The term “Virtual Assistant” is often misunderstood by U.S. Business owners

U.S. small business owners do not really understand what the term “virtual assistants” means. They sometimes equate the term with non-real people. Or that virtual assistants are in some way inferior to real workers/staff/employees.  Or that they don’t work full-time.

The term “virtual” really just means remote.

There’s no actual difference between a U.S. full-time employee who works remotely and a virtual assistant. The term virtual assistant is often therefore very misleading.

The only difference between a “virtual assistant” and a U.S. person who works remotely is for the employer is:

• Dramatically Lower Costs – They are leveraging the difference in the economies of two different countries
• Dramatically Fewer Legal Complications – The legal system in the U.S. creates a mind field of complexity, legal risks and costs
  • On average the legal processes add about 17% – 25% extra cost as well as considerable additional work

An additional soft difference:

• There are often challenges in hiring people in the U.S. in that the employee:
  • Is not willing to work hard
  • Is not reliable
  • Quits and sues the company over something they get upset about
  • Quits and starts their own business in competition to their employer
• These are well understood problems a lot of U.S. small business owners face and talk about. This is because there is a bit of a culture where having a full time job is not perceived as an indication of success amongst the younger generation. Everyone want’s (even expects) to get rich and make millions of dollars only working 4 hours a week. Of course 99.9999% of them do not.