(Of course, my perception that this is the fun thing about this blog is also probably just narcissism, because chances are that nobody is reading close enough to have climbed out onto the edge of their seats in anticipation of my following up. I may be here fretting that you are all mad at me for not explaining how X or Y worked out or if I ever did Z, when actually you’re just drunk and reading Perez Hilton while playing Mafia Wars or one of the other myriad online whatevers that I’ve totally ignored.)

Anyway, let’s make it clear that I am NOT a non-follow-through guy (usually) and DO close my loops (sometimes) so that I can keep my promises and maintain a sort of clean, distinguished continuity to this blog (unlikely).

So what’s this all about?

Well, let’s take the latest open question. You may be wondering whatever happened with my assistant situation. Like, maybe you’re at the point in your business where you really should have an assistant and are hungry for more information on the topic in the way that today’s sexy teen vampires are hungry for blood and/or Seventeen magazine and box office receipts.

So here’s what happened:

1. I decided that I really needed an assistant. Like, things had gotten too crazy around here and I was spending too much time on menial tasks. If I was to keep earning and growing, I knew I had to get some of those details and loose ends and lower-end items off of my desk so that I’d have room for more high-paying tasks.

2. I talked to my mother nee hiring-assistants expert about the best way to find, hire, and work with a V.A. (virtual assistant), then read her e-book and listened to the included interviews to hear what others had to say, then did some of the exercises she describes in said e-book, then decided what I could and should be outsourcing, and then finally got used to envisioning my life with an assistant — which wasn’t too different from Homer Simpson’s fantasy about working from home except that I’m less fat and don’t like beer.

3. I started my V.A. search and along the way got some interest from people who wanted to work for me for free, which is just nutty. I decided that I liked the idea of working with an unpaid intern (the price was right), but would still need a professional V.A. to handle the stuff these folks didn’t yet know how to do and also, frankly, I wanted someone with professional V.A. certifications and recommendations out the ass to handle some of the more personal and/or confidential stuff because it’s hard enough to trust a person you don’t know until you know them.

Then,

4. I hired my wife.

Number four is the best one.

So I should explain myself. Saying “I hired my wife” sounds like “I asked my illiterate cousin Jimmy to write my thesis because he would do it for $10″ or “I had the kid next store build my website because he knows about computers or something.” Hiring someone in your immediate circle is usually a move people make when they want things to be cheap or free, not when they want things done spectacularly. I mean, Jimmy might luck into a good manifesto (perhaps he trained with a billion monkeys working at a billion typewriters) and the kid next door might end up being competent. But that’s not why you hired them. You did it because you didn’t want to spend money.

My wife, Robin, isn’t a V.A. (yet), but she is a bookkeeper who used to work in corporate accounting and happens to be very good at what I need most out of an assistant: keeping track of projects, prospect trails, tasks, and general loose ends so that I don’t have to attempt (attempt) to do it myself. She’s good at the admin and is smart enough to learn the technical.

Honestly, the solution is so good that I can’t believe we didn’t think of it earlier. Robin works part-time as a bookkeeper in an office and works part-time doing the same thing from home. She was looking to pick up more work at the same time I was thinking of hiring a V.A. She asked what I wanted a V.A. to do, and I described it, putting particular onus on my chief aim: getting someone in a position to have my back on all of the details in my business, and being able to toss information to someone that I would normally attempt to keep track of myself — and then be able to trust that they would coordinate it for me and keep me on task.

So she’s like, “Why don’t I do it?”

So we gave it a shot. And HOLY SHIT MARY is it awesome.

Here’s what she’s doing for me so far.

1. Keeping my calendar and managing my to-do list.
So far, we’re doing this using Google’s free calendar online, but I’m not terribly satisfied with it. On one hand, having someone schedule my calls and appointments is fantastic, but on the other hand, Google’s functionality just isn’t there. You can’t prioritize to-dos or set reminders for them, and you can’t color-code anything or tie it to a larger goal. So I’m considering a few alternatives.

2. Keeping track of my projects and prospects.
At any given time, I have 5-7 live projects in the works for clients and have maybe 15 prospects who have contacted me about a job but who haven’t yet committed or done anything. Many of these prospects simply vanish. So, keeping on top of these lists requires knowing the status, when we’ve last made contact, who has paid how much, whether they’ve gotten hosting yet if it’s required, if they’ve committed in some way or are just kind of thinking. We’re now handling all of this via a shared Google Docs spreadsheet, which is a load off my mind. It used to take a TON of mental energy.

3. Pre-screening my email.
Robin goes through my email before I see it and removes spam, notes job progress from clients, and refollows (or doesn’t refollow) new Twitter followers. (So if you follow me and I don’t follow you back, it’s either because she hates you or because your profile and tweet history looks like that a spammy dickhead.) Only then does stuff come to me so that I can read, respond, whatever. So for those of you who are in love with me and want to send naked photos, you should reconsider or I should open a backup email address.

4. Doing some of the “mechanical” tech tasks.
We’re just starting this because Robin isn’t nearly as techy as I am. But my goal is to have her learn to do the repetitive, no-creativity-required tasks that I run across, like launching a blog’s architecture before I go in and pretty it up, sending emails that I write to my list, doing shopping cart stuff, etc. Basically, we’re talking tasks that I can write out directions for in step-by-step fashion.

5. Doing my billing.
I don’t bill many clients, because most people pay me in full in advance, but I do still have some legacy clients for whom I do hourly work and bill each month. Billing used to be scattered and took me forever, but now I just note my time in a Google Doc and at the beginning of each month, billing is magically handled for me.

The challenge is learning to trust the system, and to not circumvent it by trying to still keep track of all of that stuff EVEN THOUGH A SYSTEM EXISTS to free me from if. Like, Robin is supposed to pre-screen all my email and then send the good stuff to me, but I can’t yet stop myself from incessantly checking it prior to screening.

But yeah, it’s been very cool. If you need an assistant, find a way to get one. It’ll be a load off of your mind.

Oh, and there’s one more thing.

As a bonus, remember the folks who wanted to work as “interns,” despite the fact that “intern” is a demeaning term implying that they’d simply bring me coffee all day and that I’d throw danishes at them when I was in a pissy mood?

Well, Lira Vaughan won that particular spot. I interviewed Lira in the way suggested by that V.A. e-book I keep mentioning, and she passed, and we clicked pretty well, and I liked that in addition to being good assistant material for what needed of her (mainly developing an organization system and a bunch of fun stuff that I’ve decided I’d kind of like her to coordinate but haven’t yet mentioned… hey there, Lira!), she’s also a laser physicist. This is good, because I like the idea that when I mention that one of my coffee cups has gone missing, she might propose that a quantum tunneling event has caused it to vanish and reappear in Idaho, and I also like that she’s going to understand my many jokes involving Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (No, officer, I can’t tell you how fast I was going, but I can tell you exactly where I am).

I’m “paying” Lira in trade. She’ll help me and I’ll help her, and I also gave her all of my stuff for free, like Zero to Business and my often smooth and mellow Jam Sessions series with Charlie Gilkey, which is NOT being sued by Rupert Murdoch no matter what anyone tells you.

So in conclusion, if you want an assistant but don’t have the money to do so, find someone competent in your circle and then marry them, or else find a physicist and give them things that involve Charlie Gilkey. Both tactics are working well for me.