In praise of virtual assistants  |  October 10, 2007  

One of the things about being a freelance writer is that you spend a lot of your time arranging stuff. At any one time I’ve got tens of interviews that I’m trying to arrange simultaneously. Some of those interviews will be arranged directly with the interviewee, some will be through in-house PR, and some will be through agencies.

10% of interviews are easy, of the ’sure, let’s talk now’ or ‘call me tomorrow at 3pm’ variety. 70% involve some toing and froing: numerous email exchanges as PRs valiantly try to co-ordinate suitable times between the spokesperson and I. The rest are spent chasing PRs who for whatever reason ignore emails and calls, or come back declining the interview.

You can optimise the results by being clear up front - send a clear brief, and some general questions that you’re trying to cover off - but the headache and the time spent are directly proportional to the volume of work you have on. When you’re not writing, or interviewing, or reading, you’re worrying about which interview arrangements need chasing up, and constantly flitting between projects, spinning plates.

For 13 years I’ve felt like I’ve been two days behind. The more work I got, the more stressed I felt. There was never enough time to get ahead and start arranging interviews way ahead of time. Consequently, you’d spend days chasing people who were given very little notice, and eventually end up with 10 hours of back-to-back interviews for three days running.

Blogging? Forget it. No time, mate.

Then, I read a post in 43 Folders about the 4-Hour Work Week. It’s one of those management self-help, change-your-working-life-in-two-weeks books that I’m normally very sceptical about. The book’s title says it all. It proposes various ideas to get you there - touchless businesses, location-independent working, and so on - but one that really stuck with me was the idea of getting a virtual assistant.

The premise: find the stuff you do that supports your job but that someone else could do, and get them to do it, leaving you more time to do the valuable stuff. It’s a micro-version of big-ticket outsourcing (but without the five-year contracts, interminable rhetoric about core competencies and process efficiency, and hopefully without the multi-million dollar cock-ups).

One-person businesses generally can’t afford full-time assistants, but Tom Friedman was right with The World is Flat - the Internet really has made the world a smaller place. Because an awful lot of many professionals’ jobs are information-based, you can shunt the associated tasks around relatively easily, to people who only spend a portion of their time on your business, and who don’t require you to pay benefits or holidays.

So, I thought I’d give it a go.

I tried calling two organisations that Esquire editor A J Jacobs mentioned in his similar experiment. Both of these firms are in India. Brickwork sounded excellent, but failed to return the two queries I sent through the web form and the follow-up call I made. Strike one. Get Friday, a Brickwork competitor, failed to get back to me after an email query and four calls. This was beginning to look like hard work.

I checked out a number of North American virtual assistants via elance, and eventually found one I liked the look of. At the same time, another Indian firm came back to me and offered me a week’s trial. So I decided to compare them to each other over a week, asking them to arrange interviews for two separate articles. My proposition was simple: I’d give them the brief, and a deadline, and a contact or two to arrange interviews with. I use a shared Backpack account for them to arrange interviews on, which syncs with iCal.

The Indian firm didn’t work out. It was cheap at $5 per hour, but there was a reason for that. It sent out a message meant for me to the target PR person by mistake (the PR person and I have a good relationship and he’d agreed to be used as a guinea pig, so he knew that this was experimental and that things might go awry). It couldn’t handle appointments in different time zones, and it when the PR person suggested an interview time, it booked an appointment in my calendar without confirming back with him. It also took days to come back to me after I’d sent it a task. I suspect I could have spent a couple of weeks handholding the firm through things, but frankly, I wanted to save time, not invest more of it.

The US firm I tried was three times the price, but still less than half the price of most other VAs that I researched. It’s fronted by an MBA grad called Heather, who also owns the business. She handles all the virtual assistant tasks, but can also outsource to her team, who can take over if she’s sick, or away.

I started by having her book hair appointments, and lunch with a mate, just to ease into things and see how she did (the firm is a concierge service too). No problem. I started testing her with non-guinea-pig interview targets and it went well. Appointments started popping up in my calendar. I did the interviews. Great. Suddenly the time I spent arranging an interview fell from what seemed like hours to…well, no time at all, really.

I tried Heather on less structured tasks. “Find and order me a wireless doorbell for the office (she takes Paypal, so no credit card details are necessary)”. “Find me a supplier for a piece of magnetic metal, 5 x 5 feet, and arrange a quote”. No problem.

Then: “I read on a blog that Rogers Wireless has an exclusive on the iPhone. When’s it shipping? I want one for review.” She contacted Rogers, and also without prompting went to a mate of hers at Bell Canada, and eventually found the head PR bloke (who I happen to know). Rogers denied all knowledge. Bell is shipping in Q4. This was starting to get really good.

Now, I’m sending tasks like these:
“Read this news article. Find the guy who they quoted and set up an interview with him.”
“Here are six company web sites. Arrange interviews with all of them for this article.”
“I need to review this laptop for the National Post. Please sort it.” It arrived this week.

She also sources photos, and when a PR plays silly buggers, like trying to arrange an interview at 9am UK time having been told that I live in Canada, she handles it. The only thing that appears on my radar is the eventual interview appointment, or the explanation for why it didn’t pan out (at which point, I can either step in for some stronger persuasion, or direct her to another likely interviewee) .

Last Wednesday, two weeks after starting with her, was my first no-panic day. The end of the week was spent clearing some outstanding long-term tasks. Today, I cleaned up the office. This week, I’m going to spend time actually planning my writing and other businesses for a change, and setting some goals.

The work benefits are significant. Less than three weeks in with her, I’m doing just a few interviews each day, and for my upcoming features, I already have most of my research and interviews done at least a week before I need to submit the copy. I’m finding myself with way more time for background research, and more time to think about the interviews I’m doing, and the writing.

The personal benefits are even more important. Last Friday, I actually got to knock off early and spend the afternoon with the kids, having just sent Heather a bunch of interviews to arrange. This Wednesday afternoon, I’m probably heading off home to make art in the studio for the first time in months (and the first time ever, in the day). On Mondays, I might start going for a matinee (my office is in a rep cinema).

The cost? Less than the revenue from a feature article each month. The benefits? Time, which as both a writer and a parent, is the most precious commodity for me. If I wanted to fill the time I’m saving with more work, I could sell more articles and make more dough, but I don’t think I will. I’m hitting my financial targets, (with the cost of the service factored in), and for the first time in years, I’m relishing the ability to take some ‘me’ time and some more family time.

Finally, Get Friday came back to me, two weeks after my query, but I’m sorted now. I may not be working four hours a week, but I’m working way less than I did, and the work that remains on my desk is more valuable to me. I was prepared to see this experiment crash and burn, but all in all, not a bad result. Not a bad result at all. If you’re feeling perpetually snowed under, then finding a virtual assistant is well worth a try, I’d say.

Danny Bradbury