by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Apr 16, 2013 | Delegation, Time Management, Virtual Assistant
Image credit: actioncoach.com
As a virtual assistant I try to help educate my clients and prospects on the high value of delegating some of your daily business operations to better leverage your time and your skills. It is a low cost, high payoff activity to maximize your business growth. As entrepreneurs, the amount of hats we must wear can be overwhelming and very time consuming. It is almost impossible to do it all and perform at 100% of our capabilities. We can become worn out, lose track of time, have higher stress levels, become distracted, less focused, inhibit our productivity, have a decreased work life balance, miss deadlines, become backlogged or not complete our To Do lists. These things are not acceptable and will not foster growth and forward movement.
“It’s important to be working on tasks that have the biggest impact on the growth of your business–everything else should be delegated.” Iyla Pozin
I have learned the fine art of delegation as well. I certainly can’t preach the value of outsourcing to my clients if I am not doing it as well. Once I began delegating more of my daily business operations and back end admin tasks, there was a sigh of relief. The “aaahhh” feeling that I knew my team was helping me to be more effective and productive. I am a control freak; however, hand picking my personal virtual assistants gave me the confidence I needed to be able to send them tasks and projects.
Delegating has given me more time to work ON my business rather than IN it. I continually refine and revisit what I will outsource, as there is always room for improvement but if I am going to make suggestions to you, I too must follow the same premise. I have also discovered that the more I read, research, and learn about new tools for you, the more I apply them to my own business. I am grateful that you have chosen Ace as your virtual assistant. It is because of YOU that I too have been able to flourish and become even more productive, which I didn’t think was possible being so OCD about time management and productivity.
“If you are ever going to grow your business beyond what you can contain in the grasp of your outstretched arms, you’ll have to let go of a great deal of what you do to fill each day.” John Jantsch.
What will you delegate today?
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 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 | Dec 18, 2012 | Entrepreneur, Life Thoughts
Feeling like you live in a shadow but dream of success requires that you don’t merely step out of your comfort zone, but you LEAP, JUMP, SCREAM or otherwise take some real concrete actions to ensure your aspirations become realities. Sitting on the sidelines with an “oh poor me” will NOT take you to the mountain top.
You must decide what is it that you truly want! Something definitive and tangible.
If you have been floating within mediocrity, feeling just reasonably comfortable but suddenly realize there is more. YOU WANT MORE! Well, what are you willing to do for it? What will you commit to?
There can be some harsh revelations during the eye opening beginning. Learning what you did wrong, to teach yourself what you can do right.
What you can do better!
Some of us may not want to admit mistakes or past errors, but until you see the failures, it is more difficult to plan your successes.
You may see other industry colleagues thriving, flourishing, while you are only treading water. You know your legs are tiring from the constancy of monotony.
Your recognition needs to act as a positive upsurge, your motivator. Create your strategy; your plan to achieve your goals.
Envision your end result and work backwards with a detailed outline of how you will make it all happen. Record timelines, players, procedures, activities and any other structures or elements that will drive you toward your end result.
- Make a vision board
- Partner with your task force
- Seek a mentor
- Create a daily schedule/To Dos
- Write out your processes
- Enlist “industry experts
- Enhance your skill-set
- Measure or track your successes/failures
- Have a deadline
It is your playing field and if you want that touchdown you must write the playbook to score.
Now get in the game.
Learn the action steps, the stakeholders and commit to creating the life you want and deserve.
”Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes… but no plans.” –Peter F. Drucker
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | May 29, 2012 | Entrepreneur
Follow your passion. We all hear that but what does it take to make your dreams come true?
Blood, sweat and tears. Oh my!
As children we may have dreamed the biggest dreams, the treasures of life and what we wanted for our future. As our life unfolded and we matured, that may have evolved into a different vision. Our personal lives and experiences, shaped and molded us on our journey, helping us to discover what we are truly made of. We learned lessons along the way, accepted what we could not change, while continuing with additional drivers toward our goals. We saw what we wanted and we took every step, every measure, to ensure our pot of gold was within reach.
Steve Jobs: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Richard Branson: “My biggest motivation? Just to keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long University education that I never had – everyday I’m learning something new.”
Oprah Winfrey: “Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.”
Robert Collier: “The great successful men of the world have used their imagination? They think ahead and create their mental picture in all its details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that a bit, but steadily building – steadily building.”
Brian Tracy: “Personal development is your springboard to personal excellence. Ongoing, continuous, non-stop personal development literally assures you that there is no limit to what you can accomplish.”
Linda Chandler: Think P.I.G. – that’s my motto. P stands for Persistence, I stands for Integrity, and G stands for Guts. These are the ingredients for a successful business and a successful life.”
Anita Roddick: “I have always found that my view of success has been iconoclastic: success to me is not about money or status or fame, its about finding a livelihood that brings me joy and self-sufficiency and a sense of contributing to the world.”
Warren Buffett: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
Jim Rohn: “Formal education will make you a living, self education will make you a fortune.”
Michael Gerber: “The entrepreneur is not really interested in doing the work; he is interested in creating the way the company operates. In that regard, the entrepreneur is an inventor. He or she loves to invent, but does not love to manufacture or sell or distribute what he or she invents.”
Biz Stone: “Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.”
Walt Disney: “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
What are your motivators?
