When is it Time to Hire a Virtual Assistant

When is it Time to Hire a Virtual Assistant?

This was a question that I was asked on a coaching community forum.

As a life coach, your primary focus is on helping your clients reach their full potential and achieve their goals. However, you can’t do it alone. Running a successful coaching business requires a lot of administrative tasks and marketing efforts, posting on all social media channels is an essential way of establishing your voice, your presence and a chance to acquire new leads with the possibility of unpaid ads, which can be time-consuming and take away from your coaching time.

This is where hiring a virtual assistant (VA) can help, broadly speaking.

However, let’s slow down a bit and take a step back…

Before you jump into the excitement of the chance of being a boss and the up-level of the playing field in entrepreneurship, I mean that’s what being a business owner is all about, right? To provide employment, otherwise, you just give your job with multiple position titles and responsibilities, from being the admin person to sales & marketing, to PA and PR, etc. depending on your business type.

The most important steps to identify is why do you feel you need to have a Virtual Assistant?

I know this seems to be an obvious one but really, ask yourself, why do you truly feel the need of having a virtual assistant?

Do you have clients waiting in the queue for you to be served?

Do you have products and services that need to be “packaged up” to sell? Or

Do you simply feel overwhelmed and overloaded with distractions and/or what is called the “shiny object syndrome”? Shiny Object Syndrome is a continual state of distraction brought on by an ongoing belief that there is something new worth pursuing. It often comes at the expense of what’s already planned or underway, just like a child who always wants a new toy, even if their current toy is just fine. If this is your case then see How to fix your “shiny object syndrome”? (SOS) here.

Once you have established the above, then the final questions below would have to be:

1. Are you ready to take on the leadership role in guiding and leading your team with clear communication skills to have the most productive outcome for the project, time and money invested.
2. Are you ready financially to be able to invest in this option?

What happens is that, there is a misconception that, if and once you have a VA, everything is going to be magically all done, everything is set up and you can just turn up and be a boss!

This is so untrue.

There is more to explain but let’s focus back on the question being asked by a coach.

As a coach, your focus is coaching, but life coaching is so broad.

Everyone who’s new on the journey would announce excitedly that “I am a mindset coach!” or I am your “clarity coach!” or I am your health and fitness coach!

It would be much better for you to identify yourself as a specific skill set kind of coach to stand out and to be identified uniquely as you!

This is when they say identify your niche here!

I get it, identifying your niche is so often heard of that you flinch just at the mention of it!

“I just want to help people to live a better life! Help them be the best version of themselves, you may say!

For me, I started as a coach for “Parenting Your Gifted Child” it was just an area of special interest of mine with my own personal experience. I supposed it is quite specialised but I just never really thought of it too much about being in a niche as such. Then, as I helped the parents who have businesses, it was natural that we crossed over to the business mindset and business strategies, and I was able to support the parents in these areas because I had a bridal boutique before, hence I can relate and having achieved every single dream I have thus far, means I can share about having a focus and winning mindset for sure!

Still, I didn’t think too much about being in a niche as such as my journey and areas of expertise as a life coach continue to expand and evolve.

Opportunity presents itself when we tune into others’ needs

The chances came … When I was invited to speak at the Metaverse conference that was organised by a group of IT experts to be part of the panel speakers and there, I witnessed what the world needs of me!

What happened was that some of these highly skilled IT experts who were clearly so good at what they do! The work they shared, the data, figures, and numbers they shared were impressive! But apart from that, I could barely understand what was said.

I so wished at the time, that I could understand more of what they were sharing.

So much information, experience, knowledge, and wisdom have gone to waste! Well, at least, that was how I felt at the time. I really sincerely wished I could understand what they said because I am so keen at learning new things and this was my golden opportunity to learn from the expert about this new field that was emerging…! But I couldn’t get much out of that super special conference.

However, luckily, one of my so-called “superpower” is knowing “How to make things work when things don’t work!” which essentially what my book: Connection – The Currency to Happiness is all about!

After the conference, I felt compelled to do something to help entrepreneurs to improve their English speaking skills, I went on to develop, design, and created the How to go from Zero to Hero in six weeks by First, Being Your Own Hero course with the program description: How to go from Zero to Hero in six weeks by First, Being Your Own Hero, and hone Your English Speaking Skills so that you can Become the Leader You Are Meant to Be.

As soon as this course was created, I had entrepreneurs signed up right away.

This was fantastic! As two things has happened since that course creation happened.

Firstly, this has helped me came up with a very special niche, that is not only helpful to others but it is super aligning to my own personal journey “from Zero to Hero” but most importantly, my own experiences of facing the challenges when I first came to Sydney, Australia, without a word of English, at the age of 15 years old.

This opportunity has allowed me to tap into my journey and my own experiences once again at a different level from a different angle and utilizing slightly different areas of my skill set. I have managed to combine my 36+ years of experience, knowledge, and wisdom into a super short course of just six-hourly, creative and fun weeks, to collapse the time for busy professionals to be able to learn just the essentials so that they can speak English better in the shortest amount of time possible without having to attend the long, traditional English speaking class.

This is when I’ve realised that it is really a niche.

Secondly, this is when I started to feel the warrant of having an extra pair of hands to help.

Of course, there is no fast and strict rules in life. We always do what we think is best suited to us and that everyone’s situations are different.

If you have an abundance of cash and are willing to use it all before you earn, then no one is going to stop you from doing that. However, the person who asked the question was actually struggling to pay bills and was overwhelmed with everything else, which to me was more justified to have created a solid course and generating income first before hiring VAs. I mean, don’t get me wrong, being able to hire VAs and experts such as IT support, marketing and sales are all wonderful and keep the economy going by providing employment. Especially now that we can provide employment globally.

Virtual Assistants Drive Business Revenues

Virtual assistants can definitely help drive business revenues in a number of ways.

Here are some of the ways virtual assistants can help increase revenues:

Increased Efficiency: Virtual assistants can help you and your businesses save time and money by handling administrative tasks, customer service, and other routine tasks, allowing you as a coach and business owners to focus on your main business tasks, your role as a coach and revenue-generating activities.

Improved Customer Service: Virtual assistants can help you and your businesses provide better customer services by answering customer inquiries, handling complaints, and providing personalized support, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Sales and Marketing: Virtual assistants can assist with sales and marketing efforts by conducting market research, surveys, creating and executing marketing campaigns, and reaching out to potential customers, leading to increased marketing and sales leads and revenue generation.

Data Analysis: Virtual assistants can help businesses analyze data to identify trends, opportunities, and potential areas for improvement, leading to more informed business decisions and increased revenue.

24/7 Availability: Virtual assistants can provide round-the-clock support, especially now that the internet has enabled the global reach for connections and operations.

The virtual assistants can help ensuring that customers/clients always have access to support, keeping you and your business in a good standing for customer satisfaction, and ultimately, leading to increased loyalty in customers, increase the rate of referral through the word of mouth, as well as essentially, the most important factors, which are sales and revenue.

Overall, virtual assistants can help you and your business operate more efficiently and effectively, allowing you to focus on revenue-generating activities and ultimately leading to increased revenue.

This is where hiring a virtual assistant (VA) with SEO knowledge can help.

Here are Some Signs that it’s Time to Hire a Virtual Assistant with SEO Knowledge

You’re spending too much time on administrative tasks.

As a life coach, your primary focus should be on coaching your clients. However, if you find yourself spending more time on administrative tasks like scheduling, invoicing, or email management, it’s time to consider hiring a VA. With a VA, you can delegate these tasks and focus on what you do best.

Your website isn’t generating enough traffic.

If your website isn’t getting enough traffic, it’s time to invest in SEO. A VA with SEO knowledge can help optimize your website, improve your search engine rankings, and attract more potential clients to your coaching business.

You want to focus on marketing efforts.

Marketing is essential to any coaching business. However, it can be time-consuming, and you may not have the expertise to do it effectively. A VA with SEO knowledge can help you develop and implement marketing strategies, such as content creation, social media management, and email marketing.

In summary, hiring a VA with SEO knowledge can be a game-changer for your coaching business. By delegating administrative tasks and marketing efforts, you can focus on what you do best and attract more clients to your coaching business.

I hope this article helps you gain a bit more insights into VA and when to hire one. If you’re looking for a reliable VA with SEO knowledge, and not sure how or where to begin, please feel free to get in touch, as at Link Coaching besides providing businesses with business strategy coaching, we can also help with all other areas of assisting you in building and running your business coaching with ease and flow so that you can have sustainable success. With her experience and expertise, Linda can help take your coaching business to the next level, as her clients and students nicknamed her the Zero to Hero Coach and called out to her “You’re my hero!”

Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash