Business owners, CEOs, and executives have busy schedules. In addition to running their enterprises and making strategic choices, they have personal lives which include tedious yet mundane tasks.
Having a personal assistant is an undeniable sign of success for many business owners, executives, entrepreneurs, and even freelancers. They have achieved enough success in their lives that they can outsource some of their least preferred duties in addition to personal responsibilities. Personal assistants help people remain on track and avoid being pulled in several directions.
Many business leaders have commonly hired personal assistants to offer administrative help on-site. However, significant technological advancements, high labor costs in many big cities, and disruptions such as the COVID-19 outbreak have made hiring virtual assistants or (VAs) more feasible and cost-effective. In addition, personal assistants are expensive.
What is a Virtual Personal Assistant?
Virtual personal assistants are highly trained professionals that offer administrative, technical, and creative help to clients online. These professionals are also often referred to as remote executive assistants.
Personal assistants are supposed to help executives and company managers with small tasks that take up a lot of time. Leaders should spend their time on important tasks that only they can do. Personal assistants help them with time-consuming tasks that do not need their leadership skills.
Personal assistants or PAs are usually assigned a range of tasks. From picking up the coffee and laundry to answering phone calls, managing correspondence, scheduling appointments, and making travel arrangements. If you need help in person, like picking up mail, making copies, or running errands that require you to be there, a personal assistant may be the way to go. But if you need an assistant who can take care of business tasks and keep your workload under control so you can focus on other projects, a virtual personal assistant is the way to go.
First, let us clear the concept that a virtual assistant is limited to administrative tasks and not as capable as a personal assistant. Here are some of the most common things you can delegate to a virtual personal assistant:
Phone call management and personal tasks
As a virtual personal assistant, it is inevitable to cover a number of personal tasks like accepting your calls on your behalf, making them, and acting as your eyes and ears in the world while you focus on other things. This is ideal for anybody who wants to take time off for relaxing weekends or extended trips while being connected in business in case of an urgent matter.
Unexpected small business miscellaneous
Does your business involve a podcast that needs help? Do you hate working with customer support? Do you need to learn how to work in a new time zone to stay in touch with global customers? Hiring someone who works more like a freelancer than a full-time worker is a great way to make sure you have everything you need to make your daily life as uncomplicated as possible.
Focused research
Research is a time-consuming undertaking that often requires the hiring of devoted professionals. Whether you are looking for answers to some very complicated questions or want to find the best sushi restaurants or a list of the top 50 most successful real estate agents in San Francisco, your virtual personal assistant can use both online and offline sources to do the research and put together the information you need.
Expense management and bookkeeping
A virtual personal assistant can work with the software to keep track of your expenses and match expenses to agreed-upon dates and approved accounting codes. If bookkeeping is the help you need most, a virtual personal assistant can organize your daily expenses into manageable labels, pay bills on time, create and send invoices to clients, collect payments, and keep an eye on how much money you are making versus how much you’re spending. They can also help with payroll and send you weekly reports that show where your money is going.
Organizing and managing events
Do you have a private or business event coming up that you would want a professional event planner to help you plan? All parts of the event, including vendor management, budgeting, personnel management, and logistics management, may be managed by a virtual personal assistant.
Proofreading and copy editing
Do you need press releases, blog posts, emails, or other text checked and edited by a professional? Your virtual personal assistant may proofread and edit your professional correspondence to ensure that they are clear, respectful, and free of grammatical, spelling, and syntactical problems. Your creative team and virtual personal assistant work together to guarantee that each of your written communications is professional and articulate.
Here are some other specific tasks you can ask your virtual personal assistant to do for you:
- Meet milestones by coordinating projects.
- Look at travel websites to find your next cheap dream vacation.
- Record and transcribe your meetings.
- Manage your schedule so you don’t overbook yourself.
- Order birthday/anniversary gifts for your loved ones
- Find a reliable dog walker to take your puppy for a walk when you’re working late.
- Schedule Facebook posts for your business so that customers and potential leads will remember you.
- Order the things you need from Amazon, and they will magically show up at your door.
- Make sure all of the information is in your CRM so you do not miss out on sales.
- Do small data entry jobs.
- Contact influencers/bloggers to help promote your new product or service.
Hiring a highly skilled and experienced virtual personal assistant through VALUE Virtual Assistants lets you give less important but time-consuming tasks to trained and trusted professionals. This lets you keep your mind on the things that really matter to you, like your business, your goals, and your family. Work-life balance is very important if you want to stay on top of your game.
Are you already convinced? Take the first step and hire a virtual personal assistant by booking a free 15-minute consultation with us.
