If you’re like most sole proprietors and entrepreneurs, you began and are probably still operating on a tight budget. Maybe you tapped a savings account or worked long hours to secure the capital you needed to begin, so you’re not about to spend one dollar more than absolutely necessary. In your mind, there is no extra money to invest in using a virtual assistant (VA), and you can’t justify the expense.

Besides, you believe you can save money by doing it all… no matter how much time it takes. However, in attempting to do it all, you’re actually undercutting the time you need to market and grow your business. Maybe you’ve decided that you’ll dedicate the number of hours needed no matter how long it takes. That’s very simply the quick route to stress, burn-out, and dissatisfaction with your choice to fulfill your entrepreneurial dream. It can ultimately lead to business failure.

Start by determining your hourly rate. What really is the value of your time? What is your expertise worth? This is the true enterprise value of your business. Period. Now calculate the amount of time you spend on tasks you can easily delegate to a VA. Those tasks are things like appointment scheduling, phone calls, data base maintenance, travel planning and reservations, Internet research, and bookkeeping. If your small business is like most, these tasks consume twenty hours or more each week.

Let’s do the math, and to keep it simple, we’ll presume your hourly rate is $250.00 (which is not uncommon for many professionals). That said, you’re spending $5000.00 every week on administrative work. Is it worth it? Do you get a $5000.00 return on the time you spend on those tasks? Of course you don’t. No one would. Now let’s presume you delegated all those tasks to a VA at $20.00 per hour, for example. Your weekly expense is $400.00. While you may be thinking that you’ve incurred a $400 expense, what you really need to understand is that you’ve just saved $4600.00 instead.

To be clear, another perspective is that the time you spend completing VA-oriented tasks is lost revenue for you. Ultimately, you lost valuable time doing minor work, and you sacrificed potentially $5,000.00 of billable income that would look far better on your bottom line than in your expense column. It’s important to understand that as a sole proprietor, every hour you spend on VA-oriented tasks is an hour that you can’t bill. In addition to gaining billable hours and the accompanying revenue, the value gained by using a VA is even more extensive. Imagine having twenty extra hours each week to dedicate to marketing your business and prospecting for more clients. No business can grow and succeed without time spent on these critical functions. In addition to finding new clients, you can spend time catering to your existing ones to grow their loyalty.

Which one contributes more to your overall profitability: sitting in front of your computer scheduling appointments or actually sitting in front of your clients? Only you can do the latter, so why not create more time for it by using a VA to handle the former? Which one contributes to your overall success and happiness: spending ten hours a week analyzing your data base or spending that time with your family? You know the answer, and ultimately, you can’t afford not use a VA for your administrative help.