""I used to need to sit down and take a weekend to deal with my inbox or deal with all these other things. Now, my response to the actual emails I have to deal with are so fast because I only have to deal with a very small subset and everything else she handles for me. People love the fact that I'm super responsive, and for my family, it has made a huge difference.""
— Nick Knapp, Owner
The Challenge
Since 1994, Nick Knapp had built Knapp Business Solutions into a trusted, family-owned firm with over 100 years of collective professional experience. But as the business continued to grow, so did the demands on his time. His inbox swelled with thousands of unread emails, and his team's plates were just as full as his own.
As a husband and father of a one-year-old, Nick found himself constantly missing bedtime — something he deeply cherished. He recognized the problem clearly:
"I could spend hours dealing with my inbox or I could work on the company. Why force myself to do something that I hate that is not anywhere close to what I need to be doing?"
Nick had attended the EntreLeadership Master Series and heard BELAY's breakfast session with Chris Hogan on delegation. But delegation alone wasn't the answer — his team was already stretched thin. He was, as he put it, the lid on his own business. The real question was: how could he find help he could trust like family?
The Solution
Nick decided to give BELAY a try, and within a few weeks he was paired with a Virtual Assistant named Cindy. The results were almost immediate — his inbox shrank from several thousand untouched emails to about 40. In their early meetings, Nick would screenshare his inbox with Cindy via Zoom, quickly discovering that she was both competent and trustworthy.
He gave Cindy the reins to his email, and she didn't just manage the volume — she responded more thoughtfully to messages that had previously been buried or answered under stress. Nick was finally free to focus his energy on being strategic with the business.
When Cindy transitioned to a full-time opportunity with another client six months later, Nick was worried the progress they'd made would be lost. But Cindy had taken meticulous notes on his preferences and processes, and even trained his new VA, Diane.
"It was probably the easiest transition I could have imagined,"Nick recalls. Diane stepped in at full speed, taking on everything from email management to the spreadsheets that had previously consumed hours of Nick's time.
""I could spend hours dealing with my inbox or I could work on the company. Why force myself to do something that I hate that is not anywhere close to what I need to be doing?""
— Nick Knapp, OwnerThe Impact
Within a month of working with his BELAY VA, Nick's family and staff could already see a difference. The constant background noise of an overflowing inbox was gone.
"I didn't have this nagging in the back of my head,"Nick shares. His responses became faster, more thoughtful, and clients took notice — telling him how impressed they were with his responsiveness.
Diane's proactive approach meant Nick only had to deal with a small fraction of his incoming messages, while everything else was handled with care and precision. The time-consuming spreadsheets that had once stolen hours from his day became, as Nick put it, "Diane's world."
Most meaningfully, Nick was able to achieve the personal goal that had motivated his search for help in the first place.
"Within a month, I had enough stuff off my plate that I was able to meet my goal of being home by 5:30 p.m. – that's been absolutely huge."For Nick, BELAY didn't just improve his business — it gave him back the moments that mattered most.