So the other night I was watching television and I turned to my cable company’s ‘on demand’ channel to watch a movie. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they have made another upgrade to their service (which they do fairly often, actually). They have reinstated a service that they removed with the last upgrade … the timeline of the movie. For several months now we have not been able to see how much time was left in a movie when we rented it. A small thing, but really frustrating. When you are used to something being there and it gets taken away, it can be irritating. So now we have it back! High fives all around in my house.

This reminded me of working with my clients, and how it’s important to continue to offer them the little things they grow accustomed to through working with you. It made me think about the little things that I could be doing for them, to let them know that they are still very important to me.

When you start working with a client and your relationship is in the honeymoon phase, you may go that little extra mile and do something special for them – whether it’s providing an extra report or staying five more minutes on the phone with them. As time moves on, and the relationship is not so new, sometimes it’s possible to take them for granted more often, and maybe you let those little extras slip. Maybe you are now only giving those little extras to your new clients.

It’s a great reminder of how nice it feels to get those little things back if they have gone by the wayside. And I plan to implement my own advice too – the little extras are what make me a proactive Virtual Assistant for my clients, and a great mentor for my students.

Think about what you can do for your clients to make them feel just a bit more special – send them a card, schedule a phone call with them as a strategy session, put together a new report for them – there are all kinds of things you can do to make them feel special and to let them know that you value them.

Sometimes the little things can even count more than the big ones! Try it, I guarantee you’ll get a good reaction and you will make your client’s day too!

For many small business owners and solopreneurs, working with a Virtual Assistant (VA) is becoming more common. Do you have a VA yet? If you do, congratulations on making a great business move! If not, what are you waiting for?

When you run your own business, it can be easy to fall into the trap of ‘doing it all’ yourself. But remember that by outsourcing those tasks that you don’t do well, or that you don’t want to do, you will be freeing up your time to do the things that you are an expert at doing.

Actually there are only 2 things you should be doing in your business : you should be working with clients (the thing you are an expert at!), or you should be doing specific marketing tasks to grow or manage your business (meeting and getting to know prospective clients!). All the rest should be outsourced to appropriate people.

In my networking circles, I am always talking about the merits of finding a VA who is a good fit for you … but up until last month I didn’t follow my own advice! I just hired my own VA last month and am already realizing how much more organized I am … how much more time I actually have to ‘be’ in my business.

It is amazing when you get those little things off your plate that you really shouldn’t be doing anyway, how much more organized you can be and how you can actually save money by spending money – by freeing up your time to do client work, networking or marketing.

So if you haven’t started working with a VA yet, what are you waiting for? I can honestly say I wish I did this a long time ago (and you will too!)

It seems that more and more websites I visit lately have an audio component. Some of them auto-load and some of them you have to click to start. When you work virtually, that can be a scary concept when all of sudden someone is talking to you and there is no one in the room! It might scare the wits out of me some days, but I have to admit that it’s very effective.

I often open more than one tab or website at a time, and when I all of a sudden hear someone start talking to me, it definitely attracts my attention! I will always go and check out the talking page!

Many of my clients are coaches and so they use an audio service like Audio Acrobat all the time in their businesses. Whether they are recording coaching calls or conference calls, it’s a big part of the service they provide to their clients.

Of course, not all of my clients are coaches, so I thought it would be a good idea to check out what a service like Audio Acrobat could offer to other solopreneurs and small business owners. If I come across an interesting product or service, I try to introduce it to my clients if I think it might help them with their Internet marketing needs.

I was surprised to see what other things you can do with Audio Acrobat:

• record an audio by telephone, by computer microphone or by uploading a previously recorded file
• combine audio files so they play in sequence
• customize a webpage with audio notes for those you are sending audio to
• use guest lines to have guests record testimonials, comments or even events
• create podcasts
• record or upload video up to 256 MB in size

It’s such a simple system to use, and it’s very cost effective. For less than $20 a month, it’s a service that anyone can use to incorporate audio into their business. They have a terrific affiliate incentive too … you can put your affiliate commissions towards your monthly bill if you want to.

Go and check it out!  It’s an opportunity for you to bring some fresh ideas to your clients about how to repurpose their content and how to enhance their online presence with audio or video.  I know I’m going to!