A virtual assistant could claw back some time. Or you could become one, writes Marcella Bidinost.
When Kathie Thomas decided to quit the "outside world" office life in 1994 to become a home-based secretary, little did she know she'd go on to pioneer the first-ever virtual assistants industry in Australia and the second network of its kind in the world. "I was sick of heading out to work, sick of the rat race, of public transport and train strikes," Thomas says. "I wanted to meet the needs of my five children and ended up helping many women, particularly mums, meet the need for flexible work."
Within 18 months, Thomas had set up her secretarial and admin services website A Clayton's Secretary (whose tagline "The secretary you need when you haven't got a secretary" sprung from the old Claytons drink ads) and was receiving emails from women the world over who wanted to follow suit.
So to help guide others into this work, she set up the Virtual Assistant Network (vadirectory.net), which has about 300 members in 18 countries. As a virtual assistant and coach, Thomas is hired on an hourly basis to perform a range of tasks for her key clientele. Her work enables busy professionals to prioritise commitments, delegate and increase their productivity.
"A lot of virtual assistants draw on their own skills to develop a niche," Thomas says. "These can include pretty much any work that can be outsourced, from business and investment research to IT services, web design, troubleshooting, desktop publishing, executive assistance and bookkeeping."
In her role, Thomas often finds herself navigating multiple clients' email inboxes, providing database management, writing, website maintenance, social networking and blogging teaching services. She draws the line, however, at assuming their guise. "I will happily teach clients how to set up social networking or post messages online for them but I will not pretend to be them," she says.
While the virtual assistant industry started in the US and Australia, teams across Asia and India have also caught on, favouring a call-centre model over the independent contractor one operating here. Promoting his recent publishing phenomenon, The 4-Hour Workweek, author Tim Ferriss declares you can "build an army of overseas MBAs for $5 per hour and do whatever you want".
Ferriss is considered an ambassador for the mobile lifestyle and a master at getting more for less: "If you can imagine it," he says, "you can delegate it."
At one point, Ferriss even outsourced his love life by posting a challenge for international virtual assistant teams to set up multiple coffee dates for him. He scored a long-term girlfriend out of the efforts.
In Australia, Thomas says a virtual assistant can earn about $35 an hour for word processing and more than $60 an hour for web work and database management.
"Tim Ferriss has made people aware the virtual industry exists," Thomas says. "But the downside is he makes people think they can get it anywhere at a very low cost."
Ferriss's book recounts a cheeky outsourcing experiment by Esquire magazine editor A.J. Jacobs, who hired Indian assistants to handle his business and personal affairs. Jacobs' test starts with run-of-the-mill requests – paying bills, making holiday reservations – before cranking it up to see if a virtual assistant would settle squabbles with his wife by ghosting emails from him (it worked), then seeing if she would deliver his list of neuroses to his therapist to save Jacobs from attending the appointment himself (the therapist refused on ethical grounds). In Australia, the more "out there" personal requests tend to land in the domain of the virtual concierge. Adrian McCowage, owner of Someone Lifestyle Services, recalls an English client who, on his way to Australia, asked if McCowage would interview prospective dates on his behalf: "I wasn't comfortable doing that."
Internationally, Thomas moderates two chat forums involving more than 2500 people for the Virtual Assistant Networking Association. Its membership exceeds 10,000 people. According to the association, 97 per cent of virtual assistants are women, 76 per cent have children, most complete 31-40 hours of work a week and 44 per cent normally work on weekends. Thomas expects anyone who joins her team to have at least five years' office experience.
She wants to keep helping people "return home to work"; using skills they developed in the workforce to be home and available for their families.
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