Introduction paragraph
Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you decide what’s right for you
Is your business where you want it to be?
Introduce idea of a roadmap. Encourage reader to think back to startign their busienss – did they have a vision? Has the vision changed? Where are they on the roadmap to that vision?
Maybe the reader is so overwhelmed that they don’t even have a vision anymore – they’re just too busy dealing with BAU stuff. A business without a vision is like a something without a something. Why are they working so hard to just tread water?
How much is your time worth to you?
Take five minutes to jot down a list of the things you did yesterday. Are these the things you thought you’d be doing when you started your business? Do you enjoy them or are they just things that NEED to be done. Let’s say you spend an hour a day on admin – an hour of your working day is HUGE. If you value your time at 100 pounds an hour (for the sake of round numbers) – you could save yourself 70 pounds an hour by getting a VA to do it for you. So you’ve saved 70 pounds and also you now have an hour to spend on strategy and growing your business
So what can you realistically outsource to a VA?
There are so many different types of VAs out there that this list could go on for pages and pages – rather than search for a VA and THEN think about what to oursource, think about what you want to outsource and THEN find the right VA with the right specialisms. Most VAs will have a bunch of services to offer with some key specialisms. To give you an idea of the sort of things you can outsource, here is a list of the most common VA services on offer out there
- Traditional admin – most VAs offer traditional admin support as their base. This will include all those things that a traditional PA or secretary would do, such as scheduling meetings, document transcription, inbox cleansing, file management.
- Travel VA – some VAs specialise in travel planning. Hotel and flight bookings, car hire, location research, VISA assistance
- Events VAs – either online or physical. specialist Events VAs come in many shapes and sizes. Some will take on full ownership of an event from planning through to post event reporting and some take on more of a support role – but most will do both, it all depends on what you as the client want. But either way – you can remove a lot of event planning headaches by hiring a VA to help you.
- Bookkeeping VA – bookkeeping is usually offered as part of a larger retainer package. A Bookkeepign VA has to be qualified and registered so be careful to make sure that’s all in place to avoid any issues. If you need a book keeper – why not get a qualified book keepign VA who can do a bunch of other stuff as wella s the book keepign?
- Tech VAs
- Web Support VAs
- Business support VAs
- OBMs and DBMS
The art of delegation
So you may be thinking – yes all this is great, Clare, but how do I actually find the time to delegate this stuff and make sure it’s done properly.
Picking the right VA – ask them what is their onboarding process – most VAs will be fully prepared to dive deep into your business and help you with the delegation process if you’re just too stuck.
It’s not that difficult and also you don’t need to delegate everything at once – start o