When you become a virtual assistant, you have to learn how to play the juggling act. Juggling clients, time, and your own business tasks. It’s safe to say that you’ll need to be organized and efficient. Starting out, there are so many different programs, apps and God knows what else to help you get through your day as a virtual assistant. By trial and error I figured what worked for me, my work flow and what made me more efficient. Now this could change over time because what you need when you’re the only employee, versus having 100 employees can be totally different. But for now, this is what has been working for me!
I love CANVA! It is so easy to use and allows you to create quick and cute graphics or documents for your client. I use use it almost everyday for my business posts, and for my clients social media. The learning curve isn’t bad at all and honestly it’s so much fun to use. When I first joined the membership was about $1 a month, but now I have a plan that’s a little under $120 for the year. Keep a look out for deals, because Canva always has a random deal here and there.
This program has been such a life saver! I love staying organized and color coding my tasks. Asana allows me to easily do all of this. I do have the free version of Asana because it’s just me right now and I have a handful of clients, but honestly it’s all I need. You can invite your clients to your account (or vice versa) and create a board that you both can contribute to. You can track your tasks, their due dates, upload files video and photos. It’s the first program that I open in the morning when I’m about to start my day. I actually use to organize my personal tasks as well. It has a tiny bit of a learning curve, but nothing you can’t figure out in 30 mins at the most.
Honeybook is literally a one stop shop! I’m able to send invoices, proposals and contracts to clients, all in one go. I even have automated workflows that I can customize and link to specific clients. So, if someone reaches out through my contact form, it’ll trigger the workflow depending on the type of project they want me to work on. Setting up the automations can be rough depending on what you need BUT once it’s setup, your life is so much easier. You don’t have to remember to send a welcome email or an offboarding survey. It’s literally setup and ready to go. It’s also easy to set up payments through Honeybook so that’s not a hassle either. They do have fees for transactions, but they’re about the same as other programs I’ve come across. Honeybook also allows you to post projects that you need help with and allows you to search projects that you want to work on. It has it’s own little community of entrepreneurs!
So I ALWAYS have an issue with my computers. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Your motherboard is fried”. One of the things I knew I had to invest in was an external hard drive. That way if anything went wrong (which I know it will given my luck), I would still have all of my work and not have to worry about anything. I usually make a folder for every new client I sign on with, just to keep all of their info and my work for them organized. I purchased mine here on amazon.
- Google Drive
Google drive is another favorite of mine because I can share huge files and documents with my clients. They also send me documents to edit which is great, because your changes automatically save and you don’t have to email each other back and forth too much! I mostly use it when we’re editing blogs or when I need to share a newsletter draft with clients. It’s simple and easy to use. Honestly who doesn’t use google at this point!
These are just some of the things I use on a daily basis and I hope they can become useful to you too! Comment and share some of your favorite tools that you like to use when you’re working from home.
Creative Ambition Virtual Solutions 