Should copywriters get personal assistants?

Hey {NAME} -- You hear it a lot. A successful person will tell you to start outsourcing tasks to free up time so you can focus on high value activities. It sounds great on the surface. "I should have a personal assistant that does all these things for me that way I can focus solely on writing!" Then, you do a little digging and it sounds even better... "Wow, I can get someone to do all this work for $15/hr? Sign me up." I've been thinking about this topic a lot recently as my time for business activities is getting stretched thinner. Here are some things you might not have considered when it comes to outsourcing, personal assistants and delegation. 1. Income is priority #1 Effective Hourly Rate doesn't mean anything if you're going into debt to outsource tasks. (I think I learned the term "Effective Hourly Rate" (EHR) from Stefan Georgi. Basically, EHR is your monthly income divided by the number of hours you work per month.) In order to outsource, you need a surplus AFTER your savings. Say you're making $5k per month as a freelancer. And if you're honest with yourself, you're really only spending 5 hours per day ACTUALLY working (more on work hours below). 5 hours x 5 days = 25 x 4 weeks in a month = 100 hours. $5000/100 hours means your Effective Hourly Rate is $50. Great, now you might think, "I should outsource any tasks under $50." Not so fast amigo. You have to pay rent. You have to feed yourself. You have to pay taxes (hopefully not a lot at the $5k/month range). It'd be great if you could save a couple hundred bucks on top of that. So at the end of the month, you're basically at zero. If you start outsourcing tasks under $50 per hour, even if you're only paying $15 per hour, you're quickly going to end up on the wrong side of the equation. As an example, say you pay a cleaner about $120 per visit to your house (that's what I pay). It takes them roughly 2 hours to get it done. It would probably take you 3-4 hours to do the same job (plus you'll be tired at the end - more on this in a second too). The math makes sense right? $50x4hr = $200. I'm only paying $120. But again, if your income isn't high enough, Effective Hourly Rate doesn't mean anything. If the cleaners come twice a month you've got a $240 a month expense you can't afford. A better strategy is to say... after EVERYTHING... how much money do have I left over? Then divide that number by $15 or $20 or $25 and see how many hours might be able to replace. This is an extremely simplistic example but a lot of people get excited about the thought of outsourcing without really doing the math on their income. 2. You should be working during outsourced hours. In the beginning, in order to take advantage of your Effective Hourly Rate, you should be working during those hours that you're outsourcing. This is crude version of arbitrage. If my cleaners are here for 2 hours, and I don't use those hours to work, that's just a pure expense that will reduce my income and lower my EHR. Of course at a certain income, this type of expense is acceptable and very desirable and awesome for a great life. 3. There's a cap on how much you can WRITE. Writing is exhausting. If it's not even a little bit taxing you're doing it wrong :-) (Ian Stanley might punch me for saying that). Truth be told you can only really work/write so much in a day. I remember a story from Parris Lampropoulos (famous copywriter) where he said he was stoked to start copy chiefing because it meant he could find more effective hours in the day. Basically, he could only write for 4 hours max before burning out. And he could use the rest of his work hours to chief. The time to find a PA or to outsource things is when the tasks you're replacing are infringing on solid, meaningful work hours where you could still be effective. 4. Combine tasks to see if it helps. I don't hate cooking but I don't love it. So it seems like a perfect thing to outsource right? (Meal delivery service or personal chef of some sort). But hold on. One thing I want to do is spend time with my son who is 3. So instead of outsourcing my cooking, if I'm going to do it, I should do it with my son and make it an experience for both of us. That sounds awesome to me. It's easy to say this in theory but in practice it's rough. My son is going to protest, whine, lose interest. But overtime, if I'm consistent enough, and make it fun enough, he'll come around. The same can be said for all sorts of other "chores" that you might have. I never liked mowing the lawn and doing yard work until I started listening to business podcasts while I did it. I haven't a yard to maintain in a long time... but dammit do I miss mowing the lawn. I can still remember the smell of the grass and the sound of Jay Abraham's pristine pontifications. If there's something you want to outsource, first think if it might be better to combine tasks with something you DO want to do. Hopefully this is helpful to some. I'll share more insights on the topic soon. - Derek Sent to: {EMAIL} [Unsubscribe]( CopyHour.com, 340 S LEMON AVE, 5007, WALNUT, CA 91789