As a business leader, wearing every hat can feel like a badge of honor. You’re used to taking ownership, solving problems, and keeping things moving. But there’s a hidden cost to doing it all.
According to the American Psychological Association, multitasking can reduce productivity by up to 40% — and that’s just the beginning. When you’re deep in the weeds of admin tasks, you're not just stretched thin—you’re losing money, opportunities, and momentum.
The truth? Trying to do everything yourself isn’t just exhausting—it’s expensive.
In this post, we’ll break down the financial, emotional, and productivity costs of the self-sufficiency trap—and explore how hiring an executive assistant (EA) can help you lead with clarity, focus, and impact.
The Financial Cost: Time Is Money
The most valuable resource you have as a business leader isn’t money, it’s your time. Yet many entrepreneurs spend up to a third of their week focused on tasks such as data entry, ordering supplies, and invoicing. Why?
- We believe that it’s cheaper to do everything ourselves
- We’re uncomfortable with delegating
However, when you look a little closer at the figures, if an EA is earning $100,000 a year, that’s $50 an hour using a 2,000-hour calculation. If they take on 10 hours a week of admin work from you, it equates to 520 hours a year. That’s 520 hours x $200 = $104,000 USD in executive time recovered.
Delegating tasks costs approximately 520 hours at $50 per hour, totaling $26,000. By offloading just 10 hours of work each week, your annual net gain rises to $78,000. If a leader dedicates 25% of their time to administrative tasks, that amounts to 500 hours annually, resulting in a 30% loss in productivity and 150 hours wasted each year. This inefficiency costs around $30,000 per year.
Hiring an executive assistant to handle non-strategic tasks pays for itself. It frees you up to focus on growing your business, increases innovation, and enhances leadership.
The Opportunity Cost: What Are You Missing?
When you’re swamped with admin work, you’re not just busy, you’re unavailable. You miss out on opportunities to:
- Build strategic partnerships
- Nurture investor relationships
- Spot new market openings
Important strategic initiatives that align with your business goals often get neglected, and you may miss out on optimizing resources, renegotiating contracts, and achieving growth.
Hiring an executive assistant can put you back in the driver’s seat, allowing you to take a step back and redirect your attention to tasks that matter. This also plays a role in empowering your employees, unlocking their own skills, creativity, and innovation. It fosters a more capable and motivated workspace while allowing you to focus on high-impact activities that help your company grow.
The Productivity Cost: The Myth of Efficiency
It’s all too easy to believe that you can handle it all. You may feel that working longer hours and juggling tasks makes you more efficient, but the opposite is actually true. Research shows that context-switching can significantly reduce productivity.
When you become cognitively overloaded and frequently switch tasks, it can lead to decreased productivity and performance. It can increase stress levels, mental exhaustion, and difficulty concentrating. When you become fatigued at work, it affects your decision-making, leading to poor choices and even avoidance of making decisions altogether due to feeling drained.
The world’s top executives tend to focus on leadership and strategic planning rather than low-level daily tasks. By utilizing the skills of your executive assistant, you can focus on work that only you can do, such as setting long-term goals and making high-level decisions, and then delegate everything else.
The Emotional Cost: Leadership vs. Management
Effective leadership revolves around vision, presence, and the ability to inspire and empower your team. However, when you take on too many responsibilities, leading effectively becomes a challenge. Exhaustion can lead to reactivity rather than strategic thinking, and your team will sense your stress.
Having too much on your plate can have several effects, such as:
- Difficulty concentrating
- Strained trust within teams
- Reduced morale
- Slowed business growth
Assigning tasks to an executive assistant that you typically manage yourself can alleviate pressure. This approach allows you to lead with purpose, clarity, and renewed energy while continuing to inspire and cultivate a culture of trust within your team.
The Solution: Investing in Strategic Support
Investing in an executive assistant isn’t just about offloading tasks – it’s more about gaining a strategic partner. Today’s EAs are highly skilled professionals who can:
- Manage your calendar and communications
- Prepare documents for key meetings
- Optimize your schedule and travel plans
- Anticipate your needs before they arise
They free you up to focus on the big picture. Many of the world’s most successful business leaders have EAs who are indispensable.
“Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people.”
— Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs hired Naz Beheshti as his executive assistant to help him prioritize both Apple’s success and his well-being. Bill Gates entrusted Steve Ballmer with responsibilities as his executive assistant, who later became the president of Microsoft.
Conclusion: Hiring an Executive Assistant Is the Smartest Investment You Can Make
The bottom line is you shouldn’t try to do it all. Juggling too many tasks at once can have a detrimental impact on your health, business, and team. Hiring an executive assistant can help you become more productive over time without compromising your health or business relationships.
Still unsure? Ask yourself: “What could I accomplish if I had more time to lead each day?” Then take the first step. Your business and your team will thank you for it.
Ready to reclaim your time? Let’s discuss how hiring the right executive assistant can help you scale smarter.
