What is a Virtual Assistant?

0:00 Hi, welcome to the podcast that explores what virtual assistants want business owners to know, when they start asking themselves the question, hey, do I need a VA? I'm Rachel Davila, and after 18 years as a virtual assistant going it alone, I experienced the steep learning curve from the other side of the VA client relationship when I hired my own assistant. Joining me on this podcast is a group of friends and colleagues who all have their own take on what busy entrepreneurs need to know to find, hire, and work with a virtual assistant, and mindfully answer the question, hey, do I need a VA? Let's get this episode started.

0:46 Hey everyone, welcome back to Hey! Do I Need A VA? The podcast. Today's episode number three, and we're going to talk about what is a virtual assistant. Because since I became a VA in 2005, when nobody knew what a VA was, the term has now become used interchangeably with chat bots on websites all the way through executive-level virtual assistants. So with me today is Leanne Erimli, Bree BV, and Sydney Hubbard and we are the cast of Hey! Do I Need a VA? The podcast. So for me, my definition of a virtual assistant has always been an administrative assistant who can handle admin type things virtually using phone, email, and web-based technology. They're a business owner, they're not an employee, and you're responsible for paying for the hours worked, but the VA handles all their own overhead. So that makes them a 1099 contractor versus payroll. So ladies, let me know, what is your definition of a virtual assistant? Sure, I'll go.

2:20 My definition of a virtual assistant is similar to yours. It's somebody who works with you remotely, and you connect to have meetings kind of thing to see what tasks need to be assisted with, and that because they work remotely, you don't have those overhead costs of having to pay them for vacation time and pay them for having a place to come work out of. So there's benefits to that and that they're subcontractors, so then they like you said take care of their own business things, and then their business. One thing to note is if you are working with somebody that's not in the states like for me, I'm Canada, we actually don't have to have a 1099. So if you're working with a Canadian one, that's not something that comes into play, that's somebody if they're also in the US. And one thing that I will say for California, because that's where I'm at, a virtual assistant can only work for so many hours. They need to have other clients, you as a client or listener, can't be their only client they need to have more than one, and you can't take a bulk of their hours because then that gets counted as an employee, even if they themselves consider themselves of virtual assistant. So, LeAnn, what's your definition? I actually think you guys covered most of it.

3:48 Yeah, the biggest thing with the VA is you can't be just one VA and one client, you have to have multiple, at least in California, I'm assuming that's in most places. And the only other thing is that they really are business owners. So, you know, it's not just some admin sitting in a room waiting for you to give them work. They are business owners too. So there's lots of stuff that they have to cover, marketing, all that other stuff too. Sydney anything to add? Yeah, I think I really appreciate how you guys highlight the business owner aspect of a virtual assistant, because I think that that's something that I kind of gloss over when I'm explaining my job to other people. I'll say that I'm a virtual assistant and they'll say, what's that? And I'll say, oh, mostly social media stuff for other businesses. And I think it's important to highlight that, yes, I am a business owner, which even is a little surreal to me because I think that there's so much more that comes into play being a business owner, right? Like, I am going to be thinking about my own social media and invoicing and my own website, etc, etc, etc, that if I was just an employee, I wouldn't be thinking about that. The business I would be a part of would take care of that for me.

5:22 So, I think that's one way to think about being a virtual assistant versus being an employee that has virtual skills. Yeah, and I think that brings up a good point is that it's business to business, which I think can really help clients when they're looking for somebody to bring onto a team to handle the administrative stuff. They can also look at their VA as kind of a collaborator to give them business to business in how things get done, right? If a client is adding in social media, they're bringing a VA on to take over that a VA who has that skill set because they're doing it for their own business, they bring that knowledge and experience to the table.

6:20 And I think all of us can say that the things that we bring to the table is that not only are we doing the tasks that we offer to clients for them specifically, but we also do them for ourselves most of the time. I mean, you know, it's kind of hard. I like to do the things for my clients more than I like to do the things for myself, but we can bring that knowledge base with us to the VA client experience. Absolutely, like that sharing and melting of ideas and not only what we're doing in our business, but what we're seeing in other clients businesses, I mean, obviously not sharing delicate information or anything like that, but if we're learning and growing with multiple businesses, you're going to learn and grow at different skills that you can bring to the whole collaboration of all of them and enhance everybody, right? And I feel like in doing that, it also makes you learn and to focus and learn and absorb different things that you can bring as a whole and contribute. Yeah, I exactly. I think a great example of that is that for another business, I learned how to set up a podcast feed so that it can go onto Spotify, Apple Music, etc.

7:46 And now that this opportunity has popped up, I know how to do that. So I think a part of being a virtual assistant is continually learning and growing and I think that's what a lot of us really enjoy is the fact that, first, it's so collaborative. There's so many different facets and areas and, second, that there is learning and growing and incorporated into it. Yeah, my, my mentor when I was going through the virtual training program years and years ago, they said, you could learn something new every day and still not know everything and I love that over the decade that I've been a VA, technology has changed. I mean, social media wasn't even a thing when I started and watching that kind of come and grow and expand into, you know, just from Facebook into all of the different facets and podcasts. I mean, all of this was, I mean, podcast was radio.

9:00 It wasn't anything we could do, right? You know, even though it's, you know, the way that business has grown and expanded, I think, I feel like I'm running to keep up sometimes because things just keep showing up and so one of the things that I have really loved about being a virtual assistant is that idea that we are not competition with each other, we can collaborate together, and that the skill sets that I have complement, the skill sets that my colleagues have, and that if I can't do something for a client, I know where to go and I can tell a client, well, that's not something that I offer, but I know somebody who can. Has that been your experience as well? Oh, definitely, I know I've sent a few clients over to you Rachel because you're way more creative than me.

10:04 Well, all the technical questions go to you, so, but I think that that is one thing that a virtual assistant does bring to the table that even if we can't do the task, clients can still work with us because they know we can get it done, right? Even if we're not the ones doing it, we can find a team like Bree or, you know, somebody who has the skill set, you know, that can kind of fill in the gaps. With my team, we bring in other people that if we don't have somebody on our team members that cover that kind of thing, like Facebook ads or something that we're just not really looking to get into, then I'll reach out to you or other people and be like, hey, this is what my client's looking for is there's somebody who can come join us, like come collaborate with us and we kind of build out an even bigger team and doesn't have to always be within us.

10:58 So one thing that I do want to let our listeners know is that the term virtual assistant really does encompass broad administrative support. Now within that, some VAs will have more specialized skills. They might focus in one area or another, but there are areas where we're not professionals in the areas. We might have dabbled in it, we might have some skills, but, you know, like, if you're looking for bookkeeping as a task to hand off, we might be able to do elements of it, but we are not bookkeepers. Those are specialty things. And in our next episode, we will be talking about those kinds of differences, but the term virtual assistant really does encompass, like, a broad general knowledge base versus that specialty skills. Is that fair to say? Yeah, and we will talk about that, I promise. And I forgot to send the timer. So I don't actually know how long we've been talking, but anything anyone else wants to share about what is a virtual assistant, what is not virtual

12:29 assistant, I guess we could go in that direction too. I know we'll talk about that in our next episode. So thank you for joining us today on this episode of Hey! Do I Need a VA? If you have any questions, you can reach out to any one of us and our contact info will be in the show notes. Take care. See you next episode. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hey! Do I Need a VA? the podcast. If you found this episode helpful, please leave a like, comment, or review. And feel free to join our Facebook group, find, hire, and work with a VA for more tips and tools. If you have any questions, please email them to heyvapodcast@gmail.com. We'll see you next time.