As CNN reported in a previous news story, thousands have traded corporate jobs to provide services to bosses they may never see. Although, most Virtual Assistants don’t refer to those that utilize their services as bosses, they are clients. Virtual Assistants tend to get a great grasp for their clients business and take it on as if it were their own. Virtual Assistants or VAs as they are often called, handle your administrative tasks virtually, from their own office.

A Virtual Assistant is a lot more than a bookkeeper, marketing assistant or secretary. A Virtual Assistant is all that rolled into one, and more. Let me give you an insight into the typical day of a Virtual Assistant. I start my day with a large cup of coffee and review my schedule for the day. I then prioritize my clients tasks in the order they need to be completed for that day. I start with the highest priority and work my way down from there. In between the entire scheduled task for the day, there are always high priority projects from clients that come up during the day and I complete those as they come in. It is definitely a balancing act, but at the end of the day, when I know that I not only helped one business owner get a grip on their daily business, but I helped several, it is a satisfying feeling. Operating a Virtual Assistant business takes dedication, commitment, business knowledge, but most of all, organization and the ability to multi-task.

Research has shown that companies utilizing the services of a Virtual Assistant save an average of upwards of $20,000 per year. You may wonder how, if you have ever seen the rates of a Virtual Assistant, as many charge at least $20 per hour. You must take into consideration that when you bring in an assistant to your office, you are not only paying for their productive time, you are also paying for any time they waste. You are also responsible for taxes and workers comp insurance. In addition, you might be offering that assistant paid vacation, health benefits and paid sick days. That is not the case with a VA. You simply use them as an Independent Contractor and they are required to file their own taxes and are responsible for their own insurance. The best benefit, though, is you are only paying your Virtual Assistant for the time spent on your projects that will benefit your business. All professional VAs will have systems in place to organize the tasks you send them as well as the time spent on your projects. It might take interviewing several VAs to get a feel for the right one, but once you do, you will want to hold on to them for years. Also, do not be afraid to ask VAs for a free half hour sample of their services, to get a feel for how they work and to make sure they can handle the task you send them.

Kristi Daniels, the owner of Professional Business Assistant has over 15 years in executive assistance, office management and real estate. You may visit her website at www.probusinessassistant.com for more information on the services offered by a Virtual Assistant.

Imagine this – it’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon, you have been at the office since 7 AM. You have one last project to finish up before you can go home. As soon as you start that project, your accountant calls and needs information uploaded into QuickBooks, so he can prepare your taxes before the deadline tomorrow. You think, no problem, I will stay late and get everything finished up. Just then, your email pops up with a new message, it’s from your biggest client and he needs forms filled out and faxed to him for a meeting in the morning. Once again, you think to yourself, ok, no problem, I will just stay up late tonight and get it all done. As you are writing down notes of everything you have to do before the end of the night, the phone rings. It’s a huge prospect that you have been courting for months, he wants to hire you, but he has a big project that he needs you to start on right away.

Now, what do you do?  Scream? Cry? Throw yourself on the floor in a tantrum? NO!!! Call your virtual assistant!

You know we all have been in similar situations, when there is just too much to do and not enough hours in the day to get it all done in. Everyday, it seems we are getting busier and busier. Today, our society is reliant on instant gratification. Everybody wants everything done NOW. Phone calls and letters turned into faxes. Faxes turned into emails. Emails turned into instant messages. Nobody wants to wait, especially your clients. They want to be first on your list; they want their business to be your 1 priority. This is where Virtual Assistants come into the situation.

A qualified VA can not only free up many hours of your day that you spend doing things that are not profitable to your business. They can help evaluate ways to make your workflow more effective. Virtual Assistants can take on those last minute projects and help you get everything done so you can get home to your family and finally, for the first time since you opened your business – RELAX!

Yes, I said relax! I bet you haven’t done that in a while. I bet you go to bed every night with a million thoughts running through your head about what you should have done that day. I bet you wake up every morning running down a mental checklist of everything you need to do today. You’re not alone. That’s the lives of business owners.

If you make the right choice today, your life could change. Check out all the services that a Virtual Assistant can offer and think about how many hours you can save yourself, think about how much more organized your business could become, think about how much more time you could spend wooing new clients. The choice is yours, make it the right one!

Don’t forget to visit our website at http://www.probusinessassistant.com to see what we can do for you.