You’ve made your choice. Decided to ditch overwhelm and get someone in to help with the admin. But you’re not sure whether you should take on a part-time employee or hire a VA. How do you decide which is best for your business? Read on for a breakdown of the key differences and benefits of the two.

Being a small business owner is tough. You have to wear so many different hats – CEO, Finance Director, Marketing department, Administrator. It’s usually easy to tell when you need to bring someone in to take on your marketing or sort out the accounts.
​
However it can be difficult to know when you need to hire a VA, let alone admit that you need help in this area. There are some key pointers that can flag up that you’re ready to delegate that admin.

Sick of losing your to-do list? Fed up with going from meeting to meeting with no break? Never sure if you’re working on the latest version of a file?
​
There are many ways to make running your small business easier. This month’s blog looks at five areas where online tools can help to make your business more efficient and increase productivity.

Hiring a VA to provide holiday cover for your business is a novel idea for a lot of small business owners. The work culture in the UK leans towards the “more is more” approach, with many of us accepting that if you’re a business owner holidays are something other people have. This year with most of us staying in the UK, rather than travelling abroad, the temptation to have a working holiday is even bigger than usual.
​
But the last 15 months have been extremely stressful, meaning it’s more important than ever to take a break. Work culture is changing. We see more about self-care being an important part of working life and we are starting to recognise the need to take a break from our businesses, both for personal and professional reasons. After all, if we burn out it’s not going to do our businesses any good at all.

The decision to hire a VA is not always an easy one for a small business owner. Making that first step to paying out your hard-earned cash can be difficult. You’ve built up your business from nothing, so handing over parts of it to a complete stranger can feel daunting, particularly if you’re struggling to see how spending that extra money will benefit you.

However, if you’re finding that you’re spending your evenings catching up on paperwork and client emails, you never seem to have the time to review your business and you’re starting to worry about when you’re going to be able to concentrate on bringing in new clients, then a VA won’t just be beneficial, they are essential.

Read on to find out how a VA will save your business time and money.

OK, it’s not the sexiest headline in the world but stick with me. If you run a business, even a small one where you’re the only person in it, you need to be using templates. If you’re not you’re almost certainly wasting huge amounts of time and energy every time you onboard a new client or send out quotes or invoices, not to mention creating all the other documents that businesses need on a regular basis.

Creating templates is a key thing that I undertake for lots of my clients and it benefits them hugely.

​Here’s why…

April is stress awareness month. With most of us having just lived through the most stressful 12 months of our lives I imagine we’re all feeling the strain right now. As a VA my professional purpose is to reduce stress for my clients by taking on a myriad of tasks so that their day-to-day lives are easier. It’s not possible for everyone to hire a VA though so this month I’m sharing my main tips on how to reduce stress whether you’re a small business owner, corporate CEO or a swamped employee.

It’s National Grammar Day this week. It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me well, or has ever worked with me, that I love grammar and all things language-related. I’d go so far as to say I’m a recovering grammar-obsessive. I’m one of those people who tuts when they pass the greengrocer’s sign advertising “potatoe’s” and winces when someone writes “I could of done that” on a Facebook post.

Now, I understand that language evolves and the world won’t end if we all end up saying ‘could of’ instead of ‘could have’ in 100 years’ time. Misspelling potatoes isn’t going to make a difference to how many vegetables that greengrocer sells.

But if you’re a small business owner producing documents for your clients and social media channels, how important is it that you proofread and check for good grammar?

Answer: it’s hugely important and here’s why.

As small business owners and sole traders we all wear many different hats. As CEO, Finance Director, Marketing Manager and Customer Service Lead we plan for growth, ensure our business is on a healthy financial footing, work on attracting new clients and ensure that our existing clients’ needs are recognised and met. And we put the Admin hat on to take care of the essential tasks needed to provide our business with structure and underpin everything the other departments do.
​
This all mounts up to a lot of work. And while a lot of small business owners will happily outsource to an accountant or social media manager, they can be a lot more resistant to hiring someone to take care of the admin.