Editor: I have talked before about how time is something we should not waste. This week’s Saturday Selection, originally posted by Passive Income MD, shares how virtual assistants are a fantastic way to give you back time, while simultaneously growing your practice or business.
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Whether you’re a physician or not, we all seem to suffer from a shortage of our most precious resource: TIME.
Let’s face it, juggling the responsibilities and needs of our day jobs and family life is a constant challenge.
I’ve been obsessed with trying to optimize my schedule to be productive while also allowing myself to focus on the things I love to do.
The only way that’s been possible is by leveraging my time and hiring help. This is where a virtual assistant can come in very handy. As I’ve mentioned before, I think every doctor should have a virtual assistant.
Just like an in-person assistant, they can handle many of those time-consuming tasks for you–and it’s all done remotely. In today’s post, we’ll be looking at just how a virtual assistant can benefit you.
VAs Can Free Up a Lot of Time
The first and probably most obvious benefit of hiring a virtual assistant (or “VA” for short) is that they’ll free up a ton of your time.
If you really examine things, a good portion of your time, whether it’s at work or home is taken up by mundane tasks you probably don’t enjoy – like managing your calendar, keeping things organized, repetitive charting, and researching things online.
What if you could delegate all of that? How much more time would you have to devote to big-picture things, like finding new ventures or opportunities, or simply spending more time doing things you enjoy with your loved ones.
For those who have a side hustle, you’re likely pursuing them to provide an income that will allow you to stop trading time for money. And the more you realize how valuable your time is, the less you’ll want to spend it doing things you don’t enjoy.
VAs, on the other hand, are often trained to be very quick and efficient at things like data entry, organization, and sometimes, even market research. By letting them handle that side of your life and business, you’re going to have a lot more time and a lot less stress.
VAs Can Help Your Business and Practice Grow
Another major result of delegating the tedious, day-to-day tasks to a VA is that you’ll have more time to focus on growing your side hustle or your medical practice.
For example, if you’ve dabbled in real estate investing but haven’t really had the time to add new properties to your portfolio, a VA could take over the preliminary market research, projections, and even inquiries.
Plus, many VAs are skilled in marketing techniques, like social media and content management. If any aspect of your business or practice is conducted online, letting them handle the day-to-day stuff and streamlining things will get it running far more efficiently than you could accomplish by yourself.
“Virtual assistants have probably been the single biggest reason my wife and I have been able to successfully grow our medical practices while keeping our overhead low.
Last year alone we were able to add six additional providers,” says Dr. Rishin Shah, founder of GoLean Healthcare, a medical VA hiring company.
VAs Can Provide an Expert Perspective
A lot of people think that VAs are limited to data entry. But as I mentioned earlier, they can handle quite a bit more than that.
You can hire VAs who specialize in certain areas, like the aforementioned social media management, copywriting or even accounting. You might even find one person who can do all of that!
By hiring a VA who’s more knowledgeable on a subject than you are, you can gain insights that you may have never received on your own. Plus, you can free up even more time when you don’t have to learn a new process or piece of software. Let your VA handle what they’re good at, and you can focus on what you’re good at.
VAs Can Save You Money
Hiring a traditional (in-person) assistant is great, but if you’ve ever looked into it, you know that they aren’t exactly cheap. And if your business hasn’t quite taken off just yet, it’s not usually an expense you can justify.
A virtual assistant, on the other hand, is usually surprisingly affordable. You can find VAs on all kinds of different sites, but I’d highly recommend checking out Upwork. There, you can hire someone on a “per project” basis or hourly–some for as little as $4 an hour.
Of course, that cost goes up if you’re looking for someone more skilled in marketing, for example, but it’s certainly a great starting point. Once you get our VA up to speed, you could be spending less than $300 per month for them to work part-time. For all the time you’ll save, that can be more than worth it.
Conclusion
It may seem strange at first, but virtual assistants are a fantastic way to reduce your workload while simultaneously growing your practice or business. It can also reduce your stress and efficiency. Honestly, there just aren’t a lot of downsides.
So if you’ve never considered a VA before, I’d definitely recommend looking into it. Check our list of places to find Virtual Assistants.
Trust me, once you’ve tasted freedom from spreadsheets and the mundane tasks that seem to suck the life out of you, you’ll never want to go back.
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