Q.    What is Virtual Assistance?

A.    Virtual Assistance is a new administrative profession, formalized nearly four years ago by Stacy Brice, President of AssistU, to meet the needs of small-business owners and entrepreneurs, as well as the needs of any busy person who could use some great administrative support. The people who do Virtual Assistance are called Virtual Assistants or VA's. What they do is no less than an art -- working long-term and closely with the successful person (client) without needing to be physically in the Client's office.

Its base is in traditional administrative support, but we've widened the scale and scope, and placed it on a new foundation. That foundation holds the relationship at its core, with the people (both business owners, and equals in the relationship) choosing each other, rather than, as is the traditional norm, one person being placed in the role of working for the other. It requires a level of commitment and desire from both people to give the best they have to the relationship -- to commingling talents and strengths, which surpasses anything the corporate world could currently imagine. First and foremost, it requires that both the VA and the Client fully understand, value, and desire a collaborative partnership.

Once the partnership is established, Virtual Assistance works wonderfully well, skipping over geographical barriers easily with the use and immediacy of communications media (internet, fax, phone). Working virtually allows people to be in touch as easily as if they were sitting 20 feet from one another.

Q.    Who would work with a Virtual Assistant?

A.    VA's work with smart, successful people of all kinds; authors, consultants, coaches, salespeople, real estate brokers, entrepreneurs, professionals, executives -- anyone who wants to live a more balanced life with more free time to do the the things he/she wants to do!

Q.     What's the point? I manage everything on my own!

A.     As you grow a business, sooner or later, you'll find that you can do anything, but you simply can't do everything!  And, when you give away the stuff that doesn't need your personal attention, you gain space and time in your life for an abundance of other things. Those things might include:

• Growing your business

• More time with family, friends

• Responding to other opportunities

• Balancing home and work responsibilities

Q.     If I wanted an assistant, why would I hire one who's potentially hundreds of miles away?

A.     Well, part of the benefit of having a VA is that you haven't hired anyone. When you work with a VA, you get a partner, not an employee. You get someone who chooses to work with you as much as you choose to work with him or her. The VA's decision to work with you will be based on being attracted to your work and on being interested in being your partner for success, rather than because he or she is looking for "some job." People work with VA's because they:

• Don't have the space for someone in the office.

• Don't want someone in the office.

• Don't have the equipment needed for someone else to use.

• Don't want to buy the equipment.

• Don't want the associated work and cost of having an employee: Payroll, Benefits, Paying for someone else to administer payroll and benefits, Don't want to have to conform to federal standards like OSHA and FLSA.

If what you want and need is the most basic office support, you might want to work with a secretarial service.

If, on the other hand, you want the benefit of working with someone who really wants to know you, your business, your customers, and who really wants to be deeply involved in your success, you'll want to work with a VA.

Q.     Isn't paying a virtual assistant more expensive than hiring an employee?

A.     No. The cost savings is twofold: financial and emotional.

When you hire an employee, on top of a salary or hourly wage, you have a ton of things you need to administer (payroll, benefits, etc.), many things to buy or lease (equipment, furniture, etc.), and you have to share space as well. It's expensive and can be grueling.

Depending on the VA, you might pay-as-you-go (giving him or her only the amount of work you actually have during any week or month), or you might have him or her on retainer (buying a certain amount of the VA's time each month for a pre-set and usually lower, hourly rate).

Q.     So, how much can I really expect to pay my virtual assistant?

A.     Again, VA's are in private practice, and they price their services according to their skills, their desire to do certain kinds of work, their experience, and their reputation. You really need to speak with a VA, share your ideas and the vision for your success, and ask what it might cost to have him or her be a part of that. 

Generally speaking, however, you can expect to pay $30 - $70 per hour. It depends on your needs, and the VA you work with.

Q.     Now wait -- you said that working with a virtual assistant isn't more expensive than hiring an employee, but I wouldn't pay an employee $30 per hour!

A.     Not in straight time perhaps. You're more likely to pay someone with this level of skills between $17 and $20 per hour if they were sitting in your office. However, when you add in the cost of administering payroll, your share of payroll taxes, having to pay certain kinds of insurance like worker's compensation, unemployment (state and federal), and extra liability for having someone in your home or place of business, and the cost of making sure that your location conforms to federal guidelines such and OSHA, you absolutely do pay that much per hour. And the more skilled and talented a worker, the more her time is worth, and the higher her fee.

Q.     Does Virtual Assistance work better for any particular type of person or professional?

A.     The benefits are enormous to almost anyone who's busy and needs support. What we've found is that the only people who really aren't in a good position to work with a VA are:

• People who aren't online and who can't understand why this would work.

• People who live in the urgent.

If everything you do is last-minute, if your style is to procrastinate and then rush to deadline, if you're not organized and centered, if you're in a high-pressure field where things run you instead of the other way around, if you want someone at your beck and call, you probably need an in-person employee, not a VA.

• People who don't understand the power created in a relationship with a fantastic assistant.

• People who aren't open to learning new ways of working and communicating.

• People who are billing their own time at considerably more than $30/hour.    

If you aren't, paying a VA could create a hardship for you. But if you are billing at a much higher rate, or if you work on commission and your time is valued in large chunks of cash earned that way, then every hour you spend doing work that takes you off course, is work for which you are paying yourself, in essence, at YOUR HOURLY FEE. It doesn't take a lot to see the smarts behind paying someone to handle administrative work so that you can be out earning more and more!

• People who can't shift to seeing a VA as an equal.

If you're stuck on the traditional boss/assistant paradigm, or if you need to be the boss, you need an employee, not a VA.

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