Are You Working to Save Money or to Make Money

Ah, January! The time for new beginnings, new goals and new action. This is when we believe anything is possible and feel empowered and invigorated to create a year better than the last. My wish for you is that you work smart this year rather than just working hard.

Look at how much time you spend ON your business versus IN your business. A lot of business owners these days are trying to save money by doing everything on their own. The unfortunate reality is that usually these are the business owners who are not making money. All of their time is spent working IN the business, and no one is making sure the goals for growth are being met.

Rather than get overwhelmed with wondering how everything will get accomplished, find areas you can outsource. Before you say you can’t afford it, there are ways to delegate work that will actually allow you to make money faster than if you do it all yourself.

Let’s take marketing. People need to know you exist and they need to understand how you can help them so they want to do business with you. Clearly marketing is an important part of what you company needs to do, but as the business owner it’s not something YOU need to do. I’d like to share the stories of Larry and Heather’s approaches to marketing in 2010 to illustrate two ways of marketing. They both wanted to use physical marketing materials and online marketing strategies, keeping costs low, but they took very different approaches.

Larry is like many other cost conscious business owners, did his own marketing and admin work.

• He created his own marketing materials to take with him to local and national business events, but since he wasn’t great with layout or graphics, it took him a long time to create a mediocre marketing piece.
• – Larry took the time to learn about FaceBook, LinkedIn and Twitter. He was overwhelmed with all of the different approaches and information on social networking and would find himself spending hours on the sites but not doing much.
• He wanted to blog regularly and submit his articles to online article banks. He had a great plan but implementing was tough. Larry He didn’t have time to update his blog regularly and didn’t know what keywords he should use to attract more visitors. His articles were submitted to one article bank but he didn’t reformat them to meet the specifications of the other sites.

Larry was kept busy with marketing activities, often 2-3 hours per day, but didn’t have much to show for it. He didn’t have many new clients from his efforts and didn’t have time to work toward his other business goals.

Heather also wanted to keep costs down, however, Heather decided to outsource some of her marketing in order to have time to make money.

• She worked with a virtual assistant who could create high quality flyers and webpages in very little time. Heather would provide the content and communicated her desired outcome, and the VA would produce it.
• Every week Heather sent a rough draft of a blog post to her VA who would then edit it and add it to her blog.
• Heather had her VA assist with social networking sites so Heather spent no more than 30 minutes per day on her sites, and still built quality relationships and awareness of her company.

Heather only spent 3 hours a week on marketing related activities, and less than $100 for her VA. Because she had time to focus on her business and effectively implemented her marketing plan, Heather increased her number of customers, her company’s offerings, and her income.

Do you see yourself in Larry or Heather? Honestly evaluate if you are in cost-saving or money-making mode. More often than not, the fastest way to make money is to focus on the most important activities for the business owner, the income generating activities. Then contract with other experts to take care of areas where you don’t excel or where it’s not the best use of your time.

Want to explore how you may be able to outsource to make money? Contact Assistant Match for a complimentary consultation.

5 Tips for Outstanding Presentations

We all have presentations to give from time to time, whether they are to clients, prospective customers, colleagues or an internal team. Many of you most likely know that formatting presentations and documents are huge drains on your time. (Just delegating the task of formatting documents usually gives you at least one full week back per year!) Chances are your time is much better spent focusing on income-producing activities.

You may have considered working with a virtual assistant to help you get prepared for a presentation. Here are 5 sure-fire presentation-related tasks you can delegate that will give you a huge “VA bang for your buck.”

1. Create a template. In PowerPoint or a standard document, presentations always look sharper with a template that gives the look and feel of your company. The right virtual assistant can create or revise a master template that you can use for all future presentations.
2. Assemble content. If you are the subject matter expert, provide the necessary information in raw form, and let your VA format it correctly. If more than one person is involved in providing data, ask your VA to collect and assemble everything for your review.
3. Include charts, graphs, and images. Often, visual representation of data is more effective than words alone. Your VA can create charts and graphs, and find images that will add “spice” to your presentation.
4. Proofread. Even if you choose to create your presentation on your own, have a VA proofread to make sure it is perfect before sharing it with the world.
5. Add advanced automation and effects. In PowerPoint presentations, adding slides with movement and sound can work wonders when used properly. Many virtual assistants can include advanced features quickly and easily. Let them take your presentation up a notch.

Delegating any of these 5 functions is sure to make your next presentation memorable and stress-free.

As always, the key is to delegate activities that are not the best use of your time and to work with a virtual assistant who is skilled in the areas you require. Contact Assistant Match to find the right VA for you!

UPCOMING TELECLASS: Virtual Assistance 101

Complimentary Teleclass:
Virtual Assistance 101
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Noon Pacific (3 PM Eastern)

Discover the basics about virtual assistants and how to work with one. During this 45-minute teleclass you will learn:

• What a virtual assistant is and what one can do for you.
• Why virtual assistants are increasingly popular with busy professionals.
• How to tell if you could benefit from working with a virtual assistant.
• How to identify the things you need to delegate.
• Keys for working successfully with a virtual assistant.

Dial in number: 641-715-3200 Access Code: 640142#

If you cannot attend live, send an email to Assistant Match and you will be sent an audio replay link.

Hey Virtual Assistants!

Want to add another feather to your cap and learn the easiest way to build a website ever?

Get certified in the Bold Business Works Website Builder.

• One 90-minute webinar will teach you everything you need to know. You’ll learn best practices and hands-on training on this simple, intuitive system.
• Then you have two weeks to show what you’ve learned by building a real, functioning website. You’ll add images, meta tags for search optimization, embed a blog and a video, integrate payments from a shopping cart and other specific tasks. It’s all easy to do with this system.
• You submit your completed site to Bold Business Works, they’ll check your work and within 24 hours you’ll have your certification!
• And it only costs $39!

Plus if you like the website you built, we’ve arranged for you to be able to buy it for HALF PRICE. Or not. You decide.

What a great new tool to have in your VA arsenal.

Class: Wednesday, June 10th @ 9:30-11:00 am Pacific (12:30-2:00 pm Eastern) Then you will have until June 24th to submit your site for evaluation. Easy as that.

Sign up now by clicking here.

Time-Saving Technology – hootsuite

HootSuite is designed to let multiple people share responsibilities for managing multiple Twitter accounts. Using HootSuite, you designate one person to be the administrator of the accounts, and that person can give other people the authority to edit and make changes to individual accounts. This is a great tool if your VA will be managing your account, and/or if you have multiple Twitter accounts.

Grow Your Business by Writing Less

There seem to be two types of people – those who love to write and those who do not. Even for those who enjoy the process and are happy with the end result, the process is not always a fast one. If writing is a part of your business life, think about getting some virtual assistance around it.

• Proofreading. For people who don’t mind writing, proofreading is an excellent timesaving service. Many Assistant Match clients write their own articles, workbooks and self-study courses, but send them to a virtual assistant who is an excellent proofreader to review. They know that the sentences are not perfect, but the thoughts are down. With a second pair of eyes correcting grammatical mistakes and typos, they know the final product will be professional.

• Editing. This is the perfect service for someone who can get ideas down on paper but needs help with flow and structure. It’s more in depth than looking for typos and is a huge timesaver for people who are slow writers.

• Writing. Do you have articles and blog posts in your head but have trouble getting them out? Have your VA write for you. Give a few bullet points and guidance on the style and length desired and your virtual assistant can whip up something great for you.

We written in past posts that just delegating document formatting will give the average business owner a full week back in their life. Using a VA to assist with writing-related functions is the same, and can even give you more time back into your life! Give it a try – you won’t be disappointed.

Money-saving Technology: DIMDIM

With more meetings and trainings moving online, it’s nice to find a high-quality web conference service that is free to users. DimDim allows users to hold meetings for up to 20 people at no cost. They also have reasonably-priced monthly fees if you are expecting a larger group. DimDim has many features available and has been getting rave reviews from users. Check them out for yourself at www.dimdim.com.

Social Networking and Your Business

The theme for most small business owners these days is to network. With the economy slower than it has been in the past, there is a major trend for professionals to put more time and energy in building relationships with potential customers, possible alliance partners, and other business owners with whom they relate.

The challenge for most is that networking can take up a lot of time and money. (The local breakfast and luncheon meetings, the informal coffee dates, the gas money, etc.)

The solution is to commit to the live events that make the biggest impact for you, and then direct your focus to online, social networking.

There has been a HUGE surge in the number of business people using blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and similar sites to connect and network. Big corporations are using them as well as your Aunt Mabel. Are you? The price is right (free for most) and being online, you can network from anywhere in the world. You are able to find people who have the same interests as you, connect with potential customers, and build relationships all from your computer.

Part of your marketing strategy may need to include social networking. There are plenty of people out there who can train you on how to most effectively use social networking, so we won’t get into that in this article. Instead, let’s focus on three core basics of getting the most out of social networking.

1. Define your goals. Is your primary reason to get involved in social networking to reconnect with high school friends before your upcoming class reunion, or is it to build your list of contacts so that you increase the number of people who attend your business webinars? There are many reasons people get involved with social networking. What is yours?
2. Have a strategy. Know how you will get from point A to point B with social networking. Having a LinkedIn account is great, but unless you know how to spend time each week using the account effectively, you will not see results other than time passing while you are online. Posting to your blog each week doesn’t really matter if you are the only person reading it.
3. Get help. Most people need some sort of help in the social media realm to be successful with it. Take a class or read up if you don’t know the basics. Follow the teachings of a mentor who has the results you desire. Hire a virtual assistant to help maintain your accounts and to keep your plan on track. Work with someone who knows more than you. Remember, as long as you know what you want to accomplish, you don’t need to get there alone.

Talk with Assistant Match to see how a virtual assistant can help you maximize social media strategies for your business.

Attention all VAs – social media training

Due to popular demand, Ted Prodromou is back and will be offering a webinar, “Hot Trends in Social Media” on April 22, 10:00 am PST.  Ted’s trainings are always extremely popular with our virtual assistants and I’m sure participants will leave with outstanding tips to implement immediately. Ted really gives all that he has to these classes, and is a leader in the social media and social networking fields. With statistics like this:

• Over 15 million business people network on LinkedIn;
• Twitter growth is over 40% per month;
• YouTube visitors are watching 13 billion videos per month;
• Facebook has 200 million members and is still growing,

all virtual assistants need to at least know the basics of Social Media and Social Networking. Whether or not you choose to offer social media services to your clients, being in touch with trends and having some sort of presence yourself will only help you secure and retain clients. This free webinar is the perfect option to see the latest and greatest, and to go more in depth in the areas that interest you. Register now at www.netbizexpert.com/hot-trends.

In the near future we will have a social media webinar for business owners – this one is just for virtual assistants.

Spring Cleaning

Has the spring cleaning bug hit you yet? Use this “urge to purge” to get your business and life more virtual! Here are two examples you can implement right away.

• After shredding and discarding all those old documents, start scanning the ones you want to keep. Electronic files take up less room to store and are easier to access when away from home or the office. Continue going paperless by switching to electronic bills, and scan and shred papers that get sent to you in the mail. Then be sure to back up your files!  Check out Mozy or Carbonite for great off-site back-up services.
  
• Turn loose notes into an organized system. Cleaning often turns up old notes with phone numbers, dates, and reminders. Put all of that information in an electronic format so you can access them anywhere. How? Update your contact management system (or create one from scratch) to hold information and notes for business contacts and friends. Use an online calendar to record your appointments and phone calls. One of our favorites is Google Calendar and for a virtual contact management system you can try Highrise.  The best part is that both these tools are free!

And if you want to experience the benefits of spring cleaning but just don’t have time to do it, let your virtual assistant take care of it for you.  Not only will you get the spring cleaning done, but you will also have a terrific foundation for your virtual office.