When you are getting started, it can feel like no one even notices you, and if you are just putting up a list of services that you provide that might even be the case.

That’s why it’s important to get specific about a few things and use those things to build a strategy to get clients to notice you.

1. Know who you can best support or serve. The services you provide are probably ‘in need’ in several industries, especially if you work in administration. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can help everyone. You need to really get clear on what you do best, what you are an expert at, and then figure out who you can help the most, and then you will ‘target’ that market to connect with and work with.  By being really specific about who your client is, you will be able to get in touch with them quickly and speak directly to them, and you will sign more clients in a shorter time frame than by trying to put your services out there to everyone on the Internet.

2. Know exactly what they need. By studying your target market and your ideal client, you also need to determine their needs. You need to know how their business runs, how they interact with their clients and the specific kind of support they need in their business. By getting to know their needs better, you can tailor what you do so that you are the perfect person to help them in their business. It’s not enough to be able to provide a long list of services; if you can’t explain to a prospective client how you know you can help them in their business, they probably won’t buy your services. Be clear and be confident and you will sign them.

3. Know the benefits of your services. One common mistake small business owners make when discussing their services with prospective clients, is to tell them the features of the services they provide (turnaround time, process by which you complete things, specifics of packages and rates). While features are important from your own perspective, it’s really not important to the client. What they want to know is how you are going to help them and their business.  So you need to know how each of your services will benefit them: ie, save them time, save them money, give them more time to work with clients, broaden their audience, etc.) This is a key area to present your expertise to your market as well, so really be sure to work on this when you are doing your marketing strategy.

Look carefully at these things to develop a successful marketing plan. Figure out who you can best support, research them so you know what they need, and determine what benefits you can provide them with. Then all you have to do is find them and connect with them. If you do your research and you speak directly to them, you will build up a loyal following of great clients before long!

Here are a few questions to ask yourself. The answers might surprise you! If you decide that any of these areas needs change or ‘tweaking’ to keep you on the path to success, now is the time to get that done!

Do you analyze your billing when you send it out each month? When you put together your invoices or retainers for clients, do you stop to look at them to see how you spent your time? This can be a really good time to do some quick analysis of what is filling your days. If you see things in there that you don’t love to do, get a plan in place to move those things along to someone else, whether that means getting subcontractors or speaking with your client to keep your services limited to those you are great at and love to do. Remember, you are a business owner – McDonald’s does not sell fried chicken, simply because someone asks for it at the cash register.

Do you spend too much time filing or reading email, or is your inbox overrun? No matter which email system you use to process your email, you probably have folders set up to file things in various places. Whether you set up message rules to do this automatically or whether you do it manually, take note of those things that you are filing. Are they things you come back to look at on a regular basis or do they just pile up in folders? I have that syndrome … file it and forget it. I just deleted all of my ‘read later’ emails this weekend. Why? Because I didn’t read them. I decided that it’s time to start fresh again and really analyze whether I need the items coming to my email address. Now that it’s empty, I can analyze what comes in and decide whether I am getting value from it or whether I should unsubscribe.

Do you get distracted by social media, phone calls or email? What kinds of boundaries do you have set up for clients, family members and yourself? Do you allow yourself to get distracted by things that are not earning you money on a daily basis? How much time do you waste on personal distractions? You should be sure to set business hours (even if your business hours are only a few hours a day!) and stick to them. Be sure to do only billable work during that time, and you will ensure that your revenue increases. Focusing on bringing in money to your business is the only way to succeed.

How do you market yourself on a daily basis? In order to keep your business always growing and reaching ahead, you need to always be marketing. Whether you are trying to get new clients at this time or not, you should always be sure that you are marketing yourself through whatever channels you use. You never know who will find you, and certainly it’s important to keep cultivating relationships all the time, for that time when you are looking for someone new to work with. By marketing yourself every day, you can keep yourself ‘out there’ for when that time comes.

How many potential clients do you have in your pipeline right now? Do you have any? Or do you have just enough clients now? In my experience, you should always have potential clients in your pipeline – there are various stages of people’s readiness to work with you – it usually starts with your freebie, or your ezine, and can progress rapidly into your marketing funnel – from a small purchase or a project, to a more regular gig, to a full time retainer. It’s important to keep this pipeline busy and active. You never know when you are going to be looking for a new client (even if you don’t think you are now), and your pipeline is the first place to go!

Are you staying on track and in focus in your business? Ask yourself these questions, and make adjustments where necessary to ensure that you are!

This can be a difficult place to break through, particularly if you come from the corporate world, but it is so important to keep tabs on where your mindset is regarding your business.

Even when you do start working with clients, as a coach, speaker or consultant, you are taking a support role, and at times, boundaries can start to get crossed and sometimes you may get treated like a colleague or even a friend. It can be a difficult thing to manage your mindset at these times, to be sure that you remain a business owner working with another business owner.

Here are a few tips to help you integrate your strategy and business plan with a positive and strong mindset:

Treat your business like a business. When you set up your business, be sure that you treat it as such. You should have regular business hours, you should have an up to date ‘shingle’ (your website), and you should plan to make money to provide your services. If you constantly give away your services for free, you will not get ahead and that can lead to resentment. See the value in your own services and go out there and find people who want to work with you! When you treat your business like a business, clients will see it that way also.

Make your own business decisions and stick to them. While it’s great to ask around for advice, once you decide to do something in your business, don’t waver on it. Make a decision and stick to it. If you decide to change the way you do something because it isn’t working for you, that’s fine, but always be sure to have a plan of action that is yours. Hold yourself accountable to work through it. If you have boundaries set up, honor them. If you have policies in place, adhere to them. Clients will understand as long as the rules are always clear.

Develop strategies and procedures in all areas of your business. Set up a strategy for everything you plan to do – service offerings, networking, bookkeeping, sales calls, follow up, conflict resolution and so on. The more you have written down the more you will have to refer to. By developing strategies and procedures, you will be more prepared to deal with every situation that can arise. Really think everything through! Nothing speaks louder to a client than having the answer for them when they ask.

Analyze results in each area of your business. Sometimes our best business plans don’t work out the way we expected them to do. It’s important to analyze the results of each area to see if they are working for you. If they are not, revise and then analyze the next set of results. Analysis will help you to identify weak areas in your marketing or business plans and it can help you tweak your business to keep it on the path to success. If this means letting go of a long-time client, then so be it! When you find the strategies that work well for you, repeat!

Strive to stay in integrity to your business and in your business. Your business will always be an extension of yourself. By being in integrity you will be able to give more of yourself to your clients, which is who they are ‘buying’! Be honest and open with your business practices, pay your bills on time and deal with conflict as it arises (or before it does!). Be authentic, be you, and just get out there! Your clients and potential clients will find you when you are!

Stay positive! Remaining positive when things go wrong, or don’t go exactly according to plan, is probably the most difficult thing to manage about your mindset. Maybe you have a client who hasn’t paid on time. Maybe you have had hardware or software problems. Maybe you are finding it difficult to sign clients. There are challenges in owning a business, and you will get through them faster by maintaining a positive attitude. Seek help when you need it. Fix what gets broken. Steer your ship when it starts to go off course. You can do it!

How are you managing your business mindset? I’d love to know how – send me an email traceydaviero@rogers.com.

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.

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!

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!)

This sounds good, but I was, in fact, lamenting that although I do all of these things for my clients, I do not do pay enough attention to them for my own business.  Do you know what they said?

Stop Putting Yourself At The Bottom Of Your List!

They were right. The fact is that I constantly tell my clients how important it is to keep their service offerings current, their clients and their ‘tribe’ informed and in touch, and their networking contacts fresh. I tell them these things because they are TRUE! But I always let this area of my own business lapse. I focus on it for a while and then I get too busy and let it go again. Instead of keeping on top of it, I am always playing catch up.

I have decided that it’s time to take my own advice, and so as you know I am building my very first team of subcontractors, after working alone for about 13 years. I have decided that my business is just as important as my clients’ businesses. We are not apples and oranges (now you get it!). We all deserve the same attention.

The fact is, my client load right now is full. I have a waiting list for work in June and July. So really the attention needs to turn to my own business in order for me to be able to grow, and for me to be able to grow with my clients too!

Look for an exciting announcement from me early next week about a new program I am launching. It’s going to be great, and finally I am looking after my own business the way it deserves! (and thanks to my wonderful team members, it will get the TLC that I show my clients!)

It seems like just yesterday, and yet it was so long ago. In fact, the world has dramatically changed so much since then. See my previous post to get an idea of what happened over the last 10 years!

It makes me wonder where we might be in another 10 years, or even five years … or even next year!

Where will I be? Well, I have been putting a lot of thought into that lately, that’s for sure. I have been working with my business coaches, Paige Stapleton and Brian Stark for several months now (love them!!) and we have been carving out my path for the future.

I am embarking on the new year with much transition planned. With Paige and Brian’s help, I have been able to obtain focus and clarity for my business, the likes of which I could not have obtained on my own. Their guidance and support has been invaluable to me and I know it will continue to be as we get things together for my business transition.

Don’t worry, I’m not going away! Quite the opposite, actually! I am focusing on fewer service offerings and narrowing down my niche, so that I can provide more streamlined services and support to my ideal clients, while growing my own business at the same time.

It seemed like the right time to do this, and while it is a lot of work to get it all together, it has brought me comfort and strength at the same time. It has built my level of confidence in what I do. It has helped me to identify what I do best, what I enjoy doing the most, and who I most enjoy working with. It has helped me concentrate on the things that matter most to me. It has helped me get to know myself as a business person.

Do you have a business coach? If not, I would highly recommend it. You get a toolbox of goodies that helps you analyze and streamline your strengths, and you get your very own personal cheerleader. Who doesn’t want that?

So I wish you all the best of the remainder of the holidays and keep an eye out for the new and exciting things on my horizon. I hope it will inspire you to take the time to focus on your own business as the new year begins. You will be glad you did!

Picture this: it’s Monday and you set up your task list for the week. Looks good, you have fit everything in and you know you can deliver it all on time.  But what happens if something goes wrong? Do you have a ‘plan b’ in place so that you can still manage when something goes wrong?

Say on Tuesday one or more of the following situations comes up and threatens to mess up your tidy task list.

• you get sick or injured
• your child or a family members gets ill and requires your care
• a great client calls with a last minute project that they need you to find time for
• you have technical difficulty with a task that you only allowed a set amount of time to do
• you lose your internet connection for a prolonged period of time
• you get more than one referral or prospects call needing proposals

Do you have a backup plan?

If you haven’t thought about what you would do in any of these situations, now is the time to do so! By the time you need to have a contingency plan in place, it will be too late. The time to get your plan in place is when you don’t need it!

Your contingency plan doesn’t have to be complicated – just put together the basics when you have time:

• find someone (or more than one someone!)  who can help you out when you need it
• put together procedures for the tasks you take care of on a daily basis
• set up an intake process for new clients
• develop a project management protocol

Don’t wait until it’s too late!

As a solopreneur,you can sometimes go from 0-60 in no time flat. Make sure you are prepared for that before it happens by going through the steps above and developing your contingency plan.

I’ve never been off work for a week for a conference before. It was great, but it took planning the two weeks before and catching up the two weeks after just to be able to do it.

If you know me, you’ll know that I’m a list-maker and a details person. I always try to approach each situation (work or personal) by assessing the necessary steps and then planning the best route to the result.

Lately I have been starting to work with the social marketing needs of my clients, and we always begin with a checklist that we turn into an action plan, just to be sure we start off on the right track.

The extra attention that we put into the planning phase pays off in the end, when we know exactly what we are going to include in our strategy, and how we can best pull it all together. The setup for social marketing can be very daunting, and it is easy to get lost in the maze of it all. Good planning is essential to streamlining your strategy and saving valuable hours of setup time.

After the proper setup is done, the maintenance is much easier to manage. It’s like anything … plan it well and then execute to the best of your ability. It may not go perfectly every time, but you’ll be better prepared to handle any bumps along the road if you plan accordingly.

Take the time with your VA to figure out what you want to do with your social marketing, and then plan your implementation strategy to get there the right way. You’ll be glad you did