146: How Virtual Assistants can Revolutionize Your Business

CAMILLE WALKER [0:00]

So, in that way, the pandemic and having so many remote workers actually helped me sell my course more easily and also have other people understand how they too could use virtual assistants to help them grow their business.

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So, you want to make an impact. You're thinking about starting a business sharing your voice. How do women do it that handle motherhood, family, and still chase after those dreams? We'll listen each week as we dive into the stories of women who know. This is Call Me CEO.

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Welcome back everyone to Call Me CEO. And today's episode is special because I'm actually going to start recording solo episodes that will be shared. Throughout the summertime, I'm going to try something a little different as summertime changes the way that people consume content. And so, I thought this is probably a good time to test out some solo shows and also questions that I get from people on various topics about running the household as well as running a business, how to save time, and how to be the most productive.

So, today's episode specifically is on a topic that I hold near and dear to my heart, which is the world of virtual assistants and how by using them, we can transform the power that we have to expand on the work that we are already doing and also maximize our time by bringing virtual assistants into the world of our online business.

Now, some of you may know that I am the creator of 60 Days to VA, which is a course that I wrote over two years ago to help stay-at-home moms build a virtual assistant business. It takes everything from scratch of knowing how to start a business online. building a website, social medias, but also within the bones of your why, how you want to build the business, and the skill sets that CEOs are looking for to help them run their online businesses.

Why did I write this course? It is because I had so many women who were saying, "I want to build a business from home that I can have flexible hours with and be at home with my babies or be able to go to doctor's visits or performance recitals or whatever the case may be." So, the course was built.

And what was really interesting too is that on the flip side, I had so many busy entrepreneurs who were asking me, "How do you wear all the hats and get everything done?" I have been blogging, creating, and podcasting now for over a decade. The podcast now is about two and a half years old. But in years past as my team grew, I knew I needed more people to help me.

And listen, virtual assistants are the reason why I'm able to do what I am today, period. Shout out to all of my virtual assistants because I really wouldn't be able to grow my business and have a family and be as connected and as involved as I would like to be with them had it not been for the help of virtual assistants.

So, in that case too, I have now been coaching and helping line up busy entrepreneurs with people who have finished my course. So, in today's episode, we're going to talk about how having a virtual assistant can help you revolutionize your business and what that looks like.

Segment 1: The Rise of Virtual Assistants: So, first and foremost, we want to talk about what a virtual assistant is. Now, a virtual assistant can wear many different hats. You can have one that does a myriad of different responsibilities within your business. And you can also have a virtual assistant who does one or two things within your business.

For me specifically, I have team members who help me with Pinterest only. I have members of my team that help me with my podcast only, while others will help me with web or digital design or even video creation. So, you can find someone that can wear all of the hats or you can even find people who are more experts in the fields that you were looking for specifically, which is more what I have done.

Now, what else can a virtual assistant do? Many people will hire a virtual assistant to be an admin of sorts. Now, pre-pandemic, when I explained what 60 Days to VA was, people looked at me with a blank stare of what do you mean? They can help you from home? How does that even work? And then, 2020 came and a lot of people were working remote and finding out that, yes, someone can work very effectively from home or wherever they have Wi-Fi and help your business grow.

So, in that way, the pandemic and having so many remote workers actually helped me sell my course more easily and also have other people understand how they too could use virtual assistants to help them grow their business.

Now, if you're looking at the demand for virtual assistants, that has also gone up with the increase of people working remote. This idea that people can work productively from home has revolutionized the virtual assistant world. Because anyone with these skill sets to either help with admin tasks, for example, answering emails or doing HR-type customer service positions, it can even be with scheduling, with travel, with design, with SEO, with content management, with editing, with scheduling contracts. It goes on and on and on.

So, what I did within my course is I actually created three different pockets of fields that I saw were most sought after for online businesses. And that's how I developed my content. But what's been really fun about seeing people utilize my virtual assistants is that I could have never even anticipated the amount that people would need and the myriad of different things that these virtual assistants would be used for.

I've had some of my graduates work for dentists' office, plastic surgeons, online boutiques, podcast management, screen printing companies, subscription companies, tech companies. And it goes on and on and on. And it's been so fun because every time I have a graduate or I line up a new entrepreneur, my eyes are open to even more ways that you can use a virtual assistant.

So, as you're listening to this episode, I want you to think about pockets of your life or within your business that you would like to create a team around. I do a time audit with the people and entrepreneurs that I helped to hire virtual assistants because I think a big piece of that is a time audit of what do you enjoy doing? What do you not enjoy doing? And what is actually moving the needle and helping you to create more income in your business? And that is the part where as you dissect your hours and your minutes, you'll be able to see how you can most effectively use your time and perhaps open up for the use of someone else to help you grow your business.

Now, virtual assistants are growing in popularity, especially with the use of social media. Many of you have probably heard of the idea of creating video to share on social media. That may be something that you are not as familiar with. That could be something that video alone is something that you hire someone else to help you to create so that you can have vertical video showing on Instagram reels, TikTok, pin ideas on Pinterest, YouTube shorts, and many others. I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter comes up with some kind of their own video. Currently, they don't have one. But it is only growing more and more video.

And now, the reasons behind getting more virtual assistants can be remote work trends as well as the advancement in technology. If there are pieces of your business where you're wanting to expand your business or grow on your business, if you are in the minutia of trying to learn every new technology or social media that can hold you back or even make you feel encumbered by not knowing how to do it all.

So that is where if you are feeling like you need help in your business, typically the people that come to me and say that they are, they will say that they've been needing someone for a long time. So, if you're feeling like that, yes, in the beginning of a business, it's important that you learn all the pieces of your business. However, once you're to a point where you're holding yourself back by holding too tightly on to all the little things and you have income coming in, it is much more cost effective to trade your time for some money because that will help you to elevate what you're able to produce in your company as the visionary.

Segment 2: Time-Saving Benefits of Virtual Assistants: All right. So, let's get into time. There are so many time benefits of having a virtual assistant because taking care of repetitive and time-consuming tasks is something that a virtual assistant can help you to maximize the use of your dollar over the amount of your time.

An example that I heard of this in a book recently was someone who had gotten a new printer and they were spending hours upon hours to try to figure out how this printer worked. Now, when they finally bit the bullet and asked someone to help them who was familiar with printers, it ended up being a couple hundred dollars. And the exchange for that was so much less than the amount of time that that business owner was spending and trying to figure it out themselves.

So, you have to consider the cost analysis of what it is that you're giving up for the time that you're using and either doing something repetitive or something that you don't understand as well as a virtual assistant might. Now, it's important too to remember that there are specific tasks like email management, appointment scheduling, data entry, and research that if you were to pass that on to someone else, you could save lots and lots of time by giving the opportunity to someone else.

Recently, I had an entrepreneur who was a global speaker. She's actually been on this podcast before. Her name is Kristen. And I set her up with a virtual assistant. And her main desire was to have help with scheduling her travel and keeping track of LinkedIn messages as well as appointments that she had set for herself because the moving parts were too many.

And what I loved so much is that when I set her up with a virtual assistant that could manage that, she was so excited about the potential of that and also the research that her virtual assistant could do to make her be much more responsive to the clients and contacts that she had as well as showing up on LinkedIn and in travel in a way that it alleviated so much stress.

Segment 3: Strategies for Maximizing Time as a Business Owner: So, let's talk about strategies for maximizing your time as a business owner and strategies to make the most of your time. So, one thing that we can talk about is how we can delegate lower priority actions to a virtual assistant. And what I mean by lower priority is something that someone else could handle without needing your personal touch.

Now, obviously, this is my voice. I am speaking to the microphone. I'm looking into the camera. No one can replace my image or my likeness. However, the follow-up tasks of running a podcast or a blog involve a lot with the editing or the transcription or setting up social media sharing. Those are all pieces of my business that I really want to have done, but it doesn't require my likeness to be a part of that. So, that's a piece of delegation that I can give up to a virtual assistant to help me be more effective with my time.

Another example of that is to think about how you can create business growth by connecting with people in your field. Now, if it's an email that you're sending out, maybe the first one is an email written by you in your voice. But then, you can then take an email and connect with outreach for potential clients, maybe for potential guest spots on podcasts or other blogs or even collaborative efforts for people in your field. This is a way to maximize your time where you're creating the original piece of content. But then, you're able to share that in a way that a virtual assistant could help you maximize your time with key components of who you're trying to reach within a shorter amount of time.

The future of virtual assistants and what is happening in the future with this is that we want to think about the impact of what's happening with our ability to maximize our time. Now, listen, I have been using chat GPT in new ways I have never done before in 10 plus years of creating content online. And there is a place for that to be able to use ChatGPT and AI in our content creation. However, to have someone who is behind the scenes helping you to strategize, now, not to say a virtual assistant is someone to strategize all of your content or everything that you're putting out in your business. However, it is nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of and create a strategy around everything you're putting out into your business.

Now, if this is something that sounds interesting to you or something you want to explore more, that is actually what I help entrepreneurs with is coming up with a time audit of what you're working on and how you want to expand your business and strategy of how to do that by implementing a virtual assistant.

So, if you're interested in that I do discovery calls for free to see if there could be a good fit for you to help maximize your time and grow your business in only the way that I know how, which is to involve experts and teams and virtual assistants and people who can see the perspective of a whole where you get to be the leader, the innovator, and the entrepreneur of your business, but you can have people that are on your team and helping you reach those goals more quickly.

Segment 4: Success Stories and Testimonials: Okay. As we're talking about employing virtual assistants and what that may look like, I wanted to share with you a testimonial, one from an entrepreneur who I helped line up with one of my 60 Days to VA graduates and another testimonial from someone who took my course and I helped to line up with an entrepreneur.

So, the first comes from Jessica Paige who is a CEO. And she says, "As a business owner, I needed to hire someone and got dozens of applications. I have limited time and knew the skills I needed, but didn't have the time to weed through all of the resumes. I went to Camille for help finding someone that checked all the boxes. Best thing I've ever done. She has people trained in exactly what I needed. She did all the work for me. She sent me to her top applicants that she thought would be a good fit. I interviewed only a couple people rather than dozens and found the perfect person for the job. It was the easiest hiring process I've ever experienced."

I love it. Thank you, Jessica. I'm so happy we found a great fit for you. And that's part of what I do is to help to line someone up who has past work experiences and skills that match up with you and what you're looking for. The hiring process, you do decide who you hire and you only pay me if you make a commitment with hiring someone. So, just a little FYI on how that works.

All right. This next quote comes from Vanessa Moore, who is a graduate of my 60 Days to VA program. She says, "Camille's 60 Days to VA course is one of the best investments I've made for myself, both in my time and financially. As a stay-at-home mom of eight plus years, I've searched many times for the perfect job. For me, that meant something where I could bring in some extra income and stay home with my children. This program checks all the boxes and more. The course material is straightforward and simple, yet full of incredibly useful details that I never would have thought of up on my own. What I felt really set this program apart was the network of people and Camille's knowledge and ability to connect everyone from the entrepreneurs to the graduates trained to be just what they needed. I am so grateful for this program and the connections I've already made." That's Vanessa Moore.

Segment 5: Future of Virtual Assistants and Conclusion: So, as you can see, it's an awesome sweet deal. I'm helping women on both sides who are looking to take skills and knowledge and training that they've had for years in addition to my course and the training that comes within it to match them up with busy entrepreneurs who are looking for the help and wanting to weed through the mess of knowing they can find someone that they can trust and grow their business with.

If you enjoyed this episode, please give it a share. And I would love it if you reached out to me. The link is below where we can set up a free discovery call. Also, make sure that you are following along for each episode where you can subscribe and leave a review here on the podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in and I will see you next time.

Hey, CEOs. Thank you so much for spending your time with me. If you found this episode inspiring or helpful, please let me know in a comment and a 5-star review. You could have the chance of being a featured review on an upcoming episode. Continue the conversation on Instagram at @callmeceopodcast. And remember, you are the boss.

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