance worker is a person who pursues a profession without a long-term commitment to any one employer. …
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer
• Freelancer is a space trading and combat simulation computer game developed by Digital Anvil and published by Microsoft. …
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer (computer game)
• one who freelances
  en.wiktionary.org/wiki/freelancer

Interesting! I could go on all day about the implied differences here along with how those differences might translate for different business scenarios, but alas, I am going to leave that to our loyal Commenters.

What do you think? Would you rather hire a freelancer or a virtual assistant? Or does it truly just depend on the situation? Better still, if you had to choose between a freelance copy editor and a copy editor who calls him or herself a VA, whom would you prefer to work on say, YOUR web copy?

Laters!