What is a Virtual Assistant?

Simply put, a virtual assistant is an independent professional who provides critical support services to businesses and entrepreneurs from a remote environment. Virtual assistants, or VAs, are highly-skilled contractors that can help a company with a wide variety of tasks, ranging from administrative and technical to marketing and even creative work. By taking care of essential, recurring, and at times tedious tasks, virtual assistants free up a manager’s time so that he or she can focus on growing the company and generating revenue.

In other words, a virtual assistant can vastly improve productivity.

Most entrepreneurs and small business owners wear multiple hats while taking care of all their business’s needs and wind up feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of daily tasks on their to-do list. This type of daily stress can lead to burnout, the mental exhaustion brought on by prolonged stress. Managers often find themselves drowning in details and minutia, zapping them of the energy they need to innovate and build. Virtual assistants are rapidly becoming a small business life-saver by offering overworked business owners specialized skill-sets, flexibility, and an inexpensive option to getting the job done.

WHAT CAN VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS DO?

Virtual assistants are integrated into existing workflows or can be hired to help establish or streamline systems within a business. By focusing on specific sections of a company’s operations, VAs unburden time-constrained managers. Tasks typically outsourced to a virtual   assistant include, but are not limited to:

• Daily office functions like making/receiving phone calls
• Appointment scheduling
• Calendar management
• Making travel arrangements
• Managing email accounts
• Blog writing
• Bookkeeping
• Social media engagement and scheduling
• Graphic design
• Website content management and design services
• Marketing services
• Research
• Project coordination
• Event management
• Customer Relations Management (CRM) / Database support

Business owners also utilize virtual assistants to employ niche-specific skills to help business owners in specialized career fields like real estate transactions, medical coding or transcription, paralegal work, and accounting.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Virtual assistants are hired based on the specific needs and requirements of the business or entrepreneur. A VA can be brought on as a part-time or full-time employee, paid on an hourly basis, or contracted project-by-project as needs arise. 

VAs often run their own business out of their home, taking on clients and projects as they arise and fit within their self-managed schedule. Virtual assistants can also be part of an agency like Freedom Makers. Companies like Freedom Makers maintain a pool of talented, vetted VAs. They attract businesses and entrepreneurs who have identified the need for a virtual assistant and then serve as a matchmaker, finding the best-qualified person for the job that needs to get done. 

In both cases, a virtual assistant typically files as a 1099 worker. Business owners do not have to pay the same taxes they would for a full-time employee or provide employee benefits like medical or dental healthcare or paid vacation leave. Entrepreneurs only pay for the work completed by the virtual assistant as agreed upon at the beginning of the relationship. Due to fluctuating cash flows, most small business owners find this arrangement to be far more cost-effective than bringing an employee into a traditional office environment. Not having to provide physical office space, desks, computers, etc., helps keep overhead low.

THE REMOTE OFFICE

A virtual assistant works offsite, often from their own home, and typically provides and pays for their own computer equipment, software programs, and internet service. Managers provide virtual assistants the privileges and passwords they need to access shared documents, calendars, spreadsheets, the backside of websites, etc., remotely. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the technological advances that allow remote work to be more seamless than ever, but VAs have been successfully contributing to nearly every industry for years.   

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

A virtual assistant must have both soft skills and technical aptitude in order to be successful. Strong communication skills are a must. VAs must be reliable, accountable, execute definitive decision-making, and have stellar organizational skills. Virtual assistants should be self-starters and have a love of learning to remain competitive and adapt to constantly changing software platforms and applications.

Virtual assistants must know or learn the tools available to make working from a remote location possible in today’s fast-moving business environment. These technical skills include:

• Scheduling apps like Calendly, Google Calendar, Honeybook, etc.
• File sharing apps like Google Suite, Dropbox, Huddle, etc.
• Communication and collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, DocuSign, etc.
• Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, etc.
• Graphic image development tools like Canva, PicMonkey, etc.
• Project management tools like Asana, monday.com, Trello, Basecamp, etc.

Virtual assistants must always be willing to level up their knowledge and skill-set by constantly and consistently training and learning new platforms and upgrades to systems on their own time. In this way, they stay competitive and adaptive to the changing needs of today’s businesses and industries. 

DECIDING TO HIRE A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT

When looking to hire a virtual assistant, business owners should decide what tasks they would like to outsource and then assess how a VA could best serve their needs. Freedom Makers provides a free task audit on their website to help small businesses decide if a virtual assistant is right for them and how the VA would best fit into their business. This valuable tool helps managers determine if they want their VA simply to execute pre-determined tasks or if a more fluid, creative relationship is preferable. In either case, clear communication is always a critical part of any virtual assistant’s job, as is remaining flexible and adaptive to the changing needs of the business or manager.

In Conclusion

Managers and entrepreneurs have been utilizing virtual assistants for years. They are flexible, talented, and skilled individuals who work to lessen the burdens small business owners face while running and growing their companies. A less expensive option to get various types of jobs done, VAs are rapidly becoming a priceless, invaluable part of nearly every industry in today’s modern world.