Virtual Assistance

Been a very busy few days for me. I’m looking at a few Virtual Assistants to do some subcontracting on projects that I’d like to charge less for, so I need to find someone to do it for less. What I’m noticing though, is that it is somewhat difficult to find someone that I don’t have to really double check all of their work. Don’t get me wrong, as much as I’d like 100% accuracy, this is probably not going to happen. But I’m noticing what should take someone 5-10 hours depending on their rate of speed, is taking 17-30 hours. In the long run this doesn’t really help me out, I could do it in the 5 hours, charge my normal rates, and still be ahead of the game.

If you’re a VA and perusing this blog from a link from VANA or some such, take heart. Are you being fair to your client? Are you giving your best effort, or “eh, it’s enough” effort?

If you’ve perhaps looked at Virtual Assistants and weren’t wowed – keep in mind, in some ways it’s just like hiring an assistant, there are some you gel with better. If you’re not happy and the issue has been addressed, keep looking. We can do so much to get your organization back and your administration flowing better off site.

Ask for referrals from happy companies, but ask about a situation where a client wasn’t happy with the work – listen to the answer. (And “oh all my customers are always happy with me” may or may not be true, but ask for at least a frustrating experience to see what the issue was at what you may have to look at going forward.” )

Why

As I’ve mentioned before I have a young child. I can’t quite tell if I hear “NO!” or “Why?” more in any given day. The easy answer is “Yes, and do it now”; or “Because I said so”, but I know that for my child to understand I need to address the question, and then point her in the direction of productivity; which puts me back into a productive mode. But I don’t want just busy work, I want to be productive – whether itis marketing my own business, or doing work for one of my clients.

I came across this article that talks about the Power of Why, and consequently why – whys are important to us. (Say that four times fast) Some interesting things are covered in marketing and why we do what we do, actually the whole site is fairly interesting – take a minute or two to check it out.

http://www.psychotactics.com/artpowerofwhy.htm

Now onto a humor break if you are a mom, or if you’ve had a mom you may very well enjoy this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=VlY8STkhopc

Disneyland Thoughts

We went to Disneyland for the second time in 2 months yesterday. (One of the pluses of having out of state friends, and living 30 minutes or so from the most magical place on earth.)

I have memories of Disney that date back at least 30 years. Somehow they keep the magic alive for the newer little ones, and make it fun for the “old hands” of Disney as well.

What I was most amazed at, was how long the line pathways are. (And here’s a hint, go the week school is back in session, we didn’t wait in line for anything except the Toontown roller coaster, and the Dumbo ride the whole day). Those lines though, in busy days, are chock full of people in great expectation of the rides that they’ll be taking. Most of the time lines are longer than the actual ride.

What do we do in our businesses to keep our customers happy and eagerly awaiting other services we may offer? How else do we get out the word? Do we keep them informed along the way? “Thanks for your order, we’ll be processing and sending shortly” or “This project should take about a week” and they hear from us on day 7 that it’s almost but not quite complete?

We are obviously not Disney, and most of us aren’t in the entertainment industry, but I was struck at the evolution over the years. I used to eagerly await Disney to go on the rides. We seldom saw any characters except Mickey or Goofy once in a while. Now, you know where to go to find the characters you’d like to see, and if you don’t want to stand in line or want to ride the rides you can have non-personal time but still see them up close at the parade.

Are you available to your customers on your schedule or their schedule? If your service or business makes it too hard to reach you for personal service, you’ll lose out. That’s one of the ways that a virtual assistant can be of service, we can be a point of contact, sort through customer requests, tell your customers we remember their special days, or be their first point of contact by sending mailers, or other information to them and of course we can always take some of the other things off of your desk that will keep you from your customers.

Mom-preneurs and Moms who work from home

I thought I may have made up a new word today – mompreneurs. It described how I view what I do.

I was brought up in an entrepreneurial family. My parents always had their own business, and it was also a family affair. My brothers and I can do a perfect impersonation of our mom “your going to hurt someone with that!!!” but we can also tell you that any welt from our rubber band fights were gone within an hour or two, despite our best efforts. I’m also pleased to tell you that not once did a rubber band land in a sibling’s eye.
I sometimes laugh as I try to get my daughter to be quiet and stop singing while I’m on the phone, as I recall my 5th grade printing and handwriting, later typing, and finally using computers to do our invoicing. My parent’s clients always knew it was a family business, after all during the summer we were all present while they were working. Yet, I find myself trying to keep it quiet that I’m a work at home mom, or saying sheepishly to someone on the phone “Well, I’ll apologize in advance if you hear a bit of 3.5 year old background noise.” I wouldn’t apologize if I were the HR Manager and talking to an employee with manufacturing going on in the background. I’m choosing to enjoy working at home and lighten up about background noise (as long as it’s background and not terribly distracting).

At any rate, it doesn’t appear that I was so creative as to have thought up a new word – so with full credit I’d like to introduce you to their site. http://www.mompreneursonline.com/

Another new to me site is http://www.workitmom.com/ This thought provoking article is by the woman who created Work It, Mom! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nataly-kogan/the-mommy-stigma-well-_b_51561.html .

I chose to go into Virtual Assistance and Human Resources Consulting because of my daughter; I provide awesome virtual assistance and HR consulting because of my experience in the corporate world before my daughter. If you’re a solo, mom, entre, or any other kind of preneur and you need someone to help you with your marketing, employee or administrative tasks that are taking way too much of your customer or revenue building time, send me an email and let’s talk about how we can take the frustration out of administration for your venture.

And dads and single entrepreneurs no worries, I’ll find some great networking and article sites for you soon – or drop me a line on your favorites and I’ll include them soon.

Saving big bucks in business expenses each year -

One of the best resources I’ve found for Virtual Assistants is the Virtual Assistant Networking Forum. There are lots of opinions, suggestions, questions and everything in between. I came across this comparison analysis and thought it was interesting enough that I wanted to share it.

Full-time Employee vs a Virtual Assistant Cost Comparison

Want to SAVE over $60,000 in business expenses this year?
If you answered yes, read on …

A cost comparison for a full-time employee
versus a Virtual Assistant

COST COMPARISON	Full-time Employee	Virtual Assistant
Hourly Rate of Pay	$20.00	$35.00
Fringe Benefits @ 35%(Health/Dental/Life Insurance, Retirement Plans)	7.00	None
Overhead Rate @ 50%(Office Space, Equipment & Office Supply expense, UI Insurance, Worker’s Compensation, Overtime Pay, Administration Costs)	$10.00	None
Total Effective Rate of Pay	$37.00	$35.00
**Hours Per Year	2,080 hrs.	480 hrs.
TOTAL Annual Labor Cost	$76,960.00	$16,800.00

Difference = $60,160.00 per year

By hiring a Virtual Assistant…You SAVE over $60,000.00 per year!

Although the Virtual Assistant’s hourly rate
is more than the employee’s rate in the first place, you save the cost of benefits
and overhead that would have to be applied to the new employee’s wage. And,
because Virtual Assistant’s are usually more experienced, more efficient, and
better connected than the employee, you’ll need to devote far less time to the
project to get the same results, only 480 hours a year versus 2,080 for the
new employee.

**Remember,
with a Virtual Assistant, you only pay for the time on task by the minute! No
more paying for socializing, hour long lunches or frequent trips to the washroom.

Your employee’s 8 hour day can be
crunched into 3-4 hours with a Virtual Assistant.

Simply put, you should contract with a Virtual
Assistant because it’s more cost-effective and Virtual Assistants go above and
beyond the normal assistant’s duties to impact your own productivity. No task
is too big or small for a Virtual Assistant to handle. Even if you only have
1 hour of work a month for a Virtual Assistant to do, a VA can (and will) do
it.

For more information – email info@totalresourceconnection.com

*Souce: Virtual
Assistant Networking Association (VANA) Cost Comparison

The Largest Global Network Online for Successful and Aspiring Virtual Assistants

Another Google Gadget that I like

So, there are a lot of things that I like to keep track of online. I keep track of publicity and how often a few clients get mentioned (as well as a couple of friends and colleagues), there are a few political items that I am passionate about,  I also write blogs for a couple of other people/businesses.  So I like to try to see what other people are saying, doing, writing about etc.  Google offers a great alert system, you simply log in http://www.google.com/alerts and type in the words you want to keep track of.  As in most searches if you’re using a proper name you’ll want to put it in quotes, for instance “Total Resource Connection” will get items about us,  – Total Resource Connection  – will get many more results because it will pick up any of the three words.

So really, what is a virtual assistant?

Virtual assistance seems to be one of the fastest growing industries that I am personally aware of at this time. Many virtual assistants work out of a home office. Which is perfect as a lot of our clients are busy, on the run people who don’t really want someone in their office – in fact they may be working out of a home office as well. So what is a virtual assistant? In a nutshell, we are off site assistants.

One of the biggest pluses, and what my current clients love the most about me – besides my sense of humor and modesty, is the quick turnaround time on projects. My clients as they get to know me, know that I’m a night owl. So it is not at all unusual to get an email or a call as my client is finishing up for the day and realizes they have a project that didn’t get done (or started) and by the time they are in their office in the morning the project is complete and in their email inbox waiting for them, or if it is a longer term project they at least have it out of their mental clutter and know when they can expect it.

We’ll cover more later on the virtues of virtue assistants. In the meantime check this out http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/ it will tell you how much you need to be making per hour to break even or make a profit. Nifty little tool.

After you’ve played with that calculator for a bit, think about the time that you spend doing things administratively that you don’t have to. Instead of outsource, think of “off desk source” – what are some items that you would like to “off desk source.”

I’d be happy to discuss any of those items with you. One of the things, I enjoy about being a virtual assistant is the virtual networking I get to do with other virtual assistants. If you need something that we don’t provide as a service, let me help you find a reputable person that can.

Here’s to a prosperous day!

Organizing yourself

Seriously! Who knew there were so many ways to get yourself organized? If you do a google search for “Organizing tools” there are more than 17,300,000 sites that show up. I am always on the hunt for that ONE magical idea, program or process that will suddenly make everything fall into line. At the end of the day though, what is needed is time to put things in their place, and to move, one by one the items off of my desk.

Sometimes I think I need my own virtual assistant to take care of the little details for me that I take care of for my clients. Think about it, if you could get one or two items off of your desk that take up the most time, but are the least rewarding what would they be?

For a couple of clients, it’s me answering their phone. Even though, I’m sometimes on the phone and have to return a phone call, I guarantee a return phone call within an hour. We all have those special clients. They are definitely worth having, but they require a little too much hand holding. I can take those clients and be a buffer – they still feel like they are getting special treatment, but my clients have freedom to not have to address every little thing with them.

Other clients have me screen their email. I forward on what needs to be addressed personally, respond to some with the appropriate answer, and to others respond to expect more follow up shortly. Of course there are some private issues that are better handled by the client personally, those go to a private inbox, separate from the main business email account.
There are many ways we can help you get more organized or add more time to you day. Check us out at www.totalresourceconnection.com for more information.

Favorite Online Gadgets

One of the things that I notice is when I am doing research online, I sometimes get lost in the “well that looks interesting” maze. What should have been a 15 minute search becomes a lost hour or more because I end up surfing.

Here are a few great tools that I’ve found while surfing that are applicable to most anyone that runs their own business (and some even work for employees too).

This nifty little tool that Google has created is amazing. It’s the Google Notebook. It allows you to highlight text on a web page that you want to save, right click and add it to your notebook. It saves the text along with a link back to the site the text was on. The notebook can be categorized to easily organize your information, so if you’re researching a particular topic and want to save snippets of information, this is a great way to go! On a scale of 1-5, this definitely rates the highest 5 possible.

Jotcloud is another organizing type tool. They bill themselves as “the sticky note of the web”. Basically, you keep your sticky notes online instead of on your computer, phone, walls etc. Now, we all know that sticky notes aren’t the best place to keep information, but it is kind of a clever idea to be able to jot little things down that may not deserve a complete file in your office, plus you have access to it anywhere. My favorite part was the demo is in Japanese. No, I don’t read, speak, or understand Japanese, but I got the idea of the demo and understood their program better after watching it. Scale of 1-5, this is a solid 3. Sometimes you just need to jot things down. If you’re one of the anti-google folks, this may work for you.

We all need a little humor in our day. While I would not endorse being dishonest, there are times that we just need to end a conversation. We’ve tried “Well, I’ll let you go now.” Or the more to the point “you need to let me go now.” or even, “Hey, we’ll have to pick this up tomorrow” but that person is still chatting with you on the phone. Here’s a perfect site that gives you the back up of sound effects to really get off of the phone. http://www.sorrygottago.com/

Now, back to work. Many start ups, and others have limited space, but we sure have a lot of gadgets. I personally can’t have another gadget on my desk, credenza (or floor) so I love efax.com. All of my faxes come to my email where I open them and only print out the ones I need. Plus, the bonus of no more extra paper filing. I can file it all in that email folder, or by client. If you’re just receiving faxes, you can sign up for free, to send faxes it starts off at less than an extra phone line per month. This is also a good option for anyone that would like private faxes sent to them.

Finally, are you still doing your email campaigns through Outlook? Check out www.icontact.com for your email, newsletters, and blogging campaigns. Their program is incredibly easy to use, you don’t need to know any HTML, they even have templates that you just add content to. It lists bounced emails, and gives fabulous statistics that you can see who has opened your marketing message (and how many times), unsubscribers, and many more stats.

Blogging 101

I don’t know about you, but it seems like every where I turn, or at every click online, I’m being marketed to, both subtly and very in my face. It almost seems like you can’t visit websites without being forced to give an email address and your name to just look at what might be an interesting article.

Blogs seem to be different. You can build on a blog, it isn’t like email that can be directly filed into my deleted folder, or get lost in my junk file. It’s more of a conversation, by cross linking, and commenting on other sites, you build your own network based on what interests you and what you would like to focus on in your interests and your business.

As I look at blogs though, and somewhat voyeuristically see conversations; I’m reminded of my daughter who sees something shiny and drifts far away from whatever conversation, song or activity she was just involved. Yet the benefits are real if you can engage your reader.

What are the actual benefits to blogging?

According to a recent article in entrepreneur.com, “a blog allows your business to engage with current and potential customers in a direct, informal, no-pressure way. You can communicate the strengths of your product or service, the expertise of your top executives and the breadth of your company’s experience in ways that traditional marketing and advertising don’t allow. This can help engender a better understanding of your company as well as inspire customer loyalty.

Because of its collaborative nature, a blog can help you gain insight into customers’ needs and interests. You can then use this information to develop new products or services or fine-tune existing ones.

A blog can make your company appear more “alive” and approachable. A website promoting your products or services is an essential marketing tool. But a blog, in effect, gives your company a personal voice, which also can help boost customer loyalty.

Blogs cost little, if any, money. Some public blogging sites are free; others charge only nominal fees. Also, blogs are often extremely easy to set up and update, with virtually no training required.”

If you don’t have the time , creativity, or desire to create your own blog, but you’d like the exposure, consider outsourcing it. Many Virtual Assistants (including us) offer this as a service.