10 Ways a Virtual Assistant Can Help You Grow Your Business & Decrease Your Stress
You are BUSY! As in, stay up until 1 am answering emails getting 4 hours of sleep and then back at it again at 5 am kind of busy. Some days, you aren't entirely certain that the time fairy didn't trick you and sneak out a few hours behind your back.
The good news is, that means you care about your business and are DRIVEN! Congrats, BTW (we don't hear that NEARLY enough) - 99% of the population doesn't care enough to work as hard as you do and won't reap that rewards that you will.
The bad news is, it is extremely difficult to grow when you are tapped out of energy and hours. The truth of the matter is that if you want to grow, you HAVE to find a way to get some help. Some people look to family members, some find a close friend to help take off the load, (either with business or some of the personal stuff), but this can end in disaster. Trust me - it's really really hard to fire someone you love. A successful business person needs to be able to lay down the law occasionally, and previous relationships can disturb that.
Try this instead - pay someone to help you! Many business owners think that means they will need to bring on someone that they will be forced to promise hours to, put on the payroll, and pay taxes on. This used to be the case. Now, however, we have developed this awesome niche called the VIRTUAL ASSISTANT.
This person works remotely, saving you in overhead, but is seasoned, professional, and experienced and can likely jump in with 2 feet without a long training period. Plus, they work for reasonable rates ($10-$20/hour) and can accomplish more in 1 hour than you probably can in 5 since they are able to focus. Here are just a few of the items you can dump off on your VA - trust me on this - they want to help you!
1) Social media management - bye bye hours of time spent looking for content to post and then returning messages.
2) Email management - you know that inbox of yours with 1,000 unread messages? Let's clean that baby up.
3) Scheduling - real estate showings, inspections, your day, your life, you name it.
4) Marketing and lead generation - consistency is key in marketing and if you have someone managing it with a beautifully designed SYSTEM, you will reap the rewards.
5) Bookkeeping - let's try NOT waiting until April 15th to enter all those receipts this coming year how about it?
6) File management - does your Dropbox look like a tornado just dumped everything in there? VAs are organizers at heart and want want want to get you organized!
7) Writing and content creation - that includes blogs, social media posts, brochures, listing descriptions, you name it!
8) Reports - the best way to know how you are doing is to track everything. Your VA cannot only use Excel like a magician, but can show you how to incorporate Google Analytics and track conversions.
9) CRM management - many of our new clients have contact lists of 4,000 plus people. Guess what they do with that list? Nothing. Let's change that.
10) Transaction management - not just for real estate, but wouldn't it be nice to have someone ELSE take the phone calls from the inspector, the appraiser, the title company, the lender, the buyer's agent, the sellers, the nosy neighbor and everyone else that seems to come out of the woodwork when you are working a deal?
This is just a handful of the duties a trained VA can perform for you. The sky is the limit, acutally! VAs are jack-of-all-trades that can wear more hats than you can count and thrive on multi-tasking. Interested? We know some good ones ;-)