How my virtual assistant makes me money

I’m coming clean. My coworkers feel like I’m cheating, I hear it in their voice when they ask me about trivial tasks, such as what flight I booked, what hotel I’m staying at, the booking rate I got at the hotel, how annoying our travel booking site is, or if I sent a follow up email to a client among other day to day trivial and annoying tasks.

I’m a cyber security professional. I suck at booking flights, I despise the mental thrashing and wasting of my knowledge on trivial tasks such as booking hotel rooms and filing medical receipts for reimbursement. I’m uncomfortable writing follow up emails thanking people for their time; Maybe it’s the introvert in me. I’ve had a virtual assistant for two years now and it’s life changing. I use geographic arbitrage to hire someone that lives in a low cost of living location in order to get a talented assistant at an affordable price.

How does this virtual assistant make me money? The answer doesn’t have an MBA spreadsheet to prove it…yet. I’m working on that. The newest task for my assistant is to send followup thank you emails to clients. The goal with this task is to liven up and grow my network so that when I make requests for feedback to my business ideas, the people I want to invest in the idea provide feedback on hackerfinance.com/startup-ideas. I’ve never been good at follow up emails. I recognize this weakness and realized for around $15 I could plug the leak in my professional network.

The other way my virtual assistant makes me money will never have a spreadsheet to prove. My assistant protects me from career burnout. I book a ton of flights, hotels, and reservations all around the US. It’s the most annoying task that consumes hours per week. I’m usually multi-tasking when I book reservations, which always led to me making booking mistakes. These travel reservations also took my focus off client projects. Every few months my company would change travel booking software, forcing me to relearn how to use it. How to choose a hotel that was within company policy, and other mundane items. Now I have a wonderful assistant who not only books my travel, but recommends nearby healthy restaurants, and running routes to take the edge off of multi-city travel.

All of the tasks my virtual assistant completes, keep me loving my job. I get to focus on the fun part of my job. I don’t sweat the small stuff, which keeps me positive and ready to rock and roll all week long! Maybe all companies should provide three hours per week for a virtual assistants as an employee benefit?