Planning for Success

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Tracey

Many Virtual Professionals go through phases of overwhelm in their business.

Anyone who owns a small business realizes that there are ebbs and flows of business, and there are also ebbs and flows of overwhelm as a result of that.

But a little bit of planning can go a very long way when you are working with your Virtual Assistant or other support professionals.

There will always be times that something has been ‘forgotten’ or is scheduled to do last minute, but in order to build a successful working relationship with someone, it’s important to keep the last minute requests to a minimum.

Most VAs work with multiple clients, and as such they work with many different schedules. It’s important to honor the time and schedule boundaries that are set when you start working together, so that you can both be productive and get the most amount of work done when needed.

Here are a few tips on how to manage your time regularly in terms of your support requirements.

1. Set deadlines to complete time-sensitive work. When you have a project or a task, be sure you set a realistic deadline for the work to be turned around. When you need something done, ask when you will get it back. Respect the scheduling of your VA, and if something needs to be turned around more quickly than they initially tell you, let them know. Work together to make sure your project gets done on time, and be sure to identify issues that can be corrected for the next project to make sure more time is allowed for the implementation or production part. For instance, if you couldn’t get registration started for an event because the graphics person you used was swamped, get a new graphics person or allow more time the next time.

2. Develop an editorial calendar. For ongoing tasks such as newsletters or broadcasts, set up a Google calendar that you can use to plan your writing, so you are not doing things last minute. By determining what you are going to write about each week you can get ahead and make your writing process smoother. For instance, if Thanksgiving is coming up, you have an idea what your personal note will be about. If you have a product launch coming up or a colleague is having an event, you have an idea what your ‘recommends’ section could be about. And if you develop a regular routine of what you will write to your audience about (ie week 1 marketing, week 2 business tips, etc.) then your articles will practically write themselves.

3. Plan product or service launches properly. This is one thing that a lot of people make mistakes with. It’s important to have enough ‘lead’ time to properly launch a new product or service to your audience. By trying to do things too quickly, you can often sabotage yourself in terms of sales. Decide what you want to do, when you want to do it, and then step back from your calendar to set up the launch process properly. Never rush something that you want to do well, and be sure you have enough time to set things up properly so you can make the connections with your audience as part of your launch. If you don’t allow yourself enough time to set up a group program, for instance, you could find that you have low enrolment because you start to panic when you begin to run out of time to promote. Or worse, you send multiple emails to your list in a short period of time because you didn’t plan correctly. By allowing enough time for your launch, your support team will be able to help you build momentum instead of panic!

4. Use checklists so nothing gets missed. Whether you are working with one team member or several, it’s a good idea to set up a checklist of things that need to be done (or have your VA set it up) so that you make sure nothing gets missed in the planning, production or launch phase. You can make an actual checklist or use a Google calendar that will track the tasks and deadlines for each piece. By determining deadlines for each part, you will know at a glance what needs to be taken care of during a given day, week or month. It’s a really simple planning tool that can work for so many applications, and it helps to keep everyone on task.

There are so many ways that you can keep yourself organized so that your team can best support you. These are just a few, but they are really easy to implement and will be sure to help you work well with your support team.

I’d love to hear your comments on this article.

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Making your support ‘wish list’

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Tracey

When you are considering getting support in your business, it can sometimes be difficult to figure out where to begin.

I say, begin at the beginning!

The first thing you need to do is to make a list of all of the things you are doing in your business – and that means everything – so include your client work, but also your marketing, your bookkeeping, your scheduling, your networking, your emails, writing correspondence or newsletter materials, customer service, anything at all that you are physically doing in your own business.

The second thing you need to do is to look at that list and really think about whether you are serving yourself and your business by doing each of those tasks, or if you can get support in any of those areas.

If you look at that list, you will see that most of the things on it are not actively generate revenue in your business … and that means that most of them should be outsourced or automated in some way.

There are many reasons you would want to get support for something – you don’t like to do it, you aren’t good at it, you don’t have time to do it … these are just a few. But also think about this – if there is something that you will eventually not be able to do (because you get too busy with client work, for instance) then you should flag those items as well.

Anything that can be outsourced or automated in some way should be. I like to tell my clients that the list they have created is their ‘wish list’.

Now that you have identified things that you would like to get support with, pick one thing and get started.

You will realize how much easier it is to have someone support you once you actually do have them doing it. You don’t really realize how much time you are spending on non-revenue-generating activities in your business until you write it down, and then get support with those tasks.

Finding help is also a lot easier once you know specifically what you are looking for. You can put out a request for proposal, you can ask colleagues for referrals, or you can hire an intern who is studying in your field. There are many places to find help but knowing what you need is the first step.

I’d love to hear your comments on this article.

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5 Easy Things To Outsource in Your Business

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Tracey

“Why is it that with all the information available today on how to be successful in small business, so few people really are?” ~ Michael Gerber

Whether you are looking to build your business from the ground up, or grow from where you already are, it’s important to look at how you are filling your days. Essentially your time should only be used to do two things in your business – working with clients (and therefore directly generating revenue), and doing specific marketing tasks (to plan revenue strategies, and to network with potential clients). If you are doing anything else during the day, you are possibly leaving money on the table.

Here are 5 things that you should look at outsourcing in your business:

Scheduling. Ah the dreaded appointment book! Have you ever had one of those situations where it takes 5 emails/phone calls to settle on an appointment time? There are two ways you can outsource this task. First (and easiest) is to automate it. You can do this by setting up a public calendar and having people select an appointment from that (do this free using Google calendar, of use a paid service like TimeTrade). This will save so much back and forth time you will wonder why you ever booked appointments manually.

The other way to outsource this is to have a scheduling person in place. If you have more appointment management to be done, it can be helpful to have someone managing your schedule for you (ie regular appointments that need to get set up, or changes to appointments once they are booked). In any case, this can be a serious time drain if you manage it yourself. When there are so many easy options to outsource this to, you need to take advantage of one of them!

Bookkeeping and Finance. You know it. I know it. The last thing that you think about each day is booking your hours and doing your billing. Although it’s the lifeforce of your business, so many business owners leave this part until they absolutely have to deal with it. Again there is more than one way to outsource this. As a small business owner, it’s important to know how you are spending your time – to ensure you have enough billable time in your calendar. You can outsource any portion of your time tracking and invoicing – there are systems like free MyHours where you can record all of your time. I have my VA enter mine, and then I just run and check my reports each month before sending my billing to my clients. That’s as simple as it gets. You can use many other online systems to track hours and invoice your clients. The key is to get into the habit of having someone help you do this part – as you grow this will be something you will outsource entirely, so start early!

Client Care. Although it’s important for you to work with your clients as a service professional, the ‘administrative’ part can be handled by someone else. It can be so easy to get bogged down in paperwork and things like that with a client. By setting a process to outsource things like proposals, contracts, payments, renewal dates, resources and reporting, you can free up a lot of your valuable time. Again, this is something that you will eventually outsource anyway, so you may as well get systems in place to start it as soon as you have any clients at all.

Technology. From websites to social media, technology is an important part of any virtual business. Many, many business owners get wrapped up in trying to learn these things ‘to save money’. There is no way that learning something new (and unrelated to your business) while you should be finding and working with clients is a good use of your time. From the start, have someone set up a simple web presence / social media presence for you. Your online presence is a very important of how people perceive you – they will check you out before working with you. It doesn’t have to be complicated … just a simple page or profile, and you are on your way.

As you grow, so can your online profiles and presences. I can’t stress enough that you just need to get something up there, so get a professional to do this for you. It’s one of the biggest ‘excuses’ I have heard from virtual professionals as to why they are not marketing yet. You can always tweak and adjust as your business grows and changes, but you need to be out there.

Copywriting. One of the places business owners get stuck the most is writing marketing material. It can be daunting to ‘get it just right’ … why? That’s easy … because you’re not a copywriter! By finding a good copywriter who can work with you for your projects, you will be leaps and bounds ahead of your colleagues! If you are building your business, you will always be marketing something, so it makes good sense to think about outsourcing this piece as early as possible in your business. Doing so will help you launch products and services faster, thereby helping you earn money faster with each item.

These are five simple ways to outsource things in your business, no matter what level you are at. When you are first starting out, it’s easy to get these things looked after, very reasonably. As you grow, you will be glad you have people in place (it’s a lot harder to outsource when you are used to doing everything yourself!). Take a look at your business and see where you are handling things that you shouldn’t be … and find some help!

I’d love to hear your comments on this article. Please share them below!

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5 Great LinkedIn Tools

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Tracey

LinkedIn has proven to be a great business networking tool for me. It is different from other social networks that I use in that there is no real personal connection being made with people. What I mean by that is that we are connecting for business reasons. Of course I am drawn to people because of their personality, but I am really networking with people who fit into my business as part of my niche or my colleagues. On my other social networks, I often connnect with family, friends, and people who have similar interests as I do.

LinkedIn works differently and I think it’s very effective. People will connect with you based on what you say in the various groups, discussion areas and so on, but they will almost always check out your profile first (at least I do!).

So you should have a look at your profile to be sure that you look as professional as you think you do! LinkedIn has some applications and tools that you should be taking advantage of to help maximize your profile.

Here are my favourite five:

1. Recommendations: Reach out to people you have worked with before and ask them for recommendations. Also offer to give recommendations in return! Having recommendations on your profile establishes you as a real person, and can instill confidence in people who are wondering if they should connect with you.

2. Groups: Get involved after you set up your profile. Your profile will never serve you if you do not get involved in discussions with people who have similar interests. I have made some wonderful connections with people that I would never have met except that we joined the same group. It’s about networking!

3. WordPress: Install this application to pull your blogfeed into your LinkedIn profile. When you publish a post, it will automatically display in your profile, so people don’t have to leave LinkedIn to see what you have written.

4. Twitter: Your twitter feed will display on your profile, and you can even update your Twitter status while surfing on LinkedIn. There is so much great information shared in groups on LinkedIn that you will find this to be a quick sharing tool!

5. Events: I love this application because you can see at a glance the events for all of your connections.  It’s easy to add your own events and invite your connections.

There are plenty of others (and they are adding new ones all the time), but these are my favourite five, and ones that I use all the time with my profile.  Check out the application directory to see what apps you can add to your LinkedIn profile!

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Spruce Up Your LinkedIn Profile

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Tracey

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently got a great tip from a LinkedIn connection about how to make my profile look more professional.

It’s such a simple fix and I never really knew it existed until this fellow pointed it out. In your profile section, you can list up to three websites that you can connect your profile to. You probably have this already set up.

When I first joined LinkedIn, you had the option of putting in links for My Website, My Blog and My Company. Well I did not know they had updated this so that you can actually edit the top text for these links so they can say whatever you want them to say.

So now my labels say, ‘Tracey D’Aviero, VA, Your VA Mentor and Your VA Mentor Blog – which is much clearer than the generic labels that were there before.

It only takes a moment to change, but I really think it makes a big difference in how you profile looks. Here’s how to update them: http://linkedintelligence.com/making-the-most-of-website-links-on-your-linkedin-profile/.

I’ll be on the lookout for other cool tools to share with you! (If you haven’t updated your profile in a while, there are some neat new applications you could be taking advantage of!)

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Do You Comply with the LinkedIn Terms of Use?

Posted on October 1, 2010 by Tracey

So I mentioned in my last post that I had a semi-heated discussion with a LinkedIn connection after we disagreed about my open question.

At first he was concerned that I would log in to my client’s LI profiles to post their information, which he pointed out is a violation of the Terms of Use Agreement that everyone agrees to when they sign up. No problem, I only post things to their profiles by connecting them to a feed system using an application that LI allows. I don’t even write the material that I post, my clients do. I simply do the data entry portion for the application, and the system does the rest. Check.

Then he pointed out that my own profile was not in compliance with the TOU from LinkedIn. WHAT? How could that be? I did everything right … at least I thought I did. He pointed out that I had my email address listed in an area that was not a designated field. That was true. I did. He mentioned that this violated section 10B4 of the TOU agreement … “Include information in your profile or elsewhere, except in designated fields, that reveals your identity or sensitive personal information such as an email address, phone number or address or is confidential in nature”
I had read that to mean that my privacy would not be protected if I posted my email address outside of a designated area. I was fine with this so I left it where it was. It seems that this error could breach my TOU with LinkedIn. Interesting! I removed it and I feel better already! (I am sooo not a rule-breaker!)

This made my connection discussion start to ease up a bit. He was impressed that I cared enough to make the change. It wasn’t that I was trying to break the rules, I had only misunderstood the jargon. Anyway from there we became friends again *haha* and he actually gave me another great tip to make my profile look more professional.

Stay tuned – I’ll let you know what that tip is next time … so you can do it to your profile too!

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Farewell to my friend and mentor, Val Belcher

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Tracey

Earlier this week we came home to hear some terrible news.  A dear friend, Val Belcher, passed away from complications from congestive heart failure. He was my former boss, my friend, my mentor and even my client for many years.

Val Belcher

Val founded the restaurant chain (Lone Star Cafe/Big Daddy’s Crab Shack) that my husband and I worked at (we met there!), and after I left the company and started my own food and beverage consulting business, the corporate office became my client for 8 years. Val and I worked very closely to cost everything on every menu to be sure that we were managing our controllable costs to the best of our ability. The restaurants grossed 10s of millions of dollars per year, so it was important to ensure our costs and profits were where they should be … and the head office essentially became my full time client.

After Val left the chain himself, we continued to work together on his other ventures (Big Easy’s). We had a great working relationship, and we did work I was very proud of. It was a very valuable relationship for me in my career, and one that I don’t think will ever be replaced by someone else.

He called himself a ‘big old football player from Texas’ (with that Southern drawl), but he sure knew what he was doing when it came to the restaurant business. He believed in procedures and analysis. He taught me that attention to detail was a great thing … sometimes a painful and tedious thing … but a great thing. Together we had a really good handle on food and liquor costs in every restaurant and it was due to the fact that we thought out our procedures and we used checks and balances with everything.

Val taught me a lot, but more than that he put his faith in me every day, and he trusted me and instilled confidence in me that I had never experienced in my career before.

Val built an empire and inspired so many people in the process. Being part of the Lone Star/Big Daddy chain ‘way back when’ allowed us to make some great friendships, some of which (like mine) blossomed into marriages and families, and many went on to have success in businesses, because we all put our hearts and souls into our work. We learned about stellar customer service and Southern hospitality from Val, his brothers Gary, Russell, and the Belcher family.

Tonight we will honor Val at a memorial service, and he gives us the opportunity to gather together with our old friends to catch up and share our great memories. 

Rest in peace, VB.  I will miss you and I will never forget you.

~ Trace

Posted in miscellaneous | 2 Comments

Ask a Stupid Question …

Posted on September 12, 2010 by Tracey

The other day I put an open question on LinkedIn … very simple, or so I thought! My question was this: ‘Do you use automation in your social media strategy? Do you think it’s a good thing or a bad thing?‘

As you may know, I do automate several of my social media posts … you know, the product and service ones. I only have so much time to post on my networks, and really what I want to be doing when I am ‘live’ is to be connecting with people, not tweeting or posting about the services I offer. So I automate those so that people can get a sense of what I do and how I do it.

So I thought by asking that question on LinkedIn I would get some input as to whether people liked or disliked the automation aspect as I see it. Instead, I got all kinds of answers that really surprised me. Many people thought that automation was a bad idea, no doubt because of those bots that post dozens of posts every hour (you know the ones) in an effort to monopolize the twitter feed. I auto-post about once every two hours on Twitter … in order to reach my audience at various stages of their day.

Anyway, most people said they didn’t like automation, and I agree to a certain extent. I know when you ask a question you have a 50/50 chance of people agreeing with you, but it doesn’t help if they don’t really understand your question.

This was an interesting exercise for me because I realized that what is so clear to me in my head really doesn’t always translate to others without more explanation. I actually had a semi-heated discussion with someone about this very topic as a result of me posting that question (but that’s another blog post!).

So my lesson was this … when posting on social forums or networks, be sure to make your point clear. My intention was to post a question that would generate discussion, but what I received in return was opinions that either agreed with my viewpoint, disagreed vehemently, or were way off track on what I was actually asking.

Clarity … essential when trying to foster discussion. I chalk it up to ‘ask a stupid question’ and I will be sure to be more careful in the future. By the way, I am grateful to each person who took the time to answer my query … whether we agreed, disagreed, or completely misunderstood each other! 

Communicating online is not always as simple as communicating in person, but it certainly expands our networks farther than we ever could have in person. Good to meet all of you!

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5 Keys To Building and Nurturing a New Relationship

Posted on September 9, 2010 by Tracey

Working with someone new can be an exciting time, but it can also be stressful. Everyone goes through it at one time or another. Whether you are a client working with your first VA, or a new VA with your first client, it can be a scary time … all the uncharted territory … like a child on his first day of high school! But if you lay some clear boundaries and keep the lines of communication open, it can be a really easy transition.

Decide who will do what. It’s important to determine who will be taking care of which tasks, and when they will be taken care of. If you don’t use some type of collaborative software, at least keep a simple checklist that everyone can work with. There is nothing worse than missing a deadline simply because someone wasn’t sure that it was their task to complete.

Schedule regular check-ins. Although it can be tempting to pick up the phone every time you have a question, it’s easier to schedule regular check-ins to cover updates for more than one task at a time. Email is such a distraction, but a good way to ensure that everyone is communicating is to simply reply to an email when someone sends you one. A simple ‘yes I got it’, or ‘I will send it to you this afternoon’ can save so much worry, especially when you don’t have a regular communication routine going yet.

Ask questions. Be sure that the tasks set up are clear, and that the steps to complete them are also clear. Just because someone has used the same service as you to send a newsletter before, doesn’t mean they will do things the way you want them done. When a task is completed, be sure to discuss whether it was completed properly, and work out any issues before the next time.

Build standard operating procedures. The best time to build your standard operating procedures is when you first start working together. Write everything down as you get it done the first time, and be sure that the procedure is right for the next time. Keep your procedures up to date once you begin!

Get to know each other! It is much easier (and more fun!) to build a strong working relationship when you find out a little bit about each other. Ask about family, hobbies and things like that. You don’t have to have long drawn-out conversations about what you watched on television the night before, but little tidbits of information can help to break the ice when you are just starting to get to know each other.

Bonus Tip: Be honest and open minded. It’s important to be honest with each other as much as possible. If something isn’t going exactly the way you planned, be sure to speak up. Likewise, if your new partner gives you some constructive criticism, try not to take it to heart, but work with it so that it benefits both of you. Not everyone works the same way, so compromise will be key to keep everyone happy. By working together, you will form a solid lasting relationship more quickly!

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31 Days of Laughter – Day 29 to 31

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Tracey

This was so easy – the hard part was remembering to post.

We laugh so much in our house, in our everyday lives, that it is so difficult to pick a moment (or sometimes remember it!)

Day 29 – Ha ha – I remove wine cork from bottle (it makes that great sound!) and Owen yells ‘Opa!’ :)

Day 30 – Checking out the hall with our friends Ivan and Dar (they are having a big party in a couple of months). Many laughs, but probably the most fun was me suggesting that we serve venison on the buffet. Ivan almost jumped out of his chair (he hates it!). Soooo funny!

Day 31 - watched Old Dogs … Robin Williams and John Travolta. I actually laughed out loud several times!

Thanks for playing!

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