Virtual Assistance and the Solo Entrepreneur

I recently talked with Brian Gladu of LongerDays.com about outsourcing and using virtual assistants as a solo entrepreneur.  Here's Brian's take on:

The Benefits of Hiring a VA:

They can purchase a small quantity of time, and what that means is that it's more affordable.  They can start out at ten hours a month, twenty hours a month, and that makes the price point very low.  People get focused on the hourly rate, but if you actually look at the cost over the course of a month, there's no possible way they can find someone willing to work ten hours a month, so the monthly cost is much less expensive.

They're able to use the time they've purchased flexibly, as needed, over the course of thirty days.  Again, with an employee, they're probably not going to be able to work on-demand, whereas with us, they can use that time at the beginning of the month, at the end of the month, and there can be lulls.  There's a lot of benefit there, just having that flexibility.

They get access to the skills, talents, and resources of our entire office, essentially a super-employee.

The Considerations When Hiring a Virtual Assistant:

Solopreneurs need to know what they're going to outsource.  Then list off the qualifications someone's going to need to complete the task.  What hours do they need to be available?  What experience will they need to have?  What software do they need to know?  What price range should they be looking at, based on the benefit received from the task?

I think they also need to consider whether they need to work with a solo virtual assistant or a company like ours.  There are distinct pros and cons there.  With a company like ours, we can offer more, because we're not limited to the skills of a single person.  We can add people to our team, basically creating a super-employee with a wide-range of skills.  We can offer a lot of things, but I do think there's less intimacy in the relationship.  When you have someone working by themselves, they're going to have fewer clients, and so they're going to develop a more personal relationship.  How important that is depends on the task, but I think those are the trade-offs there.

The Cost of Hiring a VA:

There's a very broad range, in terms of hourly cost.  Someone can go to eLance and find someone on the other side of the world willing to work for $5/hour, and then you can find very experienced retired professionals in the states unwilling to work for less than $50/hour, and you can find everything in between.  Our range is $19-25/hour, and that range just depends on the quantity of time purchased.

In terms of how much someone should be paying for a virtual assistant, I think it comes back to their needs.  If this work can be done by someone for $5/hour, then definitely go with that.  They need to know the skill sets and what qualities are important for that virtual assistant to have and then pay whatever they need to to get that person.

In a lot of situations, for a lot of tasks, having someone do it in another country makes a lot of sense, but for other tasks, more complex tasks that require a lot of back and forth communications or a really good understanding of the English language, then I think people should be willing to pay for someone who speaks English as their first language, or it will just end up causing more problems than the cost savings.

Justifying the Cost of a Virtual Assistant:

As long as solopreneurs are delegating important work that's going to make a meaningful contribution to their business, then the hourly expense of that becomes much less important.  As long as the end result justifies the money spent, I think that's a good task to outsource.

Want to hear more about outsourcing for solo entrepreneurs and how to use a virtual assistant to grow your business?  Listen to the rest of my interview with Brian Gladu of LongerDays.

Comments

[Jessica Chapman]

What an excellent article. Delegating is where a lot of solo entrepreneurs and small business people get stuck and limit their business growth. Once the entrepreneur recognizes that outsourcing admin tasks to someone for $25 an hour frees them up to earn $100 dollars in that hour, then their business takes off.

Jessica D Chapman, Founder http://RoomToBreathe.org
Author, The Entrepreneurial Itch Workbook