by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Nov 16, 2017 | Guest Blogger, Productivity, Time Management
We read about what will make us more productive in life and at work. We know what to do but sometimes we can’t get ourselves going.
Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Here are 6 different and I hope unique ways to experiment with to get you powered up each morning.
- Make your calendar reminders more specific so they grab your attention. Example: Instead of “Morning routine,” list the specific things which you know make you more productive, more focused, organized or have a positive attitude. What works for you? This is useful for getting into a new habit, reminding yourself of one if you’re feeling as if you’re falling off track, or after sickness, vacation, or any break.
- Give yourself a deadline. Remember SMART goals? They work for many people, because they are specific and set a deadline. I’ve been trying to get back to riding my exercise bike, so my goal [finally] became: by the time the U.S. Thanksgiving month begins, I’ll be biking three times a week at 6:30 a.m.
- Get yourself a motivational or accountability partner. Short term or permanently. For example, if for trouble getting out of bed, ask your spouse or one of your kids to get you going. Or if you need support starting a new morning routines, work with a coach. That task you’re procrastinating on …. How about working at the time your kids are doing their homework. Or ask Suzie to call you each day and check in on how you’re doing!
- Are you a numbers person? Use your interest in numbers as your momentum or motivation. For example, use Excel or an app to keep track of how you’re doing with the healthy habits you find important, i.e., breakfast, water, protein, walking, meditation. If you feel you spend too much time on your devices, then use a paper notepad or an index card to track. Or choose a favorite number and meditate, journal or walk for that number of minutes. If it’s short enough, do it twice a day.
- What’s your purpose? Some people get their motivation or momentum from tying a routine to a bigger, meaningful goal. For example, by meditating every day, which you know makes you calmer, you can be the kind of parent you dream of being. Or by walking each day, your mind is clearer at work, so you’re more productive and therefore lead your team more effectively.
- Write down what happens if you consistently do not follow through on your morning routine. If you don’t feel like doing it, and this has lasted more than a week, answer this … and write it out because it will make a greater impression in black and white, staring back at you: How will I feel about myself in another week if this continues? What happens if do not do this for a month, when I know how good it has been for me in the past? And what about in a year? How will you feel about not following through on commitments to yourself?
Guest Author
Sue West
Productivity & ADHD Coach
Certified Organizer Coach®
Certified Professional Organizer®
In Chronic Disorganization
Connect with Sue
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Website & Blog: www.CoachSueWest.com
Phone: 603.554.1948
Email: Sue@OrganizeNH.com
Think you may have ADHD or similar symptoms? Try Sue’s coaching services or self-paced, ADHD workbook to focus and get started on managing your distractibility or follow through, before they manage you.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Mar 28, 2017 | Entrepreneur, Goals, Productivity
If you’re like me, you probably start your day with a morning routine. Routines help build positive habits, support priorities, create structure, amplify your time, and increase your productivity. Plus, you have the opportunity to set the mojo for the day.
Probably the most important period of your day is when you first wake up. Your morning routine can set you up for massive success the whole day. Matthew Toren
These are essential productivity components whether you operate your own business, support others with theirs, have a career, a family, or even a guinea pig. A morning routine will help you kick ass all day long. Stuff needs to get done. Put away. Managed. Started. Finished. There’s plenty of verbs for all of this but you get the idea!! That being said, do all of your typical morning routines strengthen daily positive productive habits? Sometimes, not so much. You may hit snooze (several hundred times), get sucked into social media, the abyss of checking your inbox, the dreaded remote control, or perhaps even a tempting starchy bagel. Truthfully, I’m not sure which is worse but either way, most are not only a distracting waste of time but studies say these types of morning activities are not the most prolific, thought-provoking methods to ACTIVATE your day. First off, set your intentions. Goals. Priorities. If you don’t have any direction, how will you direct your day? A plan is key to reducing chaos, eliminating overwhelm, being on time, and getting more done. It’s that simple. It doesn’t matter whether you go old school with a pen and paper or more digital with a Google Doc, an app, or some other online tool/platform that you will COMMIT to. This is nothing new. You’ve read it before but maybe now you’d like to SPRING into action. It is March. So March on to the new you.
Break it down and simplify your priorities:
Personal & Business
- Think about what you value most
- What will your morning routine look like to you?
- How do you best start your day?
- What invigorates you – inspires you to be your best/do your best?
- What NEW habits should you bring into your life?
- What old habits should you kiss goodbye?
- What/who should you make more time for?
Healthy routines impart a healthy mind, body, and spirit. A whole healthy you generates a more vibrant and industrious day. [GREAT GOAL] Think of your morning routine as the tool to achieve optimal workday performance. Fuel and nourish your race car if, and only if, you want to win.
Morning Routine Key Principles
- Prepare: design your motivational morning routine
- Time block: actually block off time for specific tasks and HOLD to it. Example: 5-6:30 am gym
- Boycott technology: tune out and turn off distractions and notifications. Facebook, Twitter, and other social posts will still be there after your “self-deposits”
- TIP: Leave your Smartphone on the other side of the room. Don’t grab for it unless you’re turning off the alarm to jump out of bed. [DIGITAL DETOX]
- Be present – in THIS moment Multi-tasking is not allowed
- Self-nourishment: If you sacrifice your health and wellness, there is no business. YOU are a priority. Do it for yourself, friends, family, loved ones, and your company
- Food: science-based evidence clearly demonstrates that foods are medicine. Give your body what it needs to support and power your day
- Meditation: focus, quiet the mind, practice being present and mind FULL
- Exercise: being fit isn’t a fad. It keeps you healthier, reduces or eliminates pain, enhances your life, keeps you younger, strengthens your heart and lungs, battles disease and helps to sustain mobility….. just to name a few benefits
- Goals: write them down!! Keep your goals/plan visible. Be accountable and share it with your friends and family. Your dog might have an interest too
- Action: take daily actions to get you closer to your goals
- Ask yourself: does “this” support my vision?
- Will it help me be better or do better?
- Is it growth-oriented?
Sound off: How does your morning routine IGNITE your day?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 31, 2017 | Delegation, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Productivity, Small Business
“Delegate, but don’t abdicate.” “Delegating takes more time than doing it myself. ”
Delegating – or outsourcing if you are self-employed: yes, it’s difficult and yes, it is so worth your time to learn how to do it well. It is a skill, not something any one of us is innately good at, so I suggest you begin with low risk practice first.
What do you get in return?
- Attention to your bigger goals you’re wanting to spend time but just can’t seem to create.
- A team. Better, clearer communications.
- Accountability practice. And practice at leaning into difficult conversations when you need to have them.
With nearly 20 years of corporate experience, in addition to being a small business owner, I can confidently suggest the following exercise to begin your road to successful delegation and growth. Especially if you’ve never delegated before and are feeling a little apprehensive, this is a fascinating skill because of how much you learn about other people and yourself.
#1 Start Small. Low Risk. Get Some Practice.
Choose a low risk, small task and delegate or outsource it. I hired a company to work with me on one edition of my newsletter. Eventually, I outsourced my website and more because their work, flexibility and ability to hold me accountable worked well for me. Had the newsletter not been successful I could have returned to doing it myself.
Look at your “big goals” list. What do you not have time for that’s really pulling at you?
And then look at your day-to-day work: What project is: not getting done, needs skills you don’t have/aren’t great at, needs a partner to hold you accountable, is low risk (not financials) or is frustrating you and you’re stuck? There will be at least one, guaranteed.
Now back to the goals list: If you invested some time explaining what’s needed for your low risk project and if you could think of the delegating or outsourcing as an experiment, wouldn’t it be great to have time to work on that goal? What’s the risk? Keep it small enough that it’s hard for you not to do it.
#2 Invest Time.
Create time on your calendar to explain and educate the person who will be handling this for you. If you don’t meet and create time to explain and educate, delegation will fail and it won’t be the other person’s fault. You’ll have done it to yourself. Get it right on the calendar, at least one to educate and one short time to check in. More if needed.
Pay attention to how well you two work together. If you’re being heard. Are solutions and proactive suggestions made? Is understanding present? Ask the person to explain back to you what he/she thinks you want.
And rather than framing this as “asking for help,” do this instead. Since “help” implies you don’t know how to do the task, yet you likely you do know, think “leverage.” What you are doing is even smarter: you are building a team so you can leverage your skills and time as well as your team’s. And that gets you closer to your goals, whether it is to work fewer days a week, have more travel money or time or anything else important to you.
Leverage, not help. Completely different mindset and way of operating here.
#3 Expectations. Get Clear. 
Start by discussing and being super clear in your expectations of WHAT needs to get done.
The goal, the end game, the results. Not the HOW, but the WHAT. [And if you’re working with people who need to know the context or the WHY, give them that, too. Can’t hurt.]
If you have any preferences which add value to the project, mention them, but be prepared to let them go if they are not critical. Double checking quality is critical. The process or tool may not be so much.
Let go of HOW the task is done. That’s what you’re delegating.
If something comes back to you and it’s quite wrong …. first look at or ask about the expectations you think you set.
I did say: this is not simple.
#4 Set Limits.
Consider ahead of time what your limits are and communicate these.
Examples:
- Please don’t spend over ‘x’ amount.
- Let me know how much you get done in 1 hour & let’s go from there.
- It’s important to me that you feel comfortable holding me accountable. Here is what would be great to have … and not.
- Let’s try this one piece. Come back to me and let’s check that together so I’m sure I’ve been clear. And you’re on the right track. If so, we can get lots more done like those.
If you don’t educate on what’s a deal breaker, then when someone spends too much, that’s on you.
Delegate = Leverage.
Delegation is a muscle that needs an attentive workout. The first few times you try delegating may not be as perfect as you envisioned because this does take practice. You didn’t learn to drive, or program, or market in one try. You practiced and got better as you did.
Delegating and outsourcing allow you to do what you know are so incredibly good at. And the work you delegate or outsource? It allows another person to do what he or she is really awesome at, so you both contribute. How good is that?
Guest Author
Sue West
Certified Organizer Coach®
Productivity & ADHD Coach
Certified Professional Organizer®
In Chronic Disorganization
Connect with Sue
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Website & Blog: www.CoachSueWest.com
Phone: 603.554.1948
Email: Sue@OrganizeNH.com
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 24, 2017 | Marketing, Productivity, Social Media
Social media marketing continues to grow at exponential rates and remains one of the simplest tools a business owner can use to reach their audience and further deepen their digital footprint.
According to We are Social, 3.81 billion people worldwide have active online accounts which exemplify the tremendous opportunities to build and connect with your audience. It does take time and effort to develop a strong foundational footprint but where else are you able to assemble a sizable following at pennies per impression?
My dad used to say “if you throw enough shit against the wall, somethings gonna stick.” This still holds true but I recommend a planned attack, some SMM strategy. Nothing willy nilly if you’d prefer better results. So let’s dive in!
Here are 13 tips you can use to maximize your social media footprint
- Social visibility – include all social channels in your marketing collateral (print and online), email signatures, and your website. Don’t make people have to click, search and discover. It should be an act of ease and grace to connect with you on their terms.
- Profiles – make sure they are all up to date with cohesive branding and content. If your information is scattered with various profile details, obscure images, varied company/service descriptions, you’ll confuse your audience.
- Consistency and frequency are key – post several times daily. Don’t be a flash in the pan with sporadic posts. You won’t give people a reason to follow you or look for your content. You’ll get lost and forgotten.
- Incorporate video and branded images.
- Content-rich, relevant, and sharable.
- Ask clients to “check-in” and tag the business. The more the merrier right? Each time a client checks in, a little bell goes off. Figuratively speaking of course. What greater way to help promote your business and generate a little social proof with people clamoring in your front door. To take it a step further, offer an incentive.
- Build relationships – engage with your audience, share, and comment on their content. Keep the social in “social media” and humanize your brand. Buyers and prospects don’t want robots or the sound of silence. Relationship marketing develops authentic relationships based on real connections and emotions. Reach out.
- Branded visuals – incorporate branded images into your marketing magic. Your images should be strong, convey a message, emotion, or thought, and most important, it should contain your logo or company name. It’s been proven that visuals generate a greater response to your posts.
- Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images (source)
- Hashtags – use popular, trending or industry hashtags. Join the conversation, gain authority, share rich/relevant content. #UseHashtags
- Social proof – Display (ask for) testimonials/reviews. People buy from people. People trust people. People will follow the crowd. Be the people that people love to talk about and ask them to talk about you. Social proof generates business with the peer to peer discussions.
- Local business – make sure all online digital maps/places/directories are up to date with your address/phone and hours. Finding your whereabouts shouldn’t feel like a mission impossible or a CSI investigation.
- Blogging – weekly/bimonthly – go for daily if you can or hire someone that will
- Consistent blogging pings Google and other search engines to new activity
- Increases SEO with keywords and tags
- Content is shared by your network, bringing people to your website and social platforms
- Cross share the content on your various accounts to drive site traffic
- Write for the audience and their needs/problems/pain points. Your content isn’t about you or what you feel is essential in the world. It’s all about your buyers and what moves them most.
- Blog commenting – Each time you comment on other relevant business blogs you have the opportunity to provide your website which links to your name. It can be time-consuming, but create a few keyword alerts with daily email digests or use tools like BuzzSumo, Feedly, and Tagboard to discover appropriate content.
- LinkedIn – comment on daily pulse articles as those are shared in public domain. Public domain is your free for all link to the search engines.
- Team involvement – suggest that staff also share and like content. This helps FB algorithms and exposure. The more people who like/share content, the greater chance of being seen, showing up in keyword searches, and increasing social proof once again.
Social Media is not just a spoke on the wheel of marketing. It’s becoming the way entire bicycles are built. Ryan Lilly
Social media and the online environment has become an integral part of people’s lives and it’s only going to continue to explode. With approximately 4.5 billion people on the internet and 3.81 billion using social media, don’t you want to wriggle in with your target market?
Be discovered before your competition?
Maintain a stronghold on your market share?
Distribute those digital breadcrumbs to maximize your social media footprint and give your audience a full meal, not just a tidbit snack.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 12, 2017 | Entrepreneur, Executive Administration, Small Business, Time Management, Virtual Assistant
Greeting the day as an overwhelmed entrepreneur has become part of the norm for many first-time business owners. The hats we wear are numerous and can present unexpected challenges in our day-to-day operations. It can be suffocating trying to figure out where to turn or what to do next.
Becoming more productive and being able to free up more time and leveraging your existing time, is one of the most skills that can literally multiply your success. Tor Refsland
You are an executive who worked hard, paid your dues and now you are sitting in the seat of responsibility. With responsibility comes an increased need to manage your time effectively. You cannot spend hours of your time formatting documents, writing business letters, building forms, writing and responding to emails, and editing or proofreading marketing material. Your decision-making, client relationships, and management of the company’s fiscal responsibilities take precedence. Hiring someone full-time is just not in the books yet.
What can you do? Is there a simple solution to help you achieve more by doing less?
Delegating
The purpose of delegating is to enable you to focus on your core genius, the tasks and projects that ONLY you can do; the revenue generators.
If you are being busy with many of the back end, admin tasks, you not using your expertise to the best of your ability; thereby further impairing your business advancement and opportunities. You’re potentially hindering your own growth which is counterproductive to starting your business. Let go to grow.
Tracking Hours
How much valuable time is used for follow up emails, searching/scheduling social media posts, writing/editing content, travel planning, document reviews, calendar reminders, project management, or presentation prep, just to name a few?
Track your time for the rest of the week, including the project, time on task, distractions, task completion, new additions to your list, items that were dropped to a lower priority or simply forgotten and how you felt at the end. In your review, what tasks clearly represented your core genius? What tasks were a low value?
Infinite list of responsibilities
All of the above are just a few of the basic yet necessary components to your business operations. It can be exhausting and frustrating to manage all of these tasks on your own. Unless you’re a super hero, it’s nearly impossible to be all things, to all people, all of the time.
In his blog post “The Way To Measure Your Productivity As An Entrepreneur”, Dan Martell suggests you:
- Create 4 buckets of activities: Admin, Work, Mgmt, Strategy
- Measure each with a monetary value: $10, $100, $500, $5000
- Focus on moving your way up the value chain (working ON vs. IN)
Measure each activity for what it is, then tally up your time for the day to get your daily value creation score.
The goal of these activities is to nudge you to work ON your business, rather than IN it. Typically, the IN does not generate revenue but keeps you busy. Busy isn’t necessarily productive. Busy can be frittering time. You don’t have time to waste.
When you love what you do, you want to do more of it!
Delegating gives you the flexibility you need to keep the company momentum going. Unburden yourself of these time consuming, the low payoff tasks/projects that keep you from the core of your business.
Stop doing stuff that isn’t valuable. So much of what people do in attempting to be productive involves just trying to fit more low value tasks into the same amount of time. Being productive means accomplishing more with the same or less effort. Mark Shead, Productivity 501
ACTION STEP
What’s on your To Do list right now that you’re ready to outsource? Do it and discover for yourself why so many other entrepreneurs embrace the power of delegating. What do they know that you don’t?
