Recently, I met with one of my clients, one who had started working with me back in January. We have had a lull in work lately mostly because she was trying to make everything perfect before handing it over. Finally at this week’s meeting she realized that this was actually holding her back in all areas of her work.

As we talked about a timeline when I would get the work and what the deadline was for some of it, she then mentioned how she was going to block off two days in a few weeks to go through all her files and sort everything out to give to me. She was also talking about how her workshop was coming up and that she had a conference out of town in 3 weeks as well. Very busy time.

So… I casually asked ” Why did you hire me?”
The answer from her was “To help me get this work done and off my plate”.
I said “Right, but look what you are doing now. You are actually thinking of blocking off two entire working days to sort the work for me; and when I get it I will have to do that to most of it anyhow.”
I paused, “Now think, how many client appointments could you book and what income would you earn from those in the two days?”
“Four clients”, she said. “And about $1,000.00.”
“And…. how much money will you pay me to do the work?” I asked.
“Argh!” was her answer. “You are so right. I will box it up right away!”

I think the stress of all she had going on, finally made her see the light.

Working with a Virtual Assistant (VA) shouldn’t be stressful – it should be the absolute opposite. As long as you have good communication and trust, you can easily give your VA what she (or he) needs and the work will get done. A simple system for assigning and handing over the work and it will get done.

You will gain what you wanted by hiring your VA in the first place… your time back to work on more important tasks and the work not requiring your special skills gets done.

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