Time equals success: cut the admin

Time is the biggest luxury. We’re chained to our phones and laptops, working longer hours and subjecting ourselves to more and more stress as we try to turn ideas into reality. It’s all part of owning a company and when you see results it’s worth it, but when you find yourself wading through heaps of filing and photocopying with very little progress, it’s frustrating. It starts to feel like a nightmare where you’re trapped into a corner by a thick, impenetrable wall of black ring binders. And it’s not surprising you feel that way. In our recent survey, we discovered that on average CEOs are spending 20 precious hours per week lost in the vortex of an overflowing inbox. That’s the equivalent of 16 full working weeks a year!

It’s wasted time, especially when administration has very little impact, if any, on the immediate growth of a company. But why, in that case, are so few business owners employing a personal assistant? We asked SME business owners: over a third of you said a permanent PA’s salary was prohibitive, that an extra team member caused more admin, that you only needed ad-hoc assistance and that you lacked the office space to accommodate a Personal Assistance. Thankfully, this is where our part time, virtual personal assistants step in with more flexible hours and rates, saving you time, space and money. Now you’re starting to see a little window in that ring binder wall.

‘It’s easy to think that doing everything yourself is the most cost-effective way to work, but you’re usually underselling yourself and if you’re able to offload the tasks that need to be done, but don’t necessarily need your personal attention, you find that you can get far more from your business,’ says Richard Walton, founder and CEO of AVirtual. ‘Most business owners find themselves handling between one and three hours’ worth of admin per day,’ Walton adds. ‘While that’s perhaps not enough to justify the employment of a full time PA, a virtual PA could make life far easier, freeing up time to focus on the more important aspects of your company, and may be even letting you get home in time to read the kids a bedtime story occasionally!”

Our virtual personal assistants can take care of everything from travel arrangements to HR to social media management, tailoring their skills to exactly what you need and freeing up valuable hours for you to concentrate on the bigger things, which might be exciting new partnerships, creative collaborations and lucrative business deals, or it might be simply spending time with the family.