We are seeing an explosive growth in the number of people who want to take their own future in their hands and set out on their own, to become an entrepreneur. Undoubtedly, this has been fuelled in large part by the recent economic downturn and the huge number of layoffs in supposedly “cast-iron” industries. No longer could you rely on a job for life and the slow realisation that nobody’s job was secure anymore prompted many to sit up and take notice.
Many individuals decided that they could create a future for themselves based on their abilities, skills and experience. They decided that they would set up their own small business to focus on something that had always been a passion. After relevant research they came to the conclusion that there was indeed a market for their particular product or service and set out to join the ranks of the self-employed.
Far from being an easy way to earn a living or to try and safeguard one’s future, being an entrepreneur called for significant dedication, longer hours and a nice big helping of stress. Now, you had to be “head cook and bottle washer” and needed to know how to juggle all of these tasks within the dwindling number of hours available to you in any given day. Those weekend lay-ins become a thing of the past too and before you knew it, your new baby was occupying your time seven days a week.
It would be nice if, as an entrepreneur, you could clone yourself and achieve much more within your workday. It would be nice to cut down a few of your hours so that you had some time to spend with your family and friends once again. In fact, even though your business is now doing particularly well, will you be able to cope with this stressful situation going on into the future?
No matter what kind of business you are in, or in fact whether you are a one-man band operation or not, it’s time to consider hiring a virtual executive assistant.
Before you do this however, consider this exercise. Tomorrow morning, before you start work at all put a sheet of paper and a pen to one side and use it to log everything that you do on that day. Don’t leave anything out because it seems to be mundane, because this is the actual point. At the end of the day when you tally up the amount of time that you spent on administrative and more “mundane” tasks, you can begin to see how employing a virtual assistant could make a significant difference to you.
Remember that every moment of time that you spend doing those administrative and essentially non-productive tasks is a moment of time that you are not engaged in development, marketing or the search for new clients. The executive virtual assistant could be a highly cost-efficient way of outsourcing so many of those tasks that eat into your productivity and your potential for success.
I’d love to read your comments.
