One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard was, once you start to make a profit in your business, use that money and pay someone else to do the things you don’t have to.
When you’re running your own business, it’s easy to think that you have to do everything yourself. You can easily become a martyr to yourself. There’s no one there to suggest hiring someone else or outsourcing work. But by doing so, you can actually increase your productivity and boost your revenue.
Here are some things you can use a virtual assistant for:
1. Bookkeeping
There is no reason that you have to send out your own invoices. Most people I know are far better off hiring a VA to help them with invoices, keeping track of receipts and filing quarterly tax statements. You don’t have to spend your precious time making sure that every mile is accounted for.
You can also buy bookkeeping software to at least make that job easier for you, if you insist on doing it yourself. Sending and accounting for invoices can be time-consuming, frustrating and often redundant. There’s no reason you should spend hours doing that kind of work when you can be meeting with clients, creating new content or brainstorming about new ways to increase revenue.
2. Responding to emails
It’s so easy to hire a virtual assistant for the most mundane of tasks. Checking and responding to emails is something that a VA can help with you. The more you grow your business, the more difficult it can be to resist checking your email every hour. Doing so can slow down your productivity and keep you from focusing on what’s really important, instead of what the client is worried about.
Having a VA who can read and respond to emails can make sure that you focus on what you have to get done, while knowing that anything super crucial will be brought to your attention. You can help create blanket responses to people interested in hiring you so you’re not repeating yourself every time.
3. Social media and marketing
You don’t have to be a genius to schedule social media posts and do grassroots marketing for a small business. Hiring a VA to schedule tweets, promote blog posts and connect with other people can be a great way to free yourself up without sacrificing an important aspect of marketing.
If you hire someone competent, you can have them trained to write blog posts for you, develop new ways to interact with clients online and host live-chats – all while you’re doing the work that only you can do.
That’s the biggest reason people need virtual assistants. There’s a lot of work that only you can do, but there’s also a lot of work that has to be done for your business. If you outsource the work that doesn’t have to be done by you, then you can grow your business exponentially faster. There’s no reason to think that you should be doing everything. Nothing bad will happen if you miss out on a tweet or Facebook comment. Hire the right person and watch your business grow.
