Growth takes more than clearing your task list.
Busy entrepreneurs quickly learn this as their to do lists get longer and they struggle to find time for activities that promote growth.
When lists get too long, finding a virtual assistant is an obvious next step, but finding someone to help you check tasks off your list is one thing. What about an assistant who can actually help nurture business growth?
Forward motion isn’t just about finished work.
So with that in mind…what’s the difference between a virtual assistant and a premium virtual assistant?
Everything.
That seems like hyperbole, but when you listen to a few of our clients to tell us about their premium virtual assistants, you’ll see it’s the truth. It’s the difference between to do lists and trust, relationships, and actual growth. These are the stories of successful (and busy) entrepreneurs who needed a virtual assistant who would actually help them move the needle in the right direction.
Dedicated vs. Distributed Virtual Assistants
Not all virtual assistant companies are created equal.
Drew, owner of Nerd Marketing, understands the difference between having a dedicated solution, like he has with Boldly, compared to a distributed solution (or pool), which he’s used in the past.
A dedicated solution means you’re working with one virtual assistant who really gets to know you and becomes an integrated member of your team. You’re not working with a pool where you don’t know who’ll be doing your work next.
Distributed virtual assistants, function on a task-based approach. You have tasks that need to be completed, you toss it to the pool. Whoever is available will do the work, you can check it off your list, and you repeat for the next task. It could be someone different each time, and they might not know a thing about you or your company.
With distributed solutions, it’s great that things get done, but you’re missing something very important: a personal relationship with the person doing the work.
“It didn’t work for me,” Drew said, pointing out that some of the work he needed taken off his plate were things that were personal and private. “My personal assistant is in private areas of my life. My bank account. Reading my personal email. She’s helping me filter.”
Unless your assistant really knows you personally, they can’t possibly know what to filter out and what to bring to your attention.
Andrea and Scott, the owners of CorgiBytes, a software remodeling company, also experienced the benefits of a dedicated virtual assistant, where a personal relationship is at the heart of it. They took it a step further, though, and used their experience with their Boldly virtual assistant to model what future employees would be like.
“It helped to set the stage when we brought on our first employees. We realized this was the level of professionalism we should expect from employees as well,” Andrea noted. “It set the tone for what our culture became, which is that you deliver on time with lots of trust.”
Normal Work Hours, Better Productivity
When CorgiBytes was young, Andrea was pulling 18-hour work days. At first she thought this was normal for entrepreneurs, unaware of the costs associated with these kinds of hours, but she fired off a tweet wondering if this was so.
Boldly saw that tweet, and reached out.
It was actually from that conversation on Twitter that Andrea found a virtual assistant and was back to normal work hours with no loss in productivity. Business partner Scott was a bit jealous, watching how many tasks were removed from Andrea’s plate, and the great working relationship she was building with her assistant. He soon took the leap himself.
“Everything I tossed her way got done,” he said of his Boldly virtual assistant, “and it got done really well.”
What kind of price tag do you put on getting all your work done and still having time for your personal life?
Leo Melendez, a former fighter pilot who now helps entrepreneurs create better productivity systems, experienced the same boost to his productivity. He was able to actually get work done that grew his business.
When he has to focus on a client, he asks his virtual assistant to step in.
“She’s just a call or text away, and I ask her to step into a situation for the team.” She handles the process, not just a task, enabling Leo to experience a bit of “autopilot” with some of the daily management of his business.
It’s not just about how much you get done, but also about the peace of mind that comes with entrusting important work to your virtual assistant and knowing they won’t drop the ball.
Better hours, quality finished work, and letting go of the stress of having to juggle everything; that’s what a premium virtual assistant can do for you.
Protecting Your Focus
Entrepreneurs are growth minded. You don’t start a business without a certain kind of drive. That means entrepreneurs know the importance of staying focused on what keeps their business alive.
It also means they know the danger (and pain) when focus is centered on the wrong thing.
Leo had tried different virtual assistants in the past but without great success. He’d send them tasks to do, but “it became a game of them waiting for me to feed them information.”
This wasn’t really saving him time, but ended up creating another task: get stuff together to keep the virtual assistant busy. His focus shifted to keeping his virtual assistant busy, which didn’t help him grow his business.
Once you stop viewing virtual assistants as merely someone who completes tasks, you start to realize the importance of protecting your focus.
“I want to focus on what I want to do, the things I really enjoy, and offload everything else,” said Drew, from Nerd Marketing.
Being someone’s task manager? No thanks. That ends up being just another job you don’t need. Real relationship with your virtual assistant? Yes please. It’s the only way to get your focus back on what’s important and what you love to do.
And best of all, with Boldly, all of this top tier talent and productive outcomes is wrapped in the incredible flexibility of subscription staffing. For entrepreneurs or brand new startups, the subscription staffing model removes the budget fears. You increase or decrease your virtual assistant subscription based on what you need. You don’t need to worry about finding extra work for someone to do just to fill their time according to a locked-in contract.
Skip the wondering, the searching, the intense onboarding, and all the other hiring headaches. You can get started with Boldly today with one click, and be up and running with a premium virtual assistant in no time.
