Virtual Assistance and You

• Brick and mortar service business.
• 20 year history.
• Owner loves it but works too much, would like to have some time off.
• Finds it hard to delegate. No one can do it as well as she.
• Just opened second location.
• Several thousand in debt.
• About 10 on staff.
• Can’t see the forest for the trees.

This is what I worked with today, and I confess, it left me gasping somewhat. What a mess challenge. And yet, I believe it’s a relatively common situation with American small businesses. It’s the logical result of the Puritan Work Ethic.

Here’s how wikipedia.com defines that legacy of all multi-generation Americans:

“The Protestant Work Ethic (or the Puritan Work Ethic) is a concept in sociology, economics and history, attributable to the work of Max Weber. It is based upon the notion (of) the Calvinist emphasis on the necessity for hard work as a component of a person’s calling and worldly success and as a sign of personal salvation. It is argued that Protestants beginning with Martin Luther had reconceptualised worldly work as a duty which benefits both the individual and society as a whole. Thus, the Catholic idea of good works was transformed into an obligation to work diligently as a sign of grace.”

Now, that might be hard to follow unless you’re a student of theology or history, but basically it means that many millions in our society live, and especially work, under the thumb of guilt. If we’re working hard and not getting anywhere, we assume that’s because we’re not working hard enough.

A subversive new idea is beginning to infiltrate, however. (It was introduced ages ago, but evolutionary change is slow.)

Note that the computer age not only backs this new idea but insists on it.

The new idea is to work smarter, not harder.

Are you like my friend? Do you feel as if the faster you go, the ‘behinder’ you get? Though you try to stay positive, is a quietly insistent thought intruding, suggesting there must be a better way?

My friend has a wonderfully optimistic outlook, despite her underlying awareness of the hamster wheel. I would like to help her see alternatives. Not a easy task when you’re working with someone who’s going at a gazillion RPMs all the time.

My friend let slip that she loves doing layout design and graphic arts. She also told me that a pressing task today was adapting a contract template to a specific case – something she does not love to do.

I tsk-tsked her and said she should be doing those things she loves, delegating those she does not. This is the only way to maximize resources.

Yet her Puritan Ethic won’t allow

• indulging her loves,
• giving any of her work to others to do,
• spending money or time on something that will make her own life easier.

Would removing her debt allow her to open up to alternatives? Probably. But times are cruel, right now. Rare is the small business that is not carrying at least some debt. We can’t let lack of funds defeat us.

Now, far be it from me to find fault with the aforementioned Ethic or any of its proponents. But I humbly suggest that the scenario as above described is to be found everywhere and it is a situation in which a virtual assistant can make all the difference.

Just sayin’.