Additionally, look at the dollar value of your time. Whatever that number is, that's how much it costs you to do your administrative work, and we're willing to bet you do it less effectively and efficiently than a VA could. There's no financial model on the planet in which doing that makes sense.

VAs are dedicated, driven, masterfully skilled administrative professionals who genuinely want to powerfully impact your life!

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Q:  Who would work with a VA?

A:  VAs work with successful people of all kinds. Authors, sales people, consultants, coaches, executives, professionals, entrepreneurs -- anyone who wants to live a more balanced life with more free time to do the things he/she wants to do!

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Q:  It sounds wonderful to not have to share my office, but if I wanted an assistant, why would I hire one who is potentially hundreds of miles away?

A:  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 (in the relationship sense, not the legal sense!) 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 VA's because they:

1. Don't have the space for someone in the office

2. Don't want someone in the office

3. Don't have the equipment needed for someone else to use

4. Don't want to buy the equipment

5. Don't want the associated work and cost of having an employee:
   
   • Payroll
     
   • Benefits
     
   • Paying for someone else to administer payroll, benefits

6. The cost of firing an employee
   
   A recent study showed the cost of firing an hourly employee averages close to $1400, including costs for disciplinary warnings and actions taken, documentation, grievances, arbitration, litigation, and unemployment claims. Not included were damage to customer relationships, loss of assets, decreased productivity, or management time to handle the termination process.

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Q:  Why wouldn't I work with one of these secretarial services I've seen around town?

A:  If what you want and need is the most basic secretarial support, then you might just want to work with a local 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 wants to be deeply involved in your success, you'll want to work with a VA.

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Q:  Do all VA's work in partnerships? Can't I hire one to type just a couple of documents for me, just this one time?

A:  Because each VA owns his or her own business, each is going to have very different standards regarding the kind of work he or she is willing to do. All of the VA's you'll find in The Registry primarily work in partnership with others. They find it's more rewarding for them to do that, and feel they don't do their best work unless it's in a relationship with someone.

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Q:  Why wouldn't I want to give my secretarial work to a local company, and have a VA just working on bigger things?

A:  You might. However, what people have found is that it doesn't really pay to do that.

Secretarial services are less expensive per hour. That's true. The problem is that the people who work there don't know you, or your business, or your customers. You have to do a lot of work, upfront, before giving them the work, so that they know what you want — and even then, sometimes you need to speak with them several times before your documents, faxes, messages, etc., represent you in your voice.

Once your VA gets to know you, you'll find he/she can speak for you and write in your voice. Your VA, because he/she has learned you (and you've made the investment in the relationship to let him/her get to know you!), can listen to you speak just a few words about what you want done, and make it happen.... sometimes even better than you could have done it yourself.

In addition, the more the VA knows about your needs, the less time it will take him or her to do your work --- you may actually save money over time when working with a VA!

So, even for the basic secretarial work, where do you really get your best value?

The key is to remember — a VA becomes your partner for success. A secretarial service helps you for the short term.

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Q:  How long would I work with a VA?

A:  Just as there are assistants who have worked for the same person in the corporate world for many years, it's possible that could happen with your VA.

Part of the power in this dynamic relationship comes in the synergy which happens between the people working together. There's a flow, a spark, an ease of working with a VA which turns days to weeks, weeks to months, months to years, all before you know it.

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Q:  Isn't it more expensive than hiring an employee?

A:  No. The cost savings is two-fold: financial and emotional.

When you hire an employee, on top of a salary or hourly wage, you have a ton of things you need to administer (payroll, benefits), many things to buy or lease (equipment, furniture), you have to deal with a variety of insurances (workers' comp, unemployment), pay your share of taxes, conform to Federal mandates (OSHA, ERISSA), and you have to share space well (no more working in your pajamas!). It's expensive and can be grueling.

Virtual Assistance was never intended to be the low-cost alternative to getting administrative support. It was intended to be, and absolutely is the most convenient alternative to having on-site employees provide that support. As a result, VAs set fees based on the value they create for clients; the higher the value, the better the VA's compensation.

Depending on the VA, you might pay-as-you-go ­ giving him or her only the amount of work you actually have during any week or month, or you might have him or her on retainer ­ buying a certain amount of the VA's time each month for a pre-set (and usually slightly lower) hourly rate.

One payment, once each month. No muss, no fuss. Just great support from someone dedicated to your success

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Q:  What kinds of work might my VA do?

A:  AssistU VAs provide administrative and personal support, across the board, to their clients. So all your needs can be handled by your VA; she can personally do what you need, or she can make it happen. The beauty of this work is that the only things that can't be done are things which actually need to be touched in your office, such as paper filing (and even that's possible if you're creative!). Otherwise, you and your VA are only bound by imagination, need, skills and desire.

Having said that, there really are two avenues of thought you need to travel while thinking about what you want your VA to do for you. They are:

1.  The tasks of today
2.  The goals of tomorrow

The tasks of today are the things that absolutely must be done if your business is to operate successfully. They are almost never things that are going to make you money, but they are the things that keep you from pursuing additional money-making opportunities.

For instance, it's critical for you to reply to email, handle inquiries, schedule appointments, return calls, and do paperwork. While you probably handle all of them yourself, if you didn't have to do any of them, and could focus on your core business, you would make more money.

So, although it costs money to have your VA handle them, she's a pro with administrative tasks, does them faster and better than you do, and your giving them to her creates the time for you to make more, or focus on whatever's most important to you.

Tip: Ultimately, if you are doing your own administrative tasks, you are costing yourself a lot more than you would be paying to have a VA handle the same things.

Here are the kinds of basic "back office" tasks a VA would likely handle for a client:

• Handle email or US mail, handling most and forwarding to you just those which need your attention
• Make appointments, keep a schedule
• Personal/business paperwork
• Make/receive phone calls/inquiries
• Send/receive faxes
• Research of all sorts
• Plan meetings and events
• Plan parties (business and personal), weddings, reunions
• Make travel arrangements - business and personal
  Renewing passports
  Dining reservations (local and while traveling)
  Golf tee time reservations
  Theme park tickets
  Site seeing tours
  Worldwide weather information
  Turn-by-turn driving directions
• Handle reservations for seminars given by clients
• Writing
• Proof reading
• Copy editing
• Desktop publishing
  Newsletter publishing (print and internet)
• Canceling, creating, renewing subscriptions
• Coordination of web design/hosting
• Mailings
• Buy/send gifts/cards for customers of clients
  Addressing holiday cards
• List managing (majordomo, listserv)
• Reminder service
• Transcription and Dictation
• Bill paying
  Advocate for billing disputes
  Complaint handling
• Create/maintain databases
• Relocation services help and research

• Posting your articles to article banks, submitting your newsletter to e-zine directories, submitting your blog to blog directories
• Staying on top of your company news, and distributing press releases as appropriate
• Collaborating with you on appropriate "pitch" ideas for the media about your work
• Creating an online and offline media kit to submit with pitch ideas
• Researching things you can write about in your newsletter or blog ("feeding" you ideas based on what people in the blogosphere are interested in)
• Going to a telediscussion to learn about how to make your book an Amazon best seller, or build a successful affiliate program, or create easy info products you can sell or give away
• Setting up, and managing your affiliate and partner programs so that all of the people referring business to you feel fabulously taken care of
• Monitoring logs of online purchases of your products and proactively helping people who seem to have problems (or communicate that they do!)
• Being your gatekeeper; no one (except friends or family) gets to you except through your VA. She screens prospective clients using your criteria, and either passes people on, or refers them to colleagues you've put on a list for such referrals. She screens requests for your time based on criteria you've created, and says no to things you wouldn't want to do, and facilitates next steps about things you would want to do. She's the ultimate authority when it comes to you, and can even get you off the hook if you want to say no to something but aren't quite sure how to do it!
• Joining online groups, participating with your company in mind, and using an email signature that includes your URL, and the info about subscribing to your newsletter or blog
• Actively looking for people with whom you could create strategic partnerships for your mutual benefit, and/or the benefit of your clients, then making the connection for you
• Helping you identify, then implement and manage, any number of multiple streams of income
• Subscribing to, then reading blogs and e-zines done by others in your industry, or markets you target.
• Providing a weekly update of all the news you need to know, but don't have time to seek out and read yourself. Think of your VA as a personal clipping service, or news aggregator.
• Learning about new tools and methodologies for working that will make your processes and procedures better and more efficient, then implementing them and training you (and others on your team) in their use. The better you can work and collaborate, the more quickly you can respond to opportunities and challenges, and the more attractive you'll be to potential clients. Your VA can always be on the lookout for how you can better serve, and attract, clients

• Corporate Intelligence
• Advertising
• Personnel Management
• Business Planning
• Quality Control
• Space Planning
• Safety Consulting
• Ghost Writing
• Position clients as experts in a given field/Publicity
• Virtual Office Management
• Web Design

• Personal and Business Coaches
• Speakers
• Authors/Writers
• Real Estate Brokers/Agents
• Real Estate Appraisers
• Financial Professionals

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Q:  Is there anything my Virtual Assistant can't do for me, or that I shouldn't ask for?

A:  Of course! If each of us learned 500 new things each day, there would still always be things we didn't know how to do. So it stands to reason that there will be things each VA can't do -- what those are will vary from VA to VA. The thing is--it doesn't matter, really, what your VA can do. What matters is what she can get done...what she can make happen for you. And great VAs can get absolutely anything and everything done (as long as it's not illegal, immoral, or impossible!). Great VAs have the ready resources to handle it all... to be your one-stop shop, as it were. Whatever you need (and we mean that quite literally!), you should go to your VA for it.

We mentioned that VAs will not do things that are illegal, immoral, and impossible. Those are the kinds of things you shouldn't ask your VA to do. Additionally, you shouldn't ask your VA to do things you really need a different sort of professional to do. For instance, there are many marketing functions that VAs can handle for you. But if what you really need is a publicist or a marketing consultant, and you expect your VA to perform at the levels of those professionals, your expectations are completely unrealistic, and you'll be horribly disappointed. Don't ask your VA to be something she's not qualified to be.

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Q:  So, how much can I really expect to pay?

A:  Again, VA's are in private practice, and they price their services according to their skills, their desire to do certain kinds of work, their experience, and their reputation. You really need to speak with a VA, share your ideas and the vision for your success, and ask what it might cost to have him or her be a part of that.

Generally speaking, however, you can expect to pay one of our graduates between $30-$70 per hour. VAs who work with your niche, and our certified VAs will likely to be at the upper end of that range, or higher.

Remember, Virtual Assistance wasn't developed to be the economical alternative to hiring employees, but the convenient alternative. Don't look for cheap labor here--you simply won't find it.

Remember — the time you pay for is 100% productive time. It will feel to you as though there are far more minutes in a VA's hour than you ever remember getting in an employee's hour. That's because you pay for no down-time, or time not spent specifically working on what you most need!

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Q:  Does Virtual Assistance work better for any particular type of person or professional?

A:  Generally speaking, the benefits are enormous to almost anyone who's busy and needs support.

What we've found, however, is that some people are better prepared to work in these kinds of relationships.

The people who are generally in a good position to work with VAs are:

• People who value relationships
  
• People who easily see VAs as pros and equals in the relationship
  
• People who have big goals
  
• People who are somewhat cyber savvy, and well-organized
  
• People who can articulate needs and desires
  
• People who can let go of things easily
  
• People who are trusting and trustworthy
  
• People who are focused, centered, and organized

People who aren't in a good position to work with a VA are:

• People who aren't online and who can't understand why this would work
  
• People with big egos, who are controlling, and/or arrogant
  
• People who can't let go, who have to micromanage
  
• People who think VAs are task-oriented, low-level employees types, rather than equals in the relationships they form with clients
  
• People who live in the urgent, where everything is last minute, where they procrastinate then rush to deadline, where they need people at their beck and call because the work is the driver, rather than their driving the work
  
• People who thrive on drama and who have to have drama surrounding them at all times.
  
• People who don't understand the power created in a relationship with a fantastic assistant
  
• People who aren't easily trusting, or have issues with trusting others
  
• People who aren't open to learning new ways of working and communicating
• People interested in finding cheap laborers to provide high-end assistance

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Q:  And why would I want to choose a VA from The Registry?

A:  Simply stated, AssistU trained VAs are the best in the business.

They're the only ones who have taken the time to get such intense industry specific training, and the only ones who hold the prestigious CPVA (Certified Professional Virtual Assistant) and CMVA (Certified Master Virtual Assistant) designations which holds them to the highest professional standards in the industry.

The only people you'll find in the AssistU Registry are graduates of the AssistU Virtual Training Program -- and we endorse every one of them in that they have completed our rigorous, twenty-week program to our satisfaction.

By choosing a VA from The Registry, you can be sure that you will find a partner for your success. The only thing you'll need to explore is whether there's a fit in terms of your personalities, styles and work objectives.

If you know that you're ready to get a referral from the Registry, you can start that process by clicking here. When you get to the referral form, please note at the top of the form that there's a link to a very special audio to help you best understand how to complete the referral request. We wholeheartedly suggest you take the time to listen, or to read the transcript.

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Q:  You mentioned certification. Tell me more--why should certification matter to me?

A:  Certification, in general, should say to you that a VA is invested in ongoing professional growth, and is committed to excellence in his or her business and profession. We applaud anyone who takes the extra step to reach for certification, and you really should, too.

As someone wanting to work with a VA, there's still more for you to consider. You need to look at what certification a VA holds, and how that certification is earned; that will tell you a great deal about the worth of the certification itself.

AssistU was the first organization certifying VAs, our certifications are the most difficult to earn, and they hold the VAs who earn them to the highest professional standards in our industry. Certification exams are experiential, not knowledge based, and are earned only after a VA has proven his or her ability and skill as a VA. Our first level of certification, for instance, requires an intensive eight-week long certification exam. Eight weeks. Eight weeks in which the VA has to show us his or her "stuff" before we're willing to consider certifying him or her.

Every other certification in the Virtual Assistance industry is knowledge based. Those certifications are awarded to anyone who has prior admin experience and/or can pass a test; whether or not that person has ever actually worked as a VA, or has what it takes to do so, simply doesn't factor in. AssistU VAs are the only VAs in the world who are specifically trained to be VAs, and then are certified based solely on what they prove they can do. That should matter to you when you think about certification.

Feel free to visit our Alumni Verification System where you can verify our current AssistU graduates, CPVAs, and CMVAs.

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Q:  So, how do I choose?

A:  When you fill out our registry form, you'll be contacted within two business days. The VAs who contact you will be doing so because they believe, given the information you've supplied, that there's a potential fit — your needs and their skills, and with regard to your personalities. So much so, in fact, that they want to take the next step and investigate the possibilities further.

You might hear from one VA. You might hear from several. They're all highly skilled and interested in you and your business. At the point at which they contact you, you simply need to arrange time to talk with them. Once on the phone, you can both really sense whether there's a connection and whether you might want to work together.

Discuss your business, your needs as you see them now, and your challenges openly with the VAs. They'll likely respond not only to what you say, but also to what they hear in what you don't say. They'll ask questions and share their thoughts about the potential they see in working with you and how that might impact your work and your life.

Because the hope is to start a long-term relationship, don't be surprised if there needs to be more than one conversation. Choosing a collaborative partner for your success isn't something to be done quickly or lightly!

The VA will also share with you how his/her practice is set up, fees, availability, etc., so you can see if there's a fit in that way.

And remember — this is a mutual decision to work together. We're shattering the boss/assistant paradigm here. It's a budding relationship. Two people with varied skills and knowledge coming together in partnership for your success. Just be yourself. Being as genuine as you can will allow the VA to understand you far more quickly than she would if you present a heavily professional corporate image.

And when you find one you want to work with who is excited about working with you — you won't have to really do anything. The agreement to work together will come very naturally. Before you know it, you'll have a valuable, collaborative assistant and your business and life will begin to be very different.

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Q:  It sounds like I need to be a pretty smart client. There's clearly a lot to think about, and I'm not sure I really know the direction I need to go in to even begin! What can I do to really be sure that working with a VA is what I need, and whether or not I'm ready to move forward?

A:  As you consider what it might be like to work with a Virtual Assistant, why not take the time to call and listen in on a conversation we taped with clients of AssistU-trained Virtual Assistants!

To listen, simply press the Play button on the audio player below; it's that easy! !(Total listening time: 45 minutes)

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Q:  Are there exisiting clients of your trained VAs I can contact?

A:  Fortunately, the clients of our VAs are successful business people. Unfortunately, that also means that they don't have the time to devote to answering questions from people who are considering working with VAs.

To give you what you need, however, we invited some of them to a call where they talked with us about working with their VAs, how they handled their work before, what has been the biggest benefit, what has been their greatest challenge and how it was resolved, what kinds of things their VAs do for them, and other topics we thought would be of interest to people considering working with VAs.

We taped that call, and have made it available to you, 24 hours a day. Simply press the Play button on the audio player below; it's that easy! (Total listening time: 45 minutes)

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Q:  Are there any articles I can read that will help me understand how to best work with my AssistU-trained VA?

A:  We're happy to contribute the following!

• The Top 10 Things To Know About Working With Professional VAs
  
• How To Get The Most From Your New Relationship
  
• The Importance Of Having A VA Fit Into The Company's Culture
  
• What Work Should I Give My VA And How Do I Choose?
  
• How to “Train” Your Virtual Assistant
  
• The Multi-VA Relationship
  
• Uh-oh, Things Aren't Going So Well — Now What?

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