Last week I sat down and read The Virtual Assistant Solution by Micheal Hyatt. The goal of the book is to help show you the benefits of hiring a virtual assistant and equip you for success with that assistant.

This quick read accomplishes both of those tasks well.

Let’s take a look at some of the content I’ve gleaned.

Why would you need a VA

Why on earth do you need a VA anyway? One thing I always seem to not have time for is entering my receipts in to my tax spreadsheet. It’s boring and I can always find something ‘better’ to do.

This is something that needs to get done that I just don’t need to do.

Another item that is very important than seems to get away from me on Friday’s (which are very full) is invoicing. I should be invoicing for the upcoming week early on Friday (probably actually Thursday) so I can be paid before the upcoming week. Way to often I end up invoicing late Friday and not getting paid till Monday (sometimes Tuesday) though.

That’s another thing I can get a VA to do for me on Thursday.

Hiring a VA means that you can continue to move your business forward without having to do each little portion of the work. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you’re the best person to do something.

Here are a few of the statements Micheal walks you through in the first chapter of the book to get you to evaluate your need for a VA.

1. You’re overwhelmed by your workload
2. You need help digging out of an adminitsrative pile
3. You want to be more productive and less stressed
4. You’re not focusing on what only you can do
5. You need help but can’t afford someone full-time
6. You can’t afford the hassle of recruiting, hiring and training
7. You need more margin in your life

I know that many of those statements are true for freelancers. You typically went in to business for yourself (and are succeeding) because you’re driven.

That drive can easily lead to working long hours and trying to cover every base in your business.

There is a word of caution (from me not the book), it’s easy for math to trick you. Even if you can get someone to do work at 1/4 of what you charge for the same amount of time, that doesn’t mean you’re actually going to use the gained time productivly.

Getting yourself ready

The end of the book contains a few awesome pages to help you identify the tasks you could send to a VA.

1. Write down everything you do daily, weekly, monthly and put some time estimates on each item
2. Put those tasks on the delegation matrix (also provided in the book)
3. Isolate the items and work to only keep Q1 items
4. Be really honest about Q2 items it’s easy for them to ‘become’ Q1 items in disguise
5. Rank remaining tasks by importance

Q1 items should be down to things that only you can do in your business. For me that’s mainly the actual programming tasks I perform.

Everything else could be handed off to a VA allowing me more time to program.

So the question is do I recommend the book? Yes I do.

Even if you’re not planning on hiring a VA today or this month but you’re curious read through the book and evaluate your need for a VA.

If you decide that a VA is something you can use make sure you budget for it and that you actually have productive profitable things to do while the VA is working for you.