She’s just back from India, and about to go off to the Alps for a few months, so whilst Hanna sorts out some travel for her, I asked if she’d mind writing a short testimonial:

Online Personal Assistant gave me freedom.

I love running my own business, but as a one-woman operation, you do end up working 24/7 and never having a holiday, nevermind an extended sabbatical. After 3 years of no real holidays; I’ve just come back from 2 months in India and am about to spend 4 months in the Alps combining skiing and working, thanks to Online Personal Assistant and some strategic decisions.

I was able to hand over my client-facing part of the business to my dedicated assistant with complete confidence while I spent 2 months doing yoga (navel gazing) in India. Online Personal Assistant gave me the professional, connected and seamless resource I needed (without having to employ and train someone) to explore my other interests with complete confidence and peace of mind that my customers were being well-attended to and I could be connected without being attached to the “crackberry” for a few months.

This kind of freedom is invaluable to me. Online Personal Assistant has helped me maintain and develop my existing business, while also giving me the opportunity to explore other business ideas, interests and have a whole lot of fun too. Thanks a million! This service is priceless and is a perfect antidote to the crackberry addiction!

The tasks we handled for her included

• Checking an email account twice daily
• Setting up meetings and calls with leads
• Answering basic questions, and forwarding the more specific
• Organising international and intranational travel
• Finding a good value international mobile phone & blackberry solution

Say you’re earning £35 per hour. Any time you spend doing a task which you could pay someone less than £35 (eg £15) per hour to do is money lost (£35 – £15 = £20 per hour).

Let’s say you pay an assistant £10 per hour to do the work. You have just made £25 profit on that hour, and have one extra hour you didn’t have before, so you can use this “extra” hour to earn at £35 per hour.

£35 from the work you’re outsourcing   PLUS
£35 from the work you’re handing yourself   MINUS
£10 that you’ve paid the assistant

Equals £60 per hour income, whereas before you were making £35 per hour, an increase of 71%.

Clearly you’re not going to be able to outsource ALL your work, but in every job there is work that simply does not need you to do it.

If you’re a web developer, for example, how long do you spend populating clients’ sites with their material? Formatting from Word and constructing forms? Too long? Wouldn’t you rather get someone else to do that?

Or if you’re doing research, how long does it take you to turn a long-list into a short-list?

Or if you’re running an online store, how much of the order processing is a constructive use of your time?

Whether it’s remembering that you’re due to make a dental appointment, or remembering to book a train, or look into legislation around something, the only way to deal with all the stuff in your head is to get it off your mind.

To handle these ideas, thoughts, and tasks more effectively, turn each into an actionable task. So “Oh I must make a dental appointment” becomes “Call Dr.Pullen on 0207 123 4567 and book an appointment on the next available Friday”. This will help you get it done by making it real and tangible.

Now you have made it actionable, ask yourself “Could someone else do this for me?”

With your online personal assistant just an email, SMS, or form away, you can look forward to a life with less hassle and more time for concentrating on the important things.