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If you’re running a business, it can definitely be agreed that every minute counts. But what happens when you find yourself with unused hours in your virtual assistant’s schedule? Well, whether you’re a small business owner in Birmingham or running a startup from the heart of Staffordshire, there’s always a way to maximise your VA’s potential. So, here are some inventive ways to ensure no minute goes to waste and your business runs smoother than ever.

Enhancing Your Online Presence

Your virtual assistant can work wonders with your digital footprint. If there’s downtime in their schedule, ask them to glance over your website. Maybe this could be updating some outdated content, adding some fresh blog posts, or even optimising your pages for SEO, but overall, your VA can help you ensure that your online presence is as sharp as it can be.

But you also need to remember that a well-maintained website is your digital shopfront, too. At the end of the day, first impressions greatly mater, and you want the best impressions possible from your clients.

Tackle the Email Monster

We’re all guilty of this- having piles upon piles of emails, and all the important messages just seem to get lost in the chaos, right? Well, a virtual assistant can help you out by organising your inbox, setting up filters, and even drafting up responses to some common queries that you get.

Plus, if there’s any spare time, why not get them to create templates for recurring emails? This alone saves you a lot of time in the long run. This way, you can stay on top of communication without getting bogged down by the nitty-gritty.

Content Creation and Repurposing

If writing isn’t your forte or you lack the time, your VA can step in for you! They could draft newsletters, create blog posts, or even repurpose existing content for different platforms. There’s always something out there to help keep your audience engaged.

Plus, most VAs who specialise in marketing usually have graphic design experience (at least with Canva), so they may even be able to help create or curate images and videos that align with your brand’s message.

Social Media Magic

Speaking of marketing, we can’t forget about social media! Overall, a consistent and engaging social media presence is very important for businesses nowadays. So, if your VA has any unused hours and specialises in marketing, it might really help to get them to create and schedule some posts that are engaging, eye-catching, and valuable to your audience.

They can also analyse your social media metrics to identify what’s working and what needs tweaking, ensuring your online engagement is always on point. Again, this needs to be a VA that is specialised in marketing, as VAs aren’t one-size-fits-all.

Organise Your Digital Workspace

Needless to say, a cluttered workspace can be frustrating, but it’s not just the messy desks either; even a cluttered digital workspace can be fairly inefficient, too. But your VA can help organise your files and ensure that everything is backed up, and they can even streamline your cloud storage too. This might seem like a fairly minor task, but this can definitely help with boosting your productivity in the long run!

Unused hours don’t have to mean wasted time! All it takes is a bit of planning, and you can get your VA to chip in and help shape your business! So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get cracking and make every second count!

Running a business is busy and intensive, so you need to make sure you get help wherever needed. This is something that can play a big part in making you improve things, and ensuring that you run your business in the best possible way. Virtual assistants can play a big role in helping make things better for you, which is why you need to harness this power.

It is important to be able to do the best you can to make things run better as a business, and a virtual assistant can play a big role in helping you to make the most of this. Let’s find out more about a virtual assistant, what they can do, and why they are integral for business.

What is a Virtual Assistant?

A virtual assistant is an independent contractor who can help to provide administrative and organisational services to clients and business, whilst operating outside of administrative hours. They are a crucial part of helping make the working life easier for business owners, and they are a key part of enhancing business organisation.

Virtual assistants generally tend to have a wealth of experience in office or administrative roles, and will have previously done similar jobs in other roles in the past. They are remote independent contractors, who are able to fulfill the services and needs of businesses from the comfort of home, meaning your company doesn’t have to spend additional money on a salaried employee.

How Can a Virtual Assistant Help You?

It is important to make sure you understand the ways in which a virtual assistant can help you, and your business, and make things easier and more accessible for you. Here are some of the best ways virtual assistants can help your business:

Diary Management

Diary management is essential for busy business owners who need to be more organised and stay on top of their day-to-day schedules. This is why it is important to have a virtual assistant on the payroll, as they are able to keep on top of this, and this helps them to keep you more organised on a daily basis.

Social Media Support

Social media is the most powerful weapon in your company’s arsenal and this is why you need to be able to harness its power as effectively as possible. It is essential to make the best of this, and to understand the types of posts you should be making, and when, as well as staying on top of trends. This is why you need a virtual assistant who can help you with this.

Managing Email Accounts

As a company, it is essential to keep on top of email accounts, and to make sure you have a strong email marketing strategy in place. Not to mention checking and responding to emails multiple times a day. This is one of the key services that virtual assistants can help with, making them an invaluable part of your company.

If you are looking for help and support with the running of the business, as well as taking care of the things that you personally need to do, but may not always have time for, you need a personal assistant to help you. This is why it is essential to try to make the most of this moving forward.

Virtual assistants have become invaluable assets for companies who are looking to optimise their productivity and improve their operation. For local businesses across Birmingham and Staffordshire, hiring a remote personal assistant can offer a range of benefits you may not have considered before.

Whether you’re looking to save time or enhance your efficiency, understanding the top ten tasks you can outsource to your virtual assistant to help streamline your business operations matters. Let’s take a look below.

Administrative Support

Virtual assistants are able to handle a range of administrative tasks including managing your emails, scheduling appointments and maintaining calendars.

Customer Service

To retain your clients and maintain a positive reputation, your virtual assistant will be able to manage customer inquiries, handle complaints, and provide support through various channels.

Social Media Management

Maintaining an active and engaging social media presence isn’t easy with how fast social media moves. A remote personal assistant, however, can help you to create and schedule posts while monitoring your social media account and engaging with your audience for you.

Content Creation

Content is king. Having a steady stream of high quality content is vital for attraction and retention of customers. A virtual assistant can assist with creating newsletters and blog posts.

Data Entry and Management

For your records to be accurate, you need to have data entry and management handled as part of the way that your team works. A virtual assistant can handle tasks such as updating databases, entering customer information, and managing your spreadsheets.

Research

Whether it’s market research or competitor analysis, outsourcing this to a virtual assistant can help you to free up your time while that research is being thoroughly conducted on your behalf.

Bookkeeping

Virtual assistants can assist you with bookkeeping tasks such as expense tracking, invoicing, and payroll management. Keeping your financial records in order is critical for success.

Travel Arrangements

Are you planning business trips? You might not have the time to get to the nitty gritty of the planning details, but your virtual assistant will. Remote personal assistants can handle all aspects of travel arrangements, including booking flights and hotels.

Email Marketing

A powerful tool for reaching and engaging your audience, email marketing is a must. Virtual assistants can help you to create and manage your email campaigns, do the analysis afterwards and segment your email list.

Project Management

Managing projects requires careful planning as well as coordination. With the help of our remote personal assistant, you can oversee projects, track progress, and ensure that deadlines are met because you have a second set of eyes on the project. This allows you to focus on strategic planning while ensuring that your projects are executed the right way.

When you outsource these tasks to a virtual assistant, business owners across Diverter and Birmingham will be able to enhance their productivity. You’ll be able to focus on your core business activities and ensure that essential tasks are handled professionally and personally.

Whether you need help with admin, customer service, or content creation, a virtual assistant is able to provide the expertise and assistance that you need for success.

With more businesses operating remotely nowadays, it’s important to adapt your business to remote working. From hybrid to fully remote operations, the landscape of business has changed significantly since the pandemic.

To ensure maximum efficiency for your business, utilising the latest tools in technology is imperative to long-lasting success. This includes the use of virtual personal assistants to help with the day-to-day management of your organisation.

What technologies do virtual personal assistants need for efficiency?

Virtual personal assistants can take advantage of an assortment of technologies in order to maximise the efficiency of their workload nowadays. From spreadsheets to money management software for business finance, to work management software that helps juggle all of the daily tasks and demands that are expected in this role.

What are some of the latest tools worth using for virtual personal assistants?

Zapier – For AI workflows

As a virtual personal assistant, you’re going to be managing a lot of different tasks at once. That means using workflow tools like Zapier for example, is a great way to use AI technology for the benefit of automation and to streamline your tasks into one, easy-to-manage platform.

Grammarly – To catch errors

Note-taking and document creation might be a normal task within your working day as a virtual personal assistant. That means accuracy and detail matter greatly, especially if you’re a VA to a stickler for detail.

Platforms like Grammarly which come as a browser add-on, can be great for keeping track of any grammatical or spelling errors. 

Zoom – To deliver effective communication

Whether it’s a VA role for a completely remote company or for a hybrid-working organisation, Zoom has and will continue to provide an effective means of communication for VAs and their clients.

Toggl Track – Maximise your time

As a VA, you’ll want to make every last-minute count towards providing the best for your business clients. Therefore, Toggl Track is an effective app to help maximise your time in the best way possible.

Why consider virtual personal assistants for your business?

Hiring a virtual assistant has many benefits for your business. Regardless of size or existence on the market, taking on one or multiple virtual personal assistants has its advantages.

Saves time and money

Virtual personal assistants are a lot more affordable in cost than the cost incurred by hiring permanent staff. Not only that but with the help of additional hands, even remotely, it can save the business a lot of time.

Access a broader range of skills and expertise

When looking for virtual personal assistants, there’s access to a broad range of skills and expertise that you might not currently have within the business.

Increases productivity

Productivity is an important part of a company’s success, which is why having virtual personal assistants as part of your growing team is critical. To ensure continued growth, having extra help for the monotonous tasks is important.

Improves work-life balance

For current staff who are overworked with hefty workloads, they’ll certainly feel the relief that services provide when using virtual personal assistants. 

Hire a virtual personal assistant for your business

If you’re a Staffordshire or Birmingham-based business owner looking to utilise modern technologies this year, take advantage of the opportunities that virtual personal assistants can provide.

The linchpins of success are efficiency and smart resource management. And what has become more relevant as the rise of remote working and even digital enterprises is the debate between hiring a virtual assistant versus a full-time employee. Let’s pick this debate apart.

The Financial Frontlines

The bottom line, numbers and budget is the driving force behind many businesses, and looking at the budget battle between a virtual assistant (VA)  and a full-time employee (FTE) is the first port of call. Looking at a VA, you only pay for the hours they work or up until the task is completed, there are no overhead costs that you need to cover for office space, and you’re dodging the expenses that come with a full-time salary and benefits. This all makes a VA very cost-effective.

However, the predictability of a FTEs fixed salary makes budgeting in your business easier and, yes you might have to pay more, but you are building on their company loyalty, productivity (they are only focused on your work) and the company culture. 

FTEs can become a long-term return on investment, but a virtual assistant for small business can offer an attractive low-cost flexibility .

Scalability and Flexibility

Every business has to keep their eye on the future and growing their business, making scalability and flexibility of their workforce very important. Having VAs in your corner makes scalability and flexibility a dream. You will be left out of a HR nightmare of hiring and firing to accommodate either a rapid growth or change in the market. Having a VA makes it a breeze to handle the flexibility needed to accommodate project-based needs, unexpected increases in demands or even seasonal fluctuations.

On the other hand, scaling with FTEs is a “go/stop” situation. You or your HR department needs to handle the hiring and firing which can also be very time-consuming as there might even be training involved too beyond the interviews. 

Specialisation and Skills

Specialisation and skills can be what makes the decision for you whether to choose a VA or FTE. VA usually has a variety of skills. This makes it easy for businesses to hire a VA just for a specific task or project that needs a specific skill set or knowledge. 

As for FTEs, because they are a more permanent part of a team, businesses can invest in their long-term skill development. They can even make sure that the skills they want their FTEs to learn and develop are aligned with the projected growth the business is planning to take in the future. 

Conclusion

So, is a VA or FTE the best answer? Well, it all depends on your business – your needs, the financial outlook and also the growth trajectory for the future. A VA is the best fit if you are looking for flexibility, specialisation and cost-effectiveness. A FTE is more of a better fit if you are after more intangible benefits like in-person collaboration and cultural integration. So its all about, what will fit with your unique scenario.

Growing a business requires solving problems. Every day, executives and leaders must wade through long to-do lists to keep their enterprises moving forward.

But doing everything alone is challenging (if not impossible). Organising schedules, returning client calls, and managing email inboxes is time-consuming.

What’s more, it also implies a significant opportunity cost. When executives are fiddling with their calendars, they are not thinking strategically or developing new business processes.

The trick here is to delegate these functions to a Virtual Assistant. These professionals can reduce stress and make daily schedules more manageable for C-suite members. Similarly, they can also drive revenue growth by helping leaders leverage their time more effectively.

How To Work With A Virtual Assistant?

So, how do you actually use a Virtual Assistant (VA) effectively? Here are some ideas:

Figure Out What You Need To Delegate

First, you want to figure out what you need to delegate. A Virtual Assistant can’t do everything, but they can be helpful for certain tasks, including:

• Receiving and replying to emails from various stakeholders
• Scheduling appointments
• Entering data into computer systems
• Arranging flights and hotel bookings
• Performing simple bookkeeping operations
• Managing online social media

Start by listing everything you need them to do for you. Then, choose a professional who can support you. Look for an individual who lists these skills on their CV.

Communicate What You Want Them To Do

Next, you’ll need to tell your Virtual Assistant what you want them to do through clear communication. Providing them with a single-sentence brief isn’t usually enough.

During communications with them, set the standards you expect. Show them previous styles you like so they have a template to work from.

Utilise your Virtual Assistant and don’t leave them without tasks to work on for you for weeks on end. Schedule regular calls and video meetings to check progress and discuss new objectives. Critically, keep them informed about your plans. Let them know of any changes to your itinerary or upcoming events you want to attend.

Give Them The Tools They Require

Virtual Assistants will already come equipped with laptops and software. However, providing them with your team’s productivity tools also helps.

Ensure they have solutions like Asana and Trello. If you use spreadsheets or Gantt charts, let them access these via the cloud. Virtual Assistants should have a birds-eye view of what everyone in your organisation is doing at any given moment to enable them to plan more effectively.

Phone conversations are okay for staying in touch, but Slack or other business messaging apps may serve you better. These let you communicate via text without sending emails.

Encourage And Nurture Your VA!

Lastly, take time to encourage and nurture your Virtual Assistant. Often, the longer you work together, the more effective they will become. Over time, they learn your systems, habits, preferences, and style.

If you can sustain them throughout this process, Virtual Assistants will respond by improving their approaches and designing new systems and methodologies to help you. These innovations can improve your performance even further, allowing you to do more in less time and focus on the things that matter most.

Modern life is demanding. If you are not working all night to prepare that presentation for your meeting, then you are up all night taking care of the kids. It can seem relentless and it often feels like you never get a break to just sit back and be, but you know what? No matter how busy you are, it doesn’t have to be that way. It is possible to achieve a better work-life balance, and a trusted virtual assistant is the secret weapon that will enable you to do that.

Of course, hiring a good remote personal assistant in Staffordshire or a remote assistant in Birmingham, for example, is only part of the equation; you need to learn how to work with them effectively if you truly want to balance work and life better. That being the case, here are some tips that will help you work well with your new virtual assistant.

1. Communicate as Clearly as You Can

If you want to work with a remote personal assistant in Staffordshire, then it goes without saying that clear communication is the key to ongoing success in your new partnership. Make an effort to set up regular check-ins via video calls or messaging platforms to discuss tasks, deadlines, and any updates. Why? Because this will ensure you both stay on the same page, avoiding any misunderstandings or mistakes that would make more, not less, work for you.

2. Use Them When You Need Them (But Try to Plan)

The beauty of having a remote assistant in Birmingham is that they are flexible; you do not need to have them on the payroll permanently so you can use them as and when the need arises. This means, if you are feeling burned out, you can give them a call and hand off to them, so you can have a break. Of course, you can achieve a much better work-life balance IF you block out your time and plan in advance, as much as possible, when you will bring in your VA. That way, you will know exactly what you are going to do and when, so you can relax and enjoy life, as well as get that work done.

3. Do Some Serious Delegation

Next, you are going to want to start identifying tasks that consume a significant portion of your day yet don’t necessarily require your direct expertise. This could range from inbox management in Birmingham’s fast-paced business environment to scheduling meetings for a Staffordshire-based consultancy. By offloading these tasks, you free up valuable time to focus on steering your business’s strategic direction.

4. Trust and Independence is Vital

Building trust with your virtual assistant allows you to let go of the helm with confidence. So, start with smaller tasks, gradually increasing their complexity and responsibility as trust develops. Remember, a competent assistant can handle the task just as well, giving the boss a much-needed break.

Start Working with a Virtual Assistant Today

As you can see, working with a virtual assistant in Birmingham or a remote personal assistant in Staffordshire, or beyond can significantly contribute to achieving a better work-life balance, so you know what you need to do; talk to Aggrandise VA about getting your own VA today.

We all want to be more efficient, especially at work. Being efficient means working smarter so you don’t have to work harder, and you can have some fun. It also means making greater profits if you’re a business owner, but how exactly can you supercharge your efficiency right now? With virtual assistant services, of course! Here’s why that’s the case:

1. Free Up Your Calendar

When you want to be more efficient, one of the first things you need to do is learn how to delegate, and when you want to delegate, there is no better person to delegate to than a virtual assistant.

By entrusting administrative tasks, email management, scheduling, and other time-consuming duties to a virtual assistant, you are able unlock precious hours in your day that you can use for tasks that are more likely to result in more business, or of course, to take a break, relax and avoid that executive burnout! A lighter calendar is better all round!

2. Cost-Effective Efficiency

Hiring a full-time, in-house assistant can be a significant financial commitment, encompassing not just salary but also benefits, office space, and equipment, so it’s fair to say that it is not always a desirable option, or even an option at all for many.

The good news is, virtual assistant services are generally much more affordable, while offering the same benefits to you. What was once a fixed expense, now becomes a flexible one, so you can access help when you need it most, and when you can actually afford it. You gain access to professional support as and when you need it, without the overheads, and that can only be a benefit to you and your business, right?

3. Tailored Expertise

A virtual personal assistant in Staffordshire is not just an administrative whizz; they will come with a diverse skill set that can be tailored to meet your specific business needs. Whether it’s managing your social media, handling customer inquiries, or even bookkeeping, virtual assistants can offer specialised support to back you up when and where you need it most.

4. Scalability on Demand

As your business evolves, so do your needs, right? A virtual personal assistant can adapt to your changing requirements, scaling their services up or down as necessary. This flexibility ensures that your administrative support is always in sync with your current business landscape, and that means you and your company can always remain as productive as possible, no matter what the business world throws at you.

Get Your Own Virtual Personal Assistant in Staffordshire Today

As you can see, virtual assistant services can offer a transformative approach to managing your workload. By embracing the support of a virtual personal assistant in Staffordshire, you can get more things done more efficiently in less time and do a bit more living in the meantime, what’s not to love? It sounds great, right? So you’re going to want to get in touch with Aggrandise VA to discuss your VA needs right now!

As a small business owner, you will always be on the lookout for ways to make your business run more productively and efficiently. Using a time management system or scheduling app can help, but you do need to find the right package to streamline your workflow.

Even selecting a package takes valuable time. You need to learn each new system, input your project information and teach any employees or clients how to use it effectively too, all of which uses up business hours. So, you’ll want to know the package you choose is the right one from the start. But, with so many options out there, how do you pick a system without feeling overwhelmed by technology?

As virtual assistants we use a lot of online apps and packages to help organise and plan our workload. When we start working with a new client, they might already have their own way of working or preferred systems to use, and of course we are happy to use those too. That means that we have used a lot of different brands offering similar tools.

One of the questions we are often asked is which systems are best. We can only answer that based on our own preferences, but we are happy to share those with you.

LastPass – the app we cannot do without

Of all the systems we use to make life easier, LastPass is the one we could not do without. This password management tool safeguards every password we use. And when you consider that we have individual log ins for each client, that’s a lot of passwords to remember.

Asana – project management made easy

There are a lot of options when it comes to project management tools. Depending on the client’s preferences, we use others such as Trello and Monday. However, when it comes down to efficiency and productivity, our definite favourite is Asana.

Using Asana helps organise individual projects for clients and keep them updated on workflows. We know which tasks are assigned to whom, set deadlines and monitor progress. And, when needed, we have clear reporting options too.

Toggl – keeping track of time

If there is one thing that consistently takes us all by surprise, it’s how long even the simplest of tasks can take. As every business owner knows, you stop for a few minutes to write one email, and before you know it you’ve been at your desk for an hour. A simple social post may take five minutes to write, but by the time you’ve found the right image and scheduled the post, half an hour’s flown by.

So, we like to take the guess work out of time management by tracking exactly how long a task takes with Toggl – the simplest of time tracking tools. Because we know how much time to allow for a job, we can clearly set client expectations as to how your booked time is being spent.

Canva – keeping design and branding consistent

Unless you’re a graphic designer, you probably don’t need to use complex and expensive design programmes such as Illustrator. But every business needs the occasional image work, whether that’s a leaflet, a social media picture or an event header.

If you have never tried Canva, take a look. It’s free to get started and once you’ve started creating, we know you’ll love it. The controls are fairly intuitive and there are a lot of templates so that designing really is made easy. Plus, with our Pro package we can save individual client brand colours and layouts to our dashboard to create consistent images. This is one tool that we all love to use.

Microsoft 365 – collaborate and communicate

We work with multiple clients that over the last 12 months have switched to Microsoft 365 and here’s why we recommend it to everyone:

• Accessibility – How many times do you go to a meeting and realise the document you want is on your office computer, not your laptop? With Microsoft 365 all your files are stored on a cloud meaning that your work can be accessed from anywhere on any device as long as you have internet or data access.
• Security – Microsoft 365 is set up with 2 factor authentication making is a lot harder for anyone to access your files giving you peace of mind when you are working away from the office.
• Improved Comms – using Microsoft Teams to communicate with your team or clients either via the chat function or meeting function. Cuts out the needs for a separate Zoom subscription.
• Collaboration – by using Sharepoint or Onedrive you can work on documents with your Team at the same time effortlessly.

Xero –accounting for small businesses

We certainly think that every business needs a finance software package to make your business really efficient. Which one you prefer is a personal choice. Some of the better-known ones are FreeAgent, QuickBooks and Xero. We always recommend Xero to clients who don’t have one already in place.

It’s worth looking around

There are always new software options coming on to the market and challenging the best-known brands. As we find out about them, we love to go have a look and see if they would suit our clients better than sticking to the mainstream systems, purely because they are well-known.

Take Adobe, for example. When it comes to PDF tools, most people assume Adobe is the only option. But after some trial and testing of new software on the market, we personally recommend Soda. It has the same editing and conversion abilities, and at a fraction of the price.

We know that you probably don’t have the time to try every new programme that’s developed. To be fair, we don’t either. But when a client asks us if we can find them a solution to a particular problem – like better time management or how to create pdf’s without using Adobe, we are happy to do the research.

These are the packages we recommend at this time. And remember, if you need help in setting up your business or inputting your workflows to any of these programmes, that’s something we can help you with. Just call us today on  01785 337 810 or email us at helen@aggrandiseva.com to talk through the right option for your business.

We’re celebrating this month, as Aggrandise VA turns five. How exciting is that!!

When we launched, five whole years ago, I had a huge amount of experience in administration and organisation so I was confident that we would be able to provide an amazing service to our clients.  However, I’d never owned my own business and didn’t really have the first clue about how to build a success business!

Like every new business owner, there it was a massive learning curve.  I don’t like to say there were many mistakes, so let’s call them ‘lessons’.   Here are 5 key things I’ve learnt in my first 5 years:

Learn to say NO (harder than it sounds!)

When you first start your own business, you’re bound to be concerned about where the next client is coming from. This makes you very likely to say yes to every request you get. If you have quite a broad scope of services, this can be a good way to discover the ones you really want to offer and streamline your business niche over time.

However, you’ll have requests from clients for services you don’t really offer or services you really don’t like doing.  Over time I learnt to say no to those requests and to clients who were not going to be a great fit for us, because the more ‘out of your scope’ the task or client is, the more time consuming and unprofitable, your working day becomes less enjoyable and most importantly you won’t be providing a service that you can be proud of.

Don’t be afraid to say no to a request that doesn’t suit your business – it’s empowering.

We know our clients value us for the services we do offer – and we’re always happy to recommend another business if we know they can help with your specific query.

Invest in your own Self-development

There’s always something new to learn and it’s so important to invest in your own self-development. As well as keeping up with changes in your own industry, there are things a business owner needs to know – like marketing yourself online or managing your bookkeeping. Sometimes budget can be an issue when you first start a business, so do what I did, contact your local Business Growth Hub, they offer fantastic and often free workshops to new local businesses, plus it’s a great opportunity to network with other local businesses.

Not only does self-development keep you at the top of your field, but you can be sure that if you don’t know how to do something your clients will ask you about it! So, making sure you stay up to date is good for you and good for your business.

Know your Value

This is another area where self-confidence is important. When you first launch your business you will almost certainly question your price, whether it’s because you are looking at what your competitors are doing or you are faced with a potential client who tries to drive your price down. You’ll hear comments like “I really like you but I can get support cheaper elsewhere.” Or, like I heard many times “ why should I pay you that when I can pay a VA in the Philippines £5 an hour”

Your value is not just based on the work you do but the experience and knowledge you bring to the table.

It’s important that you know your value. You are a specialist in what you do. If the client is a good fit for you, they will also understand that your services will add value to their business. Don’t be tempted to offer discounts just to keep a client. And if they are more concerned about the price than the service you offer, perhaps the competitor would be a better fit for them.

Effective Networking Builds your Business

For many small businesses, networking is a vital part of their monthly marketing. This was definitely one of the biggest learning curves for me. I had never been in the position of having to talk about myself so much and I wasn’t great at it!

Of course, networking isn’t just talking about yourself. It’s listening to other people, recognising who to connect with, and even learning which groups are worthwhile. In my first group, I was a member for a year before I realised that while it was a supportive and social experience, it had not helped to grow my business at all, which was, after all, the point of going.

Networking is not about making friends. First and foremost, it’s a marketing tool. So, I would recommend keeping a spreadsheet of the costs of networking compared to the incoming business and make clear decisions about which groups are the most cost effective.

Work with a Business Coach

There are many tools that we use to make our business more efficient. We tend to think of these in terms of technology or equipment. However, over the last 18 months I’ve been working with a business coach, and I have to say that it’s changed my approach.

We all tend to focus so much on our clients that our own business gets left behind. My coach made me stop and think about the way my business was running and put in processes to make me proactive rather than reactive. Altogether, Aggrandise VA now feels more professional and structured. I think having a business coach is like having that objective third party, giving you an independent view on your business and holds you accountable.

Celebrating 5 years with Aggrandise VA

It has certainly been an eventful five years for Aggrandise VA, but I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved and how far we’ve come.  So, to everyone we have worked with, our family, friends and colleagues – from us to you, thank you for all your support over the last five years.