I have to admit that the first time that it was suggested to me that having a personal assistant would mean increased total income, I was skeptical. I knew that having a personal assistant would certainly make my life easier, and allow me to get more important work done. I just didn't think that it would mean that I would make more income, given the added expense.
So I was pleasantly surprised to find that I made more than 10% more the first year of having an assistant. As my ability to delegate increases, I expect that number to only go up.
Of course, this is an organizing blog, so what does having an assistant have to do with being more organized? To begin with, the more trivial tasks that you can personally do away with allow greater focus, which makes staying organized far easier.
That being said, this is not an easy fix. There's a learning curve for both you and the person that you hire, and that's assuming an in-person assistant, and not an AI assistant. The AI assistant trend I admit, I have less experience with, but is nonetheless growing in popularity. This post will explore the benefits and disadvantages of both to allow you to make an educated decision. should you make the important decision to move forward.
The income increase from hiring a personal assistant (PA) depends on various factors, such as the industry you work in, the tasks delegated, and your existing workload. However, here are just some of the ways in which a personal assistant can lead to higher income.
1. Time to Focus on High-Value Tasks: By offloading administrative and routine tasks, you can dedicate more time to higher-income activities. This can significantly improve productivity and increased revenue potential. As a business owner, I found the addition of a personal assistant to my team makes it easier for me to focus on the more important tasks to bring in additional business and focus on the proven activities that helped me to grow the business in the first place.
It's important to be both honest and cautious when determining which activities you're going to delegate. It is tempting to delegate those tasks that you want to do the least, but that is not necessarily the best use of your assistant's time. You want to focus on the activities that don't necessitate your particular skill set, particularly those ones that you do best and have the potential for the greatest long-term increase in your income. After all, that is the ultimate goal of having an assistant.
2. Increased Capacity for Projects: With a personal assistant handling day-to-day operations, you can take on more projects or clients, directly increasing income. If you're a business owner like me, dedicating more time to networking, seeking out new means of finding customers, and improving business processes are just a few of the tasks that you want to focus on with the additional time a personal assistant allows.
3. Improved Efficiency: A PA can streamline operations, reducing inefficiencies and possibly even coming up with new processes themselves that work better than the ones you have in place. Ambitious people just starting out their careers, such as business MBA students are a good place to start looking for a personal assistant. You want somebody who's going be motivated by more than the paycheck, but rather from the opportunity to learn from you and your business experience.
It's not just business owners who can benefit from a hiring a well-trained and thorough assistant. Just about any motivated professional, who can learn to delegate at a higher level and concentrate their activities on furthering their own knowledge and career has potential to benefit highly from hiring someone to help them with day-to-day tasks.
4. Preventing Burnout: Delegating tasks to a PA can prevent burnout, boosting performance and creativity, which indirectly contributes to sustained or increased income. It's important to remember that the added expense of a personal assistant will require some additional discipline on your part as well. The time you save not working on tasks yourself needs to be refocused on areas that will benefit you in the long term. If all you you want is a break, a personal assistant is a good way to go broke in a short period of time.
So how much can a PA help you increase your income? Studies have shown that the specific amount of income increase varies greatly. Some entrepreneurs and professionals report substantial increases, sometimes in the range of 10-30% or more, depending on how effectively they leverage the PA. The return on investment also depends on how much they pay the assistant and how much additional income the time savings generate.
As with most new business decisions, it's important to start slow and expand the assistance responsibilities as you learn their strengths and weaknesses. you may find that you burn through several before you find someone who is the right fit. Once you do, you'll wonder how you ever got by without an assistant in the past.
As promised, we should address the new incarnation of the AI assistant, as a possible consideration to the more traditional route. The most obvious disadvantage of this kind of assistant is that it is both a very new creation, and one that can be limited in terms of the scope of tasks that it is able to complete on your behalf. That scope may surprise you. Here's just a few tasks that AI can manage on your behalf:
Ordering products
Managing calendars
Creating travel itineraries
Scheduling meetings
Sending reminders
Managing emails
Data collection and analysis
Manufacturing processes
Identifying trends and patterns
Foreign language translation
Because the tasks of an AI assistant are obviously limited to non-physical tasks, they won't be the right choice for everyone. You may need someone to teach your business about so they can handle more responsibilities as time goes on, which may include a level of communication that AI is currently not capable of. That being said, the tasks that AI can manage are indeed expanding every day. The sooner you learn to use various AI applications to make yourself more efficient, the further ahead you will get in your career or business.
Comments