There is power in hiring a virtual assistant and bringing one on board can really help your business grow. Whether you’re thinking about hiring a virtual assistant, or want to ensure you’re using your current VA to their full potential, here are some helpful tips. MyGateway is nothing more than the portal that provides you with complete 24X7 access to our work product. Unlike the vast majority of retained search firms we don’t cloak what we do in a shroud of secrecy, all of our executive search assignments are available online to our clients.
The Transactional Virtual Assistant
Transactional virtual assistants are typically someone from a country outside of the US, often in Asia or South America. You can find transactional; virtual assistants on sites like Upwork.com and you’ll notice very quickly that their businesses are booming. This is usually because they are able to charge a much lower rate due to a lower cost of living outside of the US. Typical rates for these folks charge around $10-$15 per hour versus the $20-$50 per hour someone in the US would charge.There are language converter services which are more easy to use.
Transactional virtual assistants are great for doing prescribed tasks such as:
- Editing a spreadsheet
- Entering data from business cards
- Online research
The English-Expert Virtual Assistant
Hiring a transactional virtual assistant is a great start. However, you might want to start taking things up a level, which means you will often need a native English communicator or someone who has very strong English language skills. An expert understanding of the English language becomes a priority in a virtual assistant when you start having them do things to ease your day-to-day workload such as:
- Writing documents,
- Helping you communicate with your clients, and
- Drafting contracts.
Keep in mind that the increase in skill level also means an increase in cost. So, you may want to bring that work back into the US.
The Online Business Manager
These folks can certainly do transactional tasks. But, they can take can also take things up a notch and help you with more administrative tasks and helping you with travel. Even more, they can take on multi-city travel logistics and managing an Eventbrite page, or landing page, for the event you’re going to and manage photos and updates for that event. Going even a step further, they can manage your team of designers.
The Digital Operations Ninja
The next kind of virtual assistant isn’t even so much a virtual assistant, they’re more of a project manager. Ramon Ray likes to call his virtual assistant of 3 years, Jaime–a digital operations ninja!
This kind of virtual assistant is really taking it to the next level. They are someone who is working with you side-by-side. This person is managing or working with a team, they are lockstep with you in your vision for the growth of your company, they can challenge your assumptions and say, “should we really be doing this?”.
They know where your business is going, they know where you want to be, and they can help you get there.
To have a virtual assistant whose priorities are your priorities, you’re going to have to compensate them accordingly. Expect to pay someone anywhere between $40-$70 an hour, because at that point, they really are digital operations ninja, and that’s what you want in your business. That is the only way to grow.
