by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Sep 10, 2015 | Delegation, Virtual Assistant
Whether you are a budding entrepreneur or an established business, you can’t do it all yourself. Who can possibly wear all of the hats required to operate a successful viable business? Not many that I know of. It takes a cohesive team to manage each division of your business. You may already work with an attorney, a CPA, or even a graphic designer, but what about the balance of your everyday business operations? The daily administrative and backend details that keep you flowing, productive, and focused on your core genius?
A virtual assistant can change your life, giving you back your day so you can work on the tasks that will take your business to incredible new places. Brandon Turner
Partnering with a Virtual Assistant is a low cost, high payoff solution to enable you to work ON your business rather than IN it. This is such a cliche, but it holds true. If you are buried in the everyday, mundane activities then you don’t have the time or energy to focus real efforts on business development, client retention, troubleshooting or building relationships. And, as you know, your online presence depends on developing a human, touchable brand.
What can a Virtual Assistant do for you?
This is the simple shortlist of what you should delegate to a virtual assistant. There are literally hundreds of tasks and projects that you do within your business that aren’t the key drivers to generate income and don’t represent the best value of your time. If you’d like to see where your time is spent (not invested), keep a daily log of what you do, how much time you spend on tasks, and what is accomplished. You may be surprised at the end of the week to realize that you are more “busy” than productive.
“As all entrepreneurs know, you live and die by your ability to prioritize. You must focus on the most important, mission-critical tasks each day and night, and then share, delegate, delay or skip the rest.” Jessica Jackley
Take back your time to scale your business with a Virtual Assistant partnership.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Aug 25, 2015 | Delegation, Entrepreneur, Virtual Assistant
With the various new forms of technology, there have never been more ways to enrich your life as an entrepreneur, reach your target audience and grow your business. The only problem is, how can you manage everything? Software, apps and other tools might help, but the overwhelming list of tasks can be excessively time consuming if you are a solopreneur.
A solution that is exceptionally effective is to outsource your administrative and back end tasks. Some business owners balk at the idea, wondering if they will have enough resources and comfort level to make it feasible. However, statistics compiled over the last decade have revealed a growing trend, with over 43% of companies now using outsourcing to help successfully manage their business operations. It makes perfect sense, since the more power we have behind us; the more work we are capable of doing. You can achieve more by doing less.
If you are new to the outsourcing concept, these 5 high level steps can help you streamline this process and get the ball rolling to free up your time and your mind.
- DETERMINE WHAT YOU CAN OUTSOURCE
Typically, at Ace Concierge, LLC we assess the type of tasks associated with your business functions and daily management. They might fall under two categories: highly repetitive tasks, such as data entry, social media management and blogging; or more specialized knowledge, such as accounts payable or web design. You may also have your own list according to your industry and niche in addition to the day to day necessities of processes and procedures. Once we have determined a list of tasks you’d like to outsource, we can determine the skill level needed and begin to narrow down your options.
- WEIGH THE COST VS BENEFITS OF OUTSOURCING
Begin with determining your own time value and where you should prioritize your efforts. If you tend to bury yourself in the daily minutia, for example, social media, editing, proofing, or curating content, it is here you need to ask yourself if this is the best value of your time? Is this your expertise, why you started your business? More often than not, it doesn’t represent your core genius, won’t provide an immediate return and isn’t a fundamental function of your company. While these tasks and activities represent daily necessities of an online presence, they don’t embody the crux of your knowledge and capabilities.
As an entrepreneur, your time needs to be protected, leveraged and highly valued. Outsourcing maintains these properties keeping you highly effective and focused on your business, growth, development and other primary structures of operations. Delegating allows you to forgo other things you would pay an actual employee, such as insurance, training, extra office space, supplies, and benefits. Instead, you are only paying for the project time which is a tremendous cost savings.
- DECIDING WHO TO OUTSOURCE TO
One of the most popular questions we get asked is, “Who should we use? How do we know they’ll do a good job?” As the old saying goes, “You get what you pay for.” There are many opportunities to find cheap labor from developing countries, but the difference in hours, language barriers and skills can sometimes pose a problem. These are options you must consider, especially if you are presenting their work to your own clients.
Consider partnering with another entrepreneurial like-minded individual as they will understand what it takes to own and operate a successful, viable company. If you only choose someone based upon price, a “one-off task master” then that is all you will receive. Point A to Point B with nothing in between. Think in terms of a virtual business partner who has your best interests at heart. Someone who invests in you, your time and your company to help you achieve your goals.
- CREATE A PLAN AND EXPECTATIONS
One mistake we frequently hear from business owners is frustration when a project is delivered and it’s not what was expected, it wasn’t on time, or it was not successfully executed. Clearly plan and outline for accountability and outcomes, keeping all lines of communication open. We try to stress the importance of a strategy that all agree upon to ensure that all needs and requirements are met or exceeded. It is difficult enough to give up what you have always done so it’s vital to create a solid foundation with dialog, expectations and feedback.
- RELINQUISH CONTROL
The hardest step business owners tend to have is relinquishing control and letting the person or business you’ve hired do their job. Remember, you’re outsourcing for a reason. You need to focus your time and energy on other more important, high payoff activities relative to your business. It doesn’t make sense to outsource a project or task and manage it from afar. If that’s the case, you should save your money and do it yourself!
Assigning the control to someone else can be nerve racking, especially if you’ve been involved in every aspect of the business from the start. As Ace Concierge, LLC has continued to practice outsourcing ourselves, as well as accomplishing administrative tasks and business management operations on behalf of our own clients, we’ve seen an increase both in productivity and the efficiency with which we can grow our businesses.
Leveraging time, expertise and a team is a growth mentality. It’s worked for us, and we’d love to show you how it can work for you!
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Dec 17, 2014 | Delegation, Small Business, Virtual Assistant
Owning and operating a scalable business takes a team to fortify the back end, the daily routines, the foundational systems, and processes, let alone the everyday task of social media. After you’ve done it all yourself day after day and you’re ready for a business lifeline, take heed of my client’s advice to other business owners and start-ups. Cultivate the business mindset for growth and profit. You don’t have to go it alone, nor should you.
Humbled and honored by a client’s written word, I’d like to share his opinion about our long-time valued partnership.
Besides transcribing shows Suzie helped organize timelines and tasks for my books, edited and proofed them, served as a sounding board giving much-needed feedback, she found online collaboration tools to help facilitate an easier process, she’s schooled me on social media tools, made introductions to other resources and been an avid cheerleader and friend.
Her role has been a key factor in reaching my goals.
You’re hiring a partner, a coach, an employee, even a boss when you hire the right virtual assistant. If you hire the right virtual assistant, your life is made easier and more productive.
Have you truly got the time to build your business, generate revenue, and manage ALL of the necessary components of your company? Single-handedly?
Take some time to investigate your options for growth. If you haven’t already, write out your goals, both short term, and long term, including action steps and a timeline. List every hat in the company with about how much time you SHOULD invest and DO invest in each. Are there places that are falling between the cracks? Projects or responsibilities that never seem to get finished or even started?
Upon review, are you a superhero with a magic red cape who can do it all and be it all to everyone? Make an honest and sincere assessment of your organization? Can it withstand just one person at the helm or would you benefit from a co-pilot? A little scrutiny goes a long way toward your successful longevity.
If you’re still not sure about delegating, here is another client exchange:
I actually found Suzie from internet/social media, her posts and activity was something we were trying to do so I figured if she could do it for herself she could do it for us. Suzie wasn’t my first attempt at a VA, the 1st one didn’t work out mostly because our styles didn’t fit together.
My personality is that I know what I don’t want more than what I do want ….so people who work with us have to be able to think things thru and come up with solutions. I’m not good at giving detailed specific instructions. I tried Suzie on a couple of ugly projects and she worked thru them, she pushed me when I needed pushing and she made the decisions when she knew she was right.
Suzie could do the specific projects faster than we could do them, get them done on time better than us and all though my cost per hour for Suzie vs some of my employees is much higher, I found that it takes Suzie less time and it takes no supervision from me.
Don’t get hung up on a comparison of hourly costs and don’t think a VA is for the grunt work. Hiring a VA is a way to get another smart person on your staff at a low overall cost.
Delegating allows you to:
- Focus on your core genius: Do what you must do: the tasks and projects that ONLY you can and should be doing. The mainstay of your company.
- Increase your productivity: You can work on more high-level business operations instead of the routine and mundane day to day necessities.
- Eliminate distractions: There are many daily tasks that don’t require your immediate attention. Moving those off of your plate diminishes notifications and multi-tasking.
- Be client/company centric: You have more time to dedicate to building your business structures and relationships.
- Reduce your stress: You’ve got a vested partner working behind the scenes to ensure that everything is efficient, successful, and administered in a timely fashion.
- Bolster your work-life balance: The more you are able to move off of your desk, the more time you gain for your personal life. Nix the nights and weekends.
These are some time-saving and life-saving benefits for the entrepreneur. The gift of time is something we all need more of. If you want to seriously focus on what is important, rather than on what needs to be done, delegating might just be the tool for you.
When you do less, you achieve more.
If you’re ready for a few upgrades in 2015, contact us for a free consultation.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Oct 15, 2014 | Delegation, Entrepreneur, Productivity, Time Management, Virtual Assistant
Do more –achieve more is a recipe for exhaustion and collapse. And you are probably tired of being tired right? Doing more does not make you more productive or efficient. In fact, the more that you heap onto your plate, the less you are able to effectively manage. Your proficiency decreases.
Identify the essential and eliminate the unnecessary.
Learn to think creatively to find more effective ways of getting things done is nothing new- work smarter, not harder. Putting in laborious hours into your day doesn’t necessarily equate to powerful payoffs of valued activities. Just think of the wasted hours surfing the net or scrolling through social media updates. That is time used. Time wasted. Get the things done that add value and impact to your life and your business.
1. Do LESS – ACHIEVE more
How is that possible?
It sounds pretty silly doesn’t it?
Kick start doing less:
- Learn to say no
- Set boundaries and priorities
- Resist the urge to be busy
- Slow down – be fully present in whatever you are doing
- Stop multi-tasking. It’s counter productive
- Finish projects, don’t just check off a few To Do items
- Reduce distractions
2. Do LESS – ACHIEVE more
How could you give up tasks and projects yet increase your productivity and effectiveness? Here’s the little secret …
D E L E G A T I O N
Entrepreneurs are accustomed to doing it all from changing printer ink, uploading tweets, proofing blog posts and ordering supplies to curating content, creating images, retweeting and sharing content and testing the latest social media apps.
This is just the short list of every day, mundane To Dos that eat up time and energy. Have you ever truly kept track of the hours you spend on the low payoff routine activities? What is your tally? 20+ hours perhaps?
This is time you are not working ON your business. If you aren’t, then who will? With only one person at the helm, there is only so far that you can scale. While it isn’t easy to relinquish some of your daily demands, it is a tremendous benefit to free up your valuable time and avoid burnout.
VALUED FOCUS
As a business owner you need to focus on the items that are of the most value to you and your company. Simply put, the things that YOU and ONLY you are capable of doing. The core business activities that: generate income, build relationships, nurture clients, develop new leads or foster a positive customer experience. You get the idea. Structure your day around these key elements.
Remember that old 80/20 rule?
Apply it here. You know that 20% of your efforts yields 80% of favored results. The trick is to determine what represents that 20% and DO MORE OF IT! Live and breathe that as your core genius.
The Pareto Principle, or “80/20 Rule” as it is frequently called today, is an incredible tool for growing your business. For instance, if you can figure out which 20% of your time produces 80% of your business’ results, you can spend more time on those activities and less time on others. This doesn’t mean that the low payoff tasks and projects aren’t useful or worthwhile to your business – they are. BUT, they don’t exemplify the best use of YOUR time.
You’re the CEO not an employee. Of course it can be a challenge to step outside of that role, removing a few hats and grabbing the reins but as the President, you owe it to your company to take charge. You owe it to your clients and prospects.
If you buried deep in paperwork and social icons, how do you intend to shake hands and build long-lasting relationships? You all have a propensity to take on more work, do every task or project which leaves you overwhelmed and distracted. This cycle needs to stop before you do.
Don’t keep adding more work.
Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all. Peter Drucker
When you are able to focus on fewer things you increase your productivity and achieve better results. AND you want results. Every business owner does.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What are THE most important core business activities that you should be doing?
- What generates revenue?
- What leverage points produce the greatest results
You now have some key items or tasks that you have identified that do not need your focused attention. You have three options: do, dump or delegate. Make an executive decision on how you will manage or pass off these non-essentials. Consider what you will gain when you are no longer tied up doing some of the daily minutia.
Do less Achieve more!
What will you give up….. to gain?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Sep 24, 2014 | Content Marketing, Organization, Productivity, Small Business, Time Management
Bleary eyed and reaching for your coffee, you boot up your computer and start your daily diet of content consumption. It is a filling nourishment of words, intel, fired up neurons and brain overload. Or at least it can be. Personally, I can spend hours reading all of the articles on social platforms, news aggregators, daily digests, emails and newsletters. Sometimes I think my head will explode.
Research demonstrates that we take in five times as much information as we did 30 years ago, raising huge challenges to organize it all.
We are drowning in data.
In a 2010 LexisNexis study, 62% of workers felt as though their quality of work suffered at times because they couldn’t sort through the information they needed fast enough.
There is so much to digest and learn. I could be bookmarking and saving content all day long. There are hundreds of talented bloggers and business owners sharing their incredible knowledge of tools, tips, recommendations and experiences. It can be overwhelming. Think of how many times you get sucked in to the black hole searching, clicking, and redirecting. It’s a vortex.
How do you manage all of the content? There are tools to organize your content or to help you search and save but you also need to decide what you are going to do with the information. Daniel Levitan, author of “The Organized Mind,” says “Whenever we feel overwhelmed by everything we need to keep track of in life, we talk about wanting to get organized.”
You’ve chosen your sources, thought leaders and industry favorites to follow and “study” in your own college auditorium of higher learning. That’s what it sometimes feels like for me and without the outrageous tuition costs.
What is the purpose? Business or personal? How does it apply to your business? Customers? Colleagues?
What are your content goals?
- Self-education
- Curation
- Repurposing
- Inspirational
- Research
- Love of reading
If you’re like most of us, you have a business to run and can’t spend every waking moment culling and sifting through information. It’s a full time job. Who has the time to sit and read all day when you are trying to live the entrepreneurial dream?
Use filters and keywords help to refine your searches.
This will help to save time and improve your overall content management. If you have some systems in place, it will be much easier to sort through all of the posts you want to read and combat your information hangover.
Researchers tend to agree that it’s not the volume of information that is the problem; it’s our inability to organize and process it all without experiencing “information overload, or what neuroscientists like to call “cognitive overload. Saga Briggs
| Research |
Organize |
| Social Media |
Evernote |
| BuzzSumo |
Readability |
| Scoop.it |
Spreadsheets |
| Tagboard |
Swipe files |
| RSS feeds |
Bookmarks |
| ContentGems |
Files and folders |
| Hootsuite Content Feature |
One Note |
| Flipboard |
Feedly |
| Alltop |
Google Drive |
| Inbound.org |
Dropbox |
| Biz Sugar |
Pocket |
| Topsy |
Ubernote |
| Feedly |
Powerpoint |
Design a system that works for you to enhance your time management and productivity as well as minimize on the extreme overload of data and what to do with it all. A method to your madness is guaranteed to keep you on track and focused. Systems and processes are the architectural structure of your success and productivity.
Establish some routines; otherwise you hit a wall, letting things go and opportunities are forfeited. The routines could be time limits or specific times you will be searching, saving and filing. Time block when you will surf. If you discover something important during the day, “save” it somewhere to revisit later. Don’t let it be a distraction and take you away from your current task at hand.
Decide what to keep or implement NOW based upon it’s perceived impact on your goals. Prioritize to your needs. Is it something you must have or must know? If so, how soon will you be needing it? Use your organizing tools to keep track of the data, being mindful of how you will use it and when. Some articles may have a more immediate use while others are purely for reference. You decide, but take action.
Declutter: remember to go through your folders or storage options so they haven’t blossomed into an overload of organized data. Purge the old to make room for the new. There’s no sense in just letting everything pile up and multiply as that will defeat the purpose of your systems.
How do you challenge your content zombie? What helpful tools can you suggest?
