The following are a few frequently asked questions about Virtual Assistants:
What is Virtual Assistance?
Virtual Assistance is a new administrative profession, formalized by Anastasia Brice, Chief Visionary Officer of AssistU, to meet the needs of small business owners and entrepreneurs, as well as the needs of any busy person who could use some great administrative support. The people who do Virtual Assistance are called Virtual Assistants or VAs. What they do is no less than an art — working long-term and closely with a successful person (client) without needing to be physically in the client’s office.
Its base is in traditional administrative support, but we’ve widened the scale and scope, and placed it on a new foundation. That foundation holds the relationship at its core, with the people (both business owners, and equals in the relationship) choosing each other, rather than, as in the traditional norm, one person being placed in the role of working for the other. It requires a level of commitment and desire from both people to give the best they have to the relationship — to commingling talents and strengths, that surpassed anything the corporate world could currently imagine. First and foremost, it requires that both the VA and client fully understand, value, and desire a collaborative partnership.
Once the partnership is established, Virtual Assistance works wonderfully well, skipping over geographical barriers easily with the use and immediacy of communications media (fax, phone, Internet). Working virtually allows people to be in touch as easily as if they were sitting 20 feet from one another.
Who would work with a VA?
VAs work with smart successful people of all kinds; authors, sales people, consultants, coaches, executives, professionals, entrepreneurs — anyone who wants to be professionally successful and live a more balanced life with more free time to do the things he/she wants to do!
If I wanted an assistant, why would I hire one who’s potentially hundreds of miles away?
Well, part of the benefit of having a VA is that you haven’t hired anyone. When you work with a VA, you get a partner, not an employee. You get someone who chooses to work with you as much as you choose to work with him or her. The VA’s decision to work with you will be based on being attracted to your work and on being interested in being your partner for success, rather than because he or she is looking for “some job.” People work with VAs because they:
- Don’t have the space for someone in the office
- Don’t want someone in the office
- Don’t have the equipment needed for someone else to use
- Don’t want to buy the equipment
- Don’t want the associated work and cost of having an employee
If what you want and need is the most basic office support, then you might want to work with a secretarial service.
If, on the other hand, you want the benefit of working with someone who really wants to know you, your business, your customers, and who really wants to be deeply involved in your success, you’ll want to work with a VA.
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