When it comes to hiring a virtual assistant it does really depend on where your business is at.
- Where is your business at?
- What kind of assistance do you need?
Start-Up Virtual Assistant
These are usually the Virtual Assistants that a lot of people default to hiring, someone to do the admin work, the social media work and someone to get things off of your to-do list to clear things off of your desk. This is usually where your business has had some recurring revenue, you have a way to make money and you have repetitive tasks in your business but you're mostly focusing on the functional tasks – the repetitive, things that need to get done in your business versus the vital tasks – the things that actually grow your business.
Hiring a startup Virtual Assistant is essentially someone who does some of the admin tasks like email management and calendar management, these could also be things like managing your social media or managing data entry. These are mostly Virtual assistants who are focused on the entry-level kind of work that needs to get done in your business as you start focusing and letting go of them and moving up and up in your business.
Other examples of tasks that a Start-up Virtual Assistant can do could be following up on emails. It could be managing your LinkedIn account setting up leads and managing the different tools they're currently using in your business. These are things that you really just want to get off of working on in your business that you don't need to because they're not in your zone of genius or your expertise. These are all things that you can start delegating to an assistant.
Project Management Virtual Assistant
What a Project Manager Virtual Assistant does is to help manage the projects instead of focusing on the small tasks that need to get done in a day. They focus on the bigger projects. They're now focusing on the big picture of you and your business, managing the freelancers that you're working with and managing the things that need to get done in a certain project. These are the kinds of assistants who are now managing projects like website revamps and are in charge of creating employee handbooks in your business, managing different sides of how things are done in your business, creating Standard Operating Procedures and creating reports or updates for you to go over in the day.
You've kind of moved up from having an admin assistant who only focuses on tasks to having someone who has that better overview – an even better overview than you sometimes in your business, to actually get things done in that manner. They can also now start being in charge of creating strategies for your business like creating proposals on how marketing and operations should be done. They now have basically just more of the figures in the different parts of your business.
Executive Assistant
Basically, when you get to the point where your business is now running to a point where you can actually walk away, where you can take trips, where you can take holidays, you need an Executive Assistant who now manages YOU.
The reason why it's called an Executive Assistant is that as the Chief Executive Officer or Chief Operations Officer of your own business, they're now managing you and what you need to focus on in growing your business.
A really good example of this is, an Executive Assistant helps when it comes to booking your flights and booking your speaking gigs or your podcasts. They're focused more just on you because they know that as your status grows, the business will also grow with you. As you're more freed up on the other things, you're now freed up to keep growing your business.
The difference between a Virtual Assistant and an Executive Assistant is, it focuses on managing YOU, making sure that you're aligned with what the business you’re supposed to be focusing on and making sure that you are focused on the next steps and the next strategy in your business.
An Executive assistant focuses on you and what you need so you can really focus on the things that need to get done.
There is a little bit of a crossover between a Project Management Assistant and an Executive Assistant where they could be managing people and projects but the main thing is that they're managing you and what you're supposed to be working on.
Chief Assistant/Personal COO
The highest kind of assistant that you need. When it comes to being a Chief Assistant or a Personal COO or Chief of Operations, they are now managing your businesses so it's not just managing your business, it's not just managing you, it's managing your businesses so they're not just going to be working mostly closely with you, they're also working with the different people who are in charge of their businesses. You might get to the point where you have multiple things that you're running at once and this assistant basically makes sure that you are both on track. If you have multiple businesses, they can help you run it.
This is ideally the highest level assistant that you can get because they're now getting to the point where they understand you, they understand the businesses that you have and they understand what needs to get done in order for things to be aligned to your goal.
Some examples include them running your board meetings and talking with your other chiefs in your different businesses. They are now reading reports instead of creating them. They've now essentially replaced you in a lot of the essential work in the business so you can focus on creating another business and the next project and then the next, and actually creating your lifestyle kind of business.
A Virtual Assistant can really be just rising to the level of where we're at so I really encourage that when you do hire a Virtual Assistant, hire someone who's just a little bit higher than you so then you can raise yourself up to their standards and then they can tell you and walk you through what needs to get done.
If you think you're ready to get a Virtual Assistant, feel free to take our scorecard on 2xYou.com/scorecard to see if you are a good match for what kind of assistant you need based on the different levels that we just talked through.