If you're thinking of hiring a virtual assistant, one of the things you're probably thinking of is: “How can they help me? What are different ways that an assistant can help me change my life?”.

In this blog, I'm going to talk about the simple ways that an assistant can help you get started to get things through, to ‘have momentum’ as you start working and growing your business. Essentially, what a virtual assistant does is to become a second ‘you’ – a second person who is freeing you up to do the things you need to do to grow your business.

There are going to be three main areas an assistant can do for you:

1. Managing Your Input
2. Managing Output
3. Managing Ongoing, and I'm going to add a little bonus of;
4. Managing Your Life

These are the four different areas and we'll go through them in this blog.

1. Manage Input

Managing anything that comes into your inbox, to your attention, into your peripheral vision whatever that looks like, your assistant helps you with that.

There are usually three main ways that they can do that:

1. Managing Your Communications – whether it's managing your email or your telegram, it could be that they actually have access to your text messages – it could also be managing people who are trying to get your time, your assistant becomes that filter, right in front and center of; ‘what are the different things that you shouldn't be paying attention to and what are the things that you really should?’ They become that filter between you and the rest of the world so you only really focus on what you're supposed to focus on to grow your business.
2. Organize Data – as you're getting all of this information from the world, you want to make sure that you are capturing them and you're actually organizing them and putting them somewhere you can easily find them, see them later or access them as you need to and this is one of the things an assistant can do for you – this could be managing and accessing your inbox so then they're organizing things, it's easy for you to find. It could be organizing your files and your online systems, making sure it's easy to understand for anyone to walk through, making sure it's easy for yoa u to access it and find it whenever you need it without even having to tap them.
3. Track Input – tracking what is going into your life so it could be tracking your expenses, tracking the number of communications you've had, tracking the number of hours you might be working, it might be tracking how many things you get done in a day. It's seeing everything that's coming into your span of vision, and span of attention and helping you manage them so then you only get to pay attention to things you need to.

2. Manage Output

Your assistant can be the one who's putting things out into the world it doesn't have to be you.

One of the quickest examples is just having them draft and send your emails so you don't have to be the person writing out a reply, and you don't have to be the person doing the follow-up. It could be your assistant, as they're learning more about you and your business and what it is that you do, they're now able to come in as full support so you're not doing everything yourself. It could be that they're the ones writing up the follow-up email, it could be that they're the ones sending out the initial email to potential leads and it could also be them reaching out for podcasts you want to be on, speaking gigs and events you want to speak at. It could also just be sending out communications to people you want to connect with.

This is what I mean when I said, ‘sending things out into the world’, it doesn't have to be just you.

1. Create Assets or Content – this is usually why people hire assistants. A really good example is recording a YouTube video – I don't have to edit it, I don't have to put it out into YouTube, I don't have to go ahead and create the thumbnail, I don't have to create any of the social media things – it's all taken care of by an amazing assistant. This is just one of the many ways that can free you up because you can just do what I do where I record a YouTube video 40 minutes a week, 20 minutes for each video and that's it. The content just goes out onto 2xyou’s and mine’s social media profiles. At 2xyou, we have multiple assets where we have the 103 Tasks That You Can Delegate PDF and that's one where I didn’t have to put a lot of time, we've revised it multiple times, we researched, we added more things into that and it doesn't have to be necessarily me doing the updating or even putting it out on our website.
2. Managing YOUR Output – managing what you come up with when it comes to your to-do lists. It could be your assistant editing the drafts that you create, managing the things that you've created before assets, content, and other things, and putting them into one place so that it’s easy for you to push out things as you need to. It also could be just them looking over your shoulder at the things you've created and giving you feedback so you can be better and better every single time.

3. Manage Ongoing

When it comes to managing the ongoing, there are three different things an assistant can do for you:

1. Managing Your Contacts – when you're running your business there are going to be your fans, your clients, and the possible leads – your system can then run the ongoing of maintaining those relationships whether it's asking you like, “Hey this person's birthday is coming up should we send them a gift? or “hey, it's Christmas, do we send them e-cards?” It's having that system where you don't have to put in a lot of effort to maintain the relationships that you have because your assistant has it handled. They're able to give you updates on what's happening in your contacts’ lives, maybe they’re going through their Instagram or their Linked In. It could also be giving you context before you hop on a call with someone or hop on a dinner date or an event, they're giving you a packet of, hey this is this person, this is when you last talked to them, this is what happened in their life since you last talked to them, so giving you that packeted update of, “hey, this is what that looks like.”
2. Managing Tools – This is your assistant maintaining things, putting things into more than just coast mode for you. When it comes to managing your tools, it could be just creating a database of all the tools you've created, making sure all the passwords are up to date, making sure the tools are utilized, that they're actually being used, and not just you getting charged every month for something you're probably not using. It could be your assistant researching tools and testing things out for you, so then you can continue running your business. They're the ones grabbing information to be able to aid you in that search of growing more with tools.
3. Managing Operations – this is usually where an assistant is usually thought of as doing the admin work, the day-to-day work, the operations, making sure that things are in place when it comes to, for example: if you have a service-based business, tracking people through the funnel. If you have a product-based business – making sure that things are shipped out. Whatever the case may be, it's your assistant making sure that things are running even without you and that's ultimately, the dream of having a virtual assistant, is things run without you.

4. Managing YOU and Your Life

What can an assistant help you out with?

1. Being accountable – when you have an assistant who knows you and your business, knows the projects you're working on, and knows your priorities, they can keep you accountable for the things that you're supposed to be doing. This could be as simple as following up with you if there are things that are stuck in the pipeline. This could be following up with you on resources that they need to keep going, this could also be as simple as just someone who’s like, “Hey, these are my priorities for the day, what are your priorities for the day?” It's having that back and forth, it's not just you working on the business, someone else is working on it with you.
2. Managing Life Events – whether it's going to be your anniversary with your partner soon, whether it's your kid's birthday, whether it's in in-laws, events coming up, they're able to keep you on track on like, “hey, so and so is coming up, do you want me to be able to order them flowers?”. They start learning more about you and what are the things that you need beyond just the business that they're now able to contribute in that way and bring things up as they go along.
3. Creating A File On YOU – creating a file on your preferences such as traveling: “Hey, I always want to be in the aisle seat.” When you go out to eat; making sure that they're not playing music in that restaurant or when you are trying to get groceries, they're able to just order things from your favorite store and have them delivered to your doorstep.

There are a lot of really amazing things that a virtual assistant can manage for you. The main thing honestly, is to just try and see where in the different parts of your life they can fit into that they will naturally love doing, versus if you try to keep forcing them into something that they just aren't probably good at.

Having a virtual assistant isn't just a magic pill that you take and everything in your life gets easier. It is a process that you go through as you learn what different systems work for you and your assistant.

If you want more guidance on which area of your life your assistant can help you with, you can go to 2xyou.com/scorecard to see how ready you are for an assistant when it comes to your tasks, your systems and where you are at, to help stairstep you to scaling.