What exactly is a virtual assistant? What is not a virtual assistant? What kind of skills do they have? What can they help me or my business with?

These are very common questions, particularly if you had not even heard of a virtual assistant until recently. Truth is, the term “Virtual Assistant” covers a very broad spectrum. You can be forgiven for not being too sure as to exactly what a virtual assistant does or might be able to do for your business.

I often get asked questions about what a virtual assistant really is. To help, I've put together this short video to explain exactly what it is virtual assistants do and why they can be so beneficial to bring into your team. I cover some of the misconceptions out there such as VA skill levels, as well as the vast availability of jobs that a VA can help with. A virtual assistant is passionate about enabling you to succeed in your business and this video will explain the reasons why. Check it out below.

As always, below is a transcript of the above video, for those lovers of the written word out there.

Today, I want to do a little bit of clearing up of exactly what a virtual assistant is, and what they are NOT, as well.

If we haven't met before, hi! I'm Nerin from Positively Sorted. My team and I help small businesses to get some of their tricky behind the scenes admin done that can sometimes do your head in. Things like websites and dealing with the dreaded NDIS portal and things like that.

So I've met people before and told them that I am a virtual assistant, or that I was hiring a virtual assistant and they are like, oh yeah, what exactly is that? What do they do? And it's a pretty broad, general term. I kind of compare it to saying you're a "tradie". That you could be a painter or a plumber or an electrician, and all be called a tradie and a virtual assistant is the same sort of thing. You could be a personal assistant or an admin. Accounts payable or receivable sort of person or you could be a graphic designer or social media virtual assistant.

Some people haven't actually heard of a virtual assistant, usually if they work in corporate or bigger companies that don't use them. And I want to make sure that smaller businesses that could really benefit from a virtual assistant really understand what they are.

What they are not!

If you really haven't heard of them, you could think of something like Siri or or like "hey, Alexa", like a virtual reality sort of thing. If you may have vaguely heard of virtual assistant and the way some people talk about them, you could think it's a $5 an hour offshore virtual assistant from the Philippines or India or somewhere. Those people that you get on the end of the phone sometimes when you call Telstra or or when somebody calls you in like a cold call. And yes, a virtual assistant can be that and they can be really useful sometimes.

But some people also think that a virtual assistant is a Mum that's just working at home for a couple of extra dollars while the kids are at home. And trust me, trying to work from home when the kids are at home is not easy. But you might think that they don't have real skills and can't help with things other than just the basic sorting your emails or booking appointments.

A wealth of Skills and Experience

So I went to a workshop recently with a bunch of other virtual assistants, locally, and in that room, there were women who had degrees in Business Change Management. I've got a degree in Information Systems. There were people with qualifications in Event Management. There was a legal, I think it's called a Paralegal they're called, but she was also doing a Law degree.

As part of my team, I've got a graphic designer who's University trained, an ex accountant and business coach. We come from all walks of life and have amazing skills experience that can be applied. Sometimes we've come from sort of bigger corporate companies and some of that experience can help with small businesses. Sometimes we've, like, I've worked in my own small business for years and learned a lot about online marketing and things like that and I can apply that to help with my clients as well.

So, yes, a virtual assistant could be your $5 an hour from the Philippines, just doing data entry, but they could also be this highly skilled addition to your team without having to hire them as a full time or part time employee and pay all the annual leave, sick leave, super and taxes and all that sort of stuff. You could hire them for a couple of hours a week or for a specific project just to get something off the ground.

Virtual assistants are usually super passionate about what they do, what we do, because we've found something that we love. We've made work around our lives. Like, kids go off to daycare a couple of days a week or at school and we can work in school hours. And so we're doing what we love, and what we're good at, on our terms.

And we love helping other small businesses to do what they're good at. So quite often, you can hire a VA to for a certain amount of time and then have that grow as your business and your needs grow. So quite often what we want the most is to help you as a business owner, enjoy the lifestyle that we're trying to build for ourselves as well which is to be able to do the work we love and that we're really good at and still get to have time with our families. And spend time working on our business and growing it and helping our clients and not necessarily all the tricky, techie, admin boring stuff that we can take off your hands.

A lot of virtual assistants also specialise - I've mentioned lawyers and and their specific needs. Graphic Designers might just work on the more creative visual things that you need for your business. One of the things that Positively Sorted specialises in is for businesses that are NDIS registered service providers and all the admin and fun stuff that goes along with with claiming payments from a government agency. That's something that we've gotten really good at over the last couple of years. So that's, that's something that we can take off a busy service provider that's trying to help so many people that have really specific needs, we can take that admin workload off their plate, so that they can spend that time helping more people and growing their business and still have time for their family. I so love being able to do that.

Even if you think it's something there are parts of your business that only you can do, that's not necessarily the case. And it might be something that there's a VA out there that can help you with just that thing. Have a think about it!

Tell me your thoughts.

Once you've watched this video (or read the transcript), I'd love to hear from you. Do you have any questions about virtual assistants that were not covered in the video? Has this video has helped you decide to hire a virtual assistant now that you know they can specialise and can be very highly skilled? Let me know in the comments below!

If you would like to know more about the tasks Positively Sorted’s team can help take off your hands, book in a free call with us today.