The birds are chirping and my energy level is the highest it’s been all week. Why? Because I recently hired an assistant to help me with tasks specifically related to the growth and development and outreach of my business. What an incredible relief!
We had our first introductory meeting this morning, and it was so energizing and inspiring to imagine all of the tasks she could begin doing to take my business to the next level. While I will be asking her to perform some tasks that are relatively simple (i.e. organizing receipts, looking back at hours worked by project), I also have some higher level, innovative work in mind (i.e. researching other blogs in technical communication and healthcare writing, informing me about new research in public health). I’m excited that my assistant is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Global Challenges, which involves one year of intensive study on global health. So my hope is that she will be inspired to tell me about interesting new lines of research!
If you are a small business owner, especially of a writing-based consultancy, looking to clear your mind from some of the business-related tasks in front of you, I highly recommend bringing on an assistant. Obviously, I am still handling the most serious parts of my business. For example, I’m currently looking at如何提供健康保险,我的员工吗s. But the fact I have an assistant to do the work I previously haven’t had time for not only means I have less of a workload but the quality of the work will be better. Here are some of the first tasks I will be asking my assistant to accomplish:
1. Create standard work for business outreach. She’ll be helping me design email templates that introduce prospective clients to my business and give them a sense of what I can provide.
2.在过去一年中审查我的工作表现。我的核心价值之一是成为一个学习组织，不断改进。我所有的写作和对精益方法的思考有助于让我走向过程改进，并激励我尽可能地测试和改变习惯。我的助手所做的第一个任务之一是回顾一下我的所有项目日志，并介绍我有关我在每个项目和任务上支出的时间的信息。从这项工作中的短期可交付将是一年的结束总结，我可以分析和发送给我的客户。长期来看，此数据将基于我以前的努力，帮助我为未来客户提供准确和现实的定价信息。我将能够自信地估计完成各种可交付成果所需的时间，从白皮书报告到案例研究到完整的书籍。
3. Develop plans for blog posts! My blog is a centralized hub where I can share best practices, advice, and stories from the trenches. By taking time to outline some clear tasks that she can help me with (i.e. researching similar blogs, developing a blog-writing calendar and plan), I am already inspired to continue remaining a relevant voice in my field of technical writing and healthcare communications.
After our first short conversation, it’s clear to me that one of the major values of having a business assistant is that it encourages you to maintain and reflect upon your vision and direction as a business owner. Having someone there to help with smaller tasks frees me up to focus on my consulting work and build direction for my business.
What about you? How have you used business assistants? What’s been keeping you from giving it a try? What changes have you noticed in your reflective practices as a business owner?