This year I’ve started using 3 remote personal/executive assistants for my work projects. Our remote assistants have been awesome and super useful, so I thought it would be useful to try and write a guide to help others get started with using remote assistants.
If working with a remote assistant doesn’t work out for you I think you’ll lose around £300 and 12 hours of your time in 1 month. But if it does work well, then I think you have a lot to gain—my estimate is my assistants save me around 20-30 hours a month.
Ways in which my remote assistants have helped me
We have a remote assistant who does all our events logistics work, including sourcing and booking venues, booking transport and catering, and handling comms with participants and venues.
Our assistant handles paying our bills and invoices, and sending out invoices
Doing one-off tasks for the team e.g. booking appointments, making purchases, booking travel, finding accommodation for our interns
Where to find a remote assistant
If you’re based in the UK or in Europe (and communicate in English), I recommend https://virtalent.com/ which is the company I use.
I haven’t used a US-based virtual assistant before, but you could try timeetc.com. There are some other suggestions here.
Some tips for working with a remote assistant for the first time
Be prepared to invest time in explaining the task and process well for your assistant. I think it’s worth spending 10 minutes explaining a task that will take 60 minutes—that will feel like a long 10 minutes and it might feel frustrating, but it’s worth it.
Use loom.com to make video tutorials of how to do a process, instead of describing it in text
Bring your remote assistant into Slack to be able to DM them quickly
Invest in the relationship with your assistant from the beginning—take the time to call them once a week and message them each day to check in on how things are going because it’s easy as a remote person to feel disconnected. More communication is better.
Most remote assistant setups have very flexible monthly plans. You can start with just a few hours a week and scale up from there.
I think it’s worth just giving it a go; there’s a lot of info value in trying to get a remote assistant, and if it doesn’t work well then you can always just stop using the service.
Advice on how to get a remote personal/executive assistant
This year I’ve started using 3 remote personal/executive assistants for my work projects. Our remote assistants have been awesome and super useful, so I thought it would be useful to try and write a guide to help others get started with using remote assistants.
If working with a remote assistant doesn’t work out for you I think you’ll lose around £300 and 12 hours of your time in 1 month. But if it does work well, then I think you have a lot to gain—my estimate is my assistants save me around 20-30 hours a month.
Ways in which my remote assistants have helped me
We have a remote assistant who does all our events logistics work, including sourcing and booking venues, booking transport and catering, and handling comms with participants and venues.
Our assistant handles paying our bills and invoices, and sending out invoices
Doing one-off tasks for the team e.g. booking appointments, making purchases, booking travel, finding accommodation for our interns
Where to find a remote assistant
If you’re based in the UK or in Europe (and communicate in English), I recommend https://virtalent.com/ which is the company I use.
I haven’t used a US-based virtual assistant before, but you could try timeetc.com. There are some other suggestions here.
If you’re looking for a full-time assistant, we use https://www.athenago.com/ and they seem consistently great.
Some tips for working with a remote assistant for the first time
Be prepared to invest time in explaining the task and process well for your assistant. I think it’s worth spending 10 minutes explaining a task that will take 60 minutes—that will feel like a long 10 minutes and it might feel frustrating, but it’s worth it.
Use loom.com to make video tutorials of how to do a process, instead of describing it in text
Bring your remote assistant into Slack to be able to DM them quickly
Invest in the relationship with your assistant from the beginning—take the time to call them once a week and message them each day to check in on how things are going because it’s easy as a remote person to feel disconnected. More communication is better.
Tips on how to delegate well
Read Virtalent’s The Art of Delegation
Taking next steps
Most remote assistant setups have very flexible monthly plans. You can start with just a few hours a week and scale up from there.
I think it’s worth just giving it a go; there’s a lot of info value in trying to get a remote assistant, and if it doesn’t work well then you can always just stop using the service.
Book a free consultation call with Virtalent UK or Timeetc USA
Happy to answer any questions that people have, or DM for more info.