by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | May 4, 2013 | Entrepreneur, Time Management
We all have goals and things we want to achieve but are you really ready to commit? To produce an impact? Can you make the pledge to maintain forward momentum and accomplish your objectives? Saying and doing are two completely opposite entities. Action begets action.
“Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change – this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.” Bruce Barton
Sure, we often THINK about the changes we want to institute, the direction we see ourselves working toward, but those are merely thoughts. It is time to step up and confront what is blocking our realizations for growth.
- Squander our time and efforts on needless busy work
- Lose ourselves in the abyss of posting and trolling social media
- Become sidetracked with tedious, nonsense task
- Lose focus
- Decide we just don’t feel like it
- Work IN our business instead of ON it
- We are undeserving
- Expecting other company partners to contribute more
- Afraid of success
- Waiting for bigger and better opportunities
The only way to facilitate change is to learn to become more effective and efficient.
To transform.
To revolutionize our thought process and actions.
Keep a daily log of time and projects, the interruptions, personal ambushes and at the end of the week, scrutinize what you truly accomplished. How you spent your time? What was wasted and where can you improve your focus and time management?
A recent post on Stepcase Lifehack, 3 Ways to Be Less Busy and More Productive, state: “How often do you actually achieve results while you are busy? Not too often, I bet. Switch your focus from being busy to being productive, so that you can accomplish more, see tangible results, and have time for fun.” They offered some very helpful hints to fine tune and remove the busy from your life.
“Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Many become defensive when their aspect of busy is challenged and that is understandable, but in terms of accomplishable goals, growth, momentum and successes, busy and productive must be further defined to determine if being busy is just wasting time or working toward an end result. Entrepreneurship requires 150% dedication, focus and effort. It is not a part time endeavor to embark upon while meandering through life. If you are choosing to operate a business, then you must live and breathe your corporation, from top to bottom, every day.
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” Calvin Coolidge
- Know your goals: long term, short term and daily.
- Plan your work and work your plan.
- Create your action steps.
- Eliminate distractions.
- Stay on task.
- Turn off notifications.
- Be consistent with your actions.
- Delegate your non-income producing tasks.
- Learn something new to advance your business.
- Read pertinent books/articles.
- Find a mentor.
- Ask for help.
- Do what it takes to bring your business to the next level.
- Be accountable for each step-each milestone.
- It is up to you
“At the end of the day we are accountable to ourselves – our success is a result of what we do.” Catherine Pulsifer
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | May 2, 2013 | Entrepreneur, Virtual Assistant
Do you want to dance offshore or dive in with an established professional entrepreneur to help manage your business? Building a company is hard work and takes an extensive amount of time and energy to successfully manage and facilitate growth. There are vast amounts of daily responsibilities that coincide with your SOP, business development, customer service, social media, troubleshooting and all of the other 98 hats we must wear.
Can you really do it all? Commit to every single task, project and activity for you, your company and your clients? Probably not. I know I can’t. Spreading yourself too thin wreaks havoc and diminishes your output, sometimes to the point that things either don’t get completed or they didn’t have 100% of your attention.
It is here you decide you truly need help.
Enter the Virtual Assistant.
Many are familiar with the online directories, freelancing job sites, offshore call centers and of course the established virtual assistants. What do you do?
If you are looking for a vested partner, a real team player who has an honest interest in your business, then choose an entrepreneurial virtual assistant instead of the offshore tasks doers. I would believe your ideal assistant is someone:
- Who understands what it takes to start and grow a company
- Who has administrative experience
- Who has an extensive skill-set both on and offline
- Who consistently goes above and beyond being a task master
- Who takes a genuine interest in you and your business
- Who wants to be a part of your team
- Who prefers a long term partnership to help build and fortify your company
- Who drives to learn and educate themselves on related technologies, platforms and current industry news
- Who can and wants to see you succeed
- Who can provide you with testimonials and samples of their work
- Who “gets” your mission, values and ethics
- Who is available at your convenience, making allowances for work life balance, family and time zone differences
- Who timely responds to your emails and other communications
- Who values and respects your feedback to ensure your 100% satisfaction
The Virtual Assistant Industry | A Network of Professionals will provide you with a list of tips and questions to ask your potential virtual assistant.
When you team up with another like-minded entrepreneur, you are given the opportunity to have a dedicated partner in your success not someone who merely receives a task oriented email to complete. While the call centers and other off-shore operations may seem like a financial win, consider what you are opting out of for a few dollars.
I began my business in 2002: Virtual Assistants, Passion, Preference and Persistence and like the other virtual assistants in my network, we are here for YOU, helping to drive your business to meet your aspirations and dreams of entrepreneurship.
Think about your business goals, direction and management. What is important to you? Who most will benefit your team?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Apr 16, 2013 | Delegation, Time Management, Virtual Assistant
Image credit: actioncoach.com
As a virtual assistant I try to help educate my clients and prospects on the high value of delegating some of your daily business operations to better leverage your time and your skills. It is a low cost, high payoff activity to maximize your business growth. As entrepreneurs, the amount of hats we must wear can be overwhelming and very time consuming. It is almost impossible to do it all and perform at 100% of our capabilities. We can become worn out, lose track of time, have higher stress levels, become distracted, less focused, inhibit our productivity, have a decreased work life balance, miss deadlines, become backlogged or not complete our To Do lists. These things are not acceptable and will not foster growth and forward movement.
“It’s important to be working on tasks that have the biggest impact on the growth of your business–everything else should be delegated.” Iyla Pozin
I have learned the fine art of delegation as well. I certainly can’t preach the value of outsourcing to my clients if I am not doing it as well. Once I began delegating more of my daily business operations and back end admin tasks, there was a sigh of relief. The “aaahhh” feeling that I knew my team was helping me to be more effective and productive. I am a control freak; however, hand picking my personal virtual assistants gave me the confidence I needed to be able to send them tasks and projects.
Delegating has given me more time to work ON my business rather than IN it. I continually refine and revisit what I will outsource, as there is always room for improvement but if I am going to make suggestions to you, I too must follow the same premise. I have also discovered that the more I read, research, and learn about new tools for you, the more I apply them to my own business. I am grateful that you have chosen Ace as your virtual assistant. It is because of YOU that I too have been able to flourish and become even more productive, which I didn’t think was possible being so OCD about time management and productivity.
“If you are ever going to grow your business beyond what you can contain in the grasp of your outstretched arms, you’ll have to let go of a great deal of what you do to fill each day.” John Jantsch.
What will you delegate today?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Apr 5, 2013 | Delegation, Virtual Assistant
Image credit: timetrade.com
If you have never partnered with a virtual assistant, you may be wondering how can someone who potentially lives across the country actually help you manage your business on a remote basis. It seems so foreign not to have someone in the next office but we are just a call, text or click away from your fingertips. I have been in business since 2002 and thanks to technology, I am fortunate enough to have both USA based clients as well as international.
Virtual assistants use several different platforms to streamline our client projects and communications, keeping us focused, timely and productive. It is no longer necessary to rely upon an in-house team when you can save money and time by working virtually. There are literally hundreds of tasks and projects that you can effectively delegate to a virtual assistant. The possibilities are only limited by your requests. Click “25 Tasks You can Outsource to a Virtual Assistant to Grow Your Business – Today!” by Chris Ducker.
As a busy executive your early morning may begin with a cup of coffee and your laptop (just don’t mix the two). Email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blog posts, Pinterest, calendaring, appointment reminders, content curation and a review of your To Do list are just a small part of your daily routine. How much time do you spend on these every single morning? Are these activities the best use of your time? Are they high payoff activities?
As facets of your marketing, branding and a little fun time, they all require attention, but do they need to be managed by you? Probably not.
What can you do?
Calendaring Case Study:
Enter the busy entrepreneur whose days are full with back to back meetings, presentations, phone calls, business development, networking and correspondence. Triaging emails, calendaring and setting up and confirming calls was not only consuming too many hours, but it wasn’t the best use of his time as it took him away from his core genius.
Our Ace Solution:
- Create a Google account, enabling us to manage his calendar, appointments and reminders
- We also created accounts for conference calling and screen sharing programs for presentations and calls
- The client now forwards email threads with any needed appointment details, alerts the client/prospect that Ace will be managing the appointment scheduling and conference details
- Ace initiates the follow up and schedules the meeting using one of the three tools
- Depending on the application, the appointment will be added to the GCalendar or it will self-populate via the conference platform
- GCal reminders are set up to be delivered via email and or pop-ups for my client
- Email reminders can also be sent to the other attendee(s) if the conference software does not offer the service
It is so much easier and more efficient to simply click “forward” than to manage all of this yourself. It takes time and effort to set up the platforms and manage each step while you are trying to work ON your business.
How much time do you lose during the day working on calendaring and similar low payoff activities? Consider delegating your calendar, appointment scheduling and reminders to a virtual assistant. You will have generated more time in your day to focus on what is important, rather than on what needs to be done.
“It’s just plain smart to leverage your time with talented workers on your team, than try and do it all yourself.” Chris Ducker
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Apr 2, 2013 | Small Business, Virtual Assistant, Word Processing
Living in the digital world of online connectivity and technology, we have been able to broaden our reach, create deeper relationships and have many avenues to share our voice. With this explosion of technology and new forms of media expression, we have become accustomed to communicating in 140 characters on Twitter, sending a quick IM or using much abbreviated texting that sometimes leaves the message open for interpretation, or worse, needing a few dictionaries or phoning a friend to decipher the code message.
While texting may be an efficient means to deliver a quick message, allow multi-tasking, and is less of an intrusion when there really isn’t time for a phone call, it can leave you scratching your head, wondering what the sender is saying. This type of tech shorthand is expedient but studies have shown it has negatively changed our levels of personal communications, interactions and writing skills for some. Educators from the Janus project “worry that heavy use of electronic communications such as email, social networking, texting, instant messaging and networked video games has diminished kids’ and adults’ social skills.” Texting is an instant convenient form of communication but has the possibility to weaken our social and written skills, if we allow it to happen.
Debra Vargulish, is a training administrator at the Latrobe-based global tooling company and college recruiter for Kennametal Inc reported that the students she meets are often inarticulate and shy, “They seem to be way better at using technology than older people. It’s actually the content that is missing. A lot of them don’t know what to say at all, and that’s not good.” Influence on Texting on Communication Skills.
The potential impact of texting:
- Reduce the in-depth conversations
- Dumb down spelling and grammar
- Distract people from being fully present
According to a Wall Street Journal article, people are becoming lazier about their grammar and spelling due to texting, instant messaging and social media.
Young students have turned in papers using text shorthand and emoticons.
The US Job Bank reports that many employers have expressed complaints and dissatisfaction with received employment applications that are written in text language. They noted that many applicants have a propensity to speak more informally and use abbreviated text messaging as though they are writing to a close friend.
There is now an online dictionary to explain the most used terminology.
You have just a few seconds to make a valued impression and if you aren’t clear, use proper spelling and grammar, this may present you in an unintended manner.
“Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can’t tell the difference between their, there, and they’re.” Kyle Wiens.
While texting, shorthand “lingo” or social media communications may not directly impact you, it has influenced our communications and written word. Know when it is appropriate, who is your audience, become familiar with the common grammar mistakes, use spell-check but don’t depend on it 100%, proofread your documents, blog posts and emails two or three times and add in the email “To” field after you have taken the time to reread your message.
Your communications are a representation of you and your company. Make sure they are free of errors.
Image credit: Might Red Pen
