I recently had the pleasure of appearing on the Design and Play podcast with Steve Brophy and Dean Pearman, two teachers that are actively raising awareness for and doing their best to drive much needed change in K12 education in Australia.

One of the many topics we discussed was virtual assistants and how they are being used in entrepreneurial circles - by necessity more than anything else, due to both time and capital constraints.

I’ve been using virtual assistants for several years. Today, virtual assistants are a big part of the reason why I can maintain what people consider a very high output (in the past two years - in addition to running an innovation consultancy - I founded a children’s entrepreneurship program, published two books, launched a podcast that as of writing is 187 episodes strong and still maintain a solid social life, daily fitness routine, have ample time to learn and maintain interests outside of work - my team will tell you I’m rarely in the office past 7pm and rarely work weekends).

With this in mind, we explored whether or not virtual assistants are something that teachers (and corporate executives) should be looking into or using.

Why We Should Outsource

What makes someone successful or distinguished is their strengths - their unique skillset, their competitiveness, their hustle, their ability to connect the dots, to strategize - whatever their magic formula or secret sauce is that’s what they need to be spending more time doing rather than engaging in rudimentary process-oriented tasks that numb the mind and take them away from doing what creates the most value and leaves them feeling unfulfilled.

Aside from that, outsourcing obviously saves us not only time but also money, particularly if offshoring to countries with a significantly lower cost of living and minimum wage. This can be valuable in a number of ways but especially so for entrepreneurs and startups who have a limited runway (time to make things happen).

Ultimately, outsourcing allows us to do more of what we love and create more value.

What

The use of virtual assistants amongst teachers and corporate executives is no different to entrepreneurial circles, insofar as the thought process behind what to outsource goes.

You might want to first consider some of the risks.

Privacy and Sensitivity: sensitive intellectual property or personally identifiable information

Some questions to ask when considering privacy:

• what’s the risk and can we accept that level of risk? (you could use a risk matrix to rate the risk based on impact and probability and determine if it’s a low, medium or high risk - see the matrix below)
• can we sanitise the documents?
• are we bound by any regulatory requirements?
• can we put into place and enforce confidentiality agreements?

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