I started my offshore outsourcing business, Zylun, over three years ago after I left my job in NYC to pursue my entrepreneurial dreams.  Over the first couple of years of building the business my role as CEO evolved often as I tried to focus on areas of the business that I thought needed me the most.  After I hired my COO, Tony Morrison, I was able to take my focus from operations and dive in on business development and sales.  I had never worked in a business development/sales role before so I had to learn by trial and error what worked and what didn’t.  My daily schedule became full of useful tasks including management, finances, operations, lead generation, sales, and networking.  Over time my sales and lead generation tasks began to take up more and more of my day.  In January of this year I decided that I needed to hire an assistant to help me with scheduling, email, research, social media, etc.  Since Zylun is an offshore outsourcing firm I decided to hire an assistant in the Philippines that I could share with my COO.  After selection my Virtual Assistant, I took some time to document what I did on a daily basis and what I could had off to someone else.  Through this exercise it turned out that about 80% of what I was doing on a regular basis could be done by someone else.  My time spent on my most important tasks was able to increase 4 to 5 times.  I had so much work for my assistant to do I  couldn’t share her with my COO so I had him and my Director of Sales each hire a Virtual Assistant as well.  Since hiring our Virtual Assistants our company productivity more than doubled.  After working with our Virtual Assistants for a few months we decided to offer Virtual Assistants as one of our outsourced offerings.  Check out our site at http://www.virtualassistantoutsourcing.com