Entrepreneurs typically suffer from the Super Hero Syndrome where they think "I can do this myself, why would I pay someone else to do it for me? I can do it just as well as they can!"
Yet over our 11 years in the Virtual Assistant industry, we've worked with thousands of entrepreneurs who suffer from this vary condition -- and I know first hand that it just leads to burnout and frustration.
Here's my favorite way to think about this. If you have a company and you have 2 employees -- your CEO earns $250/hour for high-value tasks that require strategic planning, vision development and business growth. The other employee is paid $30/hour for administrative and operational duties. Would you routinely ask the $250/hour employee, the CEO, to handle administrative duties? That's exactly what you're doing when you don't outsource your work to a Virtual Assistant.
Letting another professional handle the administrative, operational work frees you up to focus on the high-value, strategic planning and growth development tasks in your business.
1) Answering e-mails: This is one of the first tasks that many of our clients let go of. They find value in letting their Virtual Assistant handle important yet non-urgent communication like responses to customer questions.
2) Travel scheduling: An experienced Virtual Assistant knows the travel hacks to get you the best deals, the most desirable schedules -- without you spending half of your day navigating through travel sites
3) Proofreading: It's nearly impossible to spot the errors in your own work.
4) Editing audio/video files: Unless you're an editor yourself, a VA can do this much faster (and cheaper!)
5) Follow up with leads: You've heard that you should reach out to your leads 7-8 times before they make a purchasing decision, and you've been wanting to get around to sending thank you notes and links to case studies...
6) Updating your blog: It's critical for your SEO to keep an updated blog and your VA can regularly post SEO-friendly updates
7) Invoicing: I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs who are perpetually late on sending invoices because they dislike the process so much. Avoid a cash flow crunch by outsourcing this task.
8) Social media: Your VA can stay on top of staying connected to your followers, engaging with your prospects and strategically plugging into industry news
9) Bookkeeping: An experienced bookkeeping Virtual Assistant can reconcile accounts, handle A/P and A/R and make tax season a breeze. Your CPA will thank you!
