Assistants save time and time is money – That‘s as clear as it can get.

There are few points on which I agree with the author of this sentence, but on this one I have to agree with Donald J. Trump!

Without a good assistant behind her, an entrepreneur spends a lot of time doing things that, while important and essential to the survival of the business, have little to nothing to do with her core competency.

It doesn’t matter the size of your business or the industry in which it operates. An architectural firm can benefit from an assistant just as much as a restaurant or a family-run hotel in the mountains. They all have the same problem: Their day has only 24 hours and there has to be room for the strategic and the operational business in there, plus all contingencies and unplanned events. And without delegating tasks, a lot falls by the wayside.

There are several ways to delegate tasks:

1. You can delegate tasks to family members.
2. If the company already has enough financial capacity, you can hire employees.
3. You can look for a virtual assistant, because they are usually broad and competent and bring the appropriate know-how.
4. You can collaborate with freelancers on various platforms like Fivrr, upworks, etc. – these collaborations are perfect for one-time projects like logo, design, website, etc.

Each type of collaboration has advantages and disadvantages and this is also something everyone has to decide for themselves. The important thing is to find a way to delegate tasks and thus give yourself the opportunity to focus on more important things.

Why should you delegate?

Delegating helps you to work more efficiently and effectively, because your day has only 24 hours and in those hours you still need to eat, drink, sleep and have a healthy amount of social life.

When you delegate tasks, as an entrepreneur, as a manager, as an employee, you benefit several times over:

• You can focus on the essential tasks.
• Your results will be better because you focus your energies.
• The results will also be better because the work is now done by specialists.
• You have less stress.

Can you fix a burst water pipe? Or sew around a pair of pants? If you can do both – congratulations 🙂 I can’t, so I pass this task to someone who can do it better than me. And nothing else is delegating: You hand off a task.

In a company run with employees, it is common for the manager to delegate tasks to the employees. In fact, the ability to delegate is a leadership competency that is required of every manager. All tasks that are not core tasks should be delegated. These can be small, large, simple, difficult or complex tasks.

But what about solopreneurs? Especially in the case of one-man businesses, it would be important for tasks to be delegated. Because who doesn’t know that when the to-do’s pile up on the desk:

• The invoice for the last project absolutely has to be sent.
• The latest blog article has been due for a week.
• Appointments for the next podcast interviews urgently need to be made and potential interview partners need to be contacted.
• Your website urgently needs to be updated.
• The social media post for the week still needs to be prepared.
• You’re excited about your next project, but don’t have time to take care of it.
• And the list goes on….

I know these feelings all too well, for me it comes on top of 2 kids, 1 husband and a full time online bachelor degree 🙂 I’ve learned to accept help and slow things down. And sooner or later I will also have to get support if I want my business to keep growing.

A successful collaboration

Through my work as an executive assistant and my current self-employment as a virtual assistant, I am often confronted with the issue of delegation and there are 3 points that are essential for successful (virtual) collaboration:

• Trust: Especially in virtual collaboration, situations arise such as sharing passwords, accessing servers/files, information about the company that require discretion, especially since you are working with multiple clients as a virtual assistant.
• Communication: regular communication is extremely important, information is ind erally shared via email, Slack etc. and it is worth scheduling a weekly meeting to discuss tasks.
• Instructions: Without clear instructions, work is done twice and this is frustrating for both parties, especially as it saves neither time nor money. The more information given, the more qualitative and faster the job can be processed.

The activity of the virtual assistant has been getting more known in Europe for almost 2 years and more and more female entrepreneurs are taking advantage of this offer. Once you have found “THE” right assistant, then a fruitful and long-lasting cooperation can arise from it and the tasks change.

Self-employment does not mean “self” and “all the time”.

Consider whether it might make sense for you to seek support from a virtual assistant. You’ll get more opportunity to work on the success of your business again, instead of working off routine tasks.

It’s important to think about what work can be handed off. You continue to determine the direction of your business, keep your hands on the reins, and streamline your processes.

Just take some time and always make note of the task that someone else could just as easily do for you. Here are a few examples of work:

• maintain and take care of your website / blog
• create / edit graphics, images and layout
• proofreading texts
• prepare seminar materials
• plan events
• do preparatory accounting

It is worth mentioning that many virtual assistants focus on certain topics over time and become real experts in them. This is especially true for complex topics such as websites, e-mail marketing. Podcast service and online course creation the case.

I recommend every female entrepreneur from a certain point of her self-employment to deal with this topic. It is definitely not an easy decision, because you give away a lot of information and make yourself dependent on another person, but the added value for your own business is all the higher, because certain projects you can not implement alone in a timely manner.

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