What happens when you finally realise that delegation is not an option?
How much is your time worth? This is a question that every entrepreneur and the online business owner should ask themselves from time to time. There’s only so much time available in any given day and much less than you might imagine if you’re realistic about it. When we work for others we tend to think of eight-hour blocks of time, typically between nine and five for an office environment for example. We may get paid by the hour, but even the most dedicated employees very rarely produce fully creative work during each of those eight-hour shifts.
When you’re working for yourself it becomes critical to determine just how many hours you’re able to devote to creative work and how many hours are taken up by non-creative tasks, or have simply nothing to do with the business at all. Keep a running diary for the next week and be very conscientious about this. Don’t try and “wing it,” either, because you’re going to use the results of this survey to help you make some really important decisions in the near future.
As an entrepreneur you must, of course, have a goal. If you’re going to be sufficiently motivated as time goes by then you have to have a target and you have to ensure that it’s realistic. Divide your monthly target by the realistic number of hours that you are able to devote to your work and you will see just how much each hour of your time is worth.
For many people, these results can be eye-opening. They wonder how they can cut down on the number of hours that they devote to all those administrative tasks and jobs which, quite honestly, somebody else could do.
Let’s look at blogging, for example. You know that this is a very important element of your marketing initiative, but you have to keep up with creation and management. Are you making the most of your available time if you devote a lot of it to this blog maintenance? Surely, it would be better to engage a talented virtual assistant, from many different perspectives. Not only will you know that your blog is being tended to regularly and without distraction, but you will almost invariably find that your time is worth far more than the amount that you would pay your virtual assistant to look after your blog, for you.
Virtual assistants who specialise in blogs know all the ins and outs, as well. You won’t have to devote even more of your valuable time to keeping up with the latest tips and tricks, looking for those special plug-ins, upgrading platform software and so on. It’s all of these little jobs which eat into your available time and may well be stopping you from expanding as much as you would like.
Outsourcing makes sense for each and every entrepreneur, bar none. It’s also a perfect solution for your ongoing blog work. Delegate the content creation, scheduling and ongoing maintenance to a virtual assistant as soon as you can.