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 26, 2012 | Entrepreneur, Time Management
What impedes your productivity? For many, it can be outside distractions or lack of dedicated focus. Here is a quick exercise to help you learn where you may need to improve.
When you find your mind straying or you wander off task, make a hash mark # on a piece of paper, noting what you were supposed to be doing and how much time you allowed yourself OFF task. At the end of the day, review how many times you were distracted and how many hours you squandered on non-core activities.
What did you fully accomplish or complete? Any work that is not advancing you toward your professional or life goals should not be counted as “work.” These activities account for many wasted hours during your day. Much of the busyness that usurps your time may give you a sense of productivity, but being busy does not mean you are being productive or effectively contributing to your life’s work.
Part of being effective during your work hours is the discipline to spend time on what is truly important even if other things try to steer you off course. During your review of the hash marks, where did you spend most of your time? If you end the day with several half finished projects or other important activities that merely were pushed to the back burner because Facebook, text messages, Twitter or other more “fun” interactions, you may want to re-evaluate your focus and productivity levels.
Efficiency is learning about your awareness to, acceptance of and ability to determine your real work, the actual tasks and projects that propel you forward versus time suckers, bad habits, procrastination or other low payoff activities that take you away from your personal and professional aspirations. It is a continual building process and without a strong sturdy foundation, you may find yourself with a few cracks, leading to disaster, lost time or missed opportunities.
How will you commit to improving your productivity and limiting your distractions?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Dec 2, 2012 | Life Thoughts, Small Business
Smart entrepreneurs plan because they recognize that it will increase their probabilities for achievement. Important issues are less likely to fall through the cracks with formal outlines, processes and action steps. It’s a valuable tool that can make a substantial difference in the success or failure of a business or personal dreams.
Business development is about creating your dream of self-employment and spinning it into reality. A business plan is the document you produce when you take have an idea for a marketable endeavor and work through all the dynamics that will have an influence on the startup, operation, and management of the business.
Formulating your plan will help reduce time-wasting indecision and increase the likelihood of success. Without knowing where you’re going, it’s not really possible to plan, or make inroads toward goal achievement. Take a moment and look around, thinking about all of the things in your present environment, from the chair you sit on, the pen you use, the computer, your car or even the food you eat; they all began with a plan, a blueprint.
Dumb Little Man: ”A mansion will not come out as grand and as breathtaking as it is unless there’s a good plan behind its construction. Same goes with the great and amazing things you want to obtain in your life. Plan, and plan well. Make sure your plan is feasible, doable, and effective. Also, it pays to think and plot an alternative plan or a plan B, in case your initial plan does not work.”
Managing our own lives and businesses is hard enough but without written goals and action steps, we are just going through the motions, yearning for success and growth. It is important to visualize what we want and expect. It is from this starting point that enables us to map out our plan to facilitate action and forward movement.
There are many options to formulating your plan of action, from spreadsheets, mindmaps, flowcharts or just a word document, but whichever tool you choose should be one you will faithfully utilize and implement otherwise, it will be an exercise in futility and there aren’t enough hours in the day to justify wasted time, energy or effort. Your plan can outline all of your goals, action steps, timelines and a To Do list to help drive your dreams to the finish line. c into a reality but instituting a thought out functional strategy will.
How will you launch your inspirations from a concept to a tangible outcome?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Nov 8, 2012 | Virtual Assistant
I am so glad you asked.
The life and times of a Virtual Assistant (VA) offers a very diverse day of managing numerous tasks and projects. While some VAs have chosen to work with only one specific niche market, I prefer to partner with different types of entrepreneurs, ensuring a sundry of daily operations: keeping it fresh, challenging and exciting.
The Holiday Inn Express ad campaign, “Stay Smart” depicts people doing extraordinary feats after being a hotel guest. While I haven’t averted a nuclear disaster or wrestled with a great white shark, I have been given the great opportunity to enrich my mind on a myriad of topics and industries that I never would have otherwise stopped to read or study.
I am sincerely grateful and honored for each and every client that has partnered with Ace Concierge. As noted in a prior post, I am living my passion of giving back to others – this isn’t just a job or paycheck. I thrive on helping my client base with their time management, productivity, work life balance and stress reduction, all in the form of remotely managing their projects and daily business operations.
Whether creating a document, searching for social media content or proofreading blog posts and websites, I have had the great fortune to improve or enhance my knowledge on many subjects and honestly some are absolutely fascinating!! Some of the topics I have read/researched are:
- Tissue engineering
- Biotechnology
- Regenerative medicine
- Organizational development
- Intellectual property rights
- Personal Injury Insurance
- Graphic illustration
- Leadership
- IV therapies
- Juicing
- Raw foods
- Start-up planning
- Business growth planning
- Venture capital
- Angel investing
- Cosmetic surgery
- Social media
The list continues to expand on a daily basis and I love every second that I am asked to read, write, report, post or edit. Being a Virtual Assistant IS like staying at the Holiday Inn Express. Never stop reading and expanding your mind – I know I won’t.
What have you learned lately?
