by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Nov 12, 2013 | Entrepreneur, Virtual Assistant
When you are looking for a vested partner, your goal should be someone with an entrepreneurial mindset who understands what it takes to not only get up and running, but who knows how to thrive in business. While you can certainly choose an offshore call center to help manage day to day tasks, you will be missing out on the bigger part of your business success, a trusted like-minded entrepreneur.
“Which do you think will build a stronger company over time? A technically competent team of people who share no collective set of motivations, styles or goals – or – a technically competent team of people who are united by a clearly articulated set of values and expectations the CEO has both described to them and tested for during the interview process? It’s not a trick question.” Hunter Walk
Finding the right fit goes beyond technical skills or a likeable personality. It takes a certain kind of individual to start and operate a company. A degree or a previous title doesn’t make you an entrepreneur. It also isn’t about someone who wants to turn a hobby into a 9-5 job or someone who only wants to cut a paycheck. There is more to it than that.
Owning and operating your own business requires a commitment to 24/7/365 days a year. It isn’t something you just dabble in “willy nilly.” In the beginning you may be wearing all of the hats, living and breathing every facet of the business, even in your sleep. There is no rest. No downtime.
The Entrepreneur:
- Methodical
- Courageous
- Strong time management and planning
- Organized
- Productive
- Strategic
- Critical thinker
- Insightful
- Intuitive
- Communicator
- Enthusiastic
- Problem solver
- Overly committed
- Driven
- Innovative
- Ability to pivot
- Open to change
- Ready for failure
- Readiness to begin again
These are innate qualities that you will never learn in business school.
It is what is in your head. What lives in your heart. How you survive and thrive in life.
Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding says: “To be perfectly blunt, people with hard skills are a dime a dozen. A high-school kid can probably learn most of the hard skills that would be required to do just about any job, but it’s doubtful that he or she would have the emotional maturity and people skills to make it in a Fortune 200 company.”
In the search for your virtual assistant, think about the match that is most important to you. What do you value most?
You are secure on who YOU are as well as the value and expertise you bring to your clients and the marketplace. Don’t you want and need the same type of support from your team? Someone who fully understands your needs, culture and business?
“Formal education will make you a living, self-education will make you a fortune.” Jim Rohn
Who is the best fit for your company? When interviewing your prospective virtual assistants, due diligence is a necessity. Not just a quick SKYPE interaction.
- Learn about them. Why did they get into the business? Here’s my story.
- What struggles have they faced and how did they overcome them.
- What are their goals?
- Speak with their past and current clients.
- Read their online testimonials.
- Google them: what social media platforms do they use? Is their branding consistent? What types of posts do they write? Is their blog up to date?
- What personality traits present most strongly in their online communications?
- Do you feel that they are transparent and open?
Find the real treasure, the driven entrepreneurial virtual assistant who is truly devoted to your dreams of success.
Look for a partner, not an automated task doer.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Sep 30, 2013 | Delegation, Productivity, Small Business
Business growth depends on your ability to leverage time, money, expertise and “human” power. As you have probably discovered, it is virtually impossible to manage every single task, system and project in your business, all by yourself. There just aren’t enough hours in the day to operate at 100% effectiveness, 100% of the time. Even with your action lists and priorities, you only have two hands and one pair of eyes. Your income is limited by your time.
Can you just imagine how freeing it would feel to be able to count on someone else for support? A team partner? Someone who is vested in the success of your business while still saving you money?
The answer for your small business?
Leverage the power of other people’s strengths and time so YOU can get more done: focus on your core genius to scale your business to the next level. Think of all of the everyday mundane tasks that while necessary, do not represent direct in-pocket revenue for you. Why do you use your valuable time for these low payoff activities?
“Within the first 6 months I added a virtual bookkeeper and personal assistant. I went from making about $4,500/month to making over $15,000/month.” Melanie Benson Strick
- What tasks do you perform on a daily basis that actually generate income?
- What projects or business operations are required, but are not money makers?
- Which of the two take up most of your day?
- What is on your plate, that shouldn’t be part of your steady diet?
Are you truly cognizant of all of the hours you spend on basic office administration? Project management? Social media? inbound marketing?
This is just a small sampling of what you should be outsourcing so you can focus your time on what you do best. How many of these low payoff activities do you manage every day?
- Triaging and responding to emails
- Creating email templates
- Researching statistics and industry data
- Content curation
- Social media best practices
- Social media automation tips and tools
- Sending out client birthday/holiday cards
- Travel planning
- Editing, proofing blog posts
- Image search and creation
- Uploading blog posts and adding SEO
- Creating systems
- Tracking deliverables
- Generating office policy and procedure docs
- Researching online business tools
- Managing your database
- Creating spreadsheets
- Managing your online newsletter
- Tracking web statistics
- Testing new software
- Interface with team members
- Blog promotion
- Cross promoting your content on social media channels
- Calendar and appointment scheduling
“Exceptional leaders, however, understand the importance of and how to surround themselves with exceptional talent and delegate tasks and responsibility to them.” Peter Gasca
How much more do you think you could accomplish if you outsourced just 5-10 hours per week? I am not suggesting anything new to you or something I don’t do myself. I have a phenomenal virtual assistant and without her tremendous assistance, I would go insane. When you continue to do it all, or attempt to, you become the bottleneck to your growth and expansion. If things are falling through the cracks, you have little time to yourself or you are a slave to your business, it is time to re-evaluate your systems.
What are you willing to give up in order to grow?
If you are interested in testing the waters or learning more, please contact us to discuss your business, operations, systems and how we can partner. Working through any apprehensions about working with a virtual assistant is easy with a little guidance and reassurance.
We can do this together.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Sep 19, 2013 | Time Management
Time management is always a hot topic as we seem to think we have so little time to effectively manage our days and have some semblance of work life balance. You too want to get more things accomplished while the clock keeps ticking and more tasks seem to pile up.
What can you do? Get a handle on your time, your interruptions and your distractions. Thanks to technology and the digital world, we are always connected and being bombarded with data overload. Crush the chaos. It can take all of the discipline you can muster to tune out the influx of information coming at you. Time can be an elusive mystery when you are in a constant struggle to find more of it, so it is up to you to invest in your time, in your life, in your business. The best thing you can do is learn to manage yourself to better manage your time. “Choice management.”
Determine where you want to be and who you want to be when you grow up and then, start planning.
4 Steps to Effective Time Management
Step One
Release your tie to your inbox.
It seems so simple, yet as soon as a notification pops up, off we go. Let’s see what came in. Every email does not need to create a sense of urgency. By continually monitoring your Smartphone and inbox, you generate a stop/start cycle in your work. It distracts you from your most current focus. You can let it go. Schedule specific times during the day to read emails. You can create an autoresponder letting your senders know the times you will be checking your email. You can also apply this to your phone, text messages and other IMs. Each time you stop to read a new message, you not only interrupt your work flow and concentration, but you tack on more time to complete a project, thereby decreasing your efficiency and productivity.
You must manage your Blackberry; do not let it manage you. Many executives check their smartphones throughout meetings and during off-hours. This is not good for concentration, and has a negative impact on decision making. Use it only in bursts: check emails for an hour or so and then put it away so you can focus on the task at hand. Richard Branson
Step Two
Have a plan!! A blueprint for success
Your outline or goal sheet will help to give you a roadmap to accomplish your objectives. When you don’t create a plan or at least a daily To Do list at minimum, your days are spent “willy nilly,” putting out fires, managing what you can remember, they daily influx of projects or the To Dos that are most current. You need a clear direction and plan, outlining your short term and long term goals for success enabling you to prioritize your tasks, projects and desired outcomes. You don’t want to wander aimlessly and miss an important oasis.
Prioritizing is the root of all small business evil. You must take the time to sit down and prioritize your day. Ideally before you leave the office, have a list written for the next day. Once you have a priority of daily tasks being organized becomes easy. Steve Freeman
Step Three
Tomorrow never comes! Tackle it now.
Procrastination is a killer of all things; don’t be fooled by putting something off until you feel like it or think there is a better time to finish up. The time is now, not later. Does your procrastination resemble a little fun on Pinterest, trolling Facebook profiles and your news feed or other types of busy work? Well, just stop right now and realize what you aren’t accomplishing. You are setting yourself up for doom and gloom because when you take the time to review your completed list, nothing got done or was only half managed. Set a To Do timer and commit to it. Forget the non-essentials, your time robbers and FOCUS!! Know what is important and why. Make your list with action steps and stick to it. Create task reminders. Use whatever system works for you, but use a system.
Step Four
Organize!
Organization enhances your time management and productivity. If you have to consistently search for documents,you are wasting your valuable time. File documents, emails, bookmark websites, make lists of your logins and remember everything has a place so keep it there. The more time you spend searching for things, the more time you lose.
You can learn to be more efficient in your time management which will in turn fire up your productivity.
What steps will you institute today?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jun 27, 2013 | Delegation, Small Business, Virtual Assistant
Yes! I do have one too and I am not sure how I would function without her or the rest of my team. You see, I do practice what I preach. Delegating isn’t just something I recommend for you and your business. I need to do it too.
WHY? Delegating daily tasks and projects enables me to be more productive and efficient. As a solo-preneur, there are only so many hats you can wear before you become overwhelmed and burdened with too many activities on your plate.
Scale for growth: In order to continue a path toward growth, I knew I needed to function at an optimum level. This meant outsourcing to my team enabling me to focus on core tasks that only I can do.
Two Fold Project: I wanted to expand my reach both locally and in my digital universe. In my daily content curation for my client base, I discovered a few articles about RSS feed directories and local online listings. I forwarded these to my trusted virtual assistant, including a few questions, wanting additional research, a compilation of the top sites for each and I also included the approximate time to be spent on each action step.
After a few clarifying e-mails, we had formulated a plan of action. I soon received a list of directories for both queries for approval along with some well thought out details and suggestions.
Results: I am now listed on several RSS feed directories who pull my blog posts while others require manual submission. The local directories have all been updated with my business information and links. Today, I received a spreadsheet containing all of the data, logins and submissions.
“That was easy.”
I can’t tell you how excited I was to have this time consuming project moved off my plate, giving me the time to manage other client business needs as well as other Ace projects.
Outsourcing gives me such great benefits beyond just time. I know I have a team to collaborate and brainstorm ideas. There is accountability. We meet virtually as needed and fully utilize a variety of tools to enhance communications and project management.
Feel the freedom and partner with a virtual assistant. I do.
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?
