Value of an External Administrator

It’s common knowledge that if you want your business to grow, you need to employ some help.

With all the many facets of running a business in today’s online world, how do you decide what skill sets you will need to hire? And then finding that one unique person who is a Jack or Jill of all trades, who is the perfect personality fit for your business.

Now consider all the other things you need to account for to employ this unique person.

• Like buying them office equipment and ensure they have a space to sit with the correct lighting.
• Don’t forget to add to your budget for weekly / monthly pay.
• Then there are the various insurances that need to be paid and don’t forget about their annual leave, family leave, and maternity leave!
• Now you need to manage this person. Make sure they have work to fill the hours you employ them for. (If you can’t you still pay them for the hours they sit there doing nothing or worse using your internet for who knows what?)
• Don’t forget, you will see this person every day, you will need to implement boundaries to ensure a professional working relationship is maintained.

But what if this person doesn’t work out? Here in South Africa, it’s incredibly hard to get rid of an employee. As a business owner, you are required to prove that you did your best to make this person fit and that you trained them accordingly.

When I was researching the benefits one over the other. I ran into a quote by a business owner who stated that VA meant no chance of an affair, my initial response, was really a little self-control!

But there is an alternative!

Let’s start with do you know what a Virtual Assistant is?

They are a small business owner themselves, who specialize in a large variety of skills.

As a small business owner, we are in charge of all our own overheads – leave, pension, taxes and office equipment.

Which leaves you only two obligations to the VA:

• Provide clear instructions on the work you want them to do
• Pay them once they have completed the work and invoiced you

In my research, the only warning I found was that you should never wait until you are drowning in work before hiring a VA. If you are already overloaded then you won’t have the proper time to create clear work instructions and the relationship will fail.

A virtual assistant is a sub-contractor – sort of like the electrician. We are trained to do everything from speciality tasks to your everyday mundane admin.

Why fix the electrical work yourself, to saving a few rands in the short term. That time can be better spent on actual activities that will make you money in the long term.

Just like you have a plumber fix your plumbing and an electrician fix your electrical problem. Hiring more than one Virtual Assistant makes sense.

• A web developer and a marketing manager, who can fix your SEO.
• The financial genius who has all your admin wrapped up before you even think of it.

But what if it’s not the right relational fit, well as a contractor you merely terminate and pay the final invoice and you move on.
Next time you are wondering how you can grow beyond your current time commitment, consider outsourcing to a VA.