I have recently had a lot of questions on what a Virtual Assistant is, and what a Virtual Assistant does? I am here to help you understand that. Being a business owner has its everyday challenges. How many times a day do you find yourself saying, “I need another one of me”? Here is some helpful information to help you understand what a Virtual Assistant is and what they do.

What does Virtual Mean?

Virtual Means working from an offsite location. They are not located in your office. This person can also be in another state.

How is this managed with someone not in my office?

Today’s technology makes this very easy to manage. The internet allows this person access to your company or computer just like a person on your staff would. Your assistant can also make calls and receive calls as requested.

Is this safe?

This is all very safe. If you feel the need, you and your assistant can work up a contract agreement. If you have a large company you may allow your assistant to remote into another computer to work. Or you and your IT company put together another remote access point.

What type of Assistant are they? Who do they assist?

This person assists you with your daily tasks. The process is just like hiring someone to be in your office. The difference is they are subcontracted, and work from a home office. Depending on the structure you could have this Virtual Assistant help you with work and personal tasks.

What types of assistants are out there?

The list of assistant is very long, your most common are:

– Administrative Assistant

– HR Assistant

– Doctor’s Assistant

– Marketing Assistant

What types of tasks can a Virtual Assistant help me with?

Think of it this way, If the task can be handled via phone or internet and does not need direct physical interaction, your assistant can handle it. It could be anywhere from rescheduling a doctor’s appointment to managing your email and calendar with clients. Typical everyday tasks that take you away from being your best, are tasks that a Virtual Assistant can handle.

The biggest question might be how much do they cost and how is this safe? Your VA does come with an hourly rate, However you do not pay them by the hour you pay them by the minute. For example your VA charges $15.00 an hour. Your VA will use a software program that tracks their check in and check out time on the task. This is taking that $15.00 and dividing that time into the time spent. Using a VA is perfectly normal, and safe. They are held to the same confidentiality as your staff. Believe it or not your VA has the same concerns when starting with you for the first time. Assistants have agreements they can offer you, or you can give them one.

Using apps like Lastpass allows you to give your assistant access to websites and accounts without giving them actual passwords and credit card information. When delegating permissions to view emails it’s best to do in Gmail. Gmail allows them to be delegated, leaving the control of the email in your hands. There are many more apps and programs that are free that protect you and your assistant.

Are you someone who misses appointment, or schedules over appointments. A Virtual Assistant will keep you on track and on time. Over Scheduling and cancelling appointments will set you up for failure. What good are you if clients and employees can’t trust you? In today’s world, we are provided with so many different types of technology to help us be productive. There are no more excuses for over scheduling, or pushing important off meetings with staff, and clients. I always say work smarter not harder. Here are some tips to make you more productive, and save you time every day.

1) Hire a Virtual Assistant to go through your calendar and manage your appointments. This person can cost $15.00/hr. or less. Ask yourself this question, if you have 5 people asking you for 30 minutes of your time each day, how much time are you spending in answering their questions? Most likely your answer was 30 minutes or more a day. Forward those requests to your Virtual Assistant, they can look at your schedule and coordinate this for you. Now you don’t have to waste your brain power thinking about it. Focus on something more important.

2) Set up an account with https://calendly.com The service is free if you use the basic. You can add this to your email signature for easy access. Those people who want to barrow some of your time can schedule you themselves. It looks at your calendar and automatically pulls up free blocks of time for people to select. Use this service with a Virtual Assistant works great, and saves you a lot of time.

3) Give your personal Virtual Assistant access to your email account. They will go through your emails and mark what is important, File documents for you, respond to quick emails, and schedule your appointments. There are ways of setting up security, Gmail offers great options for this.

4) Do you travel a lot? Use Lastpass.com to store your credit card, login, and password information. You can send invites to your Virtual Assistant to set you up flights, and hotels easily. This allows them to book your flights and hotels without having your login, passwords, or even your credit card information. You can use this also for other sites that need login and passwords too. Easy to use.

5) Are you missing appointments? Sign up for a Uber Conference at https://uberconference.com. Set up your conference calls with your staff, or your clients anytime. This helps bring the teams together to discuss projects. The service also includes an email address so you can share computer screens. They have a Free version if you would like to try this out. This especially works great if you have staff in other locations. You can always use this to train your Virtual Assistant as well. Most likely your Virtual Assistant is not located in your area.

These are just a few of the many ways a Virtual Assistant can help you be more productive. Don’t be that person who cancels appointments all the time. Make time for those clients and employees. Owning a business is a big deal and you don’t have to go at it alone. Put the right support behind you to line the success in front of you.

I thought I would get a little off topic on this post and talk about budgeting. Budgeting is for everyone, and it is important that married couples get on the same page with the budgeting. You hear all too often “I work my butt off and have no money to show for it”. This is true but only to a point. You have to remember those things you signed up for, like car payments, credit cards, mortgages and rent. You signed a dotted line at one point for these responsibilities. I am in the category of a “stay at home mom”. I do work from home, but my main responsibility is my child and house tasks so my husband can work and enjoy his days off of work. This is a hard position for me because I have always worked as well as my husband and we both shared the money responsibility. Now the tables have turned and our main argument is WHY IS THERE NO MONEY? For those of you who know this argument all to well it builds in to more unnecessary arguing and ruins the day.

I was tired of the same fight week after week, and day after day so I started a basic excel spreadsheet that lists all of our bills and shows when they are due. I then put in the dates he was paid and the amounts of those checks (estimated if not a set pay).I built under those pay dates the list of bills. This was great it showed we had money left over on every check. The problem…. We are still broke, how is this possible? So I continued to do more research on what I was doing wrong. In order to have a successful budget you need to be in-depth with your spending and include, gas allowance, tobacco allowance, bank fee’s, etc. Doesn’t seem like much does it? It all adds up and there was my problem. Here is my example; I was spending $60 every other week in gas. Now take that and multiply it by two weeks that’s $120 dollars I wasn’t accounting for. How about my husband who spends $10.99 for energy drinks and chew every morning, doesn’t seem like much does it? Take that over 30 days and its $329.70 dollars a month I wasn’t accounting for. No wounder we are broke. Right there I just showed a $450 dollar a month miss, just think of everything else I am missing.

Once I got our budget under control and was able to grasp our spending habits, I was able to share this with my husband. It’s important for you and your spouse to know and actually see the numbers and were you stand. By creating a budget and getting my husband on the same page here is what started to happen with our relationship.

1. We discussed our budget on a weekly basis. We were communicating about something that we used to fight over. Whats a “WOW” feeling. Especially if you have children in the house, it’s a way to communicate like adults. Something stay at home moms appreciate.

2. It built trust. He trusts what I am doing and that I am spending the money wisely and vise versa.

3. We are able to reconcile the previous errors and learn from our reckless spending habits. When we talk about the future and things we want like new vehicles or new house. We both know without question where we have to be to get to those goals.

4. We have reason to celebrate. We can now afford our child’s birthday, or a vacation, or a simple anniversary dinner now. We don’t fret over what we missed in the budget because it’s already accounted for.

5. We have our independence now and we have our dependence on each other. We have those things in our budget that allow us to go get hair done or go buy a season pass for the golf course. These are great ways to keep your independence while depending on each other to carry their roles.

6. Most importantly it makes us great parents together. We can now teach our child the same determination and the right levels of spending together. This helps especially if you have a child that thinks they get something every time they go to a store.

Once you have started your budget together you will start collaborating about things you want to cut back on and things you want to add. It does take several months to get a handle on the budget and get it tweaked to fit you. You’ll be surprised by the results, and how you will finally be able to have an allowance individually and together. You will finally have money again, what a great feeling it will be. If you would like examples on how to set up your first spreadsheet you can visit http://www.excel-easy.com/examples/budget.html. Or you can email me at JDsolutions.va@gmail.com and I can send you the template that I use.

Are you wearing too many hats as a entrepreneur? Do you find yourself needing a hand, but you don’t have the means to hire someone? As an Entrepreneur you are the business, you are what makes the money and keeps the lights on. You don’t have to be the superhero and wear yourself thin. There are simple tasks that tie you up every day that you could outsource for a very small fee. You would be shocked at the price to have a Virtual Assistant. Now, not all VA’s can handle anything and everything. It’s important to look at their skills and what they are specialized in. You may find some that are really good a graphic designs, but they can’t help you with any accounting functions. It all just depends on what type of assistant your looking for.

Below, I have listed some basic task that as a business owner you can let go and hand off to a Virtual Assistant.

1. Email management
2. Appointment setting
3. Follow up with clients sending emails, cards, etc.
4. Calendar management
5. Electronic file management
6. Database building
7. Travel arrangements
8. Research
9. Typing projects such as meeting minutes
10. Report building
11. Powerpoint presentations
12. Social media management
13. Searching for work opportunites
14. Advertising
15. Answering phones
16. Creating and managing spreadsheets
17. Formatting forms and converting to PDF
18. Supply ordering for your office
19. Voicemail checking daily
20. Client invoicing
21. Collecting outstanding invoices
22. Data entry

The list can go on and on but, the point is these are simple tasks that are taking up your time and taking you away from the things that you need to focus on. By finding yourself a VA this will free up some time for you to meet with clients or attend marketing events, it could even mean freeing your time so you can attend your child’s soccer game. Keep in mind that your VA isn’t someone who has to be in your same town, these are people working to operate a business just like you are but they work remotely from anywhere in the United States. There is a chance that as you read this your thinking I really don’t have that much stuff for a Virtual Assistant to do. Virtual Assistance don’t mind if you have a task for them that is 10 minutes a day every day, or 3 hours a week. They have built their business up to help you with your business.

– Reduce your labor costs.
By using a Virtual Assistant {VA} you are able to lower you labor costs. You won’t have to stress over the payroll taxes, insurance, or stress about any employee benefit packages like vacation days, and 401K. When you hire a VA your hiring subcontractor labor.

– Service when you need it.
Your personal VA is an on-call employee who is there when you need them on your clock. This means you don’t need to worry about having to lay someone off when times are slow. Your VA can be available to you on a full time or part time basis. You’re only paying for the time used no matter how often you need them.

– Spend the time to get your tasks done.
It’s no secret that there are boring, and dragged out tasks that get overlooked, and pushed to the back burner simply because you don’t have time to do them. By having a VA they can take these tasks and complete them so they are no longer lingering over your head. Get on with what your responsibilities are.

– Saved overhead expenses
If your business doesn’t require you to have an office, then don’t. Your VA will work from their home office. You can still direct your clients to your VA for questions just like if you had an actual office. Don’t spend the thousands of dollars on rented space to house an employee and office equipment. Your VA will have an office fully equipped with the necessary tools needed to complete the work needed.

– Your the face of your business
You need to focus on building your business and making appearances. You’ll be able to spend your time with clients and let the VA do the paperwork. Your VA has the skills to do your entries, billings, scheduling, etc. faster. Leave the office work to the office.

As a business owner I know the importance of getting work done in a timely fashion and making sure it’s accurate. I expect that my reputation in this business will suppress me. Running a business to business (B2B) operation, I can’t be successful if I am not helping you be successful. My time is dedicated to you and only you.