Tag Archives: business

A well-functioning team can’t function well if what’s important isn’t established.   As a business owner, it is important to relay the goals that you want to meet in the New Year with your virtual assistant or your virtual team.

Clear communication is the key to having a successful virtual team.  Schedule a conference call or Skype with them this month.  This kind of strategic communication allows your virtual assistant to fully understand your expectations and can alleviate any unnecessary confusion about your virtual assistant’s role in your plans.  You want to be clear about tasks you need help with and ask them for input on where they feel they can help you. Don’t forget that a virtual assistant’s role is to support you by accomplishing tasks that will help move your business forward.  If you VA isn’t privy to your business goals, than their professional input will be limited.

So,  schedule an hour  to talk with your virtual assistant or virtual team and let them know the goals, and the expectations that you have for making 2014 a prosperous year.

It is hard to believe that December is here and we will be welcoming in the New Year very soon.  Many of you still have a list of things to do before changing the calendar to 2014 that can be outsourced to a virtual assistant.

Here are 5 things to outsource for the end of the year push.

  1. Website Review.  Make sure all the information on your website is updated with new business testimonials and photos, so that the website is refreshed and ready for visitors in the new year.
  2. Email Organization.  Many of you should start the new year with an inbox that isn’t cluttered.  With proper guidance from you, have your virtual assistant purge both your active or reference-only emails and create folders to stay organized.
  3. Follow-Up Help. The end of the year is the perfect time for you to have your VA check on any open proposals, invoices and projects that you are working on, and make sure there is a plan in place for revisiting them after the holidays.
  4. Tax Preparation.  A VA with expertise in this area, can organize receipts, research end of the year charitable donations, or just look over business expenses.
  5. Marketing.  Make sure you have a plan in place for the new year.  Have your VA create an editorial calendar for blog posts, social media and print ads to help keep you organized and accountable.

 

Every business owner knows that decisions affecting your business have to be made pretty much every day.  There are easy decisions, and then there are those harder decisions that show up and create sleepless nights, stressful days and self doubt.  These are usually the decisions that are necessary to keep your business moving in the right direction.

For many business owners,  the biggest challenge isn’t making the right decision, it is doing or implementing it.  I love the quote by Tony Robbins, “ A real decision is measured by the fact that you have taken a new action. If there in no action then you haven’t truly decided”.

Think about how much time is wasted or lost making decisions that don’t ever come to fruition.

So, what are the main causes of decisions not being implemented?

  • Lack of Time?
  • Lack of Resources?
  • Lack of Motivation?
  • Lack of Finances?

Every business is different and every person handles decision-making differently. If you’re finding that more decisions are being made than are getting done, it’s time to pause, reflect, reorganize, and re-evaluate your processes  your resources and your time-management skills.

Let me know if you struggle with getting your business decisions moving from an idea to an action.

Keeping up with social media can get difficult, especially if you have a lot of accounts to deal with at the same time. Outsourcing your social media marketing can be the best way to keep your accounts active, engaging and relevant.

Here are 3 tasks a virtual assistant can help you with to maintain a strong social strategy:

  1. Pre-Writing and Scheduling Posts
    With the right direction and maybe a few examples, a professional virtual assistant can write posts or link to relevant articles that can be pre-scheduled using a social media management tool like Hootsuite,Tweet Deck, or Buffer.  This will ensure that your social reach stays active and your brand stays top of mind to your followers or fans.
  2. Researching Topics for Blogs
    Having someone research topics for your blogs posts can be the perfect task for a virtual assistant.  Most blogs posts can then be shared or linked through your social reach, which in turn can help drive traffic to your website.
  3. Monitoring Social Engagement, and Reputation Management
    If you are actively using social media or digital advertising to market yourself or your business, it is important to monitor your digital footprint.  A virtual assistant can take on that role, and respond to questions or comments, or let you know that a response is needed.   Having someone monitoring Yelp or other review websites can help you establish and protect your company’s reputation.

If you have reached the point where you no longer have the time to do it all and you are spending a lot of your business hours doing online marketing tasks then it’s time to work with a virtual assistant.

It’s our pleasure to introduce you to Marissa Levin.  We love having Marissa as a client of Assistant Match and we encourage you to connect with Marissa on her website or through social media if you would like to learn more about her business services.

1. What is the name of your business?
I actually have two businesses:

  • -Information Experts
  • Successful Culture

2. Where are you located?

I am located in Reston, VA

3.Describe your business and what you do:

Information Experts is the leader in integrated strategic communications, online learning, and human capital services.
Mission: To help our clients achieve their strategic objectives through the creation of compelling, transformative, and highly efficient communications and online learning solutions.
Values: Efficient. Reliable. Business-Focused. Solutions-Focused. Innovative. Committed to Responsible Flexibility.
Information Experts is an award-winning strategic communications and education firm. Our core areas of expertise include instructional design/elearning, strategic communications, human capital, and marketing communications & outreach.
We work with government agencies across all sectors, including civilian, defense, and intelligence. We also support numerous vertical markets in the commercial sector. We have won more than 90 awards for our creativity and leadership.

Successful Culture is the leading authority on building extraordinary organizational cultures to attract and keep extraordinary people.

Mission: To help every small business owner build high-growth, people-centric organizational cultures through CEO-to-CEO strategic consulting, enabling all employees and organizations to fulfill their potential.

Values: Integrity. Authenticity. Accountability. Connection. Experience. Transformation. Growth.

4. How has working with a virtual assistant helped you overcome daily challenges associated with being a business owner?

My virtual assistant is an expert with my email marketing tool, which is an absolutely essential part of my growth strategy.  It would take me 4 times as long to do what she does, and I would do a poor job. I dislike this type of work, and she loves it. A CEO needs to evaluate what they don’t like and what they are not good at, and delegate it to someone who loves that work, so that they are then free to do what a CEO does best, which is executing on their strategy and vision.

5. What advice would you give to anyone thinking about working with a virtual assistant?

Call Assistant Match!  If they need further convincing, they should draw a quadrant with these titles on the boxes:   1: Love/Good at it;  2: Love/Not good at it  3: Don’t like/good at it 4: Don’t like/not good at it. Anything not in Box #1 should be delegated/outsourced to an expert. Skip the entry-level route and go right to the expert for dependable results, lower stress, and a strong ROI.

6. How do you market your business and which methods have proven most successful?

Word of mouth, face-to-face networking, outreach through my blog

7. What do you enjoying doing when you are not working?
Working out, spending time with my family, reading, going to concerts

8. What is your Business Website URLs:

www.informationexperts.com

www.successfulculture.com

9.  What is your Business Facebook Page URL

www.facebook.com/InformationExperts

10. What is your Twitter username?
@marissalevin

Is your life centered around family, work, and play (FWP), not necessarily in that order?

I am pretty sure the common denominator to ensuring a balanced life is TIME.  Spending quality time with your family, putting in enough hours at work, and having some downtime to enjoy the things in life that give you pleasure and lets you recharge your mental battery.

Many of us struggle with balancing what I will call the FWP cycle.  Work is required to earn enough money to take care of our families, and a discretionary fund is needed to pay for our “play” time, so most of us put more emphasis on the work part of our lives.   I have asked many business owners (both men and women) what an ideal day would look like to them and the universal answer seems to be having more TIME. As we get older, we realize how fast TIME goes by and there is no slowing it down.

So, how do you overcome that lack of TIME to balance FWP?  As a business owner, it is important to constantly be aware of your efforts.  Are you dedicating your time wisely or are you wasting valuable time doing things that may not be generating revenue, building business relationships, or are even within your area of expertise?  Think strategically when you are worried about managing your time.  Do not waste precious time doing the things that can be outsourced.  This quote by Jack Canfield is very relevant, “When you are able to maximize your potential by focusing on your core genius, you become more productive and effective”.

ACTION ITEM: Record every single task, project or activity you do for one week, noting which line items are income producers, core genius or something that was a time waster and should have been outsourced.
Share your list in our comments and let’s talk strategy and outcomes.

It’s our pleasure to introduce you to Dr. Jay Greenstein of Sport and Spine Rehab .  We encourage you to connect with Dr. Greenstein on his website or through social media if you would like to learn more about his services.

1. What is the name of your business? Sport and Spine Rehab

2. Where is it located? There are  7 locations in the DC Metro Area (www.ssrehab.com/locations).

3.Describe your business and what you do. Multi-disciplinary chiropractic, physical therapy and rehabilitation company. We make people feel great!

4. How has working with a virtual assistant helped you overcome daily challenges associated with being a business owner ? I’m able to leverage others to do work that I can do but shouldn’t be doing. My time needs to be best spent on building our company’s vision and mission.

5. What advice would you give to anyone thinking about working with a virtual assistant? do it!  It’s a no brainer. Just try it once and you’ll clearly see the value proposition.

6. How do you market your business and which methods have proven most successful? Providing world-class service is the best way to build our business.

7. What do you enjoying doing when you are not working?  I enjoy working out, skiing, watching and playing sports.

8. What is your Business Website URL?  www.ssrehab.com

9. What is your Business Facebook Page UR? http://www.facebook.com/SportandSpineRehab

10. What is your Twitter username? @drjaytweet

Have you ever heard the quote, “you can’t reach for anything new if your hands are still full of yesterday’s junk”, by Louise Smith? Those words resonate with me because I have witnessed many business owner’s frustration when they feel like their business is moving in slow motion or even worse, that it is in gear but not moving forward.

Being involved in all aspects of your business can definitely be important to you, but trying to do everything does not always allow productivity to happen on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis. I usually ask the frustrated business owners that I meet to tell me how much time they spend on business development opportunities. The overwhelming response is very little, because they are too busy, marketing the business, doing the daily administrative tasks, handling the accounting and responding to customers. With only 24 hours in a day and hopefully 6-8 hours of sleep and a few hours of personal or family commitments there isn’t usually much time left over for developing the business which is critical to success.

So, how do you get out of the time-crunch of “having your hands full”?

Ask yourself these questions:
1. How many hours are you spending on activities that are not generating revenue?

2. What is your time worth?

Once you have answered those 2 questions it may be easy to justify hiring a virtual assistant to help you with some of the tasks that are swallowing up the hours in your day.

Some of the earliest adopters of virtual assistants were speakers and authors, business coaches, real estate professionals, and entrepreneurs just starting their businesses. Those groups of people still work with VAs, but today industry seems to matter less. Virtual assistants are very popular with entrepreneurs and small business owners across many sectors.

At Assistant Match, we have clients ranging from bestselling authors to doctors to IT companies to consulting firms to non profits. We have provided virtual assistants to manufacturing companies as well as dog walkers.

Regardless of industry, most people who work with a VA have a few things in common.

  1. They need additional help in their business but do not need a full time employee.
  2. They are comfortable with the idea that they may never meet their assistant face to face.
  3. They are more interested in results than the traditional way of structuring a work team.

It’s wonderful when someone comes to a virtual assistant fully comfortable with the 3 points above. That isn’t always the case, so don’t hesitate to have the conversation that will help flesh those out. Some clients love a VA who can help educate them on how to work together and how s/he can best be of service.

Working with a virtual assistant or a virtual team of assistants can be a win/win for both the business owner, who can outsource specific tasks and increase their own productivity, and the professional virtual assistant who has the expertise and time to do exactly what you need help with.

It’s usually fairly simple to start working with a virtual team member. In most cases, phone and email will get the working relationship started. For some people, phone calls and emails suffice if you don’t have complex requests. Examples are when you need a VA to do research, make phone calls on your behalf, format documents, or update spreadsheets. Normally documents can be emailed back and forth and conversations can happen by phone or email.

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