Not only is shouldering the bulk of responsibilities in running your company stressful and effortful, but it also kills your productive hours. As a CEO, you should know better.
Needless to say, when that moment arrives, when you begin to feel the weight of navigating your day-to-day task alone, you must seek assistance and carefully find that right-hand man or woman.
To build a strong team, you need to work with someone whose strength is a complement to your weakness. Engaging with a virtual assistant gives you just that — a remote professional who can cover so many everyday tasks that you don’t have the knowledge or the time for.
This blog post will tackle why a right-hand virtual assistant is such a worthy investment for business executives like you.
The role of a CEO’s right-hand virtual assistant is challenging. They fill the part of aiding the entrepreneur in managing the company’s affairs, optimizing the processes and lightening the CEO’s workload.
To summarize what this entails, a right-hand VA is a valuable asset to an executive, regardless of the industry.
What makes them so invaluable? Well, it’s a collaboration that allows CEOs to delegate responsibilities to someone else, thus, clearing up their schedule and creating time for high-valued tasks that need more attention.
This virtual wingman also serves as a bridge between team members and leaders, making sure that activities are effectively coordinated.
All successful American entrepreneurs have unique lessons to teach. But despite their distinctiveness, every one of them wants the same things, to save time, money and energy.
With these priorities, a right-hand virtual assistant becomes one of the hottest commodities for CEOs looking for a strategic direction.
So, how can a VA help?
Here are the main ways outsourcing a remote worker can make a difference.
Networking is like the success forecaster of every CEO. That’s why “to network” is embedded in their job description.
The more you network, the more opportunities. However, it also means more work in keeping tabs on every connection you make.
A virtual assistant can maintain that important contact information and create an organized list that’s easily accessible to you. They can update and centralize your database so that the entire team can share vital information smoothly.
As a CEO, your typical leadership duties include managing projects and deadlines with the different teams.
With so much work, your right-hand VA can fill in the gaps where you don’t have time. They can play project coordinator, layout the deadlines, coordinate activities and communicate assignments and progress.
Yes, they will help with internal communications, so that every task is clarified and right on schedule.
By leveraging a virtual assistant, you can maintain operation speed and agility, helping you create strategic capacity to build for the future.
Around 25 percent of an executive’s time is spent on personal tasks, leaving their employees without a leader.
Oh, don’t look so surprised, even CEOs need some time on people and relationships. But just as mundane tasks hamper productivity, nonwork time has the same effect.
To have a semblance of a life without breaking productivity, a right-hand virtual assistant can do all the personal tasks like dinner reservations, gift shopping and vacation planning, helping you juggle both, the work and beyond the work.
Executives keep up with the competition by keeping up with their industry trends. So, delegating research, which is tedious work, to a virtual assistant makes sense.
Your right-hand VA can collect information on your target market, competitors, new product developments and whatever useful data you might need.
Every gathered information can be used by your team to plan and make adjustments to your sales and marketing strategies.
We could only imagine what the email situation is like when you’re a CEO. Executives need to meet with investors and customers, engage with employees and even deal with personal stuff. This is the reason why business owners need a carefully plotted calendar that prioritizes their priorities
Fortunately, a virtual assistant can help with that. They’ll go through emails, draft responses to clients and employees, forward important messages and have them in one organized timetable.
This offshore support will work out the best possible schedule, so you can be more productive with your time.
Should you outsource a virtual assistant or work with a traditional assistant?
Let’s take a closer look at how these two differ from each other.
A VA is a remote worker who isn’t actually part of the company’s payroll system. They’re not employees but rather a paid service hired to perform a specific task.
Thanks to their flexible contracts, virtual assistants can take multiple clients and work on different projects, at the same time.
VAs are also called digital assistants or self-employed contractual workers who offer business-related services, usually administrative tasks like scheduling or billing and collection, to business owners from remote locations.
Contrary to a virtual assistant, real assistants are directly employed employees of a business, expected to follow set office business hours. They are part of the company’s payroll system and enjoy benefit plans.
With this, real assistants can’t often take other jobs aside from their primary employment due to a conflict of schedule and interest.
So, what exactly is the difference between the two?
The main difference is how they do the work, one is a remote worker while the other is an in-house worker. Though both can perform the same administrative tasks, virtual assistants are a much better choice for startups because they’re cheaper hires who can work anywhere in the globe, offering you a wider pool of talent.
The term “right hand” refers to someone who can provide assistance to an executive in handling organizational matters.
When it calls for it, this individual is also entrusted to make significant decisions. With so much on the line, asking yourself “How do I choose the right VA?” is only a fitting thought.
Here’s how you should do it though.
When partnering with an online worker, it’s always best to have a face-to-face meeting. Having a video interview is helpful in assessing the candidate, their motivations, principles and values, and how each of these align with your own expectations and your company’s mission.
During said virtual interaction, you’re given the chance to communicate your needs and intentions and gauge if that resonates with what your right-hand virtual assistant can bring to your business.
Pick an applicant whose knowledge expands beyond their role and who has the drive to constantly learn more.
Your right-hand virtual assistant needs a comprehensive understanding of all the organizational operations of your business, so they can spot issues instantly that require immediate attention.
A well-trusted wingman frees you from non-essential responsibilities and can ensure smooth operation without your intense supervision.
What areas do you want to improve in your organization?
Ask yourself this question and set up your business for the future from that point. By keeping your goals in mind, you can choose the candidate who has the strengths/abilities to assist you in accomplishing your objectives.
For collaboration effectiveness, you must create a clear and concise document to facilitate your right-hand virtual assistant in effectively managing the operation in your absence. If they were to act on your behalf, they should at least embody your organizational vision, correct?
The cost for an executive’s right-hand virtual assistant is usually done at an hourly rate. Now, the rate depends on four factors such as location, experience, skills and the type of work they do.
There are three ways to hire your VA namely:
Most virtual assistants are freelancers, so you can look on freelance marketplaces like Upwork or Fiverr for your search. There’s actually no standard rate for independent contractors, so they can charge ranging between $1 an hour to a hundred.
The bottom line is CEOs are more effective and productive when they have a right-hand virtual assistant in tow, and it’s not hard to see why. They produce the same results, if not better, than hiring someone that’ll cost you extra thousands of dollars.
So, it’s not really a hard decision. Entrust your non-essential workload to a dedicated right-hand virtual assistant and let your business fly.
