Lack of Time: the age-old problem
Time is the biggest luxury. Weâre 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. Itâs all part of owning a company. When you see results itâs worth it, but when you find yourself wading through heaps of files and photocopying with very little progress, itâs frustrating.
It starts to feel like a nightmare where youâre trapped into a corner by a thick, impenetrable wall of black ring binders. And itâs 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. Thatâs the equivalent of 16 full working weeks a year!
Itâs 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 PAâs 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.
The solution
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 youâre starting to see a little window in that ring binder wall.
âItâs easy to think that doing everything yourself is the most cost-effective way to work, but youâre usually underselling yourself and if youâre able to offload the tasks that need to be done, but donât necessarily need your personal attention, you find that you can get far more from your business,â says Richard Walton, founder and CEO of AVirtual. âMost business owners find themselves handling between one and three hoursâ worth of admin per day,â Walton adds. âWhile thatâs 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!â
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.Â