Category: Business Ideas
Friday Free Business Idea: Simple Personal Assistant
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With trying to coordinate Community Next, MyMint marketing and training for my marathon I barely have time to eat burritos. Yea, so you know things are bad. As well, I was talking to Tara Hunt who makes my busy schedule look like (insert funny great analogy here about how busy she is).
Then it reminded me of something Chartreuse told me a few months back. He hired a personal assistant using eLance. It only cost him $200 a month and saved him SO much time on trivial things that someone else can be doing.
I spent about 30 minutes looking and did not necessarily want to screen and spend time finding one. Haha, get the irony. I need a personal assistant to help me find a personal assistant;P
Anyways, I would love to have a recognized company that handled outsourced personal assistants only. They would do reservations, order things, contact people, schedule meetings and more…
Do you need a personal assistant and how much is that worth to you?
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Noah Kagan wrote Friday Free Business Idea: Simple Personal Assistant on January 26th, 2007 and there are 24 comments. There will be one more after you add yours, though. Read more posts by Noah Kagan.
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24 Responses to “Friday Free Business Idea: Simple Personal Assistant”
January 26th, 2007
1:09 pm
dude, I would pay $200 for an assistant. in a HEARTBEAT.
esquire had an article about a man who outsourced his assistant to india, and had another indian writer researching for his articles, and proofing them.
said every morning he’d get an email from his indian assistant who worked on his schedule with his tasks, his voicemails, etc. using voip you could have calls routed to india free (skype).
let me know where you find one. I am interested. I also need an accountant….
January 26th, 2007
1:09 pm
Noah, in my Friday Entrepreneurs section, I wrote about a woman, Sarah Deutsch, who runs a very affordable outsourced personal-assistant business.
January 26th, 2007
1:16 pm
At $200 it would be a no brainer.
The only issue would be a lot of the annoying small things I would like to give to a personal assistant have to do with my bills, banking, credit card, etc. In those cases trust is a major issue
I could really use someone to edit and review my blog posts. Also let me know if you find one somewhere.
January 26th, 2007
1:16 pm
I’ll wear a mini skirt if someone wants a personal assistant. My time is very precious but we can work it out.
January 26th, 2007
1:23 pm
Bernadette, you’re on!
How do I sign up?
January 26th, 2007
1:28 pm
OMG. Ramit Sethi commented on my blog. Print Screen!
Brian, I have an accounting friend looking for work. I will let you know about the personal assistant…
January 26th, 2007
1:36 pm
What is my blog comments section turning in to?
I like it:P
January 26th, 2007
1:44 pm
http://www.smartmoney.com/esquire/index.cfm?Story=20050909-outsource
read this.
noah: have your friend email me. i know a buttload of accountants (people i went to undergrad with) but i want someone cheap who can balance my books every month, etc. do my taxes (corp and personal) at the end of the year etc.
January 26th, 2007
5:41 pm
me, bischke, mazen, etc came up with this one a couple months ago… i think it’d be huge, with trust being a massive competitive advantage. if i’m giving my passwords, etc to someone i want to know that i won’t be screwed.
January 26th, 2007
8:04 pm
Check this out for irony, you need a hot girl to get a hot girl.
January 27th, 2007
11:49 am
My boss has an outsourced secretary working virtually from India. So far it looks like the sceretary is doing an outstanding job!! And it only probably costs my boss around $250 to $350 a month.
January 27th, 2007
9:32 pm
Bernadette, u from Malaysia?
January 27th, 2007
11:42 pm
We’ve hired someone to help us a day or two a week, but we pay $1500. We have to give her our credit card so she can run to buy stuff for the office. We have to trust that she’s going to show up no matter what because we really rely on her now.
Personally, I would feel a huge ball of guilt paying someone $200/month to do my running around. And I need them in the city, so nobody I know could afford to live here on that salary.
I want to be paid what my time is worth, so I believe others should, too…and it doesn’t always mean that I can afford it. But if I can’t afford it, I do it myself and find out why I should pay the premium.
January 28th, 2007
12:10 pm
Tara, thats great! I wish large corporations such as Mcdonalds or Walmart feel the same way you do where they get away paying people $7 an hour with awful benefits.
January 28th, 2007
2:01 pm
Sri. Yes Ma’am.
January 28th, 2007
6:27 pm
I’d totally pay $200/mo for someone to do a bunch of stuff for me. I couldn’t use them full time, so just a task by task errand runner, or something like that would be fabulous.
I certainly wouldn’t let/have them do things on the net with my passwords, etc. I can always do that myself.
One thing I could use even more than a personal assistant, though, is someone who will do my programming bidding. I come up with all kinds of crazy ideas that I don’t have the time to put into. Some of the things I could have this person build would be a major time saver for me if nothing else. And I know there’s outsourced programmers, but when you’re not working them on a consistent basis, they’re not that inexpensive either.
January 29th, 2007
10:24 am
Hey Noah
I’m actually working on this idea and working to implement a trial version by this summer. Email me for more details but they would be able to accomplish everything you listed for a very very small fee.
Paul
January 30th, 2007
1:19 am
I’d love to see if someone could actually scale that… like get the system and the trust level down… brand it really well… then franchise that sucker…. charge $2,500 for the franchise fee and have all the franchisees come out for some training at your headquarters.
Yeah well, I don’t think it would work either.
But one thing for sure is that I have a great relationship with a Vietmanese programmer who lives in Singapore. Great work, great prices and much much much much faster than any US coder I’ve worked with– that’s because all the guys around here have jobs and are burned out at the end of the day.
February 2nd, 2007
9:36 pm
I am quickly approaching the state where I need one. It sure would be nice to offload a lot of those things that need to be done for someone else to take care of. I would imagine within the year I will have one…
February 3rd, 2007
1:21 am
Hey Noah,
Is that really you? Awesome job!
Not sure if you remember me, but we have exchanged a few emails a while back and I am now off to lose my gut thanks to your inspiration!
In fact I have “gone public” with my weight loss and launched a new blog, BeerBelly.ca - I have been spending far too much time in front of my computer drinking beer and neglecting exercise.
Another thing, after reading your blog more I noticed you were working with FaceTime. Hmmm, seems we know some people in common.
Do you know Wayne & Jim?
Just saw them in Vegas at a conference.
Enough of my ramblings for now. When time permits please get in touch with me. I think we can do some amazing things together!
Colin
July 20th, 2007
9:54 pm
Hi all,
I wanted to let you know about the launch of Sunday, a revolutionary service offering 24/7 personal assistance supported by the latest internet-enabled technologies. The company provides busy professionals with the resources of a personal assistant, available via telephone and Internet, at a fraction of the cost of traditional assistants. Sunday’s experienced agents can easily arrange travel plans, provide dinner recommendations and reservations, comparison shop for various products, make outbound calls to third parties, enable remote access to numerous websites and update members of an emergency contact list in crisis situations. Messenger and errand services are also currently available in NYC.
Use the promo code “beta� for a free month trial.
Check us out at http://www.asksunday.com
August 29th, 2007
3:40 pm
OMG—am I your personal assistant??? I can guarantee I’ll cost more than $200 a month, but will bring in more than a personal assistant would.
I’m just reading the blog, as I’ve been assigned to do. Glad I came across this one!
October 2nd, 2007
2:41 am
Hey Noah,
Didn’t read your post but saw something about personal assistants. They are the best.
It’s been a while since we last chatted via email. Been busy doing the conference speaking circuit and lots of goofing off in between. Yeah, I hired a virtual assistant to ensure biz keeps rolling on even when I am having a snooze
Anyway, going to be muster some courage here and leave my cell phone number….
Only Noah may call…All others will be given the “yeah…so why are you calling me speal”
Hmmm…do I actually leave it…Yeah, why not. I can’t find your email address in my inbox, Noah…
Naaaa…Don’t want a flood of voice mails so…
Noah, send me an email at the address entered in the form. Would love to catch up.
BTW, I will be speaking at a conference in Long Beach at the end of October…
Colin
December 8th, 2007
7:39 pm
Does anybody needs personal assistant online? I dont ask much and we could talk how much you could afford. I am an honest and reliable person..I am a full mom and need a job as a personal assistant working online maybe 4-5 hours a week. Please give me your email add and I could send you my resume. Thank you.
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