Solo founder or small team? Fix your life with a real-life non-virtual assistant

A few years ago, I tried a virtual assistant and it never worked out. The types of tasks that I needed a hand with were not easily breakable without detailed explanations.

Then I was at an event last month and a flock of friends recommended one assistant in particular. I emailed her about availability and listed out the problems and roadblocks that I've hit recently. A few days later, we met over coffee and she pitched me on solving one of those problems for now with a hook to work on a few others as time goes on.

Three weeks in and it's working beautifully. Everything I've handed her just gets done. It's not a huge amount at this point, but it's a start.

If you're in Austin and looking for an assistant, drop me a note and I'll pass along contact info.

Never let an assistant mediate meetings or contacts with clients, partners, investors, or anyone else. If you're at a start up, book your own meetings. Everyone else can do it, so can you.

Why?

1. It's rude. They wanted to talk to you but you've punted them to an assistant. For a tiny company, you aren't that important.

2. It cools the relationship before it started. Relationships are the core asset of any business. Prioritize them.

3. It distances you from the market. As a startup, you should be as close to the market as possible. Actively disintermediating from people around you is a bad sign of how out of touch you likely are.

http://www.larrikj.com/media/images/ss.png

I have the text not staying in the designated areas, and text overlaying other text. This happens on quite a few blogs I read on HN, so it's probably me and not them, but it doesn't seem to happen on most other sites.

Does anyone else see these issues? Did I break something in my install or settings (or extensions)?