Are you a small business owner who wants to expand your business? Do you need to add another professional location to your company to test and explore a new market? Does a prospect of spending thousands of dollars to find a right location, sign a new long term office lease, purchase or lease office equipment and hire new employees holding you back?

With the massive explosion of start-ups and home businesses developing, you’ll be hard pressed to not know of someone going down the entrepreneurial route. Nowadays you can set-up shop and start trading in a matter of days, and the preferred choice for the neo entrepreneur is a service called Virtual Offices.

I myself, run and operate a Virtual Office company based in Central London and have written this short editorial to educate you in choosing the right provider and hopefully, help avoid the pitfalls in this relatively saturated market, so let’s begin.

How much is your time really worth? Is it worth £50 an hour or £100 an hour? YOUR time is most valuable because it is your responsibility to generate new revenue for your business. Doing small and often trivial admin chores yourself does not really add value to your business and the sensible solution is to delegate those less profitable tasks by hiring someone more than capable of carrying them out, but who’s hourly rate is somewhat less than your real financial worth. So what’s stopping you?

1. Scale down office space. Office space is very expensive. What if you could eliminate the costs by working from your home office? By hiring a VA, you can reduce or eliminate rent costs. A Virtual Assistant works from their own office, so there’s no need for additional space or trying to cram 2 people in a small home office.

How To Create a Virtual Office

It has become a growing trend for businesses to look for alternatives to the standard office setup, especially for those companies which are just starting out and are looking for ways to reduce their startup costs. One of the more popular alternatives of recent years is the virtual office, which allows individuals to work from home while conducting a large part of their business over the telephone or online. If you or you’re the owner of your business are interested in learning more about virtual offices, what advantages they have over standard physical office space, and how you can set up a virtual office at home, then please take the time to consider the following information.

What’s A Virtual Assistant?

A virtual assistant (VA) is an independent virtual office assistant who provides clerical, administrative, technical and personal support to clients from the VA’s remote virtual office. VA’s are very disciplined and able to work autonomously with minimal supervision. Virtual nature of business allows for flexibility to deliver products and services across a wide geographic area.

How Can A Virtual Assistant Help Me In My Business ?

In a nutshell, VA’s free up your valuable time. By outsourcing routine office administration and personal tasks, you are able to focus on what you do best…marketing and growing your business - or simply enjoy the extra time to spend with family and/or pursue personal interests and hobbies.

One of the best kept secrets used by the small business community is the use of a virtual office for their company. These lease set ups allow for a person to pay a small monthly fee for phone answering, meeting room usage, and much more - without having to lease actual office space. Virtual Benefits There are networks of large companies that operate these virtual or instant office centers. You can lease month to month or longer, if you want to lock in at an attractive monthly rate. A phone number is provided to you, which you can have your current phone forwarded to. Virtual space lease holders can still operate out of their home. When a customer or business contacts you, a staff of receptionists answer your phone. You can then have them forward your calls to your home or have it go to a provided voice mail system. All business owners that join have this included with their plan. Mail and Meeting Space All mail is delivered to the main building where your lease is. To the outside world - you are in that building. But instead of paying $1800 a month for a one thousand square foot office, you are paying $150 or $100 per month. Since a small business that has a virtual lease may need a meeting room or conference room - they are available. These are charged an hourly fee to use, usually $10 an hour or so. A temporary or virtual company can arrange a high level meeting and reserve space in a conference room within the office building. Multiple Office Building Use Once you are a virtual office holder, you will have access to meeting and conference rooms throughout the country and around the world. If you own occupy mobile space in one city or state, you will be able to reserve meeting rooms wherever you are traveling to or need. This is a huge benefit that traditional or commercial office space users do not have. There are hundreds of these buildings that virtual lease holders can take advantage of. You can also rent a “day office”, which allows you to use actual office space or an executive suite for the day. These also can be reserved in any location within the network. Corporate Office Locations Other things that are impressive with virtual lease set ups and instant office suites are the locations and style of the buildings. These are many times “Class A” office complexes or newer modern commercial buildings. When your address has a location that is on a well known business street or desirable location, it can give instant credibility. These locations would be considered to expensive for most small companies. A virtual arrangement gives you daily access to a high end office building that you are using as YOUR address. If you are operating a business from home, but wish to have access to top office locations without having to pay high end rent space - a virtual suite may be the way to go. You should at least check it out and see if it works for you. For many, it’s a great first step and many times their best step.

Is your business considering hiring a virtual office assistant? With the demand of virtual office assistants on the rise, you may discover that finding candidates may not be as easy as expected. Here are some helpful tips in helping you find perspective candidates.

Posting ads on job boards

Consider posting ads on job boards such as Careerbuilding.com, HotJobs.com, and Monster.com .This allows individuals to know that your company is currently seeking a virtual office assistant. You may want to add a brief description of what exactly you are looking for in an assistant. This helps both you and the perspective candidate filter out what you are searching for.

Small businesses, home-based businesses and self-employed individuals have discovered toll free virtual office systems. They are finding that there are many advantages over a static toll free number from the Bells including features, flexibility and cost. Here are just a few of the advantages as well as things to look for in a toll free virtual office provider.

Toll Free Virtual Office Small Business and SOHO Advantages