What Do Virtual Assistants Do, Anyway?

If you’ve read the blog for a while, you know I’m constantly advising you to delegate more, using the power of leverage — but don’t necessarily hire an employee; instead hire an independent contractor "Virtual Assistant."

A true Virtual Assistant owns her (or his, but I’m using her to be pithy) own business & has multiple clients — which lets you avoid dealing with employee tax or other employee admin issues. Yes, they cost a bit more than some kid from the local college, but this makes sense — you are saving money by no employee taxes, admin, or benefits costs — and a VA is theoretically more experienced/skilled.

But working effectively with a Virtual Assistant does not start when you sign the contract. You have to figure out which tasks, or even better, which roles, to delegate to your new staff. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a solo-entrepreneur tell me they hired a VA on retainer but have not yet given them anything to do (for months!).

To give you some ideas, below are some of the tasks/roles delegated to my two primary Virtual Assistants: Read more

Practice Complete Delegation or Don’t Bother

By now, you’ve heard me tell you that you must be delegating; you must be outsourcing your phone calls, emails, bookkeeping, and formatting to a Virtual Assitant, and you must be outsourcing your errands and organizing to a Personal Assistant.  Maybe you’ve tried to follow my advice, but you’ve found that it has not saved that much time overall, because you still have to manage the new person. 

That’s because you have made a grave mistake.  Read more