How to ensure hiring a freelance Virtual Assistant adds to your bottom line!

As a busy entrepreneur or small business owner, if you are spending more time working IN rather than ON your business, the time may be right to engage a freelance Virtual Assistant.

The beauty of this resource option is that you do not have the headache or overheads of hiring an employee. You are simply outsourcing tasks that are not adding to your bottom line (or perhaps your sanity!).

Hiring a freelance Virtual Assistant should always result in adding to your bottom line because they free you up to work on the high value tasks that allow you to grow your business. You can also hire a Virtual Assistant who specialises, for instance, in social media content creation.

Virtual Assistants provide support from a remote location so you don’t need to have office space for them. It really doesn’t matter where you are both based. You could even employ a Virtual Assistant in another time zone so you can brief a project at the end of your day and have it waiting for you when you wake up!

Choosing the right Virtual Assistant for your business and getting them up and running as fast as possible is key to how quickly you can focus more on what's important. So here's how you do it.

Know what you want to use them for

Before you even reach out to a Virtual Assistant ensure you know exactly what you want them to do. If you regularly spend time on tasks that are not adding to your bottom line then you would absolutely benefit from hiring a Virtual Assistant.

Make a note of everything you do that you could outsource to a Virtual Assistant (including things you could train them to do). Also note how long you spend on these tasks.

Virtual Assistants often specialise in certain areas (I’m all about admin and P.A. support myself, I LOVE it) but many can (depending on what services they offer) organise your inbox, monitor your emails and respond (as directed by you), monitor your social media, blog, etc. and moderate comments, document your processes, schedule your appointments, carry out online research for you, proofread, project manage, invoice your customers and chase payments (definitely not an exhaustive list, we get up to all sorts!). We basically get things done!

Decide whether you want admin/P.A. support or do you need a specialist in a certain area? You could even have one general Virtual Assistant and another for a more specialist area (as you only pay them for the work they do).

Know how much of their focused time you need

You can hire a Virtual Assistant by the hour, for a particular project or for ongoing support (e.g. by retainer to secure a certain number of hours per month).

If you want someone who is always available when you need them then you probably need an employee. Virtual Assistants have several clients to take care of so will be unable to guarantee that they will always be available immediately.

I used the expression “focused time” above deliberately because you only pay for the work a Virtual Assistant actually does, so when I put the kettle on it’s on my time (which is just as well as I drink a lot of tea!). I track my time and include the report with my invoice.

Expect to put some time into the relationship to start with

This is obviously only the case where you are hiring ongoing support. For instance, I am always happy to take on one-off projects but I really love to support entrepreneurs and small businesses for the longer term as I enjoy getting to know my clients and their businesses and really making a difference to their day to day.

It therefore pays dividends in the longer term to spend time educating your Virtual Assistant about your business and how you like to work.

Resist micromanaging

Ensure you are very clear in your project briefs and remember why you hired them (so you can focus on adding to your bottom line). If you feel you have to micromanage then you either have the wrong Virtual Assistant or an issue to address within yourself. Put clear agreements in place as to how and how often you would like to be updated on the status of tasks (this can be done online via tools such as Trello or Airtable for instance).

Task updates & communication

There are lots of communication and project management tools that can be used that will make it easy to keep in touch and manage tasks and projects. Have an 11pm brainwave? Just pop into the project management software and add some notes for your Virtual Assistant to see the next day.

Encourage your Virtual Assistant to value add

Many Virtual Assistants have years of experience in various industries and roles. Encourage your Virtual Assistant to add value to the relationship by making suggestions anywhere they see an improvement might be made. Virtual Assistants have their own business too so they fully appreciate your pain points.

Having taken the time to think about exactly what support you need and how much will make it so much easier for you to find the right person to work with and ensure that you can get on with adding to your bottom line as quickly as possible. Good luck!

Yolanda is a freelance Virtual Assistant who loves to lighten the load for busy entrepreneurs and small businesses.