Your rock-star virtual sidekick

It can be scary - the thought of bringing someone on board when it's just been you until now. Or maybe you've had a less-than-stellar experience with a support professional in the past.

I get it.

I'm a business owner too, remember? And I take business very seriously - yours and mine.

LumenVA is registered with the CRO (Companies Registration Office in Ireland), and with every engagement, you'll be provided with a Data Processing Agreement in addition to the standard Virtual Assistant Agreeement.

Listen - you may come to a stage where hiring an employee is the right move, but my guess is that, if you've come this far, now isn't that time. Some of the things you need to consider while hiring an employee are:

Cost of employment - while at first blush it may appear that an hourly rate for your employee is less than a skilled VA, when you add accrued annual leave, statutory holiday pay, sick pay, employers' insurance and overhead costs (like providing a computer, telephone, desk, chair, breaks, training) it quickly becomes very clear that the true cost of hiring a direct employee is much more than simply their hourly rate multiplied by their time spent at your office.

When working with a virtual assistant, you pay ONLY for the time they spend working on your stuff. No toilet breaks, or coffee breaks, or holiday pay. No equipment or maintenance costs, and no internet activity that isn't directly related to getting your stuff done. You truly are paying only for productive time.

Locked in - when you hire someone, it can be difficult to terminate that  employment once the initial probation period has expired. Business is constantly evolving, which means your needs are changing too.

When you work with a VA, you're never locked into a long-term arrangement. The agreement can be terminated for the end of any month with just one month's notice. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy.

Retention - holding on to great staff can be difficult if you're not prepared to match or exceed what your competitors in the same hiring-space are offering. Maybe the employee's needs changed and they suddenly require more hours than you can provide them with. Either way, if you've ever spent time training up a new-hire, only to have them jump ship after a few months, you know the heart-ache that comes with the wasted time and effort that entails.

Virtual assistants deliver amazing value and service to multiple clients simultaneously. They aren't solely dependent on the hours you provide.

Although it has never happened that a client wanted to exit our relationship for this reason (but there's a first time for everything, I suppose!), the beauty of engaging a VA is the flexibility - you are NEVER locked in. If your circumstances change, or our working styles truly aren't meshing, you simply give notice on the agreement.

The one constant in life is change. Things crop up in people's lives - family, health... Even global pandemics! Heck - you might even win the lottery and decide to move to Barbados. The flexibility of LumenVA's sidekick packages means that you're never stuck with me. Ever.

It's true that I will never meet many of the people I work with in "real life" (though I do have some local clients that I see "in real life"!)

If you feel a bit weird about it, I can appreciate where you might be coming from on this one - I found that this seemed to be a particular quirk of the Irish market prior to 2020. Since then, we've all become so used to meeting colleagues and customers online that it's become the new normal. 

I do feel it's very important for both of us to get a sense of each other and to see if we'll be a good fit for working together (and so that we can both make sure the person on the other end of the email is actually who they claim to be!), so we'll arrange to meet for a virtual coffee before any proposals are issued or contracts are signed.

The good news is, you're not alone here. It's a sad reality that we often let ourselves get to a stage of total overwhelm before we admit we need some help and then go looking for it - and at that point, we don't even have the time or energy to find the right kind of help.

So, first off - let me congratulate you. If you're reading this, you've already taken that important first step - don't underestimate that!

I do have a couple of different ways to help clients who don't know where to start in figuring out what they can outsource and will be happy to go over these with you when we chat during a discovery call.

Excellent! Someone who knows what they need. I offer different packages of services that might address the need you have right now, and the "sidekick" packages will provide you with guaranteed monthly hours that we can use on any task. If nothing on my services page looks right for you, I'm delighted to work on a bespoke package, tailored to your EXACT requirements.

You're not supposed to have all the answers right now. I'll be able to walk you through my onboarding process - from working out the details of the engagement and signing contracts and data processing agreements, to gaining access to the systems and applications that you use in your business. We'll spend the first little while getting everything set up and getting me up to speed - identifying the tasks that can be outsourced immediately and figuring out the ones that we can work on. As we go, I'll be doing my best to identify any areas we could be doing better on... maybe something you're doing manually can actually be automated! I've been able to save lots of businesses loads of time by using the systems they already have in place, better.

I hope so! But let's be real. ANY relationship requires ongoing work. At the beginning, we'll be spending time figuring out what works best for you and by the end of the first month, it's possible we might still be tweaking things. But isn't that a constant theme of being in business? Always tweaking things and making things better? I do promise that you'll find me proficient, friendly, available, respectful and communicative.

Only you know the true state of play of your business finances, and maybe you really can't. But have you really thought about it? If you could free up your time to focus on your revenue-generating activities, what would that mean for your business? 

What are you NOT doing right now, because you're stuck doing everything in your business? The things you know you need to do to bring your business to the next level? What would it mean to finally, finally be able to move on those things? Or maybe you're doing great in business, but your family or personal life has suffered because of it. Wouldn't it be amazing to reclaim a chunk of time each month and use that to actually ENJOY life?

You excel at what you do, while I excel at what I do, which is why I'm willing to bet that I can probably get more of the dirty work done in an hour than you can. Win-win!