11 Top Reasons Why You Should Hire a Virtual Assistant & More (2023)
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Time does not equal money.
Time is more valuable than money because if you lose money, you can always earn more later in your life. But with time, it doesn't work that way.
Unless you know of a way to CRISPR immortal jellyfish genes into our bodies, we can't turn back time and biologically de-age.
Thankfully, we have virtual assistants (AIs such as Siri and Alexa don't count) willing to help out with our businesses.
So if you would like to:
Earn more money for your business
Have more free time in your life doing other activities or less important things such as hobbies
Be more emotionally stress-free
Then you'll love:
Bonus: 3 Top Reasons Why You Should Hire a Filipino Virtual Assistant
How to Pay Your Virtual Assistants While Minimizing Transfer Fees
Let's get right into it.
The 11 Top Reasons You Need a Virtual Assistant:
1. Increasing Your Time Efficiency
By outsourcing your non-essential work to your virtual assistant, you'll:
Reduce the number of work hours doing repetitive and mundane tasks
Allow yourself to shift your focus to essential work.
Virtual assistants can handle administrative tasks such as:
Writing and sending emails and newsletters
Handling customers when it comes to live chat, phone calls, and/or emails
Research
Scheduling meetings for you
Data entry
Such examples are Microsoft and Verizon.
They outsource their work to numerous virtual assistants in foreign countries, which act as their support team to deal with difficulties people encounter every day.
Meanwhile, the executives focus on improving and creating new products and services.
The amount of time you need in your life will be the number one factor that should determine whether or not you should hire a virtual assistant.
This is especially true if you're in a situation where you want to build a business on the side, but you're busy working at your current job or focused on studying in school, as I did.
Then hiring a virtual assistant is highly recommended if you're in those scenarios.
(I majored in Biological Sciences (intense grasp of concepts then memorization) and not business related. Don't worry if you don't have experience hiring people because I was also the same.)
2. Ability to Work With Them Anywhere
Whether you're at home, work, school, coffee shop, or the airport, all you need is an internet connection and your phone (or your laptop) to check how your virtual assistant is doing.
Since they're working in their personal space and time, the only things you need to be responsible for are seeing if they're working, their mental health, and their payment.
Regarding payment, that brings me to my next point.
3. Massively Reducing Costs and Expenses
Since virtual assistants are not office employees, you only need to pay them for the amount of work that they do.
You won't have to worry about paying a typical hourly wage. It also includes breaks, expenses such as office space and equipment, and employee benefits, which include healthcare* or any additional taxes.
By hiring a virtual assistant, either part-time or full-time, you'll save over $8000 USD monthly and over $96,000 USD annually compared to hiring an in-house office employee.
You'd be crazy if that isn't enough to convince you to hire a virtual assistant for your business.
*Although you are not required to cover their healthcare costs, you should make sure your virtual assistant(s) have health insurance. You'll want to minimize any damages to your business should something happen to them.
4. They Have a Particular Set of Skills, Skills They've Acquired Over a Very Long Career
Forgive me for the reference to Liam Neeson's film, but virtual assistants do have a particular set of skills they've likely acquired from working in different kinds of jobs and companies.
It's perfect if you lack specific skills and don't want to take the time to learn them.
There are numerous marketplaces of virtual assistants with various skill sets for delegating your tasks instead.
These skills can include building and maintaining a website with code with SEO optimized, social media marketing, video editing, etc.
There's no need for training, so you'll save a lot of money.
But if you:
Already have the skill set, such as copywriting
Are looking for a virtual assistant with that same skill set to save you some time
It's beneficial to see if there are things that they can improve on and vice-versa, especially if it's for long-term work.
Be specific about the skills you are looking for and what specific tasks you want to be done when:
Posting the job on whichever website you're using and/or
Contacting the person individually and having them send in their resume
The last thing you would want is to be bombarded with numerous applications because your job listing was too general. You'll waste time deciding which applicant to hire out of all the others because they're all qualified.
My preference would be to hire someone based on the type of personality, along with how much emotional intelligence they have aside from skill requirements.
It's similar to how Elon Musk doesn't require high school or college degrees for his job applicants.
I place a greater emphasis on communication so they can get the job done smoothly, along with their preference for psychological needs.
5. More Flexibility
Since virtual assistants can have a different work schedule from you, this makes it possible for you to sleep while the VAs work in different time zones.
It'll provide you with greater flexibility in task management while maximizing performance and increasing the output production of your business.
With that in mind, virtual assistants make it possible to run your business with 24/7 availability, even during official holidays.
It's like how Microsoft does with their tech support team regarding customer response time, which is how they can generate a large following of loyal customers over time.
6. Scaling Your Business
As your business grows, there may come a time when:
Demand from your customers
The necessary time spent for lead generation
Exceeds the amount your current workforce can handle, especially if you're a solopreneur.
If that is the case, hiring a virtual assistant would be the best cost-efficient method for increasing profits while improving your current products and/or services overall.
You do not want to be the business that:
Refuses to hire new in-house employees to save costs
Doesn't look at hiring virtual assistants as an option for the sudden increase in work volume
This kind of scenario can do more harm than good if you've already established a following by damaging customer loyalty, retention, and/or process in creating a successful lead generation.
I've encountered this scenario myself as a customer for a company that experienced rapid growth.
It took them 3 days to read an email I sent. There wasn't any response since they couldn't keep up with demand which gave them a bit of a bad reputation for handling customer inquiries.
So virtual assistants, in a way, can help save your business when that crucial point in time comes for it.
7. Committed to a High Quality of Service
Virtual assistants are very committed to providing high-quality results to clients like us in order make sure we're getting the best value that we paid for.
They do this since this affects their online reputation on how their future clients are willing to hire them based on the reviews of their performance from their past clients.
After all, they're not like your typical office employee that are able to get away with doing a bit of a lazy job while still getting fully paid for their work.
And you can already see why those people aren't in the virtual assistant industry.
8. Effortless Management
Since virtual assistants have their personal life to take of, it is not necessary to communicate with them outside of work.
So it would be in your best interest to keep things purely professional. You don’t want any possible drama in your life, so communicate only when necessary for work-related updates.
So if you need to hire multiple virtual assistants at once or over time, you can do that.
Please make sure you’re not a terrible boss to your VAs by neglecting their psychological needs. It would force them to quit either because you’re not communicating properly or communicating with them in toxic behavior.
After all, they are still human beings like us and not meant to be overworked.
9. Quick and Easy to Hire (and Also if Anything Goes Wrong)
If you're looking for someone to hire immediately, it should take less than an hour to search for a virtual assistant that meets your specific needs.
The amount of time searching depends on looking at their profiles and any other background information you should know.
Otherwise, you can take the time to list the specific details of the job while describing your needs for certain virtual assistant platforms without paying for advertising costs.
And it's typically free.
You may or may not have to conduct an online interview with the applicants if you find several of them perfect for the job.
Either way, both options are perfect whether:
You want to get things started immediately
You'd like to take the time to get to know the capabilities of the person you're hiring
But if anything goes wrong with your virtual assistant, they are quick and easy to replace.
This can happen if your VA flakes out on the job and doesn't respond to your messages.
But 99% of the time, it is the client's fault since VAs will most likely find that client's behavior wasn't appropriate for them.
Like I said before, you don't want to be the toxic boss by neglecting their needs.
Otherwise, if you find out that your VA isn't capable of the job, you can easily replace them and hire a different one.
Please remember that they are not superhuman, and one VA may not be able to finish all the tasks you've delegated to them. So you would be better off hiring another one for the safety of their health.
10. Better Mental Health
Speaking of health, you can become easily overwhelmed and clouded with stress if your tasks pile up every week and you don't see them shrinking anytime soon.
This is one of the most important reasons why hiring a virtual assistant to delegate your tasks is so crucial.
By avoiding burning yourself out almost every day and creating a greater sense of peace within yourself, you'll become more productive and restore a healthy mindset.
You'll also avoid dealing with more (if any) office drama with in-house employees that can negatively affect your mindset and productivity.
So if you'd like to build a massive business sooner, you're better off with a virtual assistant that won't have problems.
You don't have to worry about problems from VAs, such as gossiping, being late to work, coming late from lunch, etc., unlike an office employee.
11. Understanding That You Can't Do Everything Alone
Time goes by faster than you think.
That's why it's considered your most valuable asset in life, and it's more important to use other people's time who are better suited for the job instead.
My parents taught me the mindset to do everything alone with the cheapest method possible, which was most often, the free method.
I did manage to find the time during the summer after finishing my spring semester or quarter in college.
It turns out that 3 months of free time still isn't enough to complete the tasks I wanted to do.
I tried learning how to code a website, but that proved too frustrating since lots of things kept just breaking.
I didn't understand how to fix it, so I paid for a service to have them fix it.
I ended up creating more problems than fixing them and wasting more time and money than I should have.
The mindset I was instilled by my parents about doing everything yourself for free is a scam.
This mindset may most likely be relatable to you.
It led me to do my research for self-improvement, and luckily, I ended up hiring a Filipino virtual assistant along the way.
3 Top Reasons for Hiring Filipino Virtual Assistants in 2023:
1. High Literacy Rate and One of the Largest English-Speaking Countries in the World
According to an article from the Manila Times, the current literacy rate in the Philippines is 94%, with 70% of the population fluent in English.
It is about a 3% drop in literacy rate from the previous years, but that has a relatively minimal effect on the population since English is one of the two official languages in the Philippines.
That is because the Philippines was a part of US territory from 1898 to 1946.
By the time the Philippines declared their independence, there was a lot of history surrounding why English is the official language.
But to keep it short and simple, it was convenient for them.
2. They Value Respect and Family
The personality type for most people in the Philippines is toward beliefs, values, and emotions.
Filipinos value lots of things, such as family, respect, and their religion, which is part of their tradition and culture.
Since Filipinos value respect, they are extremely hard workers.
But there will be times when it would be hard for them to say "no" since they have a yes-man / yes-woman mentality, which is part of their personality.
This means they have a duty to protect their clients even if they don't know how to, since they really value us as individuals.
So it would be in your best interest for them to be honest if they are able to do the job or not in forms of constructive criticism.
But once you hire them and they've completed your work, you should tell them that you appreciate / value / admire their commitment / dedication to the work they've done for you, something between those lines, or show them how positively you feel about their work.
That is generally one of the most proper ways to communicate with them.
But since there are going to be outliers as well, I briefly mention this topic regarding proper communication with different personality types in people as well as additional resources that motivates their behavior in a different post which you can read by clicking here.
3. Their Costs of Living are Very Low
Labor costs are cheap in the Philippines, making it one of the best countries to outsource your work.
Not only that, but earning about $1700-2700 USD (adjusted for inflation in 2022) each month is enough money to feed a family of four.
But since I previously used $1000 USD as an example for the math below, I've added in a math equation the hourly wage adjusted for inflation after that.
So if a person only needs about $250 per month, that would come down to a reasonable amount of about $1.56 an hour working as a full-time virtual assistant.
$250 / 4 weeks / 40 hours = $1.5625 per hour (if I calculated this correctly), which is enough to buy a bit more than a decent meal off of $1 USD.
So $1.5625 x 40 hours per week = $62.50 per week.
*Note that the weekly wage below was the monthly income in 2018-2019 for comparison.
If you're hiring a part-time VA, payment should be $31.25 per week or $125 per month.
But I highly recommend the payment be $37.50 per week or $150 each month (3/5 monthly income of a full-time employee).
That amount is necessary for a working college student to survive, based on my experience with an interview I conducted when hiring.
The math for hiring a full-time VA (adjusted for inflation for the current year we're in):
Monthly income for a family of 4 in [insert current year] / (4 weeks) / (40 hours) = the VA's hourly wage.
The math for hiring a part-time VA (adjusted for inflation for the current year we're in):
Monthly income for a family of 4 in [insert current year] / 2 / (4 weeks) / (20 hours) = the VA's hourly wage.
The math for the recommended monthly income for a part-time VA (adjusted for inflation for the current year we're in):
Monthly income for a family of 4 in [insert current year] * [3 / 5] / (4 weeks) / (20 hours) = the VA's hourly wage.
But that's just paying for a general VA, maybe lower if all you need is to copy and paste information.
Filipino VAs specializing in a specific area will require a larger payment since certain skills are more desirable than others.
But regardless of how much you pay for a Filipino virtual assistant, your ROI will likely be greater than hiring a virtual assistant whose living costs are much higher than you'd expect.
So What Now?
Before hiring a virtual assistant, determine the specific needs of your business first in terms of the type of tasks you want to delegate and the necessary skills needed to complete those tasks.
If you find that your business is lacking in a certain area, such as:
Getting more customers
Receiving complaints about a product or service
Hire a VA that specializes in marketing in social media, copywriting, etc., or resolving an issue with the customer within 5-30 minutes.
You may find that your virtual assistants aren't perfect for doing the work the first time around.
That is completely fine.
With a bit of training and going through various potential scenarios, they should be able to undergo any situation that will come at them but only with proper communication.
Helping You Get the Best Value for Hiring a Filipino Virtual Assistant
So to help you get the best value for hiring a virtual assistant, I made a brief infographic on tips, used to help you get the best value for hiring a virtual assistant.
I have some personal recommendations after that though.
Please share this infographic to help people find the best value for hiring a virtual assistant at whichever platform they want to choose.
Which VA Platform to Use for Outsourcing?
As for which service you should use for outsourcing work to a VA, I recommend two platforms:
Virtualstaff.ph
Virtual Staff Finder
1. Virtualstaff.ph
The problem with other VA platforms is that they would show you that you can hire a Filipino VA for around $6-7 USD minimum per hour, which may sound like a great deal if you’re searching for the first time.
You would think the entire $5-6 USD hourly wage would go to the VA.
But what the VA platforms don’t tell you is that you’re also paying for the markup prices of their services for each hour.
Example:
Since Filipino virtual assistants actually cost around $2-3 per hour, you would be paying this much money for the extra $3-4 each month for the VA platform's markup services:
$3 (or $4) USD x 40 hours x 4 weeks = $480-640 USD
And this is the same strategy that e-commerce businesses use as well.
They would typically include free shipping when selling their products.
But in reality, you're paying for the shipping costs included with the products, so the sellers can easily say that you're paying $0 for shipping to generate more sales.
But by using virtualstaff.ph, you'll love that you're saving at least $5740-7680 USD each year, which is a lot of money.
So instead of paying at least $6 for each VA or up to about $90 for an unlimited amount of VAs per month using a timer tracker software, you'll save an insane amount of expenses when you use virtualstaff.ph's software instead.
It's $287 USD yearly when you pay for an annual subscription.
What else is not to like about this?
2. Virtual Staff Finder
Virtual Staff Finder offers the same thing as virtualstaff.ph, which includes match-making with the VA and discussing their hourly wages.
The only exception is that you only need to pay a one-time $495 service fee, which certainly beats about 99% of the VA platforms out there cause that's the only fee you will be paying.
Not only that, but they have a list of testimonials written by people with well-known businesses compared to virtualstaff.ph.
They're featured on websites such as Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Business Insider.
So if you want to sign up for a service that offers more credibility, I highly recommend Virtual Staff Finder.
There's a $595 one-time service fee but their service is top-notch!
If you're interested in 101 tasks recommended to delegate to remote staff, you can download the PDF by clicking here.
How to Pay Your Virtual Assistant and Minimize Transfer Fees
As for paying your VAs, I would suggest either
Using Wise
Sending cryptocurrency^
Best to send cryptocurrency in the form of stablecoins or CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) since CBDCs or most stablecoin prices don't fluctuate (centralized stablecoins backed by 1:1 fiat money are best to use for beginners)
^Cryptocurrency is legal but unlikely to be considered as legal tender though that may or may not change in the future
Using Wise:
I find Wise best for international money transfers, compared to PayPal or Payoneer.
Not only are the currency exchange rates more accurate and the fees a lot cheaper there, but Wise is also transparent with how the fees are used in their business.
So you'll know how your money is used.
And you'll be glad to hear that transaction speeds are faster 99% of the time and support more currencies than PayPal.
Hearing less of "Where is my money?" or "When will I get my money?" from your VAs will put your mind at peace.
So I believe that Wise would be the better choice for your life with its ease of use for its website and mobile app.
I want to receive my first fee-free bonus transaction up to 500 GBP (~$500-700 USD)!
For Paying in Cryptocurrency:
In this case, it is legal in the Philippines since they're open to new ideas.
Since it's legal to use cryptocurrency, there are two top reasons why you should transfer CBDCs or stablecoins instead of fiat money.
First, it's usually cheaper to send CBDCs or stablecoins to someone in a different country since you're not dealing with a middleman who wants to take an unexpectedly larger chunk of your money.
Second, the transfers are significantly faster than banks, which can take a few seconds, minutes, or hours.
The only problem you have to worry about are gas (network) fees.
Gas (network) fees are usually cheap, so transfers will take less than an hour to complete, depending on the volume of transactions occurring at that moment.
Here is a list of the top stablecoins sorted by market cap (though it's not a complete list) which you can look at by clicking here.
I highly recommend doing your own research first to determine what network is being used for the stablecoin, finding out whether the gas fees for sending a certain amount of money would be cheap or not.
You don't want to get involved in an incident like UST (decentralized s̶t̶a̶b̶l̶e̶c̶o̶i̶n̶), now called USTC, which went down to $0.
As for CBDCs, they're currently being experimented by the government, so a lot of them are not widely available yet.
Final Words
Regardless of which virtual assistant platform to sign up for and how you pay them, I hope that I was able to bring enough knowledge and value to help you make a decision in the end.
And just in case if you don't want to scroll up again:
If you liked this post on the 11 Top Reasons Why You Should Hire a Virtual Assistant & More, I would appreciate it if you can tip me in BAT (Basic Attention Tokens) on this website.
Don't know what those are? You can install Brave Browser by clicking here.
It's a 3 to 6 times faster version of Google Chrome, focused on protecting your online security and privacy from all the online trackers lurking on websites (AdBlock can't get all of them).
Brave automatically blocks everything intrusive for you when you start using it [thanks to the former CEO of Mozilla Corporation (Firefox) who created Brave] and is considered to be the most private browser compared to Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
So I believe you will get the most value out of Brave as your primary browser
Plus, you can use Brave Rewards, which earns you BAT automatically from viewing non-intrusive ads up to 10 per hour (or none at all) through desktop/banner notifications.
What makes BAT awesome is that you can sell it for fiat money, such as in USD or Euros.
You could exchange it for gift cards such as Amazon, retail stores, restaurants, online subscriptions, etc. if you prefer that option instead.
