I love everything about summer. It’s my favorite season and sadly it’s winding down fast. The days are cooler, the leaves are beginning to turn. Yikes.
Mid-August is always a tough time of year for me. As I type this, I look out the window and see a bright, beautiful day just begging me to spend some time in it and play!
Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. I have commitments to keep and quite a lot to do. However, I’m going to take off an hour early today and enjoy some time in my garden. It’s one of the perks of being an entrepreneur. I don’t have a time clock.
The ability to take a little time off when I want to is also one of the advantages of having a virtual assistant. I’ve delegated many of today’s tasks to my assistant, so I have some time on my hands. I’m actually pretty good at delegating. I know what I’m good at and what I enjoy doing and I don’t kid myself into thinking I’m talented at things I’m not. So I gladly hand them off to those who are, those who geek out on doing those things. Knowing what to delegate saves me a boatload of time each week. I usually choose to spend my time networking and meeting with prospects and clients, but I do take the occasional hour off on a beautiful day to enjoy the sunshine.
While delegating comes naturally to me, it seems to be harder for some. Many solopreneurs are busy running their business and can’t find the time to train someone else to do their tasks.
Here’s an example. One of our clients has had a virtual assistant for over a year and just didn’t have the time to train her on a certain monthly accounting task. The task takes two hours each month to complete. So each month, the client did it herself. Eventually, she trained the assistant to do the task, and the entire training took only 10 minutes. In other words, that’s approximately 24 hours in the last year the client could have freed up with a 10-minute training session.
That example is only for a monthly task. Imagine how much time you could save if you had an assistant take on a weekly task? How about a daily one?
I’m sure if you think about it, you have plenty of tasks that take up too much of your time. Grab a calculator and think about how much time you spend doing them. Now think about how much time it would take to train a virtual assistant to do it. Ten minutes of training might save you 24 hours a year, a month, or even a week! Your time is money. Start saving it. You deserve to play in your garden too!
Yours in the adventure,
Angie
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