Is It Time to Hire a Virtual Assistant? How to Decide…

How do you decide if it is time to hire a virtual assistant?

If you have been doing any kind of marketing, you realize you ‘should’ utilize the services of a virtual assistant and free up your time for more important things like strategy, JV partnerships, creating new promotions or offers or organizing campaigns.

However if you’re like many marketers, you’re doing the repetitive tasks that eat up your time but give you very little in return.

It’s time to hire a virtual assistant

Before you give me the excuse that you cannot afford to hire a virtual assistant, let’s break down the actual cost of hiring one and see if you’re actually coming out ahead by doing things yourself.

First, write down your annual income. Then divide it by 52 to get your weekly income. Then divide that amount by 6 to get your daily income. (Most internet marketers work 6 days a week.) Finally, divide your daily income by 8 to get your hourly income.

Say, if your income is $50,000 per year, divide that by 52, then 6, then 8 and you’ll see your hourly rate is $20/hour.

What does the tell you?

If you insist on doing any tasks that would actually cost you less to outsource, then you are pouring money down the drain.

You still may not be convinced that you need to hire a virtual assistant. There are plenty of excuses … I hear them all the time:

1. I can’t trust anyone else to do my work for me.
2. I’m much faster than someone else would be.
3. I don’t have the time to train someone.
4. I don’t have enough work to keep someone busy for 40 hours a week.

Let’s take a moment to examine these excuses:

1. 1. “I can’t trust anyone else to do my work for me.” If you never trust anyone else to do your work for you, then you will do all of the work yourself and thereby become a slave to your business. You will continually trade time for money and never be able to leverage your time or energy. You will always be stuck making only enough money that you, yourself, can create in the limited hours you have.
   2. “I’m much faster than someone else would be.” This could be true depending on the type of task we’re talking about. Let’s look at it another way…if it takes your virtual assistant twice as long to do your work at $6/hour, you’d still come out ahead if your hourly rate is $20. Nobody likes burning up money like that!
   3. “I don’t have the time to train someone.” Time is limited. And it is precious. When you avoid taking a little time to train a virtual assistant for simple repetitive tasks, you’re saying you’d prefer to spend your time on mindless jobs that don’t necessarily grow your business. Invest just a little bit of time training a virtual assistant and enjoy the added hours to your day to accomplish those more significant projects you don’t have time for now.
   4. “I don’t have enough work to keep someone busy for 40 hours a week.” When you use the services of an outsourcing firm, they will keep your assistant busy during their “down time” in ways that can actually create additional passive income for YOU. They could work on promoting an affiliate program on your behalf. Theoretically, you could make more money per month than you actually pay your VA. Additionally, client-centered outsourcing firms will offer different monthly plans to meet your needs including paying for only 10 to 20 hours of weekly support.

Stop the Excuses

When you stop giving in to the excuses, you’ll realize that you’re losing time and money by not hiring a virtual assistant.

Imagine ending your day with a list of tasks and priorities for the next day, sending an email to your VA with those they can do for you and finding them completed by the end of the workday.

You just got twice the amount of work completed for half the time invested.

When you’re ready to hire a virtual assistant, finding the right outsourcing company is imperative.