by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Mar 27, 2013 | Delegation, Guest Blogger, Virtual Assistant
Have you ever watched popcorn pop?
It appears to be doing nothing and suddenly a loud burst and a hard kernel turns white and fluffy and jumps into the air! Then others begin to follow and the bursts become more frequent. Then the popping gets faster and louder and suddenly you have gone from a handful of kernals to a bowl of popcorn!
My brain works la lot like a popcorn popper. I can be in meetings, in the middle of conversations, reading, watching television or sound asleep and suddenly it as if someone has turned up the heat and the ideas start popping. …Fun but hard to follow – sometimes even for me!
Many times in my life I’ve sat in meetings and had so much popcorn flying around in my brain that it was hard to sort out and articulate it in a way that others could follow. (It can also be hard to listen to others with all of the popcorn flying around!)
Over-time I learned that in order for those kernels to mean anything to anyone else, I need to create bite-sized popcorn balls before I shared them.
• For me that means pulling those kernels from my brain and writing them down.
• Then thinking through what is there and sometimes just letting it sit for awhile.
• It means researching and reading, and listening, thinking and then “balling” the perfect kernels.
• Doing all of that takes time.
• But it helps me turn mountains of data and stories into something meaningful.
• In that process I learn and grow and am better equipped to help others.
As a small business owner I’ve learned that spending my time in that space is one of the most important things I can do. And as a result I’ve decided to hire a Virtual Assistant so that I can stay focused on listening, learning, sorting and “balling”!
Shortly after I made that decision, I read this article about Einstein. Wow! What a powerful way to reinforce that decision!
So tell me: In your position what should you spend more time on?
Guest post via:
Chery Gegelman, President
Giana Consulting LLC
Chery helps individuals and organizations seek truth, connect dots, solve problems and amplify their potential. She is a co-author of the Lead Change book “The Character-Based Leader.”
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.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Dec 30, 2012 | Entrepreneur, Small Business
From the time I was little, I can always remember my parents preparing meals from scratch. I don’t think I had ever seen a “box” of anything used as an ingredient or a starter. From the cooking to the presentation and even the table setting, everything was not only visually beautiful, but divinely delicious. Whether it was a holiday, family celebration or a simple dinner, they expended great effort, love and care in every morsel! This love and passion for food represented more than merely the building blocks for a gastric feast, but generated a powerful role model for each of their children’s drive for success, character development and yearning for business acumen.
To this day, everything I make is from fresh, whole ingredients. Last week I was boiling a chicken carcass to make homemade soup and as I watched it simmer, it was one of those Ah Ha moments realizing that being an entrepreneur is similar to cooking. If you want the best flavor from your soup, you must simmer the bones in chicken broth for about two days to extract the flavor of the marrow, chill the soup, remove the fat, pull the meat off the bones, add your vegetables and fresh herbs and simmer again. It is a much longer process than simply popping open a can, but if you want the best outcome, then begin with the making the time and incorporating top ingredients. There are no shortcuts or quick fixes to build the company of your dreams. It requires an extensive amount of dedication, commitment and full-time effort. My soup exploded with flavors, great pride and passion for doing my best.
“Build it and they will come” will not propagate a thriving business. When you choose to become an entrepreneur, you not only commit to yourself, but to your stakeholders as well. You have a responsibility to them to grow and generate the best company you can and this requires a 365 day a year dedication and perseverance. It is not just a whim or a hobby. It is a perpetual cultivation process of business development, goals, service, leadership, insight, customer experience, troubleshooting and so on to ensure prosperity and success on all levels.
Your eyes are not fooling you. The image above is not my chicken soup, but my father’s famous cheesecake which takes 2.5 days to create and you will NEVER find any other cheesecake as richly and sinfully phenomenal.
Serve your business with the passion and all of the time it deserves.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Dec 27, 2012 | Virtual Assistant
Tight schedules, daunting To Do lists, endless commitments, overload of emails, phone calls, appointments and an ever expanding digital world makes it extremely difficult to effectively and efficiently manage our busy lives. We all know how important delegation is in relation to the success of our businesses. It is virtually impossible to execute all aspects of our daily grind, expecting gargantuan growth, innovation and revenue. There just aren’t enough hours in the day to focus on the back end admin tasks in addition to business development, forward expansion, generation of revenue, or creating the sought after customer experience.
“So unless it’s possible for you to get 10x more productive or work 10x harder, it’s physically impossible to grow your business without more people. Your business requires the hours that only more human beings can give you! Delegation is essential for hyper growth in a business.” Laura Roeder
Have you ever considered keeping track of every task or project that you work on during the week? How many of these represent your core genius or your passion? Do they generate income or are they simply some of the necessary tasks, marketing, social media or administrative duties that are part of your daily business operations?
Seriously, are these the best use of your time? Do you need to be uploading your blog posts, scheduling your e-newsletters, proofing/editing documents, responding to all emails, searching for article content, creating PowerPoints, calling vendors, confirming appointments, or managing all aspects of your social media posts? You know that this is just the tip of the iceberg of the activities that must be managed on a daily basis – all part of marketing, online reputation, visibility, customer engagement, loyalty building and so on. BUT, as vital as they all are, YOU don’t need to be doing them all. These activities are time consuming, sometimes tedious and certainly take you away from your core objectives.
Everybody needs a team to thrive and prosper. “The fact is this: Delegating tasks to others can save you a great deal of time and allow you to focus that time on the highest value-added tasks,” states Dave Lavinsky in Do Less, Achieve More: The Beauty Of Effective Delegation This excellent article posted on Fast Company clearly reiterates the fact that as an entrepreneur, you should be focusing your time on the tasks that ONLY you can do and outsource the rest. All of the low payoff day to day things are not a valuable use of your time. With only one person wearing multiple hats, there is only so far you are able to evolve.
“If you are the one consulting, you need someone else to handle client expectations, emails and scheduling. It’s always sticky if you are the one who is answering questions, invoicing and dealing with the smaller details. It can not only be disruptive to your work, but it can give the impression that you’re wearing too many hats.” Angela Jia Kim in How a One-Person Show Can Look Bigger to Clients. “You can hire a virtual assistant for just an hour or two a day to check customer-service emails, follow your process of welcoming new clients and issue invoices. If you go this route, set yourself up as if you are already a bigger firm.”
“Delegation doesn’t come naturally to many small-business owners. However, if we want healthy, sustainable business and personal lives, delegation is a critical art to master.” Nellie Akalp, “6 Tips to Master the Art of Delegation.
As mentioned above, spend one week recording every task or project you worked on and the time required to complete it. Along with that, note if it was a direct income generator (IG) or simply a day to day activity (D2D). Tally up the hours for the 2 categories IG or D2D and think about what should have been the best use of your time. What could you have delegated? If you had spent 8 hours on low value projects, imagine what you could have accomplished in that time.
What is your strategy for growth? How will you institute change for 2013?
