Virtual Assistants Now Claimed

• Email Management
• Calendar Management
• Appointment Setting
• Social Media Management
• Research
• Data Entry
• Phone Calls
• Blog
• Invoicing
• Payroll
• Customer Service
• And Much More+

Benefits of Hiring Our Virtual Assistants:

1. Flexibility in the types of tasks they can do for you

2. Flexibility in the # of hours you can hire them for

3. Making your business appear larger & more professional (especially if you are a solo-preneur)

4. More affordable than hiring a full time or even part-time employee

5. Overhead cost savings

6. Helps you maximize your time by freeing up valuable hours that you can use to focus on growing your business (instead of using it for busy work)

7. Helps you get more done faster

8. Helps you complete tasks that you don’t want to do or have time for

9. Helps you get organized

10. Helps you take some time off to breathe: Delegating tasks is one way to avoid becoming overwhelmed

Video Transcript:

Elizabeth: Hi, this is Elizabeth Gearhart. I’m here with Valeria Inoscencio. Hi Valeria, you have a virtual assistant company, but you do things a little bit differently to service entrepreneurs. What do you?

Valeria: Yeah, absolutely. So here at Virtual Assistance Services Now we help busy entrepreneurs scale their businesses by providing hourly virtual assistance services. So instead of having to deal with big monthly packages, we work with what works with the entrepreneur. So they can be the boss, not the employee of their business.

Elizabeth: That’s wonderful. So what kind of services do you provide?

Valeria: So we provide a lot of different types of things which include, email management, that is a pretty big one, calendar management, doing phone calls. Phone calls is another pretty big one for our clients that are high touch. A lot of the entrepreneurs that we work with are real estate agents, marketing agencies, or recruiting companies where they’re constantly talking to their clients or constantly talking to their leads. So the phone call is also one of the big things that we do as well as market research, data entry, you name it.

Elizabeth: Great. How long have you been doing this?

Valeria: So we started September of last year and we’ve been growing pretty quickly; especially with everything that’s going on and people are really needing flexible help right now.

Elizabeth: You started at just the right time. Oh my gosh. Everything’s set up and ready to go when COVID hit.

Valeria: Right, exactly.

Elizabeth: I bet you grew during COVID. So if I were to hire you, would I get the same person to work for me all the time or would I just get whoever’s available?

Valeria: So it really depends on the client and how many hours they’re requesting. If it’s a client that has certain preferences because we assign virtual assistance based on preferences and skills and knowledge as well as availability. So if it’s a one-off project you might not get the same exact virtual assistant, but if you are a client who is continuously using our services, then you’re more likely to work with the same person month over month.

Elizabeth: And then I’m on the East Coast, you’re on the West Coast, but I’m assuming that you work with people across the country.

Valeria: That’s right.

Elizabeth: So if I were to hire somebody from your agency and I wanted them to work my hours, say 9-5 East Coast time, would they do that?

Valeria: Yes, absolutely.

Elizabeth: So do you have assistants all over the country then?

Valeria: We do, but they’re all US-based so only within the United States and they serve only businesses and entrepreneurs within the United States.

Elizabeth: Okay, so who’s your biggest client? What type of business is it?

Valeria: So marketing agencies is a big one for us right now.

Elizabeth: Okay, and what kind of things are you doing for them exactly?

Valeria: So we’re doing a lot of calling leads. With marketing agencies they have a lot of clients and they’re usually generating leads or generating opportunities for their clients. So one of the things that they’ve been hiring us for is having a virtual assistant call the leads, set appointments for their clients and so on, and so forth.

Elizabeth: So then if I say I was using you an hour a month and that’s all I could really afford right now. But then all of a sudden let’s say I’m some type of company that got this big order and I need people to work on it. Could I pull in five more people or get 10 more, 20 more hours? How would that work?

Valeria: Yeah, absolutely. So how it typically works, you select the number of hours that you need on a monthly basis. So whether it’s 1- hour, 10 hours, whatever it is, and the next month you can either add on more hours or you can decrease your hours. It’s very, very flexible, focused on the entrepreneur and what they need. If for some reason you don’t use your specific number of hours on a particular month then it rolls over to the next month.

Elizabeth: Oh, that’s wonderful. So then for the people that you’re hiring to do this work, what are their qualifications? What do they have to be?

Valeria: Right. So they definitely have to be located in the U.S. They have to be able to speak perfect English because a lot of them may be doing calls. They also have to have a college degree or some type of college and also relevant skills. So like I mentioned, we work with marketing agencies, real estate agents. So we’d like to have a variety of different virtual assistants that have certain skills in different industries, so they can better help the clients that we work with.

Elizabeth: Do you do most of your meetings over Zoom or some type of software, like Zoom between the virtual assistants and the clients?

Valeria: Yes. So we’re pretty flexible with how we connect with a client or whatever works best with that. But zoom is a pretty popular one, as well as connecting through email or phone calls. Some entrepreneurs they just say, Hey, just email me. They don’t want to like spend the whole time meeting the person and whatnot. They just say, hey, this is what I want them to do. This is how I want them to do it. And I want it done by this date. And the virtual assistant introduces themselves through email and gets the work done and ask them questions directly if they have any.

Elizabeth: That sounds pretty efficient. So what is the typical cost, say if I wanted 10 hours a month from somebody? Does the cost down if you get more hours?

Valeria: So the pricing is flat across the board. So whether it’s 1 hour or 20 hours, it’s a pretty flat and it’s an affordable price. So right now it’s at $25 an hour and you can select, like I mentioned as little or as many hours as you need.

Elizabeth: Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. So what is the name of your agency?

Valeria: It’s Virtual Assistant Services Now.

Elizabeth: Oh, nice. What are your work hours?

Valeria: We provide office hours, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM PST, so Pacific Standard Time, but the virtual assistants are able to work whatever works with the client.

Elizabeth: So if I was really knee deep in something and I had a virtual assistant I’ve been working with and I needed her for a Saturday morning, is that possible?

Valeria: That would have to be coordinated with the virtual assistant. So we would have to see what their availabilities would be. If for some reason though that virtual assistant was not available on a Saturday and we found a different virtual assistant that was available then we would, of course, add that virtual assistant to help you on the Saturday.

Elizabeth: Great. I know more and more people are using virtual assistants because we’re all doing everything virtually now.

Valeria: Exactly.

Elizabeth: So it’s not going to go away And I think that you’ve been doing it since the fall so you’ve probably got all your processes down, got a lot of the kinks out, and you can probably coordinate a lot of things for people too. So now some of the people I’ve been talking to are like, well I have this over here, this is over here, this over here, this over here, but you can hire a virtual assistant and they can put all those pieces together for your project right?

Valeria: Exactly. Right.

Elizabeth: Yeah. So this sounds great. Is there anything else that people should know about your service?

Valeria: Yeah, so, as I mentioned, it’s very flexible in regards to how many hours you can book with a virtual assistant. It’s pretty affordable based on our competition that’s out there. A lot of the other companies they require like 30 hour bundles or even 15 hour bundles and whatnot. So that’s not something that you have to worry about. And working with a virtual assistant is great because it’s a lot more affordable than hiring a full-time employee many times, which you have to deal with employment taxes, benefits, and all of that, which you don’t have to worry about when working with a virtual assistant. So no overtime or anything like that.

Elizabeth: It sounds like the perfect plan. One more thing I should ask you, do you have people that post to social media for clients?

Valeria: Yes. Yes they do.

Elizabeth: Okay. So you have people that can do a lot of the marketing tasks, like the hands-on things.

Valeria: Right.

Elizabeth: So the marketing plan and if they need social media posts, you have people that will do that.

Valeria: Exactly.

Elizabeth: It’s really important these days.

Valeria: It is. It is.

Elizabeth: Yes. Great. So this has been an excellent interview and I think you have an excellent service and I love the flexibility. I love the price. I think that you’re just going to keep growing and growing and growing. You said you have quite a few clients now already.

Valeria: Right. Yeah, we do.

Elizabeth: Okay. Great. Well, thank you Valeria.

Valeria: Thank you so much for having me Elizabeth. I really appreciate it. And I had a great time.

Elizabeth: Me too.