by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Feb 1, 2013 | Guest Blogger, Life Thoughts, Organization
Your parents are requiring more and more time as they age. You’re working on having a new sort of relationship with your adult children. Your vacation is coming up and you haven’t quite figured out how to manage your business and still relax while away. Your business is at a key stage and you want to spend more time in it.
You’re overwhelmed by all of this change. You know it, but you don’t know what to do about it.
Your First Two Steps
1. Rearrange your time and your work:
What do YOU want from the time you’re spending with parents/adult children? What do THEY want? These might be different, so think about this first.
How much time per week or month do your parents need? What percentage of your work time is this? Are there other ways to arrange their time to make it more convenient for you? Is there work you can take with you while you’re waiting on appointments? (Be careful of working too much while you’re with them; it’s also very nice to have this time together, so balance this carefully.) Are you possibly doing too much; it’s worth looking at it.
Get the idea here? Use this approach for your parents as well as for your adult children and the new relationship you want to have with them. Look at your time differently, and look at your work tasks differently. Reorganize to fit a new time commitment; don’t try to use the old ways to fit the new commitments you’ve made.
2. Forget about the future for awhile.
Too much future thinking is overwhelming. And with these life changes happening, the overwhelm quotient is going to be higher.
The key question here is: What’s important to you now? That’s “now” versus “not now.” That’s the only decision, for now. That’s what to fill your calendar with.
Your vacation is in three weeks. Block time in the next few days to review the status of each project and client, even if this has to be done on personal time, because this helps you get away on vacation with a calmer mind.
Identify which steps/tasks have to be completed before vacation. Not completed projects, but steps or stages of the project. Don’t use vacation as a deadline to force yourself to complete more than is really necessary, just because it’s an easy deadline.
This is the “I can’t leave for vacation unless these are done” tasks. These are the truly important priorities. To keep the focus, mark these in some way that’s clear and obvious when you review your daily goals.
Block working sessions right on your calendar, so you know for sure that you’ve protect time for these priorities. Once this is done, step back for a minute; are you overcommitting at all? Is it possible? Remember that crises happen, so plan buffer time for people coming at you at the last minute, clients not realizing right away how long you’ll be gone and needing something before you’re out, and so forth. The puzzle of your time must have white space.
Changes interrupt our lives. Change is change, whether it’s a welcomed change or one foist upon you. Accept that things are changing; that’s a key first step. And then reorganize to work through it.
Guest Post Courtesy of
Sue West
Certified Organizer Coach®
Certified Professional Organizer®
In Chronic Disorganization
ADHD Specialist
Do you have enough time for you? Enough time for what’s becoming more important to you? Sue’s clients do and because she’s an organizing coach, her approach is practical.
Her specialties are organizing through change, ADHD and time management. Her clients have called her: insightful, wise, inspiring, filled with hope, gentle yet productive. Sue works privately, by phone or in person and is also the author of Organize for A Fresh Start: Embrace Your Next Chapter in Life, a book about reorganizing your stuff, your home and your time to move onto your next chapter in life. Get to know Sue by signing up for her blog, visiting her on Facebook, or signing up for her newsletter.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 15, 2013 | Goals, Guest Blogger
After reading one of our recent posts regarding goal setting, Allison Morris reached out to me and asked if I would like to share this post and infographic with my readers. It is a powerful image with stats that speak volumes about the importance of not only setting goals, but writing them down and taking action!
Is 2013 the year you reach your goals, or is 2013 the year you’ll set your goals?
While January always brings us the promise of a new year, business people everywhere have to set goals constantly. Explicitly writing down your goals makes them almost ten times easier to achieve, but only 20% of goal setters ever write down their goals. And the results are astounding: In a survey of Harvard University MBA graduates about goals, only three percent of exiting students had clear, written goals. More than 85% of the graduates had no particular goal. Ten years later in a follow up interview, the goal setters who had written down their goals were earning ten times the amount of the other 97% of graduates. The proof is in the pudding: it’s time to write down your goals.
Employees and business owners alike would benefit from writing down their goals. Other helpful hints for making sure you achieve anything resolve are: don’t set your goals alone, don’t try to do too much extremely quickly, and write your goal down. These simple steps can help set you and your business up for year-round success. Be serious, be precise, and have a plan of action to implement steps to surmount any milestone. Successful people set achievable goals, while eight in ten people complain that their life lacks an overall goal. Dare to be different and more focused this year.
Check out the infographic below, by OnlineEducation.net, for more information about who sets goals, who achieves them, and how your business can benefit from your resolution.
Where do you want to be? How far do you want to go? Since you are in the driver’s seat, it is your choice.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 10, 2013 | Delegation, Entrepreneur, Virtual Assistant
Now I know you are not living in the dark ages and have read all of the recent articles regarding the prominence of content marketing. as an essential component of your marketing mix. It helps to build awareness, visibility, trust, branding, lead conversion, digital bandwidth and your reputation as a thought leader. Content marketing is delivering relevant and valuable content to your customers and prospects without selling.
In Social Media Examiner’s article, 8 Content Marketing Trends for B2B, they reviewed a recent study of 1,416 B2B marketers to learn how they leveraged content marketing in 2012, as well as the future prospects for 2013. “In 2012, 64% of marketers said that producing enough content was their number one challenge. More than half of the B2B marketers said that they plan to increase their budgets for 2013.”
This is ALL important data! Your customers and prospects are searching for relevant data to help them in their buying decisions. You want to be that driver. You want to stay one step ahead of your competition, even industry colleagues, but to do this, you must be distributing value. Meeting pain points. Making sure your content conveys the information your audience is chasing.
John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing created a “Total Content System™” approach which allows you to “plan, delegate, curate, create, collaborate, repurpose and generally get far more out of every piece of content you produce.” If you would like to listen to his instructional podcast click here. His system revolves around creating a monthly list of content themes, choosing your delivery platforms, and then, integrating it with your business goals.
Picture this, you must
- Duct Tape Marketing Content Calendar
1. Create a content calendar (this is John’s example ) The Experience Farm offers you a FREE 2013 Editorial Calendar
2. Choose your delivery platforms. This could be social media, podcasts, webinars, e-newsletters, hardcopy, guest blog posts, ebooks, online newspapers, chat forums or any venues where your audience lives. John lists at least 10 platforms where he will deliver his content to reach his target market.
3. The last step is to integrate your monthly themes and delivery platforms with your company goals
“When you know what your theme is this month and next month all of a sudden books, tools, articles and conversations take on new meaning and seem to somehow organize themselves for the benefit of your ongoing, long-term approach.” John Jantsch
At this point, let’s review your already busy day, full of appointments, business development, revenue generation, client appreciation, troubleshooting, maybe speaking engagements and all the rest of your core competencies. How many other tasks and projects do you manage that represent other low payoff activities that would be better outsourced?
My direction here? You are well aware of the significance of content marketing for your 2013 business growth and exceeding last year’s goals. Correct? So what is next?
The drumroll please!! As an entrepreneur, I certainly understand your excessive use of company hats and believe me, it gets heavy. I wear too many myself, but I will share with you that I too have been outsourcing to my team of Virtual Assistants. I cannot and do not want to do it all myself. If I want to continually expand my business, then I must delegate and so must you.
“The first rule of management is delegation. Don’t try and do everything yourself because you can’t.” Anthea Turner
Maximize your potential. Focus on your core genius and let Ace Concierge manage the rest. We are not just here for your “one off” tasks and projects. Consider us your vested partner.
Let’s get your content marketing plan in place and kick off this year with a plan and a bang.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 6, 2013 | Entrepreneur, Small Business, Virtual Assistant
You don’t generate revenue by posting on your blog, scheduling social media updates, searching for relevant content or images for your e-newsletter, creating Google keyword alerts, content curation, editing/proofing your website or sending appointment reminders. While these sample tasks are vital to your daily business operation, they are all low payoff activities that do not directly produce income. They inhibit your “real” productivity. Sustainable growth is derived from doing more of what creates growth and less of what seizes your time in the name of growth. You must determine the most profitable use of your working hours.
“Simplify, delegate, or eliminate other low payoff routines and activities that absorb too much of your time. This common-sense approach frees you for productive work on high priority items.” Strategic Essentials
Your valuable time is best spent focusing on your core genius, doing what only YOU can do to produce revenue for your business. Essentially, your income is limited by your time. If you are hindered with all of the backend details and daily minutia, you are not able to concentrate on business development, customer experience, creating relationships, engaging with your tribe, creating new products, planning your goals and action steps or networking with other industry thought leaders.
Case Study
Social Media Woes:
You are set up with some basic social media platforms, but realize that to create engagement, increase visibility, generate a sense of trust and build your tribe, you need some assistance.
Enter the Virtual Assistant:
- Discuss key market initiates, where do your clients commune, who is the competition
- Important industry keywords
- Create keyword alerts across multiple services
- Enhance social visual image of social media pages
- Set up news aggregators to deliver targeted content
- Create RSS feeds for industry blogs for post commenting or content generation
- Design content calendar
- Find/follow pertinent groups or lists
- Research, write and deliver relevant posts
- Edit/proof your blog content
- Regularly monitor and update your social media
- Other VA industry secrets employed! 🙂
In reviewing this list of a few of the social media management processes we administer, how much time do YOU have to spend to successfully handle your online reputation and brand?
These are low payoff activities but in the digital world, they are crucial essentials to building your positive online presence.
If you want to operate at your maximum efficiency level, focusing on only your high payoff activities, please contact us today!
Let’s create your strategy together.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 4, 2013 | Delegation, Entrepreneur, Social Media
Welcome to the first week of 2013 and what a productive week it was: new clients, consults and projects!
As a Virtual Assistant, part of my day is content curation and this affords me the opportunity to do quite a bit of reading. While some days it seems like a digital overload and my bandwidth has far exceeded it’s elasticity. I love to find relevant content to put into play or share with my network to help demonstrate the positive growth opportunities that can be achieved via outsourcing.
I am very passionate about it and not just because it is my business, but because it works; because it is true; because there is “science” to prove it. With 168 hours in the work week, it is important to choose your activities and projects that make the most sense for yourself and your business. The Sales Blog said: “Successful people spend their time where they create value. They delegate, eliminate, or defer activities where they cannot create value.”
Three of my favorite topics are time management, productivity and delegating as they all support you, your organization and goals for success. This theme seemed to be very prevalent across many news platforms and blogs this week which further supports the evidence that in order to experience growth, you need these key elements.
Weekly Words of Wisdom
“A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.” Brian Tracy
“As a business owner it can be difficult to let someone else take care of your baby, but it is almost always in the business’s best interest to create a team with diverse and useful skills to improve processes.” Curt Finch
“If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.” Lee Iacocca
“Smart outsourcing means remembering just because I can do something, doesn’t mean I should be doing something.” Trista Harris
“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” Jim Rohn
Weekly Relevant Content
The Productivity Issue Fast Company: an incredible compilation of resource articles
Delegate and Know When to Let Go of Small Business Operations Small Business Trends
30sec Tip: Identify Your Peak Hour of Productivity Life Hacker
4 Fantastic Time Management Quotes & How To Put Them Into Practice Pick the Brain
80% Is Good Enough: Grow Your Business By Delegating Forbes
How To Outsource Your Most Dreaded Tasks Fast Company
My New Productivity Tweaks for 2013 Ray Edwards
These are just a few of the articles that delighted me this week. They truly are eye candy or should I say brain candy for me and further exemplify the clear need for time management, productivity tools (plans) and delegation in order to experience personal and professional growth.
Wishing you a successful and productive 2013.
