A Virtual Assistant can take on those time-consuming administrative tasks and special projects, and give you more breathing room to grow, succeed and fall in love with your business again.

Time. As a small practice professional, it's the commodity you covet most but never seem to have enough of.

If you had more time, you could complete all the administrative chores required to operate your business.

With enough time, you could do more marketing, more networking, more planning and systemizing.

If you had just a little more, you'd be a whole lot less hurried and stressed.

But how on earth do you create more time to do all the things necessary to run smoothly, build business, and create revenue?

A Creative Solution

The obvious answer is to increase your manpower. But hiring staff is not such an easy or affordable proposition for the small business owner.

"Fortunately,” says Danielle Keister, “there's an outsourcing alternative--Virtual Assistance.”

Keister’s company, The Relief, is a successful Virtual Assistance practice that has been delivering expert, personalized administrative support services to the small business and professional community since 1997.

And just what is a Virtual Assistant, you ask?

Keister defines a Virtual Assistant (or VA) as a professional service provider specializing in administrative support services who works from her own fully-equipped office utilizing computers and other technology to deliver services and communicate with clients.

“We primarily serve small to mid-sized business owners who have smaller workloads, need only occasional help, or who don't have the space or budget for in-house office staff, much less the time to train and manage them. Today’s technology allows us to serve clients anywhere--they can be across town or on the other side of the world."

Virtual Assistance to the Rescue

Virtual Assistants provide just about any administrative secretarial service you can think of: word processing, transcription, data-entry, database management, spreadsheet creation, proofreading, marketing support--you name it.

Ms. Keister’s practice offers additional specialties such as bookkeeping, web design, desktop publishing, writing and legal support services.

The savings can be huge compared to the cost of an actual employee because there are no payroll taxes or benefits to pay, no extra office space and equipment needs, and no training or management headaches.

Not to mention that not all employee time is productive (think breaks, sick leave, vacations and other downtime). With Virtual Assistance, clients pay only for the time the VA spends working on their behalf.

That's 100% productive time; you can't get more efficient than that!

And who are these saviors? What are their qualifications?

The Virtual Assistance profession was founded in 1996, and has its own industry associations and certification programs.

Ms. Keister states, “Virtual Assistants come from a variety of business backgrounds, but the common denominator is that the best of us are typically overachievers with extensive administrative experience and superior skill sets and training.”

She stresses that Virtual Assistants are not temps. “We are highly-skilled independent contractors who love what we do, and in business to provide consistently top-quality work to clients we are committed to."

A Simpatico Partnership

Although they can certainly assist with occasional projects, Virtual Assistants are more commonly interested in establishing long-term, collaborative partnerships with their clients. As the Virtual Assistant gets to know the owner and learns about his or her business, supporting the client becomes more intuitive.

As Ms. Keister states, “The ideal is to achieve a simpatico working relationship where my support not only instills more efficiency and productivity, but is key to helping my clients create more time in both their business and personal lives."

"By taking on work they hate, they’re too busy to do, or just plain is not a smart use of their time, I allow them to concentrate on the roles they love most while growing their business and getting more out of life. I’m a collaborative partner with the same goal-–their success!”

Find a Virtual Assistant

To locate a qualified, professional Virtual Assistant in your geographic area or who provides the specific services you need, use the prescreened Virtual Assistant Directory at http://www.VirtualAssistantNetworking.com/directory/