You know what they say about the best laid plans … even the most carefully planned projects can throw you a wrench when you least expect it.

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.

So here I am, getting into the swing of blogging.

Hope you are continuing to tune in.

One of my favourite commercials on television these days is the one in which the little boy and his Dad share an Oreo cookie ‘virtually’.

The Dad smiles and says, ‘Good night, son,’ and the son says, ‘Good MORNING, Dad’ and then we see that they are on opposite sides of the world, but they still shared a cookie … virtually!

This scenario reminds me of how I work every day as a VA. I can share so many things (including, but not limited to, cookies!) with my clients, and we don’t have to be in the same place, or even in the same time zone.

One of the tools that I use with my clients is project management collaborative software. I have used several different systems lately and I wanted to give you an idea of some of the ones that I like.

If you are a small business owner or a solopreneur, using a VA to handle your administrative tasks is just a smart business move. By using collaborative software applications, you can keep tabs on your projects up-to-the-minute and free up your time to do what you do best … which is to grow and run your business!

I won’t bore you with the bad things about these applications, because, frankly, you will probably come up with your own list of good and bad, but here is my list of favourites, in no particular order!

Google Docs

Love it. ‘Nuff said. It’s such an easy application to use and it’s always there when you need it. You can created documents, spreadsheets, presentations and more that you and your VA can share or send to each other via email. You can even save them to your computer using the export feature, but the key with them being online is that everyone is working with the same document, in the same version, when they access it. Too cool. And it’s free!

Basecamp

Basecamp is great for project management, allowing you to set milestones and deadlines, share files, log time, and all kinds of other good stuff. It’s easy to create projects, and task out the various steps to employees or colleagues, and keep tabs on it all in one place. The ability to reply to messages or a notification by email instead of logging in is a thumbs up feature for me. Plans start at $24/month and go up. Highrise is also a cool contact-info-keeping collaborative unit of Basecamp (no more slips of paper with login details on them, you can keep it securely in one place!)

ActiveCollab

I just recently started using this and I must say it’s a great system. Hadn’t heard of it before my client started using it. Very easy to navigate and use. Milestones, tasks, tickets and time tracking all keep things organized and easy to keep track of. One of my favourite features is the ’pages’ tab, where collaborative writing can take place. Saves emailing docs back and forth as well.  One time purchase price starting at $199.

Wrike

Wrike is really cool. My favourite feature is that I can reply to an email and it will update the project automatically. No logging in required. It automatically sends a to-do list every morning and outlines deadlines and allows you to reschedule items, all by email. It organizes the tasks and projects, so you don’t have to.  It’s as thought it collaborates with you and for you! Plans start at $4.99/user/month.

There are so many collaborative applications that you and your VA can use (go here to Wikipedia to see a huge list), but these are a few that I have some personal experience using for project management. I hope you find some of them useful in your business!

Now go and share an Oreo with your VA!