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Why learn to Outsource office Tasks?

November 18, 2015Biz Tips and Advicean informal cornr, B2B relationship, business news, hire a virtual assistant, learn-to-outsource, outsource office tasks to VEA, outsource to VA, virtual assistant duties, virtual assistant linkedin, virtual assistant tools, virtual executive assistant, virtual personal assistant appGinsense

outsource office tasks, aic, an informal cornr, small business, office help — I Love my VEA

The world of outsourcing is here, and going on all around us, at a regular pace. We hear of corporations ‘outsourcing‘ to less developed nations. This is good for the hosting nation as it helps in creating ‘economic activity‘ but not great news for the ‘home’ nation, since jobs are not locally available. Is it possible for a business, to diversify their needed services and learn to Outsource office tasks?

Reviewing Operational Costs

Costs associated with operating a business can climb, as each ‘need‘ must be addressed especially if hiring for a specific ‘skill set’. A small business owner may find him and/or herself wearing ALL the hats as manager, marketer, designer, advertiser, accountant (omg! Tax time!), trainer, next to delivering their own business service(s).

The owner may not have huge amounts of money to spend hiring a specialized ‘team‘ in a firm. Some may wonder, how can one be in business for themself with so many tasks, to tend and manage?

Learning Value of Locally Outsourcing

Are your eyes spinning around with imagining all these tasks? Well, a few business owners have learned to value and appreciate, the services that a Virtual Executive Assistant (VEA) can offer.

Statistics show that a VA is a new, rising, and popular industry in the USA, new to Canada and growing in other nations too. The VEA, or Consultant, is also an Independent business owner.

A VEA understands quite well all the skills needed in operating a successful business. Can you imagine the knowledge, skills and expertise that you can tap into? and help your own business? Not every VEA is equal since education, job experience and skills will vary. Again, statistics have shown that a majority of VA’s are college and University graduates, next to being great parents.

Evaluating Areas for a Virtual Assistant

‘A little help can go a long way’ We’ve all heard that quote before and I’m positive that you will enjoy hiring a Virtual Executive Assistant and/or Consultant. S/he will deliver benefits for your own business goals and improve your own over all time management.

Take a seat and think about tasks that ‘steals time‘ away from you delivering your own services. Write these time thiefs down. It could be one task or a few, write them down. Think about areas that are troublesome because you know very little about it (i.e., social media management, blogging, tweet, what?). Did you know that us humans, tend to let pride get in the way, of asking for help?

Posting your VA Job Advertisement

The number of tasks you have listed could now be assigned, to a VEA depending upon her/his skill set. Finding a VEA can be easily done simply with the responses, to a Job ad you post on a popular VA forum, classified ad site, or job board, online (psst! Twitter and LinkedIn work wonders!).

Remember, skills will vary therefore maybe add a specific skill heading (marketing, graphic design,etc.) to the job post.

Tasks that you need done could be those that are repetitive, or to, sort your email, manage your social media, manage your web site, provide content for your blog, event planning, flight arrangements, do a concise market industry report. These tasks can get done and delivered to you because of our fabulous internet and locally skilled workers!

Reasons to hire a Local VA

Once a response, or quite a few, have arrived in your email, now is the time to review and choose who you believe may ‘fit’ your job post. You may very well find one located in your own neighborhood.

I believe that hiring the services of a VEA should be close to home since they will be most familiar with your local, regional and/or national, business laws and we don’t want to be doing something illegal or cause damage to your own business ‘brand‘.

I believe the majority of professional VEA’s and Consultants, will KNOW and comply with their local, regional or national business contract law. After all, a contract is a legal and binding document recognized in Court and there are Specialists that can track a person that owes monies.

Skillsets of a Virtual Executive Assistant (VEA)

A VEA/Consultant will have specialized skills and be knowledgeable in many and/or specific areas, such as the following:

Paralegal
Financial Advisor
Accountant
Business Development
Marketing
Web Design
Graphic Designer
Research
Technology
Audio/Visual Editing
Political
Medical
Note Reader/Scopist
Real Estate
Mortgage + Loans
Writers
Transcription
Public Relations
Translation
Photo Image Editing
Pod/Web cast

The professional VEA/Consultant strives to maintain and build their skills, experience and business knowledge.

Offering their assistance to help your business and delivered ‘remotely‘, not in your office but from their home via computer connections, is the perfect environment to showcase their abilities.

Hidden Value of VEAs

One of the most important qualities of knowing and working with a professional VEA/Consultant are his/her business CONNECTIONS! There are forums and associations for the Professional VEA/Consultant where they share and connect with each other and other business professionals.

They can quickly fill a need for a business owner without you having to go forth in search of specialized help. This new industry intertwines and works effectively in the B2B relationship. Have you made friends with your friendly, neighborhood Virtual Executive Assistant/Consultant?

Contracts are Necessary

An agreement or contract, will be forwarded to you which should state the protection and confidentiality of your business, payment terms for hourly packages, by project, or by retainer, other services they provide, and, maybe their own promotional brochures too.

A common fear about use of the internet is the release and/or discovery, of our passwords to our numerous internet accounts. A professional VEA/Consultant understands this fear and will inform you of measures they use, to protect and maintain confidentiality and your privacy.

The process of hiring a VEA/Consultant is not painful and no animals are harmed. A variety of online business tools commonly used by VEA/Consultants, are:

Google Documents, word processing, slideshows, spreadsheets, easy to email or share work.
Evernote, send large files
LastPass, Password management tool
EchoSign, used for electronic signature
Hootsuite, post to various social media accounts
OpenProj, Project management tool
DropBox, cloud storage service, share documents
Freshbooks, invoicing, accounting program
Toggl, one of many time tracker tools
Aweber, bulk email program, many more
Skype, video chat
Anymeeting, video conference, webinars, or online training (ability to share your screen)

A few tools that you may want to familiarize yourself with since no VEA/Consultant, is identical. There are many, many other tools online that may be used and will operate in a similar manner and you two may already use these very tools. Do you already notice the capabilities of the professional VEA/Consultant?

Calculate the Pay Differentials

A question that commonly arises about VEA/Consultants, is, why hire you? Well, we begin with full-time versus as-needed. Now, which do you think will cost less? 20 hours of a full-time EA per week or 20 hours of a ‘as-needed’ VEA/Consultant, per month?

Prices will vary with VEA/Consultants and that alone, may prove a deciding factor. So, if you need help but can’t afford the full-time staff, why not consider hiring a VEA/Consultant, today?

Oh! how big is your list? VEA/Consultants are available for long term too. Imagine, only a couple hours per week at per month. 🙂 It’s a wise investment that every small business should be aware and keep in consideration. As a business owner, you should NOT have to train your VEA therefore pricing should indicate the VALUE you are requesting for skilled services.

Learning in Action

Build your Food Stockpile

October 18, 2014Home Ideasan informal cornr, email gift, food security, gift of reading, health and diet, healthy recipes, recipes, simple recipes, youths learn cookingGinsense

A Youths Cornr

Cooking on my Own

Every Youth can learn to cook but a few EXTRA tips to have healthy food LAST is the greater Gift of knowledge that could be passed on for many generations, and ensure a sense of food security. Send this Ebook as a Gift today!

Chutes, Gravity and Drag

September 27, 2014Educationan informal cornr, BASE jumping, education, education sciences, extreme sports, extreme sports skydiving, learn #science of skydiving, physics of skydiving, SkydivingGinsense

bear skydiving with chute — Bear sporting Chute jump

A field of science in Physics states, in Newton’s First law: “An object will stay at rest or continue at constant velocity unless acted on by a resultant force“.

No matter what mass an object is falling towards the Earth, science has found that they will fall at the same rate, if no resistance exists, and land at the same time.

So, how do these forces make skydiving, with a parachute, and science of gravity, chutes and drag – so popular?

Learning the Math of Falling

Calculations is done with use of the equations involving force, mass, and acceleration. Studies have shown that acceleration remains constant, for all matter with mass. This formula shows the most basic equation:

F=mg

The breakdown of this equation refers to the following:

F = force, objects being pulled to the Earth
m = mass of the object
g = acceleration rate due to gravity(g = 9.807 meters per second-squared (m/s2) )

Following mathematical rules will have us write out this formula as:

F= m x g

The use of this formula can get far more complex depending on which area of science, one is using it, such as in aeronautics, space sciences, engineering, etc.

The world of skydiving is a popular sport even though it can be a risk to one’s life. Not many can understand ‘why jump from a perfectly good plane?’ but there are enthusiasts who love the extreme sport of skydiving, or BASE jumping – sports requiring one to jump from a plane or off a fixed object (cliff). These are considered extreme sports and may require a fair investment of funds in gear and equipment since rental for a plane may not be anything to sneeze about.

Forces created in Skydiving

On topic, the meeting and creation of forces, involved with deploying a parachute. A person will jump out of a plane and find themselves falling through the skies, gaining speed along the way, since ‘a force of attraction exists between any two objects that have mass and the more mass they have, the greater the force of attraction. The closer they are, the greater the force of attraction will occur‘. I will hazard a guess that this particular stimulus creates a thrilling excitement not found in other sports, such as volley ball.

A parachute is deployed, and the chute creates a surface area, which slows the descent or rate of acceleration. This surface area creates ‘air resistance or drag force‘. The larger the surface area, the slower the descent. This ‘resistance or drag force‘ creates a force that’s opposite to the force of gravity therefore creating a ‘push and pull‘ force that are nearly equal.

Safety in Chute Deployment

The timing of deploying a parachute is important to note aka ‘pull altitude‘. This is due to a shrinking drag force. As one slows down, the drag force gets smaller even if the surface area of air resistance, is larger than one’s weight.

Also important is speed of the chute itself opening, therefore a deploying sequence with equipment is used, to prevent injuries, death or damage to the parachute. This helps to slow deployment of the main ‘canopy‘ along with maintaining a tangle-free ‘chute opening‘. Most skydivers will jump at about 12,500 feet above ground level, allowing for one minute of ‘free falling‘ before deploying their parachute, a minimum of 2000-2500 feet for the more experienced.

Differences between Skydiving and BASE Jumping

The gear and equipment for skydivers and BASE jumpers are NOT the same. BASE jumper gear is designed to deploy quicker and at slower air speeds. BASE jumpers do not have ‘reserve‘ chutes either as the skydivers equipment does. The science involved in these sports may be the same but both are definitely activities, not for the ‘faint hearted‘. Is this where I say being a sports spectator is safe?

Learning in Motion

Physics of Sky Diving

https://youtu.be/ur40O6nQHsw

Extra Reading

Gravity Equations Formulas Calculator

Your Guide to Skydiving

United States Parachute Association

I hope you found this article informative. Please feel free to leave your comments, Share your thoughts! or Share this article. Use the ‘Ask a Question‘ form to send me a request on a topic of your interest, or to say Hello!

AIC|An Informal Cornr

'personal development can start with learning to grow your Knowledge from ordinary, to extraordinary'