Too much work, and not enough time?
Solution = outsource
Most people are used to outsourcing some element of their work, this may be their companies Payroll, or perhaps at home you enlist the services of a cleaner, all to free up your time to allow you to focus on building your business and doing the things you enjoy. But would you consider outsourcing your administration, bookkeeping, even your social media support? There are many, many qualified, experienced people out there willing to take on a variety of tasks, calling themselves a ‘Virtual Assistant’.
So you have a new project, or you need to conduct market research, perhaps you require help with system implementation, or even keeping financial and admin records up to date. Are you drowning under a heap of paper records?
How are you going to find the time to fit all this in with everything else? You need to focus your time on your business, therefore you need more resource to work for your business.
OK, who should I outsource to?
One option would be to hire an employee, but this brings additional costs in PAYE, pension, training, new starter admin. You may only require someone to work a few hours a week, or on an ad hoc basis.
Consider hiring a Virtual Assistant, or a VA as more commonly known. A VA is a self employed specialist who will work for an agreed number of hours, either weekly, monthly, or on an ad hoc basis. Some VA’s also offer project based services. Now the difficult task, how do you identify what work a VA could do for you?
What work could I pass to a VA?
How do I know what is taking up my time?
Complete this simple task to highlight specific areas you could outsource:
- Grab a pen, paper and three different colour highlighters
- Write down everything you do over the next week.
- Highlight in one colour anything only you , or someone specialised for example your Account, can do.
- Highlight in another colour those tasks you feel you may be able to hand over to someone else, but at a later date.
- Highlight everything else in a third colour. You have now identified a list of tasks a VA could help you with immediately.
The list of services offered by Virtual Assistants is always increasing. Most have an area of specialism, for example Book-keeping, social media support, email management, lifestyle management – the list goes on.
Fantastic, I’ve identified what I can outsource.
But where do I find these super efficient VA’s?
You will find VA’s via search engines, at various networking meetings, or even on LinkedIn and Facebook.
A good Virtual Assistant will save you time and money.
Contact me to discuss how Smith Virtual Assistant could help you get back valuable hours from your working day
