Hiring a Virtual Assistant Can Refocus Your Business Efforts.

Hours can be spent trying to grow or develop a business. But how you spend your valuable time could actually end up hindering your company from becoming successful. Hiring a virtual assistant can free up some of the time you may be spending on administrative work and replace it with what you do best. An extra set of hands can help with data entry, creating newsletters, posting content on your blog, answering emails from clients or responding to social media mentions.

A virtual assistant, which is an independent contractor, can also take charge and become an all-out project manager for a campaign strategy or product launch. A virtual assistant can be short-term or long-term, and an assistant can fill in for a specific project, or commit to a certain amount of hours per week or month. This can be especially helpful during a crunch time or a busy season like the holidays. Determine your needs before hiring. Start by figuring out what relationship you want with your virtual assistant, rather than starting by dictating to-do lists at them..

Deciding in advance whether you’re looking for a project manager or someone with a more task-oriented role assures that you and your virtual assistant are on the same page and will prevent a lot of awkwardness and uncertainty. Not having clear expectations and clear boundaries around the roles can be frustrating and awkward and off-putting right (from) the get-go. Take it slowly. Start out on a trial basis if necessary. If you have requirements or preferences, make sure you discuss them in advance. Manage — don’t micromanage .

Once you find the right virtual assistant, the first few weeks of a project will be a learning curve for both parties. It is very important that you trust your VA enough to do the work you give them without second-guessing them. There’s a difference between watching the work that your assistant does for you to make sure it’s up to par and being a micromanager. Micromanaging can lead your virtual assistant to think that you don’t trust them. Don’t delegate your pet projects If you really can’t let go of a specific project or activity because you think it needs to be completed in a certain fashion, don’t assign it to your virtual assistant. No matter how hard somebody else works, no matter how hard they try to follow your instructions to a tee, they’re not you. They’re not going to do it exactly like you would do it. Chances are even though you delegated the task, you’re still going to be thinking about it and will continue to absorb your time and energy. That defeats the purpose of hiring a virtual assistant. Keep the tasks you’re attached to on your own to-do list until you reach a point of trust with your VA.

Remember why you got a VA!! Working with a virtual assistant allows you to delegate activities that are tedious, energy draining or simply time consuming, so you can spend more time doing work that inspires you and keeps your business moving forward. Keeping that in mind will help you decide what to delegate, what to work on and what to do with your new-found free time.