The competition in the business world is fierce, and it’s hard enough to get a business off the ground, not to mention expanding. At times for expansion, increasing your productivity as the business owner by outsourcing time- and energy-consuming jobs can be the key to success.

If you’ve already set up your shop, by now, you must already have an idea just how much paperwork and service work is necessary to even keep the shop running, from legal paperwork to licenses to inventory management to website building and maintenance to fielding customer inquiries, and it could go on depending on the type of business you’re in. And all these are probably not even your main concern, which is probably expanding your business and making your services stand out even more.

It almost feels like you’d have to grow four more arms plus a brain to keep up.

Luckily, as soon as you start to earn some revenues, a virtual assistant is not an impossible option. There are plenty of virtual assistant companies and freelancers out there, offering as little as only 10 hours of work per month. Even if you just delegate, say, the weekly inventory orders to them, you’ll have, 10 extra hours to think about how to grow your business or network.

One of the best ways to utilize a virtual assistant is entrust them with maintaining and updating your website or social media account, as well as fielding customer concerns. All you have to do is give them all the necessary information and instructions beforehand.

Customers are generally expecting timely and efficient response if they contact a business, and they also expect any product or business information to be kept up-to-date.

With a virtual assistant, you can be freed from all these maintenance duties with a relatively low cost to pursue the real goals for your business. You can be out networking and scouting, or at home brainstorming or making new products only you can make—in general, doing the kinds of work you know only you can do.

Alternatively, if there are aspects of your business you have to tend to yourself—say, if you’re the owner and pastry chef of your bakery—then you may even outsource networking and market research to a virtual assistant. This way you can be hard at work, producing the best possible products for your customers, which will translate into better business in the long run, while your plan for expansion is being executed by your assistant.