Do you run a small business and find yourself getting bogged down in everyday tasks? Are you up late at night staring at spreadsheets, or have a hundred emails you need to reply to but can’t find the time? Maybe you have customer queries that are taking up your hours or data entry tasks that you’re working on rather than actually doing what you’re meant to be doing – that is, running your business.

If this sounds like you, it’s probably time you hired a virtual assistant. It might seem daunting hiring an employee to work for you (especially if you’re a control freak!) but trust us, it will probably be one of the best things you’ll do for your business.

Still need convincing? We’ve broken it down for you – here are five reasons why you need to hire a virtual assistant:

1. A virtual assistant doesn’t cost you money – they save you money

Your time is money. Each hour you spend doing mundane tasks, rather than spending time on growing your business, you are losing money.

If you could pay someone $20 to do a job you’re doing, and your hourly rate is $100 an hour, you are losing $80 for every hour you spend doing a task you could outsource.

When you look at this way, having a personal assistant suddenly seems very affordable and worthwhile.

Think of it like this – the more time you can work on growing your business, rather than just keeping your head above water and running the day-to-day, the more money your business will make in the long term.

So quit doing the accounting and staying up late to enter data into your laptop – outsource these tasks to a personal assistant and you’ll thank us for it!

2. A virtual assistant cuts down on hiring costs

If you hire someone full time, you have to think about paying superannuation, holidays, training and firing.

When you hire a VA, you don’t have to worry about any of these drawbacks. You can simply call on your virtual assistant if and when you need them, meaning if you don’t have any work to outsource, you don’t have to be spending any money to have someone sitting around the office.

Also, a virtual assistant works remotely, meaning you don’t have to invest in computers and other office equipment for them. You can still work from home and have someone working for you remotely!

3. Rediscover your work-life balance with a virtual assistant

Do you feel exhausted at the end of each day when you collapse in to bed? Are you finding you have no time to go out with friends or spend with family? If you are working on your business more than 50 hours a week, it’s time you had a break, otherwise you could face burnout.

Virtual assistants are perfect to help keep your business ticking over with the mundane, repetitive tasks that you need doing each day but don’t have time for.

Free up your diary and finally spend some time on you, giving yourself some much needed TLC and thinking about something other than your business for a day or two.

For example, if you need to go on a business trip, why not have your virtual assistant research a hotel and book your travel for you? Or if you need to write a blog post, why not get a virtual assistant to draft up an editorial calendar for you and research some blog topics?

All these simple tasks can be outsourced, saving you time.

4. Outsource your weaknesses

Do you have parts of your business you loathe? Often if we dislike something, we will put off doing it, meaning it doesn’t happen. Why not outsource these tasks to a virtual assistant to get the jobs done, rather than continuing to procrastinate about doing them and feeling guilty about them not getting completed?

For example, if you hate replying to customer queries, get your virtual assistant to draft up some email templates that they can send as regular responses to common questions.

Or if you hate doing your tax, why not outsource your receipts and other tax information to your virtual assistant so they can organise it for you, preparing it to be presented to your accountant at tax time?

5. A virtual assistant will save you time

This is the most important point about hiring a virtual assistant – they will save you massive amounts of time. All those jobs you need done will get done swiftly and easily while you work on more pressing issues in your business.

So what are you waiting for? Have we managed to convince you to get a virtual assistant? We’re sure the benefits are clear after reading this article!