What do you feel or think when you read the phrase “if you don’t have an assistant, you are an assistant”?
Last weekend I listened to Hyper Sales Growth by Jack Daly on Audible. I had heard about Jack Daly but hadn’t made the time to listen to one of his books, despite the lofty recommendations. I was not disappointed.
I’ll spare you the book report, however, and just say that (1), Hyper Sales Growth isn’t only about sales; I came up with a lot of cool team building and morale tips while listening to Jack’s stories. And (2) Daly had a very relevant quote for our message here at Get Staffed Up (it seems that all the gurus are trumpeting a similar message about leveraging your time these days – for example, READ THIS BLOG I recently wrote with similar concepts).
Daly was espousing his 5 Rules for greater sales growth, and in the middle of talking about the law of self-discipline, he said, “if you don’t have an assistant, you are an assistant.”
I stopped in my tracks and hit pause. We’ve been singing the same tune for a while now at Get Staffed Up, with a different twist. We continually say if you do the job of a $10-an-hour employee, you can only expect to be compensated as a $10-an-hour employee. But Jack Daly hit the nail on the head. He put it in a way that I hope resonates with the lawyers out there who so badly need our services. The attorneys we really want to help. Sometimes we’re on a call with an attorney that acts as his/her bookkeeper, secretary, and assistant, and we’re explaining how they’ll never have more money until they hire someone. However, just like some of the potential clients that you know you can help, some people refuse to get it.
In case you’re one of those that think there’s enough time in the day to wear 15 hats and that you can do your actual legal work later in the evening or early in the morning – it will never happen if you have kids and you want to actually spend time with them – let’s review Daly’s example. He says if you make $100 an hour as a salesperson and you hire someone at $10 an hour to do all your administrative tasks for you, you’ll come out a net $90 ahead.
When lawyers argue with this point, here’s what they miss that Daly hammers home: it’s about leveraging your time. You cannot get that time back. Any time you spend doing administrative tasks, you make $10 for that hour, and you can’t get it back by working later into the wee hours of the night. For example, if you bill two hours during an eight-hour workday, then bill two more hours from 10 to midnight, (1) you’re exhausted and over time, your quality of life – not to mention health – will greatly suffer, and (2) you still didn’t leverage the eight hours in a workday. If you had an assistant, i.e. an offshore administrative assistant through us (which is much less than minimum wage, by the way), you would have billed five hours during the day. That’s the proper, honest comparison, apples to apples, i.e. five billed hours out of eight instead of two (the dollar amount difference over the year is an astronomical $180,000, by the way). THEN, you can discuss the last two hours of the night that you billed – so if you’re really that crazy workaholic and want to do legal work from 10 to midnight, now you have seven to eight hours billed that day.
Just to be clear – you can work eight hours and bill five and have a life, or you can spend most of your day as an assistant, then be a lawyer at night, and be miserable. I know. I was there. It wasn’t fun. That’s why we want to help other lawyers – who are just like us – because being a lawyer should be fun.
The bottom line is that if you’re not leveraging growth, you’re violating the law of self-discipline. Who grows faster – you, doing everything yourself because you think you’re saving some money on an assistant (and I’m using the first person because I want this to hit home – we’re not afraid to be direct at this company because we so badly want to help you), or your competitor that is getting five times as much work done, networking five times as much, appearing on social media five times as much, sending nice cards and emails to referral sources five times as much – because she’s leveraging her time?
Ever hear a lawyer say, “I’m a better lawyer than that person, they’re just a good marketer.” Well, guess what – I disagree. Here’s the real secret: that lawyer is a better delegator. They have a delegation mindset, bottom line. That includes marketing. It includes everything. Delegating allows your business to get more done faster than anyone else, and the momentum becomes unstoppable.
For lawyers, leveraging our time is so simple. Instead of answering phones, sorting emails, taking messages, searching for documents to attach to an email (estimated at over 125 hours per year of lost time), re-starting Microsoft word, and then tracking and accepting changes, etc., you can pay someone $15 an hour (or much less through us) and use that time to do more legal work (that’s what your client hired you for anyway, right?). Even at $300 an hour, you’re up a net $285. It’s that simple. More clients will then be happy, and even more clients will come your way. I promise you. It’s doing too much that’s holding you back, not doing too little.
Daly ends his point on assistants by saying, “time is money, and you need to understand how you’re spending your money; in other words, take care of how you spend your time.”
So you’re convinced you need some help, but you don’t want to deal with hiring, the payroll, the overhead, etc. We get it. One major problem with in-person assistants is that they always seek their next, higher-paying gig. And who can blame them? Wouldn’t you? Well, this is where we come in. Our offshore virtual staffers are placed with you full-time, so they work only for you during your business hours. They’re paid above what their peers are paid, so they work hard to keep the job. A happy, hard-working, reasonably paid (we hate using the word cheap, but comparatively, it’s certainly true) administrative or personal assistant, receptionist, or marketing assistant? It sounds too good to be true, but it’s not.
Click HERE to see what our rapidly growing and exceedingly happy client base says about our services. We’re the only company started by lawyers dedicated to helping lawyers and law firms leverage their time with extraordinary talent at unbeatable prices. You can add three people for the price of one by working with us and really leveraging your time. I could go on and on because we’re so passionate about this. But I won’t. Just click HERE, and let’s have a talk today. Or subscribe to our mailing list HERE.
Be honest with yourself. Do you have an assistant, or are you one?
We look forward to helping you delegate your way to freedom.
