For the past 5 years, I’ve been asking people a few questions on this site in the hopes of pointing them in the right direction on their virtual assistant search.

Perhaps ironically for a site dedicated to delegation and outsourcing, I answered every survey result myself for the first 3 years. (Now I have Fancy Hands do it for me!)

But over that time, I’ve collected some interesting data in what readers of this site are looking for when it comes to a virtual assistant.

I removed the duplicate entries and found this nice little upward trend on the number of surveys submitted over the recent life of this site:

So what did I ask? Read on.

What Type of Work Do You Need Done?

The first question I ask is, “What type of work do you envision your virtual assistant primarily doing for you?”

The options are:

• Mini-projects or tasks, such as online research, scheduling, or travel planning.
• Ongoing support, such as bookkeeping, article writing, SEO, or other business processes.
• A one-time project, like building a website.
• I’m not sure.

And the results:

Nearly half of all respondents were looking for ongoing business support, while another 40% were trying to find help for smaller tasks.

A handful of people were looking for virtual support for a one-off project, and surprisingly 1 in 12 respondents said they weren’t sure what a VA would do for them.

(My book has a laundry-list of potential tasks to get your creative juices flowing.)

These results match up pretty closely with my own virtual assistant usage. I tend to outsource primarily business functions, but occasionally tap into some task-based help for personal stuff.

How Many Hours per Week?

Next up, I ask how many hours a week people envision for their new hire. This is important to get a sense of how much work they have to offload, since some companies are better for full-time support, while others happily take on smaller workloads.

The options are:

• 0-10, or on-demand as needed
• 10-20, regular part-time help
• 20-40, an integral part of your team

And the results:

As you can see, almost two-thirds of respondents are looking for very part-time help. I think it makes sense to start small and ramp up as you gain trust and comfort in remote delegation.

The remaining piece of the pie are those looking for 10-40 hours of virtual assistant support each week. If you’re in that boat, I feel your pain, and know what a relief it will be to get that work off your plate!

What Kind of Working Relationship Sounds Best?

Different VA companies have different approaches, so it’s important for me to find out if potential employers are looking for a dedicated hire or if they’d be OK with a pool of assistants handling their work.

The way I phrased this is, “What kind of working relationship with your VA would be best?”

And the possible answers are:

• A dedicated assistant would be better, so I can train them to meet my needs and establish an ongoing relationship.
• A different person can do each task, I don’t care as long as it gets done.

Here are the results:

Three out of four respondents indicated they’d prefer to work with a dedicated assistant, and I tend to be in the same boat. Though I’ve used — and continue to use — pool-based assistant services (like Fancy Hands), the bulk of my outsourcing is done with one-on-one assistants.

I think the prospect of building a long-term relationship and having someone get to know your business and your processes can be immensely valuable.

On the flip side, if you’re having a hard time imagining what a pool-based service could do for you, think along the lines of rapid template-driven customer response, proofreading, research, flight check-ins, or reservations.

Where Do You Want Your VA to Be Located?

When it comes to outsourcing, does the golden rule of real estate still apply?

While location can be important for language and time zones, I think the biggest advantage of the global talent pool is that you can find great people from all corners of the world.

So I asked readers if they cared where their prospective VA would live. The possible answers were:

• I don’t care, as long we can communicate.
• I would prefer to work with someone from the US, or at least a native-English speaker.
• USA, all the way.

And in the end, these were the answers I got:

The majority of respondents were geo-agnostic, which usually opens the door to some healthy cost-savings.

I’ve worked with dedicated virtual assistants in Pakistan, Panama, Eastern Europe, the Philippines, the UK, and the US, and can safely say that communication always trumps location.

Paying more for a close-to-home VA doesn’t necessarily mean higher quality right out of the box. In fact, I’ve been severely disappointed by some “local” VAs and VA companies when my requests come back nothing how I imagined. In those cases, I have to turn around and look in the mirror because I clearly didn’t explain the job well enough!

Your Turn

How would you answer these questions? What have your outsourcing relationships looked like so far? Do they match up with the rest of the Virtual Assistant Assistant readers?

Let me know in the comments below!

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Accounting is one of the first things most business owners hire out.

The tax code is so complex — and the penalties for messing up so severe — that it just makes sense to bring on an expert, right?

Well this might surprise you, but for the last 8 years, I did all my bookkeeping, taxes, and accounting myself. Even as I sit here advocating delegation in most other areas of your business, this was one role I held on to.

Why?

The reasons boiled down to a bad experience with a local CPA a few years ago, and my own cheapness.

A bad experience years ago

After moving to California and setting up shop here, I interviewed a few local accounting firms and settled the one that made the best impression.

However, once we started working together, the owner and I didn’t really see eye to eye on what the scope of the relationship should entail. I was looking for a consultative partner who would more than pay for themselves by giving me strategic tax advice.

And really, that’s what I’m looking for in any hire. It’s supposed to be an investment, not a straight cost.

But this CPA was really more of an order taker and just filled the numbers I supplied her into the appropriate forms. For this service, she charged a healthy upfront retainer and $200 an hour.

After the second year of this, I could see which numbers were going into which boxes, and since she wasn’t offering any sort of strategic guidance, I cut ties and started doing it all myself.

The DIY years

It just didn’t seem like I was getting enough value relative to what I was paying her. Was this how all accountants operated? Are there any who operate on a “performance basis”, taking a percentage of the tax savings they uncover instead of a flat hourly fee?

Parting ways with my local CPA coincided with a downturn in the business, so the cost savings were important to the bottom line as well. Why spend the money if I still have to do 80% of the work?

For years, I filed all my returns myself. I did the corporate returns by hand and our personal returns with Turbo Tax. I haven’t been audited to find out, but in the back of my mind, there was always this question of whether or not I was doing everything right.

Every tax season, it would usually take a full weekend day (sometimes more) to complete the returns, and perhaps a half day for the business stuff. This is one area where TurboTax shines; they store all your information from previous years so if things are similar year-to-year, you can get it done pretty quickly.

But where TurboTax struggles is they try and make it too dummy proof. Sometimes I don’t know the “right” answer to their questions. Should I account for something this way or that way? Which way is best?

So between the time spent, the anxiety, and the business looking up again, I started to keep my eyes and ears open for some help.

Do I need a bookkeeper?

One role I’ve never really considered hiring for is bookkeeping. And the reason is I actually really like doing it.

Maintaining my spreadsheets and keeping track of all the income and expenses as they happen is oddly satisfying for me. And on top of that, I can see daily how my month, quarter, and year are shaping up in terms of profitability.

Related: Here are our top online bookkeeping services.

But I knew I could use some help on the tax planning side. By simply following the form inputs my first CPA did 8 years ago, was I leaving money on the table or paying more than I needed to?

Finding a new accountant

I actually connected with my new accountant through a podcasting friend of mine. Every month he’d share a different tax tip or strategy on my friend’s site.

Because he was focused on giving value upfront, he’d built up a lot of trust in my mind before we even spoke. And it helped that he was familiar with online businesses like mine, a concept I’m not sure my old CPA ever fully grasped.

When I finally reached out to explore the possibility of working together, we had a free 30-minute consultation. He said a couple things during that free call that ended up saving me thousands of dollars, so it became a no-brainer to hire him after that.

It turned out my years of stubborn do-it-yourselfing had cost me quite a bit in the name of not spending money on professional help. The trouble is how do you know if someone will really help you!

In this case it was easier to see because this CPA was well-versed in the online marketing world and had done a great job of providing actionable tips for free. I reasoned, if this the advice he’s giving away online, what will he come up with when he really digs into the numbers?

And as a bonus, he charged quite a bit less for the corporate and personal returns than my local CPA did years ago.

Your Turn

Did you do your taxes yourself?

If you’ve worked with accountants in the past, what did you like or dislike about the experience?

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This year I’ve been letting a new VA into my inbox.

I felt like I was fighting a losing battle against the constant barrage of email, and even though I had what I thought to be a pretty robust system of filters and tags, it was still taking up a ton of time every day.

A little over an hour a day, 7 days a week, according to RescueTime.

Time to Hire Help?

Several friends have recommended getting an email VA — someone to help sort through incoming messages, craft simple replies, and essentially serve as a gatekeeper so you only have to see the messages that truly require your attention.

So I took their advice.

And in the few months we’ve been working together, I’ve been pretty impressed with my new VA.

In fact, she’s saved me from over 2000 messages so far.

But here’s the kicker: “she” is software, not a person.

How it Works

It’s a tool called Sanebox that plugs into your email account, analyzes your inbox behavior, and begins sorting the messages it deems important from the ones it thinks are probably less so.

And while there have been a few false positives in both directions, the sorting algorithm is crazy smart.

In my case, all the “not important” messages are dumped into a folder called SaneLater.

You still have full access to all your incoming mail (I was worried about missing something), and I tend to check that folder a couple times a day.

If I find something miscategorized, I just drag it back to the main inbox.

(Or vice versa, and the system learns for next time.)

There’s also a folder called “Blackhole” where you can drag messages you never want to hear from the sender again.

My Results

Now I’d heard of Sanebox before but never tried it until this year, when they reached out to sponsor my podcast.

I figured if I was going to do a convincing ad read I’d better test it out and see how it worked … and honestly it’s hard to imagine going back to my old way.

And more importantly, according to RescueTime, my time in my inbox is down 2-3 hours a month. I’ll take it!

Your Turn

If you want to give Sanebox a shot, they put together this special deal for you:

A 2 week free trial (no credit card required) + $25 off any paid plan.

They only condition is you drag emails from me back into the main inbox 🙂

Check it out and let me know what you think!

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