Are you afraid of hiring a Virtual Assistant?

How are you from the last time you read my blog?

If you are new, welcome to my blog!

Yes, I am talking to you. You have managed to leave the corporate job that you were in, or maybe you have reached a time in your life when you want to do things on your own, on your own time and be the boss of your own business.

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Is your business, taking you away from the tasks that you love doing?

Stop! Do you really think you can do all of this on your own? Yes, you can but some part of your life will be suffering. Yes, it could be the kids’ game, the husband waiting for you to stop paying more attention to the new business than him, and even you who might have forgotten to take a bath (Yes, I said it).

I was in your shoes; I was working for my clients and trying to build a name for myself. I have learnt—yes, you can build a business on your own, but I soon realized that I cannot do it entirely on my own no matter how hard I try to dedicate 12-14 hours of my day. Some part of my life will be affected.

How a Virtual Assistant will help you today!

Do you know that a virtual assistant can help you? Do you even know what a virtual assistant is? A virtual assistant can provide the additional support that a business needs from everything from administrative support to social media presence.

I will speak on three ways you can hire a Virtual Assistant, whether it’s from a freelancing platform, a job board or A virtual assistant having their own website. With each platform that you choose, they do offer payment from all major payment sites such as Paypal.

Business owners can choose from a vast majority of virtual assistants that specialize in certain areas. You do not need to worry anymore or be panicked because a virtual assistant can provide the minimum technical and administrative support for your business.

What you should know about A Virtual Assistant.

When I first started out, a general virtual assistant starting rate can start from $25-$30 per hour while a specialized VA can start from as much as $75-$100 per hour. Now I am not talking about those third party sites that offer rates that are smaller than those VAs who have established themselves by creating a website or name for themselves.

You have options to choose from, to work with a VA!

There are many ways to hire out for assistance. This can be depending on your budget and which platform you are comfortable with. I started out with Fiverr, which is a freelancing website that starts at $5. There are other freelancing websites that you can hire out from, but you have to join this platform in order to hire these freelancers.

A second option is joining a reputable job board that facilitates different types of virtual assistants. I really liked VAnetworking because this site provided free resources as well as great benefits to start your business. You have to join such a platform in order to hire your first VA and post your specific tasks. Did I also mention that it’s also free to join and post your request when finding the perfect VA for your business?

The last method that you can use is hiring directly from a virtual assistant website. Some key factors to look out for when hiring is to see from other past clients, through their testimonials on the VA site. If none is provided, then a sure way is to ask the virtual assistant to provide a client that has worked with him or her and has no problem in providing a positive feedback.

Another factor is when hiring a virtual assistant through a website, more than likely, a VA will have a contract in place for you to sign and what is expected and how long the task will take to be completed.

Remember, hiring a virtual assistant is the easy part of the process. In most cases, the fear is not knowing what this virtual assistant can do for your business and not being educated enough in this industry. On the next post, I will talk some more on what tasks can be used to start off with when hiring a virtual assistant.

It was nice of you to stop by.

Until then, happy hiring, and best wishes with your business.

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

Photo Credit:Haute Stock

Here’s a quick way to manage your 24 hours

8 / 5 / 16 6 / 15 / 18

How are you from the last time you read my blog?

If you are new, welcome to my blog!

◊This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.◊

So I am a Virtual Assistant and before I was working on a freelancing platform. I was planning on the side to get my business out there and create my website.

How are you managing your 24 hours?

I was doing everything. I was scheduling posts for my social media pages, I was showing up in groups for my ideal clients, and I was even writing my blogs, in addition to also doing clients’ work on a freelancing platform.

OMG, I was heading for a burnout and as a trained Guidance Counsellor who should know better, I knew I should not be doing this because this was going to impact the growth of my business. This was heading towards impacting my clients negatively and them not getting the best services from me.

So I slowed down and with the experience, I learned from some of my clients who were leading busy lives and needed to schedule their time more wisely, I literally stopped and follow suit.

We are each given 24 hours in a day, and how we use it determines if we will be wise with our time or let things we spend most of our time with dictate to us.

Why you MUST invest in a planner or project based platform.

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

I strongly recommend that if we are online business owners, that you invest in a cloud planner or project management based software to manage your tasks. No disrespect to those book planners. My favorite is Asana and because it saves tasks automatically.

I also like using Passion planner for my planning as well; it can be used from your computer or be printed if you so desire. I also think if you like to use a physical planner to schedule your days, this comes in handy too. I will talk some more on what I mean by this.

I mentioned earlier that I was trying to do everything myself; this does not eliminate hiring out help, but this blog also helps with managing your time as well on a daily basis.

I started out using sticky notes before I was even aware of an online planner. Each day I would dedicate to doing a single task; it does not have to be the same time, but I will do mine on various times depending on what the day is like. You can time yourself if you don’t mind mentally doing it on your own.

I will show you how to theme your days for the week.

Each day, I schedule a specific task. So let’s say for Monday, I will dedicate 2-4 hours on scheduling my content. This means that I will use a scheduling platform for the day to schedule my tasks for the week, or for the month. You can time yourself using a platform such as Toggl or using your phone or a reminder that you have on your computer.

For Tuesday, I focus on my business. This can entail hiring out for additional help or keeping track of what needs to be done, such as keeping track of my VA, doing my website or it depends on what you need to be done, which will be a focus for your business.

For Wednesday, remember I said in earlier posts that I signed up for every webinar that I could think of; luckily for me, most of them fell on a Wednesday or Thursday, or sometimes on a Saturday. If I had no webinar on those days, I did courses that I thought would benefit my personal growth and my business. I did courses on Udemy and Alison and when I had signed up for these individuals’ webinars, some also offered courses that I did take.

For Friday, I focused on creating my content. This is the time I did research on what my ideal clients were talking about and I saved them in a spreadsheet for future blog posts. I even used Canva for creating images that would be great to go along with my content.

On Saturday, I had another day for a task. Yes, I know this was funny. This was the day that I used to insert new stuff into my scheduling platform. This was the easy part because this did not take much effort on focusing on my tasks for each day. You might not need this day because as each time your progress is achieved, you can tick it off or even add in what needs to be done. You don’t have to wait for Saturday to do this.

I rest on Sunday. You do not necessarily have to set your days specific to what I choose; you can even start on Sunday and choose the days that suit you best to manage your time.

But, remember, as a business owner, you have the same 24 hours as everyone else. Use your time wisely and don’t do everything yourself; there is a difference between being self-employed when you do everything, and being a business owner.

It was nice of you to stop by.

Until then, happy hiring, and best wishes with your business.

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

Photo Credit: Haute Stock

How I discovered the virtual assisting industry by accident

8 / 5 / 16 6 / 15 / 18

Your beginning will not always be your present situation.

My journey is not one of those moments where you will think that it was an easy and successful one. I came into the virtual assistant industry by accident. I will talk some more about this.

I am Julian, but I prefer to be called Juli. I am from Jamaica and I went to school and studied to be a Guidance Counsellor and also did some Data Entry courses during my time in college when I was studying for my degree.

Fast-forward a year later, graduated and getting ready for the workforce with no work. Yet another year passed with me volunteering at schools, staying online on social media, and still no job. I must say I love to watch TV and this is where I saw an advertisement for a boot camp on how to make money online.

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Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

How my online journey started from a freelancing site.

I went to the boot camp, which introduced me and educated me vastly on how to make money online. I signed up to the Fiverr platform and Upwork (formerly known as Odesk) and choose to offer virtual assistant services because I did have some experience in Data Entry.

Little did I know that this is where my journey would begin. Fiverr, I must say, was where I had made the majority of my income when signing up; I was not as successful on Upwork, but I wanted to do more with my career and I was not planning on staying on a platform to make an income starting at $5.

Mind you, I know that Fiverr presents the opportunity to make more and to be successful, but this was only the tip of my iceberg on my journey and I did not want to solely depend on Fiverr because, even though it was my learning ground or school to be educated in this industry, I was getting more and more frustrated with the many issues that I was facing with the platform.

I will show you how I researched and learn.

I researched every day on different ways for me to earn. I even joined another platform to see if I could earn more than what I was earning now. That was not successful either. I came across groups and social media platforms such as Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook, which was more than a graduate school in itself.

This is where I learned in groups that, as a virtual assistant, the potential is there to work and build relationships with your ideal clients, and of course to make more money.

Discovering myself on my journey.

The first thing on my journey that I discovered which I learned, was that coming into this industry, it’s imperative to have a website. Little did I know that this was only the beginning stage of this process; I thought that that’s all I needed until when I was in groups I saw other person’s pitching their services.

I signed up for almost everything just to be educated. Some seemed to be fruitful and some were just not for me, but what I did learn and appreciate from all the information that I gathered was that I learned each time when I signed up for a webinar.

Social media played a big part in my journey in this industry because I learned from others in various groups that I was in. When I needed support or a question to be answered, I did get that support.

Offer services that you love and outsource those that you don’t like!

I learned from day one to stick with services that I liked or preferred to do. What I mean is that tasks that were time-consuming and were not easy to manage, I stopped offering such services before it was something that I thought would make me leave the industry before I was ready to.

Another one was I did not want to be attracting the wrong types of clients that would not understand that this was something intended to be beneficial to both myself and for these clients receiving my best service.

As a small business owner myself, starting out your business, we tend to make the mistake of not hiring out for help from day one or putting in place measures that can assist us in the growth of our business.

We tend to not want to let go of the horns of the bull of our business because we think we can do it all.

Wrong! Misconception. We have to put measures in place; some of the time, we do not think of what will happen if you are unable to work tomorrow if an accident were to happen or you being sick for a day.

Mind you, we might not think these occurrences might happen, but how many of you have put in place a backup plan when this happens, because days like these when you will be unable to, your business and customers are still there and this is where a virtual assistant will come in, that will assist in getting the flow of your business growing.

Now I am at the stage where I will be working hard to meet those ideal clients and to deliver the quality to my clients. My journey is not yet done in this area; it’s only the beginning, but I am glad that I did start the race to do this business and I will continue to do so until I reach the finish line.

It was nice of you to stop by.

Until then, happy hiring, and best wishes with your business.

Don’t forget to check the sidebar and footer of this website for awesome resources!

Photo Credit: Haute Stock