During the past decade we have had the pleasure to work with hundreds of founders during the most exciting period of their lives. Starting up a business is like having a baby. It all starts with excitement and everyone around you is happy and is congratulating you, but the real job and responsibilities are on you as you embark on this wild ride.
As your business grows, ideas evolve and most often than not, you find yourself juggling a lot more than you can handle. As an entrepreneur multi –tasking is your job profile, but getting the job done efficiently is more important than just making it by. The reason is that start –ups and early stage businesses are usually short on cash. Without addressing other business issues – the core of any business is to make ends meet. Your margins are lower and competition is high as a new kid on the block. If you give it some thought, the cost of not hiring someone else to help is costing you more business and productive time lost on tasks that could easily be delegated to someone else. Imagine someone else scheduling your tasks, organizing your work, working on email templates, graphic and marketing materials, or scheduling your meetings and you being the one getting the money in the door by doing the tasks that are “Worth your Time”.
The difference with what you could do with some help and what you are doing right now is your – Opportunity Lost
Advantages of hiring someone virtually:
- Decrease your administrative burden: Starting with the hiring process there is no burden on you. You do not have to post any job listings on craigslist or have an HR agency pay loads of money to line up the ideal candidates.
- No overheads: You do are not paying any overhead costs that come with hiring an employee onboard who works physically from your office. No desk, stationary, Internet, electricity or heating costs.
- No long-term contracts: The ease with which you can hire more or scale down your work with virtual workers is amazing. When you are hiring a Virtual personal assistant, you are not bound by any contract. As your workload increases you can have more people come on board only by sending one email. And when the work is less during holiday season, you can scale down on your work force.
- Cost advantage: At $6.98/hr hiring a personal assistant with Tasks Everyday is very economical. To have someone do all your legwork without hurting your pocket is your key mantra as a founder.
- You can do better and faster: Every morning you want to do more, accomplish more tasks, and gain new business more than you did yesterday. What you really end up doing is the repetitive mundane tasks that eat away your productivity and efficiency. We agree you will work on these individual tasks faster than anyone else, but do you really want to be doing these. More importantly are they “worth your time”.
- Delegate like a pro: We have listed the key steps to easy and effective delegation in another post. It isn’t rocket science. As you go along and you build your rapport with your personal assistant, delegation will come naturally to you.
If hiring an assistant can make you a better entrepreneur, by giving you “your time back” that you would have lost doing all the tasks that you shouldn’t be doing at the first place, you have got your value for money right there. While you embark on your wild ride and learn each day, it will be nice to have someone who is always there, ready to take up the tasks that you assign them and at the same time giving you an honest opinion when you need it the most.
Hiring a personal assistant is like having your wingman with you all the time. To know more on our services and different tasks that we can help you with please call us. Our offices are open Monday to Friday all 24-hours/ day.
Get virtualized, get amazed!
If you are an Entrepreneur you have been told or at least heard that you should delegate as much as possible. Or read a book called “4-hour work week” and wonder what it would be like to have your own personal assistant. Whatever the reason be, you looked at Tasks Everyday website, heard a few people just like you talk about their experiences and finally signed up for your very own dedicated Personal Assistant.
When it comes to working virtually it isn’t so much “virtual” as it literally means. Here’s why:
- Your assistant works your time zone. You could be working from Honolulu or Tampa in Florida; you have someone who is always there for you. So it really doesn’t matter where you are physically located.
- You have a local phone number, Skype, IM to reach your assistant. Just like any other work space where you usually do not meet all your co-workers on daily basis but the work still seems to get done in a very smooth manner, thanks to our technology. So why should be it any different here.
- Video calling: It’s a big hit with all our clients. Having a face to the name and the ability to discuss face-to-face is absolutely wonderful.
- Interacting and sharing with someone who is half way across the world, cares for your work, reminds you what’s next, keeps your schedule up to date, makes sure you don’t forget your girlfriend’s mom’s birthday (help you win those extra brownie points!), keeps your organized, and more importantly saves you time that you never had to begin with and help you live better- is a very liberating and exciting journey!
Are you thinking as to how does this work, what will you tell your PA to do? Do you even have enough work to delegate to someone else? You don’t have to be a pro at delegation to get your tasks done. In the beginning you should send all the tasks that you don’t like doing at all. The one’s that you hate to do, because they are so time consuming or are simply boring! Send these over to your PA and have him work on these tasks, while you sip on your favorite macchiato! After a first few days as you get your tasks done and communicate with your VA, you will find it’s fairly simple to save time and have your workload off!
Are you still having second thoughts if hiring a VA is the right choice? Ask us how we can help! Having an assistant is so addictive that you will wonder how you managed your life when you did not have one!!
Tasks Everyday is a secret tool for lifestyle entrepreneurs. Our assistants have helped seasoned business owners and the likes of founders of some amazing start -ups. VA’s have helped the bottom line to the top chain managers working on tasks that free up time and churn more profit. The job of your personal assistant is to alleviate all those things that are coming in the way of living your life to the full.
Here is a little peak into the lives of some assistants who have helped business owners achieve work life balance.
Sandra
Our Excellence coach, she went from being an amazing Personal assistant to the team lead and then manager of excellence team to ensure standards and quality of work were met by the assistants. She is a “Goan”. Belongs to a small state on western coast of India not far from Mumbai. Goa was a Portugal colony until 1987, has diverse culture, exotic beaches and breathtaking churches.
She is an avid historian, thanks to her Portuguese roots and has passion for anything “new”. She has a sharp encyclopedic mind, every question you throw at her, and she has the answer.
A big reason why she is an excellent mentor is because she believes in teamwork. She is a wonderful coach and guides everyone on her team along his or her way to excellence. Having worked as a personal assistant for 4 years and helping business owners and busy professionals has given her a deep insight into the world of “virtual freedom” that comes with having your own dedicated assistance.
Anil
Frankly, any client that has ever worked with him doesn’t let go of him. He has worked as customer service rep back in the day when all the major companies were setting up call centers in India. He is a remnant of the era when all customer care reps were Indian. Having worked with banks, insurance companies, car dealerships, cable companies, he knows how each of them function inside out. If you have a bill complaint or unsettled accounts that need to be sorted with any of these giants, we have never really found out how he does it, but he gets it done for you.
He loves playing cricket over the weekends and is a captain of one of our in-house cricket team. He has a degree in mass communications and loves his 2 fishes. When he is not working, you will find him glued to the TV watching cricket series. Aptly enough when we had an international cricketer as our client, Anil was assigned to his account. He strongly believes “Passion is something that brings the best out of us that we never knew was there to begin with”.
Priya
She has a degree in physical science and is a trained karate coach. Her coaching skills reflect on her work too. She mentors and advises new staff members in her free time. She works with a company in Philadelphia, which manufactures sleds. Year 2014 has been particularly more busy thanks to the crazy snowstorms. She takes care of any new orders that need to be entered into the database, handling any inquiries, coordinating with the shipping companies and ensuring the CRM is always up to date. She makes sure that the process from placing the order to the delivery is pain free, confidential and correct.
Recently an amazing incident happened, where a “baby was born on a sled”, not sure if you read it on the local news if you are from around Philly, but it was an inspiring and a story straight out of the movies. The sled on which the baby was born is the same company the Priya works for. It was an inspiring story.
Having lived in Mumbai most of her life, she had never seen snow, until recently when her husband planned a surprise getaway to the northern parts of India which have abundance of snow. When she is not taking care of her family, she gives karate-teaching lessons to kids in her community over the weekends. She never sits free, she is a like a little powerhouse always filled with ideas and genuine desire to help people live better!
3 Personal – assistants. Different skills, experiences and passion, but have the same desire to help and make your life better. They take away the tasks that are repetitive, time consuming, mundane or any task that you loathe and make your life stress free. They are your life style savers and work behind the curtain; give you extra time and sanity to enjoy what is more important. LIFE itself!
Concentrating on your business and personal life becomes a challenge while you try to juggle many tasks at same time. This is where your personal assistants come into picture.
When we talk to people, who are interested in hiring a virtual assistant, they always ask these two questions, “How good is their English.” and “Where do we get our Virtual assistants from.” Reasonable questions, as they will be working closely with their assistant for a long time.
Back in 2007 when Virtual assistant term was garnering excitement from media It was CNN who captured the true spirit of Indian virtual assistant and a typical day in the life of an assistant who works at Tasks Everyday. If you haven’t watched the clip you can click play and see it again below. There is a long list on what we do, and even longer list on what sets us apart from other VA companies but we can talk about that later in another post.
Parth
He is our go to guy. Having lived in Mumbai most of his life, he is very versatile and loves long walks on the beach. Prior to Tasks Everyday he had worked as a Design and marketing consultant. He is a team player, good with social media and abstract designs. He has masters in computer science (as an added advantage) but his passion is designing. He loves learning and helping others figure things out.
When we asked why “Tasks Everyday” He said, “well, as a designer I needed to find a company that will let me design and get creative. I like that they offered dedicated assistance to professionals from all walks of life. I could realize my true potential and work independently with ambitious Gen xers from New York to New Zealand!”
He is an avid wild life photographer. He has travelled to almost all national parks of India and is actively involved in Save the Tiger mission.
Rachana
She is a south Indian from a small beach town called Mangalore. But there is nothing small when it comes to her aspirations and dreams. Having worked as an information management adviser prior to joining Tasks Everyday, she has great coding skills and has designed more than 100 wonderful looking websites.
Tasks Everyday was the perfect place for her to share her knowledge, skills and work with her happy clients from all around the world. You can hear our clients specifically talk about her in our success story videos. When she is not coding she likes to hear music and her playlist is most sought after at our in house parties.
When we asked her why “Tasks Everyday” the answer was “I like the idea of working with dedicated clients. In my past few months alone I had the opportunity to work with a Hollywood stuntman who plays the double of Justin Timberlake and also design a great website for an Aussie NGO! I love the versatility and experience my job has to offer!”
Shruti
She is our hidden gem. She is a trained classical dancer and has a passion for cooking. She plays a wonderful host and her friends can vouch for her Prawn curry laksa!! She keeps a journal and runs her own food blog in her spare time. She is a planner by nature and pays attention to detail and her clients love her for that. She has worked as a social media analyst prior to working with us. What started as a hobby to promote her own blog online, turned to be her full time career, where she helps other business get social and engage with their clients.
She likes helping clients grow their business online and get the recognition.
According to her “Every client and every business is different, you need to analyze who their target market is and how to reach them best. Just like every dish, each business needs it own personal recipe (SEO strategy) to make it a hit!”
At Tasks Everyday, we don’t offer you a super VA! (Jack-of-all-trades) Because that’s a myth if you are trying to chase one, good luck with that! What we offer to our clients is a service, a lifestyle changing opportunity where based on your tasks, we assign you a dedicated assistance who has the right skill set to get them done. Our virtual assistants come from diverse backgrounds, cities, and cultures and have different skills, but all have one thing in common and that is the desire to help you live better and increase your productivity.
If you haven’t found your assistant yet, get in touch with us and let us know how we can help.
P.S you can thank us later!
We have been asked this question many times and there isn’t one single definition that can explain the beauty of their work. Personal assistant is someone who assists you with your everyday tasks. It does explain how we got the name of our company “Tasks Everyday”. When we first started out a decade ago we were purely into VPA’s offering remote personal assistants to busy professionals and business owners.
Why you need one
Personal assistants are your ticket to a better life. They can do a variety of tasks like research, finding budget hotels, planning your travel and all those tasks that are consuming your time. VPA’s do all your drudgework and at costs as low as $6.98/hr you can have a dedicated personal assistant. Why they are so inexpensive is because they are based out of Mumbai, India and there is a favorable dollar to rupee exchange rate.
Earlier only the rich and famous could afford personal assistants, but globalization and technology has made it possible that your assistant can be miles away and still manage your everyday tasks. You can now afford a great personal assistant and save time to do what you love to do.
Some of the tasks that your Personal assistant can do
VPA’s are lifestyle managers. They make sure you are always keeping up with the pace of your life and never fall behind any meeting, presentation, date or social event. They are your fifth gear or your secret weapon to success.
- Research on anything to everything
- Creating power point presentations
- Booking travel, finding hotels and flights
- Managing your schedule
- Can work on sheets, data, reports or anything that is on your computer by giving them remote desktop, go to my pc, team viewer access
- Clean up your inbox
- Answer calls on your behalf
- Secretarial tasks or front desk managerial tasks
- Updating your social media accounts
- Uploading images on Flickr, Facebook, tagging your friends, sending invites
- Find a perfect gift for your brother’s 16th birthday
- Give you a wake up call
- Finding restaurants and booking you a table
- Work on excel, format sheets and data
- Update your blog
- Any business or personal tasks can be sent out to your VPA and can be taken care of effectively
Once you start using VPA you will never get back to not having one. They are your escape to a better life in which you have time to do what’s important. To find out more about our services and specials email us at support@taskseveryday.com or call us on our toll free numbers.
Your business might be just beginning to take off or has been passed on to you from your Family, every business owner has one thing in common: more work than they can handle. As business owners you need to be absolutely ruthless in your focus. And it is here that the online assistants play a key role.
At Tasks Everyday, we have had the opportunity to work with business owners, young and old, from Silicon Valley to the out backs of Australia, working on exciting ideas and concepts. What we have learned from these passionate business owners are the key insights into how an online personal assistant can help you do what you love the most and keep you focused.
Delegation benefits for your ongoing business tasks: One of the fundamentals of being a business owner is to identify the tasks that need to be done and then getting those tasks done from the right talent. As businesses grow and evolve the tasks that you need to be done becomes more challenging. To take upon yourself to do all those tasks will result in little or no time left to focus on what’s important. Art of delegation is what each business owner should realize earlier on the course and then master it. Working with your Virtual personal assistant allows you to learn and hone the skill of delegation while reaping the benefits of getting your tasks done.- Your time is worth more than you think, make the most of it: If you think about all the small mundane tasks that accumulate throughout the day and then day after day and the time they end up consuming and not to mention the additional stress of doing them, It will be much easier to have someone else do these for you. Online assistants are willing, trained workers ready to work on those pending tasks. If you have some specific tasks that need training, then the time you will spend to train your assistant will be minimal in comparison to the value you’re your assistant adds up to your business. Bottom line is saving your valuable precious time to focus on more meaningful tasks and having an online assistant does that for you.
- Research, you can never have enough of it: It is vital to our lives just like grabbing a cuppa in the morning. It is a ritual and we all need to follow it. You need to know what your competitors are doing, which newer products or services they are rolling out, newer technologies that can impact your business, research data, finding new markets and avenues of growth. To find out the newest bars in your area where you can catch up with your buddies over the weekend ball game, or to find that latest hot selling Kate Middleton’s dress for your girlfriend after all it’s the thought that counts. When you have an assistant who can do all that research and compile that information in the format you need, you will harness the true power of having a well researched subject before you begin to invest in it.
- Access the Talent pool of online assistance, when you need it: Doing a business is rewarding and crazy at the same time. You have to be prepared for the change, as nothing there is really a constant these days. For instance you need to roll out a new service to your clients and want to market it online, send out bulk emails, study the response, evolve the idea and work on it, all at the same time. To do so you need the right talent pool of assistants who are ready to start immediately and work. You don’t want to employee permanently and do not have the time or space to hire permanent employees. With online virtual assistants this isn’t a problem. You can pick and monetize the right resource for the job at hand. There isn’t one key fits all locks, to make your next idea into a success or to evolve your current services or products. You need to have access to the right talent and that’s exactly the leverage you get with online assistants.
- High value tasks outsource: As business owners you need to travel, book flights, make dinner reservations, all these are basic tasks and your online personal assistant can do the research find the best deals online, and then email you that list. Smart business owners in addition to the above mentioned tasks have their assistants clear up their emails, work on reports, spreadsheets, research, power points, blog updates, email marketing, database updates and all those tasks which are mundane, repetitive or mere time consuming. With Tasks Everyday you can also hire an MBA online assistant for higher value tasks like competitve research, reports, market analysis writing business plans and all those tasks that you wish had another you, or a set of extra hands to work on. It isn’t humanly possible to increase the number of hours in a day, but what can be acheived is doubling your productivity in same work hours. Having worked with more than 10,000 businesses, we know one thing for sure leveraging your time and money is your biggest asset and your online assistant makes that do-able!
Before we dwell into how it all started, what does Virtual Assistant mean. In simple terms, someone who does your work virtually over the phone, email, IM, that does not need him to be physically present. Different people define them differently. Some of those names are listed below:
- Independent contractors,
- General personal assistants,
- Virtual personal assistants,
- Personal assistants,
- Personal secretary
- And all sorts of different names. But they all mean the same thing.
Just like any other job in the world, where designation of a person is based on his skill set and job description, we believe the same norms apply to virtual assistants too.
We will cover this in detail in our next post of virtual assistant’s job description and responsibilities.
Brief history of virtual assistant
No one knows when or how did it start. Just like digitalization this concept evolved slowly from offshore labor work to highly skilled outsourcing that we see these days. Big companies started with call center outfits based out of India or Philippines for customer support. this slowly and eventually led to a concept of why not small business owners and individuals also take benefit of low costs and get their tasks done. When small business owners realized this there was no turning back.
Virtual Assistant for $6.98/hr, why do they cost so less?
2 Reasons:
- They cost less because they are based out of India. Where the cost of living, eating is far cheaper than US. Most people live in big family units, house is mostly paid, as they have been living in it for generations, almost all families have some cousins which are still into agriculture, their grains and rice which form staple diets are mostly free sourced from there family cousins and not to forget the government schemes where every family gets a monthly rice and grain supply for as low as 2rupees per pound. That’s as low as 0.03 dollar per pound.
- Currency Exchange rates. US dollar stands at a might conversion of 1USD=67 rupee exchange rate. This plays very favorable.
So before you make a run for the moral police, or imagine that your assistant is some poorly starved slave, you will be surprised to know that your assistants live far better than you think. Most of them will have nannies or cooks or maids who help them with household chores while they sit and work for your all night on their computers.
When CBC Canada, wanted to cover story on virtual assistant service in India, they covered all of it. By that I mean, where do they live, how they travel, their lifestyle and their day-to-day living, their thoughts about their job and other things. Why don’t you watch it for yourself, click here..
It’s not all about cheap labor
Hiring an assistant at $6.98/ hr is definitely one of the reasons why you are interested in hiring a virtual assistant. But that’s not all. Virtual assistant gives you leverage of Time. Most often underpriced, undervalued and overtly over planned activity or commodity that we need to take control and make the most of.
The advantages of hiring a virtual assistant are huge, apart from the business help you get are as listed below:
- Immediate positive change in your life: you have more time to do what you love to do
- No overheads, benefits, insurance, payroll taxes that need to be taken care of or paid
- No long term contracts
- No need of additional space or equipment
- Scalability
- Flexibility of hiring or firing someone is all just a click away.
- Talent pool access
Virtual assistants, help you look at the bigger picture, with more time and money available at your disposal, you can think of new ways to expand your business and look into possibilities which you never knew existed earlier or didn’t have the time to focus on earlier.
If you are looking to hire a virtual assistant to help you with business or personal tasks, get in touch with Tasks Everyday. The most easy breezy way to hire the perfect virtual assistant!
