Consultants are kind of like jugglers.
As a consultant, you have lots of clients, each with specific needs and at different points in their journey. Keeping everything straight leaves you feeling like at least one thing is always up in the air.
That lack of control is unsettling.
Clients hire consultants expecting attention to detail, hoping to benefit from your experience and your network. Your connections and expertise are what they want to tap into, yet it’s way too easy to let daily administrative tasks keep you from giving your clients your complete attention.
Your energy has to be focused on your clients, not your email inbox or invoicing software.
It’s not that you have a full plate—you have a table of full plates and you need some help offloading tasks that are getting in the way of your clients’ best experience. Heck, those tasks are getting in the way of your own best experience.
A virtual assistant is the best way to stop juggling plates and start focusing on what matters: becoming more productive, sharing your expert advice, and helping clients excel.
The Right Virtual Assistant Makes You More Productive
Leo Melendez runs a company that creates productivity systems for clients.
His goal is to help clients do more of what they love, and less of what they don’t. Unfortunately, he was in need of his own services, something not unusual for consultants who often find themselves incredibly busy and not taking their own advice.
Melendez tried different virtual assistant services, but nothing clicked at first. “I would send them tasks to do. It became a game of them waiting for me to feed them information.” Gathering information and providing instructions on what needs to get done is time consuming, and it’s one of the reasons many consultants prefer doing things themselves.
When he turned to Boldly, though, he was able to get back on his own script.
He was matched with a virtual assistant who was able to quickly step in and help run things in the background whether Melendez was there or not. A quick phone call or message, and he could travel to meet with clients without worrying if all the admin tasks were done. He said his virtual assistant allowed him to run his business almost on autopilot, knowing everything was being taken care of.
Having a virtual assistant who has the skill and experience to know what needs to be done without being micromanaged is a must. It’s one of the reasons we have some of the highest industry standards when it comes to building our team, and many of our virtual assistants have Fortune 500 experience.
Clients want to reduce their work and worry load, and that only happens with top shelf talent.
Why Relationship And Connection Matter
Just as Melendez discovered, not all virtual assistant services are created equally.
Drew Sanocki, a solopreneur whose clients turn to him for marketing advice, discovered an important distinction between dedicated and distributed virtual assistant solutions.
With a distributed virtual assistant service, a pool of workers will help you get things done. You toss whatever it is you need to be completed to the pool and the next available worker will get it done. While the work may get done, something crucial is missing: relationship.
Without any relationship, you’ll never develop trust.
Having a deep level of trust with your virtual assistant is how you’ll truly gain freedom from all the distractions that don’t allow you to focus on your consulting business.
A dedicated virtual assistant is someone you grow to know, understand, and trust. They learn how you work and can anticipate what you need. Instead of having to take the time to come up with every task you need done and the expectations of how to do it (as you would with a distributed virtual assistant), a dedicated virtual assistant already knows.
“I want a dedicated VA,” Sanocki said, pointing out that to do the work he needs done, they have to be in sensitive areas of his life, such as his bank account, email inbox, and even buying presents for family.
One of the reasons we take matching a virtual assistant with our clients so seriously is that we understand the connection between relationship and trust, and that you can’t run your consulting business without it. Both develop between people who have similar personalities and work styles, because they will quickly build trust once they recognize themselves in the other person.
Solopreneurs Can’t Fly Solo
“At the end of the day, you’re a solo operator,” Sanocki pointed out, and he’s right. You’re running your consulting business all on your own. But because you’re flying solo, you’re wearing every single hat there is to keep the show going.
Bookkeeping. Scheduling meetings and travel. Managing communication. Marketing. Working with clients. And somewhere in all of that, you have to take the time to strategize, figure out where you want to go, and understand where you’re actually heading.
Strange as it sounds, solopreneurs need virtual assistants to get the job done. They can’t fly solo if they don’t have a solid ground crew.
You simply can’t make it happen at the level you need to if you don’t have a virtual assistant to take something off of your plate. Going it alone is self-limiting, and growth will be finite. Every successful solopreneur has a virtual assistant they completely trust and rely on; don’t let the “solo” part fool you.
“I want to do what I personally enjoy, and offload everything else,” Sanocki said. “If you run the numbers, it makes sense to do that. It doesn’t make sense for me to do email or bookkeeping or flight scheduling.”
Not only is that approach good business sense as far as productivity is concerned, but it’s also a way to stay focused and healthy.
True Agility And Flexibility
Relationship and trust are the cornerstones when it comes to a virtual assistant, but there are a few other hurdles that might be keeping you from bringing on a VA.
Namely, the time and cost.
We understand that solopreneurs, and even consulting firms with a few employees, are trying to operate in an ever-changing agile environment, and that client demand is constantly fluctuating. Because of that, your budget and time constraints matter.
We get it.
Through our subscription service, you’ll be quickly matched with an ideal virtual assistant and be up and running without having to deal with contracts. Think of it as “people as a service” where you only pay for what you need. Increase or decrease your subscription depending on what is required.
Fast agile start. Flexible subscription. Top talent. Complete trust. Clear your plate and focus on doing the consulting work you love. All you need to do is contact us. We’d love to start working with you today!
Topic: Remote Executive Assistant
