What Tools should you use in your Virtual Assistant business?

I’ve had people ask me what tools they should use in their businesses. It’s a common question in our online communities, especially with VAs who are just starting. Now, the joy of being a virtual assistant is that since you work with different clients you’re exposed to different tools and that helps you inform your choices for what to use in your own business. If you’re just starting though, it is a bit daunting, so we’re here to help! We’re going to cover:

• What we use and why we chose those.
• What our clients use, which helped us decide on our tools.
• What you should consider when choosing your business tools.

I know this will help you make an informed decision.

The Tools we use for our Business:

ClickUp

ClickUp is our Project Management tool. We keep track of tasks, our own business information in there, meeting agendas and use it a lot with our clients to keep track of projects & to-dos for them as well. It\’s so amazing once you get the hang of it.

Dubsado

Dubsado is our CRM (Client Relationship Management) tool. It has a steep learning curve, and I will touch on that in my next blog post, but once you get the hang of it, it is the best thing that can happen to you. Full disclosure: We initially wanted Honeybook, but it doesn’t cater to businesses outside of the USA & Canada.

Google Workspace

If I’m to be honest: Google is amazing when it comes to supporting online businesses. I mean, so many things can be shared online, you can edit documents in real-time, during a meeting, or a call as a team. The fact that most of the tools can be replicated with a few formulae and excellent templates is what makes Google Workspace a yes for me.

Canva

We’re in the social media business, so of course we had to get Canva. I love their templates, their tutorials, and simple features like their Brand Kit, where you can input your brand colours & fonts and not have to worry about where you saved those pesky hex codes.

It’s also got a content calendar and a scheduler to help you schedule your posts. It’s pretty basic though, so it’s mainly for single images and videos, and you can’t use it in bulk.

LastPass

LastPass is the best and most secure way to store passwords. It can also store your business passwords if you’re tired of having to remember them.

Toggl

We use Toggl to track time. Our services are moving to package-based, but tracking our time gives clients a sense of security knowing that they chose the right package and their hours are being utilized effectively. You can download a report for each client and attach it as a PDF file if they want regular updates. It’s also got a nifty Pomodoro timer which you can activate if that’s how you like to work.

The Tools We Use With Our Clients:

In addition to the above, our clients have the tools that they use, and working with their business has helped us with our choices a little bit, as well as increasing our skills with the tools we use. A good tip is that you should learn the ins and outs of your business tools and that will help you use those skills with your client\’s tools. So here are the tools our clients use that we’ve worked with and are in the process of mastering:

Project Management: Asana, Trello, Airtable

CRM: Honeybook

Email Marketing: MailerLite, MailChimp, Flodesk, Convertkit, ActiveCampaign, Kartra

Social Media Scheduling: Buffer, Hootsuite, Later, Planoly, Loomly, Social Sprout, Metricool

Course Creation & Membership Platforms: Kajabi, MemberVault, Gumroad, ThriveCart

Time Tracking: Clockify

Meetings & Webinars: StreamYard, Zoom, Loom

We’ve worked with a lot, so knowing what we needed for our business took a lot of work but we managed to narrow it down and we’re happy about our choices.

How do I Know which Tool is Right for Me?

Okay, so we’ve told you how we chose our tools and you’re wondering how to choose yours. It’s a lot of things you need to look into when choosing for you to say, “Okay, I like this, you will be handling my business.” Here are a few:

1. What do you Enjoy Using?

You don’t want to wake up every day and think to yourself, “Oh my gosh I have to use that darn thing again.” Especially if it’s for your business. So first figure out what you like using, or at the very least what you find tolerable, and consider that.

2. Consider the Pricing

Which tools fit your business budget? If you’re just starting out and not looking for tools that you have to pay out the nose for, look into tools that have more than one feature that you’re looking for. For example, we have no reason to use the paid version of Zoom since we already have Google Workspace and can use Google Meet for our meetings. ClickUp has an in-built screen recorder, so again, we don’t have to use Loom. Many tools also have free versions, so you can use them till you decide you need the paid features. Take advantage of sales, promos, and affiliate codes that give you discounts. We got a huge discount from a client’s affiliate code when we got Dubsado the first time (20% off) and that helped us out a lot.

3. Do the Best with What You Got!

I love this meme so much:

It’s true though. Sometimes you have to work with what you have till you decide on what will work for your business needs. There are so many free tools you can use, templates for Excel/Google Sheets for project management/CRM/ or any type of organization you may need. You don’t necessarily need the bells and whistles initially, you just need something functional that will keep your business in order.

4. Trial and Error

Sometimes, you have to try it and see how you like it! That’s the joy of free trials. I’m a kinesthetic learner, so it doesn’t make sense to me until I do it. So I’ll hear someone rave about a great tool, and I’ll try it out to see how I like it. If you’re a practical person like that, that’s what I recommend you do. If you realize you don’t like it, close the account, or save it for when you’re with a client that uses that tool, and find something else. You’ll eventually get the right tool for yourself.

What tools do you use in your business? What made you choose those? Let us know in the comments!

With you in business,

Nawena Virtual Solutions