Running a business is a busy and stressful job. Entrepreneurs and business owners – including freelancers – can often feel overwhelmed since they are always juggling far too many ideas and projects. This has become part and parcel of this job, especially in a fast and ever-changing world like today’s.
It’s imperative that you need to find ways to deal with the complexities of your business life. One solution to this is by hiring a VA. But why? Read on.
First Thing First: How to Deal With Your Overwhelming Business Life?
Feeling overwhelmed can impact your physical and mental well-being negatively. By following a few stress-busting tips, you can manage your feelings of being overwhelmed and increase productivity.
1. Understand the reasons
People running businesses feel overwhelmed for different reasons. You have to first identify the cause of your stress. It can be due to several reasons, like trying to do everything by yourself or trying to complete too many tasks in too little time. Whatever the issue is, identify it and try to solve the root of the problem.
You have to remember that the person in control is you, and only you can make effective changes.
2. Delegate
As an entrepreneur or business owner, you will have countless responsibilities and many roles to fulfill. But you have to accept that you can not do everything on your own.
Delegate mundane and less important tasks to others so that you can focus on the critical ones. You can use the help of virtual services and virtual assistants to help manage essential tasks in your business that you cannot focus on.
3. Map your projects
Massive projects and imminent deadlines can cause a huge amount of stress. To combat this, always plan out your projects before starting them. Identify milestones and define steps to achieve them efficiently. Try to complete tasks according to your timeline. Take the help of virtual assistants to stay on track and finish the project.
4. Mapping your day
Mapping out your day is as indispensable as mapping out your project. Have a clear picture of what you want to do on a daily basis and stick to the schedule as much as possible. Delegate daily tasks to your virtual assistants.
5. Have healthy work practices
Unhealthy work habits can also lead you to feel overwhelmed. Always focus on one task at a time rather than swirling your mind with a haystack of ideas. Also, keep your workspace neat and organized. A clutter-free workspace will improve productivity and conserve time.
6. Seek help
Feeling overwhelmed sometimes mean that you just have too many responsibilities to juggle. This is probably the best time to seek help – e.g. hiring an employee. The problem is, there are plenty to think about when hiring one – the costs, the compliance, and all the nitty-gritty related to employee managmeent.
One solution to this problem: Hire a virtual assistant (VA.) There are plenty of benefits when you choose to hire a VA, which we will discuss in the next section.
Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant
Running a business all by yourself can get out of hand, especially when it is thriving. Having an extra set of hands to help will surely take a lot of the burden off your shoulders. Having a virtual assistant will help you delegate mundane tasks to them. Virtual assistants offer a lot of benefits to entrepreneurs. Some of these benefits include:
1. Maximize productivity
A virtual assistant can manage your mundane day-to-day activities. This means you will have more than enough time to concentrate on critical activities that will help your business grow. It will give you more time to devise creative development strategies.
2. Cost-effective
Hiring a virtual assistant is cheaper compared to hiring a traditional assistant. You only need to pay for the work you receive from a virtual assistant. There are no additional costs like benefits or pensions given to a full-time employee. Similarly, hiring a virtual assistant does not involve the long-drawn-out interview process that is associated with traditional hiring.
Having a virtual assistant means you do not need a physical office space. This will save you a lot of money that you can further invest in your business.
3. Hire talents globally
Since virtual assistants work remotely, you can hire people with the best talents all around the world. This will eventually benefit you and your company.
4. Improving productivity and customer service
When you are handling everything on your own, you may not be able to give a prompt reply to your customers. This can negatively affect your brand image. A virtual assistant can solve this issue by ensuring that the customer’s issues are properly taken care of.
5. Skill and experience
You can hire virtual assistants based on the skills and expertise that you require at that particular time. There are virtual assistants who specialize in carrying out specific tasks and others who have numerous skill sets. Some virtual assistants may have enormous experience in a critical field like online marketing. You can obtain their services without keeping them on the permanent payroll of your company.
6. Balancing your life
A balance between professional and personal life is important to reduce stress and the feelings of being overwhelmed. A virtual assistant, by doing mundane tasks, can help you to spend some time relaxing with your family. This will further enhance your productivity.
Overwhelm is hard to avoid in a stressful work environment. But reducing workload by delegating tasks to others can help beat stress to a great extent.
Hiring a VA: When is The Right Time?
Entrepreneurs who juggle a lot of tasks themselves may be confused as to when to hire a virtual assistant. Consider hiring a virtual assistant if you are experiencing scenarios similar to the ones mentioned here:
- Try to find a virtual assistant if you are finding it difficult to focus on your core responsibilities.
- If you are feeling overwhelmed constantly and your stress is negatively affecting your performance, then hire a virtual assistant to share your workload.
- If you are finding it difficult to keep track of your schedule, then try hiring a virtual assistant. They can manage your calendar and can remind you of important meetings and deadlines.
- When you are juggling a lot of tasks, you may miss or ignore phone calls that might be important. A virtual assistant can help you manage customer calls and improve their satisfaction.
- Marketing is a necessary step to gaining customers. Entrepreneurs may not get enough time to focus on this essential task. A virtual assistant can do tasks like engaging the customers on social media, managing the business’s blog, and writing weekly newsletters.
- When your business is small, you may be able to manage things single-handedly. But as your business grows, it will become progressively more difficult. Try to hire a virtual assistant when your business starts experiencing rapid growth.
Conclusion
Running a business is overwhelming. There are always deadlines to meet and not enough time to complete all the necessary tasks. Since going into a panic attack and shutting shop is not an option, entrepreneurs can use various methods to cope with the chaos and beat the stress.
One of the solutions that – surprisingly – aren’t often considered by business owners is hiring a VA. The logic behind hiring a VA is pretty simple: You can access the services that are provided by someone who is as qualified as the typical in-house staff – at a fraction of the costs.
Here’s your takeaway: Your next step would be deciding whether hiring a VA is necessary. Then, if you decide you will hire one, you need to determine the right time for it. Finally, you need to make sure to hire the best virtual assistant from a reputable provider, such as www.virtualheadquarters.com.au.