When I mention I am a virtual assistant, people are often curious about what I do on an average day. I thought a quick ‘day in the life’ post may be of interest and put my job role into context.
Many of us VAs work at home. 89% in fact, according to the 2017-18 UK Virtual Assistant’s Survey produced by the Society of Virtual Assistants. This means we often wake up within reach of our office space!
Most VAs are part-time, female and over the age of 35 says the survey and many of us are managing to successfully juggle our businesses with the needs of a family, myself included. That being said there are also younger people in the profession and men (of various ages), now joining the VA way of life. They work full and part-time.
Just because we may have families to take care of, it doesn’t make us any less committed or professional. In fact, I would say we are a driven bunch! It feels good to be able to bring an income into the household and get the satisfaction of doing a great job for our clients.
So, first things first for me- deposit the children at school and walk the dogs. I tend to be at my desk, ready to work at 10am. Some days I have client work booked in for specific hours of the day, other times I deal with developing and running the business.
A typical day will run like this- I will quickly scan through my emails and voicemails to see if there is anything pressing I need to deal with first. Assuming all is well and I don’t have any new work requests, I carry onto my client work.
Mainly I work with small businesses or solopreneurs but, because I specialise in copywriting, I do have some larger businesses who use me for ad-hoc writing work rather than employ someone specifically for those tasks. For example, I produce a newsletter for an English language school and also work on the content for their website, making sure it is new and fresh.
For a very talented artist client, I write a monthly blog, edit photos and add the content to her WordPress website. She tells me she couldn’t do without me- I think mainly because she is really not a fan of technology!
One business I work for has chosen to book retained hours so I work with them every week. Generally, I help maintain their sales list, contact potential customers and deal with the admin this produces. However, since they are a small team there are times when I step in and provide extra help. This month I produced a press release that needed to be sent out before the launch of a new product. I love working with this client as I know their business really well now. They are a family company and even transfer their phones over to me when they go on their annual Summer holiday.
Sometimes my work requires creativity. Other times I am given jobs that are completely necessary, very time consuming and could be seen as rather boring, such as moving an Excel spreadsheet of 800 potential clients onto some sales software. These essential tasks need to be done in order to keep a business up and running and I am always happy to assist. In fact, they are the perfect type of job for a client to give to a virtual assistant.
Once my client work is completed, I turn my attention to some marketing for Pass the Task or some personal development. Maybe I will do some work on my virtual assistant blog, send out a targeted email or check Facebook or Linkedin. I am a huge believer in being the best VA I can so I am normally working on a course, either learning a new software package or enhancing my content writing skill set. Sometimes I read blogs from niche areas, such as SEO. There is so much useful information out there, just waiting to be accessed.
By the time 3pm rolls around my dogs start to nudge me and mill about impatiently. They are very good at telling the time! Generally, this is when I finish for the day and turn into the mummy taxi, ready for whatever challenges are to be thrown at me. Being a VA is on hold until at least 8pm. Most evenings are spent doing my own thing but if I am busy with work or really want to get something finished (such as this blog post), I may return to my desk for a couple of hours.
I really enjoy my job as a virtual assistant and the challenge of working for many different types of businesses, with a variety of work. The flexibility of being self-employed means I can give my all, whilst working, but also rise to the challenges of raising a young family. I’m sure many of you appreciate that juggling act!
Hopefully, you have a clearer idea of what a VA does in a day. If it sounds like I can help you, get in touch. Let’s chat!
