Do Virtual Assistants Work All Day? Here’s the Truth from the Inside

Ever wondered what a virtual assistant really does throughout their day? Join me to discover the inside scoop – it might surprise you!

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Transcription

Have you ever wondered what a virtual assistant really does throughout their day? Join me to discover the inside scoop. It might just surprise you. Well, hello, hello, my spicy friends. My name is Heather Michelle. And for years now, I have been working as a virtual assistant. As you can imagine, there’s always lots and lots of different types of questions. Typically, they were all they typically they revolve around what it’s like in this industry, especially from those that are hoping to become VAs themselves. And so I just wanted to talk today a little bit about that and give some insight into what a typical day looks like as a virtual assistant. And maybe you can decide this if this is something they would be good for you. So let’s go ahead and get started.
Either, my sweet friends welcome to the Business & Spice podcast, where we blend business know how with a sugary kick of uncensored player. I’m your host, Heather Michelle. And if we haven’t met yet, I’ve been rocking it in the virtual assistant world for about eight years. Now I’m on a mission to teach people just like you how to launch and grow their very own digital assistant company. Whether you’re eager to take the leap, still contemplating your departure from the nine-to-five world, or juggling the responsibilities of being a stay-at-home parent, this podcast is tailored just for you. So come on in, let your hair down and get ready for a wickedly sweet adventure. We’re here to add an extra dash of spice to your entrepreneurial journey, one unapologetic episode at a time and a bit of fair warning. Our sweet spice comes with a pinch of language. Let’s kick things off.
So let’s start off with what is a virtual assistant. And what do they do? A virtual assistant is as it sounds, it is an assistant that is virtual, and they are assisting a business more often than not. They can be anywhere around the world. They can work in any time zone, they can do a plethora of different types of tasks for their clients, they typically have more than one client. Their work is never the same every day, which for myself is beautiful. I have had add my entire life or I guess now we’re calling it ADHD. And so being able to jump from task to task to task is very soothing to my brain, which makes us super convenient. And I don’t have to fight with my brain to make it work for me. virtual assistants work their own schedules as a stay at home mom myself, being able to work around naptimes golden. Being able to pick and choose the work that I do that I accept is absolutely liberating. Let’s go ahead and talk a little bit about the types of tasks that a virtual assistant can be assigned. There is I don’t believe there’s a limit to the amount of tasks that you technically could be assigned or could be requested of you. Do you have to take them? Absolutely not. Again, you get to pick and choose what makes sense for you and the season of life that you’re in. But I have been assigned or asked to do a plethora of different types. I’ve been asked to clean out an inbox and you’re talking 1000s and 1000s of emails. I have been asked to go through set To email and flag ones that are important, and basically flag them so that they are set aside for the company or the owner to know that they are the ones that they specifically need to look at and respond to. I have been asked to book travel, look into different types of courses, build courses, social media management, community management, app building, website updates, design graphics, organize files in like Dropbox, or OneDrive or Google Drive. I mean, there are an endless stream of mundane tasks, necessarily always mundane. There’s a plethora of tasks that will always need to be done by a business for business. And being able to assist those is really obviously the end goal. Now, if you would like to know more about the different types of jobs available for virtual assistants, I do have a free resource. And I’ll go ahead and link it in the show notes. And it is the top 10 jobs for a virtual assistant or digital assistant. So be sure to grab that check it out. Again, I’ll link it in the show notes for you. It is a very hefty Guide, which is fantastic. Especially if you’re just trying to get your foot in the door for becoming a virtual assistant or a digital assistant. I would definitely start there. If you’ve got a computer. And you’ve got you know, a couple minutes here, a couple minutes there a couple hours a week, you can totally get in easy. But again, I’ll let you go ahead and make that decision for yourself. Let’s examine the different types of businesses that benefit from having a virtual assistant. Every business, I have worked for realtors, I’ve worked for travel agencies. I’ve worked for mom and pops. I mean, there are literally every business will have some kind of tasks that they need to have taken care of, excuse me, by a virtual assistant. Or, technically, they may have it by an assistant with in house. But the way that the world is going now everything is kind of switching over to virtual, which is great. It’s definitely I think this whole these past couple years have definitely been eye opening for a lot of business owners that they can hire virtual assistants, and it saves on their on their payroll as typically you can get hired for a couple hours a month or a couple hours a week. It just kind of depends on how you have your own schedule setup. But it does end up typically saving business owners a good chunk of change in the end. Which I mean, it’s a win win situation for everybody. So let’s talk about how long a typical workday is. And there is no right or wrong answer in what a typical workday looks like. So I personally have a munchkin at home who is very active. So I have to work my business around their naptime. So that means that I can work super late at night after they’ve gone to bed. That means that I can work during their nap time, middle of the day, or if you know I’ve got somebody that can come over and hang out with them for a little bit, right, I can get a couple hours in here there. And it works. It works really well. And I get to do a different array of tasks and get to jump from business to business and helping all these all different types of areas of tasks, businesses, owners, I get to have different conversations. And it’s it’s really it’s really great. The fact that I can work anywhere I could I could technically if I wanted to. I could work a full eight hours or I could work an hour two hours a day. Depending on the tasks that I have in my pipeline that need to get finished or completed. So there is really no right or wrong answer, I can take this and work anywhere in the world, anywhere as long as I’ve got Internet, and probably some phone service so that I can contact clients if need be. But other than that computer, Internet, and I can go anywhere, doesn’t matter. Let’s go ahead and talk about like the advantages and disadvantages of being a virtual assistant or digital assistant. Kind of depends on how you want to phrase it, I like to phrase it as a digital assistant. But the advantages and disadvantages Advantages are I get to pick my own schedule, I get to choose the work that I do. I don’t have to ask anybody, if I can go on vacation, because I can work anywhere, it doesn’t matter. I can get all my work done at one time, or I can procrastinate till the very end and do it at the very end. I don’t recommend that. But again, things happen in life. And if some things pop up, and you need to, you know, take care of those. That’s the beauty of this business. I get to set my own rates. So I can charge by the hour, I can charge by the project, I really get to choose if you will how much money I can bring it. On the flip side, the one of the disadvantages of being a digital assistant is that I have to create clients and I have, I will let me change that, excuse me. I do not have a quote unquote, steady paycheck, which is scary to think about. But it’s really It’s okay. Honestly, you can have, you know, five clients a month that are on retainer. And you can bring in, you know, anywhere between five to $10,000 a month if you want to do and all you have to have are a couple reoccurring clients or you can do a business model where you are taking on
all new clients all the time. And it’s a little bit more work in my opinion as you need to market your skills, market, your your portfolio, different things like that. So you are actively looking for new clients on a regular basis. I personally like the model where you have reoccurring clients, and they are on retainer. So you have a set paycheck, if you will. And you can pick and choose, they just tell you, here’s the stuff that I need you to go ahead and get done. You know, this, this week or this month, within your allotted amount of of hours easypeasy disadvantage, you don’t have insurance. You do work from home, which can be an advantage and a disadvantage. If you have munchkins running around. It’s like a double edged sword because like you get to spend time with them, which is super awesome. But at the same time you’re trying to get things done sometimes and it’s not awesome. And that’s usually when they’re like hey, I need you and you’re like no I have things I need to do that never fails. So it’s definitely a give and take, I find that there are significantly more advantages than there are disadvantages. But again, that is, you know, up to you to figure out if that’s what you want to do. I will say if you are a business looking to hire a virtual assistant or a digital assistant, I would love to chat. I will link my consultation form in the show notes as well for those of you but aside from that, let’s continue exploring a little bit more about virtual assistants. So let’s talk about communication methods. virtual assistants can communicate in many, many ways. I typically will communicate with my clients via email or messengers. Just so that I do have a running written request, I will use forms or whatever type of communication that my client is actively looking to use more often than not everybody does want to in writing, just so that it’s clear. And it’s not something that you have to remember, you can constantly go back if you are distracted during a phone call, if you will, you may lose things. If you’ve got, you know, your mind is other places versus an email, you can always go back and revisit what was asked of you. I have used Slack teams, WhatsApp, a couple times I’ve used Facebook Messenger, not my favorite, but I’ve used it. More often than not, though it’s been through email, and it’s, it works super great. Let’s talk about how you can ensure in lieu excuse me how to ensure success when hiring a virtual assistant as a business owner. So when you are hiring, or looking to hire a virtual assistant, it is very important to know what you’re looking for. I get asked some not so pertinent questions, and not asked the pertinent questions. When I’m interviewed, or I’m interviewing a client, because it’s, you kind of do both like they interview you and you interview them to see whether or not it’s a mutual fit for one another. And the questions that are needed to be asked, Can you show your work? Are you able to communicate the way that I need you to communicate? Do you have time on your on your schedule to add my XY and Z in? Do you what is your rate? How much would this charge? How much can you get done in X amount of time. But as a business owner, you definitely need to go into it knowing what tasks you’re looking for. Don’t just go into going, you know, I know I need a VA to take something like I’m just super stressed, I know I need help. There are times that yes, that that can work. It’s a little bit more work on both parties, trying to as a virtual assistant trying to pull out from you what you need done how you would like to do it. And, you know, at the same time as a business owner, relinquishing some of that control, and having to explain what it is that you need done. So I have this really great checklist. I will once again link it in the show notes. But it is a great free checklist for hiring a VA to make sure that you have everything ready before you start having those interviews or those conversations. Definitely check it out if you’re looking to hire on a virtual assistant or digital assistant. I highly recommend it that way. Everybody has clear expectations as to what to expect. But let’s talk. So let’s talk about tips. So virtual assistants, how can we remain productive throughout the day. I like to work in short spurts. Just kind of depending on you know what it is that I’m working on. I am I actively use a timer to help me keep my tasks in line. With having ADHD I can very easily go down a rabbit hole. And so I do need that outside notification to remind me to not necessarily to remind me of things that I need to do, but to remind me that I need to move on to the next topic. And I they’re really great. I like to have snacks at my desk so that I don’t have to get up to go do something. Everything is within arm’s reach at all times so that I’m not getting up. I’m spending less time trying to grab the things that I need or getting up to use the restroom. It’s just easier everything’s within grasp, and then Pair of noise cancelling headphones as long as you have children at home, make sure that someone else has them or they are taken care of. So that you don’t have to worry about hearing them if you have noise cancelling headphones on. But noise cancelling headphones work amazing to be able to do what you need to do. And stay on task stay focused. Those are just some of my favorite things to do and to use. In staying productive short spurts work great for ADHD typically. They just they just were they just work. But again yeah. Wow, we have gone over some really great stuff today from what is a virtual assistant the types of jobs, the hours that they can work, hiring a virtual assistant. There’s some really great information that we kind of went over today, but I just want to be sure that you grab your free resources from the show notes. And have you subscribed to and have you subscribed to my podcast yet? If not, you should. You wouldn’t want to miss what we talked about next week. Alright, my spicy friends. I will talk to you later. Bye for now.