You are finding yourself trying to juggle everything in your business, this resulting in pulling you away from working in your genius zone, doing the things you love and are best at doing. When you do find yourself struggling with time, focusing on generating more business or revenue can become extremely challenging. This is where outsourcing becomes your next ‘must-do’ step.
Outsourcing is where you can hire someone externally, a virtual assistant, to do certain tasks in your business. You can create a team of resources around you to manage various tasks or functions. Often business owners feel they should just hire one virtual assistant, which is fine but don’t limit yourself to feel you should have just one.
A virtual assistant is basically a business owner operating from a remote location, generally their home, providing the services you need. With the digital world we live in and the constant revolving technology, you can pretty much do everything from your own desk and have virtual assistants support you from their desk. Entrepreneurs around the globe have teams operating for their business from various countries, provide 24/7 support if needed.
Where to start?
The best way to start outsourcing is to delegate a task you do regularly and know all the ins and outs of completing. This will give you the guide of what expectations you have and the timeframe it takes you to do it. Idealistically, those you’re outsourcing it to should be confident in completing the task at the same or faster time than you.
Some of the types of tasks you can outsource are:
- Email Management
- CRM Management
- Handling customer service – telephones and emails
- Event management
- Calendar and appointment management
- Travel scheduling
- Social media & Community management
- Blogging
- Course Creation support
- Website Builds and updates
- Newsletters
- Typing
- Graphics
- Ebook creations / Presentations
- Drafting documents or email sequences
- Setting up scheduling systems
- Setting up and managing webinars
The list goes on. There isn’t much you can’t get help with these days.
All virtual assistants have different skill ranges, so you may decide to have several on your team and have them all focus on different areas.
Another reason to outsource is for specialised skills that you may not have yourself, such as copyrighting, SEO or specific programs, like Mailchimp, Aweber, Ontraport.
Virtual assistants rates range between $30-$70 in Australia. You pay for the experience and skills. It’s important to remember, if your hourly rate for coaching clients is $200 and you’re paying a virtual assistant $50 an hour, you’re still pocketing $150 and you’re not wasting your valuable time on tasks that would be costing you $200 an hour.
One of the essential elements to making a great working relationship with your virtual assistant is communication. Ensure they understand what your request is, when the deadlines are due and what you expect to get back from them. Don’t’ be afraid to ask for an estimate on the time it will take to get the job done if you’re worried it will be lengthy. The last thing you want to do is be caught by surprise with expensive bills.
If you are sourcing a virtual assistant just for a project, ask for a quote for the project. You may need to pay half upfront and the rest on completion but at least you won’t be surprised by unexpected costs.
When you find a virtual assistant, you are confident with using, then you can start outsourcing more and more tasks to them. A virtual assistant wants to be a valued member of your team, as much as you need them.
I have a virtual team and would like to introduce you to one of my team members Anne Clark. Anne is a virtual assistant/online business manager who operates in the online business management, working with clients supporting them with project management from newsletters (a Mailchimp expert), blogging, website updates, automation, social media and more.
What makes our working relationship so effective, is we use an online tool Asana to communicate tasks, I set deadlines and Anne completes the requirements and communicates when completed or raising questions she may have when they arise. This goes for all my team members.
Have your systems in place, set your boundaries and if you don’t have success at first with outsourcing first, look at how you are communicating what you need. If you feel your communication is on point and it still isn’t working out, look for someone else that you will be able to work with you more effectively. I have used quite a few VA’s over the years and I am finally 100% happy with all my team members.
I would love to hear your thoughts...