Virtual Assistance in South Africa

There is a story of a man who once traveled to a far mountain to meet a very old wizard. “What do you want from me?” the wizard asked the man. The man replied, “I want my trade to grow bigger and my life to grow easier.” The wizard reached for a book in a drawer to his right. “I have got just what you need,” he said. What did the wizard give the man? He gave him a Mwa. Actually, seven Mwas.

The Mwas, or fairies, did many things for the man: they wrote his letters and delivered them to the right people, always kept him true to his schedule, whispered in the village people’s ears about the man’s shop so that they go visit it, and more.

This is what virtual assistance is. You hire a VA (Virtual Assistant) to do many different tasks for you. And, just like the Mwa, the VA is also not a physical thing but sort of a brain in the clouds that make your life easier. And, of course, in today’s modern world the tasks are a bit different: Instead of writing letters with ink, emails are written and sent. Instead of ghosts whispering in people’s ears, marketing management is carried out. And so on.

The Nooks and Crannies of Virtual Assistance

The fact of life is that sometimes you just can’t do everything you have to do, especially if you run a business that’s growing and flowering. Email writing and sending, schedule ordering and editing, data entry, calls, advertisement, blogging, coordination of team members, copywriting—they are some, not all, of the details that, upon reaching a specific level of success and progress, one has to outsource (or leave) to a professional.

Now, just like most other things in life, virtual assistance comes in degrees of quality. And there are two main ways to go about activating your own virtual assistance network: You can take the easy route and use a professional service—that’s if you have the money, of course. You can also piece together a team, member by member, from the different sources and freelancing websites—and that’s if you have the patience.

Whatever route you take, piecing together the perfect network of VAs can take your business to incredible levels of achievement, but that takes smarts and a strong will…and a few rands. In short, having a successful and functional network of VAs is like having an army of fairies in the sky. And, just tell me, who wouldn’t want that?