What Can a Virtual Assistant do for my Subscription Box Business? | Episode 24

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We’re subscription box entrepreneurs, which means we’re motivated by success and ready to take on new challenges as they arise. But we don’t need to take on these challenges alone! Behind the scenes, we can have a support system to help us stay on track and even expand without getting overwhelmed. This week we’re talking about how Virtual Assistants can help take on some of those tasks and next-level your business.

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What is a Virtual Assistant?

Virtual Assistants are independent contractors who work flex schedules and have a negotiated set of hours they would commit to working on tasks that you would need from them. Being independent contractors means that while you are hiring them to help you with your business, you’re only taking them on for a set number of hours or specific tasks rather than hiring a full-time employee which can be more flexible to your budget and specialized for what your business needs are.

3 Task Buckets: Admin, Creative, and Tech

VA’s are best used when you have certain tasks in mind for them, and some VAs specialize in certain tasks over others. I like to break what a VA can do for you into three task buckets: admin, creative, and tech.

With Admin, you can find VAs to help you with customer service work such as answering service emails, especially cancellations like we spoke about in a previous podcast. They can also help with billing issues and bookkeeping, or really any of the nuts and bolts of running a successful business.

On the Creative side, this can entail the designing of those customer-facing marketing materials. Graphic design VAs can help build graphics for social media, custom emails, newsletters, worksheets, or e-books and make them look good to reflect how you feel about your business to your customers. They can help you brainstorm to figure out those ideas that you might have a blind spot to and having a professional for the creative side of business can go a long way.

Tech focus tasks are a huge help getting you up to date on the latest and greatest tools available to entrepreneurs. Maintaining the back end of your website, integrating waitlists to email lists, optimizing website plugins, and making sure they’re working properly... these can be hair-pulling to learn if you’re not tech-savvy, so why not get help with it?

Where can I find a Virtual Assistant for my Subscription Box Business?

Finding the right VA for your needs takes a little bit of footwork but pays off huge. Finding Facebook groups for what tasks you might need are a good place to start as VAs are in those groups ready for work.

As with hiring anyone, make sure you interview with the person to see if your values match up and be ready to take that leap if things work out. You can also try to find a VA through Emily Reagan’s website, which we spoke about on the episode.

Good Luck!