By Tina Hilton of Clerical Advantage

Some days I just seem to need a little background noise when I’m working. Not music, which is playing most days, but other human voices.  On those days I tend to turn on the television and you’ll often find it on a home improvement channel.  Mostly because it can run in the background without grabbing my undivided attention too often.  But even with it just on the peripheral of my attention I noticed something that I felt could be applied to business. The Do it Yourself shows.   Not the ones where they take you step by step and show you how to complete a project.  Nope, the ones where people decide they are going to renovate, flip or whatever by themselves with no help from experts.  The main theme that runs through all of them is that people never seem to realize just how much work a project is going to be, how long its going to take them or how much it will end up costing them.

Now let’s apply this same principle to your business.  As a Virtual Assistant, I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard the phrase, “I don’t see the point of having someone else do what I can do myself.”   Sound familiar?  Business DIY. It appeals to business people for the same reason it appeals to home owners. They see it as being cost effective.  And in the end, it usually ends up being far from it.

Let’s say J.Q. Ficticious, Attorney at Law  has decided to do several things for his practice. First, he’s decided to start a business blog based on his expertise, let’s say Real Estate Law. He’s also decided to pull together a class on Short Sales that he can offer to local real estate agents and mortgage brokers. And finally he’s going to submit an article on Short Sales to several local papers and media outlets.  J.Q. has some great ideas doesn’t he?

Someone suggested he outsource these tasks to a virtual assistant, but since he knows how to do all of them, J.Q. decides it will save him money to do it himself.

He begins with the blog. He already has a website that his cousin pulled together for him a year or so ago.  But when he begins researching, he realizes a blog will have to be installed on the website.  Which means he has to do research to figure out how to do it.  It takes him an entire day to figure it all out and finally get it installed and ready to post to.  8 hours and it’s not even exactly the way he wants it. Oh well, on to the next task.  He needs to pull all of his notes together and create class materials, and since he wants his participants to earn continuing education credits he needs to submit the material to the proper channels to get approval for that. J.Q. ends up spending several days on this, a total of 14 hours.  Using his class materials, he drafts a related article.  It takes him an hour or so to find submission information for the places he wants to sumit to and then another hour to fill out each form for submission.

He has now expended approximately 24 hours on these three simple projects, and his blog isn’t even the way he really wants it.  During this time J.Q. wasn’t earning his $200 hr. on client work, so effectively it just cost him $4800 to do these ’simple’ tasks.  Had he outsourced these tasks, it might have cost him $40 hr., but it probably would have taken less time.  So let’s say it would have taken a virtual assistant 16 hours.  That’s  $640 and the blog would be exactly what J. Q. was looking for and someone would be following up on the article submissions for him.

Just like the DIY homeowners, DIY business owners are often biting off more than they can chew.  Perhaps they don’t even realize how much it’s actually costing them to do it themselves.  And in the end, hiring an expert to do the job right the first time can be the true savings.

If you have questions concerning virtual assistance or have an interest in working with a virtual assistant you can contact Tina Hilton or visit her business website for Clerical Advantage.