by VA Connect | Aug 11, 2020 | Entrepreneur, Virtual Assistant
Until recently many entrepreneurs and businesses in general have viewed using the services of a Virtual Assistant as a luxury more than a necessity. However, the outbreak of Covid-19 has changed the way people view working from home and thrust the Virtual Assistant role into the limelight.
I am not a ghost
I find that when you start working with a new client there are always a few teething problems, given that you are asking two or more people to work together who in all probability are sitting in different areas of the country or even the world and there are different personalities that need to gel. It is a tad difficult as you cannot have a chat in the kitchen while you make your first cup of coffee for the day. A VA is to all intent and purposes a “ghost” employee, and it is important to remember that although I do not physically sit in the office, I am a person. So many times, I have heard other remote assistants say “My client has no idea who I am.”
It sometimes takes a while for clients to get their head around the fact that you as a VA are an individual who works remotely on tasks and projects that you have been assigned by the client. Very rarely is there that personal connection.
My working hours
Utilising the services of a VA is the best way to move forward. I find that one of the first issues to address is working times. Clients sometimes need to be reminded that you are a “free-lance worker” and as such you will normally have more than one client, your priorities will be slightly different to an office-based employee.
I need it in writing
Communication is key to a long term, successful working relationship. I always remind my clients I am not physically in their office and therefore unable to raise concerns face to face. It is always good to give written instructions. This way I can revert to this document should I need clarity on what you expect from me. It helps to provide me with a timeline. It is a way of holding everyone accountable for their actions. With working from home becoming the new norm, there are plenty of online management tools and apps that one can use to assist with managing both client and VA expectations. It is a matter of time and trial and error to see which one works best for you.
How am I doing?
I have found in the past, that the more detail I am provided with the better my performance will be. Certain clients that I have worked with have provided specific feedback along the way and this has always been a good way of getting to know one another and addressing areas that might need to be changed.
My theory is simple, I will work hard for my clients, if we keep the lines of communication open and we regularly check in with each other, we will become an awesome team. I will be able to assist you in the day to day management leaving you free to grow your company and move from strength to strength.
Photo by ThisIsEngineering from Pexels
by WP-Dev | Aug 11, 2020 | Entrepreneur, Virtual Assistant
We are living in a very stressful time in the world while trying to protect our health as well as continue our day to day living and continue with business as usual. As business owners and employees, we are often too busy to take time out for our own wellbeing and more often than not we tend to put our mental and emotional needs aside.
It is so important for us to ensure that we too feel safe and comforted as we are unable to perform optimally while feeling stressed and suffering from burnout and exhaustion.
I recently came across the Danish phenomenon of Hygge. Although at first one might feel skeptical and dismiss such a “whimsical and artsy” idea. Just try it and you will discover the change it can create in your life.
Recharge
One needs to only take a few minutes per day to recharge and remove ourselves from our lives in order to gain perspective. All you need I a space to reconnect and be present. In this way you will be able to recognize and enjoy the moment you are in and gain clarity on what is important.
Hygge is not something that you can buy, its existence is in the complete absence of stress and feeds off feelings of happiness and relaxation. There are many ways to practice Hygge from creating a space in your home where you can unwind without disturbance, where you feel comfortable and have things surrounding you that bring you comfort and joy.
Set aside a brief moment of time in your day where you know that you will not be disturbed and clear your mind thinking back on all the good that you have in your life and all you have achieved. Remove the negative and do not think of what could or has gone wrong. Just live in that moment of contentment. You can light a candle and enjoy a cup of tea or coffee in your favourite china cup.
Take the time to create a tasty, nutritious and aesthetically pleasing meal. Use your good plates and candles, create a calming atmosphere and play your favourite music. Don’t sit in front of the television or in front of your computer, don’t eat your hastily prepared meal in the kitchen before running off. Go sit outside and eat your meal and enjoy nature. Eat mindfully.
Clean out your home and office from clutter and only keep what is necessary. By clearing out your living and working space you are clearing your mind to only what is important.
Be present
Take time to be present with those that are important in your life. Remove all distractions such as phones and televisions. You will be surprised at how your relationships evolve and what you can learn about each other. Take time to listen to what they have to say instead of thinking of the next thing is you need to say. Just listen and be. Sometimes just being with another human and interacting mindfully can be more therapeutic and relaxing than any form of therapy.
Hygge should ultimately become a natural extension of your daily life and you will find that your 15 to 30 minutes per day in one corner of your living space can ultimately extend to your whole life so that you are living each day mindfully and being present in the now.
by VA Connect | Jul 28, 2020 | Entrepreneur, Virtual Assistant
You might think that online business meetings cannot possibly be as effective as in-person meetings.
Think again!
During this pandemic we have no choice but to meet online. While a virtual meeting cannot replace personal contact, there are many ways to manage virtual meetings to get better outcomes than you would by sitting around a table.
Have shorter meetings
If your virtual meetings aren’t shorter, they should be.
‘Zoom fatigue’ has entered the lexicon – online meetings are more tiring than in-person. The most obvious reason is that staring at your mirror image makes one self-conscious. It takes real strength of mind not to worry about your appearance. You also cannot shift on your chair without wobbling on video. Extroverts feel that they do not get a chance to interact with their colleagues and introverts don’t enjoy being on camera.
These are a few in-depth articles you could read for more information:
Zoom fatigue is real — here’s why video calls are so draining
‘Zoom fatigue’ is taxing the brain. Here’s why that happens.
Here’s Why You’re Feeling Zoom Fatigue
Get great participation
Let’s face it, getting participation during a any meeting can be a challenge – but technology we have at our disposal makes it possible to energize and involve people. It does mean that the host needs to do more preparation than walking into a room and starting a meeting with an icebreaker, but this can be a good thing to give structure to your meeting.
Here are some of the do’s:
- Enabling the waiting room and be online five minutes before the meeting starts to allow some socializing among colleagues.
- Plan an activity to energize participants, particularly during those unavoidable long meetings. Here’s an article which will give your thinking a kickstart:
https://www.sessionlab.com/blog/online-energizers/
- I nclude opportunities for interaction on the agenda.
- Collect input with polls and surveys.
- Your Q & A sessions are livelier and more productive with live chat enabled – more people ask more questions. You have a written record to help you collate topics and give comprehensive answers. This also means that you can address any unanswered questions later.
Take control
You can control participation and eliminate most disruption by setting your preferences for each meeting.
- If you want everyone’s full attention – disable private chats.
- To encourage discussion – enable chats.
- Use opinion polls and surveys to dynamically involve your audience.
- Control who attends with unique passwords.
- Prevent disruption in your meeting preferences – you control whether participants can mute their microphone and/or video.
- And you can avoid those potentially embarrassing moments which go viral on social media too! Simply take what precautions you can to avoid disruption at home and remember that you are on video.
Bring in the experts
Do you need a consultant to give a quick insight? No problem – give them a time slot and they can join online for as long as their time allows. You will find that it’s much easier and cheaper to have outside experts speak at your events when they don’t need to travel at all.
Find the right service for you
The tech giants and the newbies are racing to bring more and better features to market. Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Zoom Meetings are the biggest names in the news at the moment, but more and more options are available almost every day.
If you are shopping for the best platform for your business, visit technology comparison sites such as G2Crowd, PCMag Business Software Index or Capterra to compare features, benefits and pricing.
These are some features to consider:
- Which face to face view do you prefer?
- Do the analytics provide all the information you need?
- How secure is the software?
- Does it integrate with all the collaboration tools and software you are already using, or offer new aspects you will benefit from?
Use collaboration tools
You might be content with the collaboration tools built into your software but need additional features. No problem – you will find technology which integrates with systems you are already using. Some of the features which I find most useful are:
- Screen sharing.
- Whiteboards and parking lots.
- Live chat (group or private). Chat is your opportunity to increase collaboration and keep everyone on the same page. Some of the actions you can take are:
- Link your agenda in chat.
- Link shared documents.
- Answer questions as you go, or park them on a whiteboard.
- Solicit and expand on ideas.
Record keeping made simple
Record your meeting with a mouse click and save it to the cloud where you can access it later. Depending on the software you use, you can even get a transcription within minutes.
Analyse and monitor your progress
Use the analytics provided by your software for ongoing improvement. Find out which topics are popular, view and save poll results and create infographics.
Make the paradigm shift
In conclusion, although we have no choice other than meeting online during a pandemic, we can choose to make the most of the options we do have. Whether you are new to video conferencing or an old hand, technology changes provide ongoing opportunities for improvement.
Embrace the benefits, be more effective, and enjoy your meetings!
Image by Lynette Coulston from Pixabay
by WP-Dev | Jul 24, 2020 | Entrepreneur, Virtual Assistant
You might not think so, but budgeting is one of the most creative things that you can do. Closing your eyes and making a wish is the way we humans dream. Having a thought, making a plan and working the plan, makes our dreams or thoughts come true! Budgeting is putting that thought on paper and if you are sticking to that plan, your dreams will come true.
I want to give some tips from my personal experience and years being part of many companies and their budgets.
There is still today a lot of businesses and people that don’t understand the reason why they have to have a budget. I think it is because the definition for a budget, ”an estimate of income and expenditure for a specific period”, sounds so vague and uncertain.
But implementing a budget can change your whole cash flow issue and can be very rewarding, IF you are doing it correct and IF you are disciplined to stay focused on what you have decided.
Estimate your income
The first section of your budget is the income estimate.
Surely you must have something to work on, you can’t decide that I am going to do a budget with an income of R500 000.00 per month and you trust it will be there, no, you need to have previous sales history and projections to back a budget like that.
Whether you are working with actual stock or giving a service it is very important to make sure that what you using as a figure for your budget you can also verify.
A car salesman can’t have a budget of R500 000.00 income, if he has only stock of 20 vehicles and he knows his profit per sales is +/- R20 000.00 which will only give him a R400 000.00 income, IF he sells all of the vehicles.
A service person that is working per hour, can’t use an income of R200 000.00 and his rate per hours is R250.00 p hour. Even if he works 30 days in the month for 24hours a day he is not going to get to R200 000.00 income for the month. Your budget must have a reason why you say you will be able to get that income.
For example, you work 10 hours a day at a rate of R250.00 p/hour and you know that with all the work you have, you will only be able to rest for 4 days in this month.
- Days worked 26 days
- Hours worked 260 hours
- Total income for hours R65 000.00.
Your budget can’t be more than R65 0000.00 for the month except if you are going to get in another person to help and you can add more hours.
Rather make your income a little bit less, than committing yourself to expenses that is not going to happen at all. Then you tell your bookkeeper “I told you a budget won’t work”
If your budget income is projected on actuals like stock, hours, capacity, and history of sales and not a thumb suck or wish list, I can assure you, the budget will work.
Plan your expenses
The second part of your budget is your expenses and I am sure I don’t need to tell you that if you have in your budget an income of R200 000.00 you can’t have expenses of R300 000.00!
There are different expenses on our budgets.
Monthly expenses:
Items like telephone bills, internet service, rent, salaries and wages, fuel, printing and stationery, insurance and this can differ from person to person.
These expenses are usually easy to budget for, because we have history and actual figures on which we can work our budgets. Keep in mind situations where those expenses might increase for example, now we use more data for Zoom calls than Fuel for driving due to Covid 19. Just take some time and think through your planning for the month and you will be able to see where there might be changes.
Yearly expenses:
Yearly expenses are expenses like your Licences on vehicles and also programs that we are using.
Instead of going into a panic because you have to have R10 000.00 one month for an accounting license renewal, budget it over 12 months and putting aside R833.33 per month and you don’t need to worry one month!
Saving
Now I have touched a very important part of budgeting, and that is the saving part and discipline part. If you budget for a big expense or taxes or even a yearly fee, you need to keep that money in your bank every month as per budget. The budget won’t help you, if you have that amount of money budgeted every month, but you are using all the money every month because it is available in your bank and when you need to pay your yearly bill…. the budget did not work.
Budget and saving work hand to hand. If you are lucky to be in government you budget and they give you that amount of money that you budgeted for, for that month, but if you are in the private sector, you have to make sure that, the money you have budgeted for a certain expense on a certain time, will be available.
I find the best way to make sure you keep to your budget is open a separate savings or money market account. Do transfers for the amounts that you know, is not this month’s expense, to that separate account, you can also earn some interest on that amount, if you choose the right account and then you know the money is not lying in the current account that you use for daily expenses.
Your wish list
The last part of your budget is your wish list. I always keep a wish list apart from my budget to make sure that when good times are here and I made more profit than expected, that I spend it on the wish list items. These are items that you know you need to better your work or service but there is no money available now. For example, I have a printer, but would like to have one of those big printers that can scan and email lots of pages with a touch of a button.
Instead of wasting money on unnecessary stuff, keep to your wish list, and then you will eventually have everything you wished for.
As Abraham Lincoln said – “The best way to predict your future, is to create it”
by VA Connect | Jul 16, 2020 | Entrepreneur, Virtual Assistant
In modern times, it seems like social media is taking over and becoming one of the most popular and most used forms of marketing. But in fact, email marketing is up to 40 times more effective than social media. Social media gets filtered, which causes content to not reach all social media users. The buying process is also said to happen 3 times faster with email marketing.
“Just look at sites like Amazon, one way they continually get you to buy more products from them is by emailing you offers on a regular basis.”
Neil Patel – Co-Founder of KISSmetrics
Does email marketing still work?
Yes it definitely still works. Email marketing still remains a very effective marketing method to use, for attracting and keeping customers. Based on surveys conducted, it is noticeable that 91% of internet users access their email account at least once a day. Most people would also rather receive business information via email.
Email marketing should definitely be considered as a tool to be used by businesses in their digital marketing strategy. The content you use needs to be relevant. Your company can get more sales and even more customers through using this marketing method. Rather focus on quality over quantity
Email marketing allows you to perform A/B tests, it enables you to target your audience and communicate with a more personalized approach. By sending an email weekly or monthly, you can increase company awareness and attract more attention.
So how would you do this?
By allowing users to interact without having to leave the email. You can accomplish this by using interactive content, questionnaires, games, quizzes etc. It will allow the users to be more engaged with your brand.
You can make the process of buying even faster, which will boost sales as well. Achieve this by giving your client the ability to make a purchase within the email.
There are excellent email marketing tools available that can be used to help and guide you to creating successful campaigns.
Find yourself an emailing software that uses tools in email campaigns, such as:
- Reporting
- Mailing list management
- Analytic tools
- Auto responders
Your subject line must grab the readers’ attention. If you can catch their attention that way, they are more likely to open your email.
Go through your own emails, look at the email subjects that you opened and the ones that you did not open. Why did those attract enough attention for you to open them? Adding numbers to the subject line, “5 Ways to boost your sales”, “How to increase your reach by 400%”.
You need to plan your email marketing carefully
Because of the fact, that promotional emails are seen in the same light as spam, it would be beneficial if you personalize your email campaigns more. Making your email interesting is important as well. This will help you to catch the reader’s attention.
Ideas to use in your email:
- Use interactive navigation bars
- Polls inside an email
- Rotating carousel of product photos
- Enable customers to place their order via an email
- News feed
- Use emails as a feedback mechanism
It is important to reduce the number of emails you send. To avoid your email address being listed as spam, try not to bombard your audience with too many emails.
What lies in the future for email marketing?
It has been estimated that by the year 2023, there will be around 4.3 billion global email users, according to Statista and it is forecasted to grow at 19.60% from 2017 to 2025.
Email programs will become more and more personalized and more interactive. With today’s technology it is possible for a business owner, to setup a questionnaire in minutes and to send it out via email marketing.
As we see a growth in the use of smartphones, we see an increase in email usage as well. It has become so easy to quickly access your email account while on the go, in your lunch break, while cooking dinner, while standing in a queue. You do not wait to be behind your computer to have access to your emails anymore. And as user experience becomes better and better, consumers are more likely to use their mobile phones rather than using a computer.
So, are successful email campaigns still possible?
Yes definitely! 89% of marketers consider their email marketing successful. Use some killer content, throw in some personalization, and you can easily create a really successful email campaign.
by VA Connect | Jul 14, 2020 | Entrepreneur, Virtual Assistant
Delegating is probably one of the most under-used human resources available to us. If you are anything like me, I have spent years doing everything myself because I either don’t have the time to show someone how to do it or I just get on and do it myself because then I know it is done properly. But I have found that as the years go on and I take on more responsibility the same old problem remains – Time. There are never enough hours in a day or days in a week or weeks in a month. I just keep wishing for more time.
This is exactly what delegating does, it gives you more time. The freedom to focus on what you need to be doing and allowing others get the rest done. Let’s name this: Operation create a work force. Your work force will become your anchor. A space where you delegate tasks, ideas, meetings, projects with the sole purpose of making sure that everyone is contributing to making the pie. The problem we find ourselves in when we try to make the pie entirely by ourselves is that we end up with a dozen pies that are not entirely cooked through because we have spread ourselves thin and tried to give at least 80% to everything and 100% to nothing.
I was reminded lately that you need to learn to trust the process, pick a team, trust this team and begin moving your ship forward.
So where does one start?
Firstly you need to assess what you need help with, instead of making a to do list – make a what not to do list. This will help you realise what you will you be delegating – what these tasks look like and what their focus area is – administration, sales, marketing, projects, operations, finance/accounting, etc. By knowing what your focus area or areas are, this will allow you to know who you are looking for and what you are looking for in a candidate.
Secondly you need to hire a virtual assistant. This will allow you the flexibility to work at your own pace, and without the added pressure of office space. Your VA will be able to be molded to carry out tasks the way you like, follow policies and procedures that are in place, and be only a phone call away.
There are 7 tools and applications available to you that will make delegating easier
- Todist
Todoist allows you to keep track of your own tasks (personal and business related) as well as assign tasks to your team. Todoist also allows integration with Gmail that will allow you to assign a specific email to an individual.
- Asana
Asana allows you to manage your team, projects, workflow and processes all in one space. You can easily find out the status of a project, view setbacks and closed tasks, no matter where you are.
- Kantree
Kantree allows you to assign tasks, leave comments, track progress, and easily create reports.
- Zapier
Zapier allows you to create connections/integrations between 300 different applications. You will be able to assign ‘zaps’ automatically from one platform to any of the others, for example if you receive a social media alert in Gmail, you will be able to send a response immediately from Gmail, should you receive a new lead, you will be able to respond to that lead or assign it to another team member.
- Stepshot
For those that would rather not have to train someone because it would take too much of our time initially without realizing that in the future it could save us hours, stepshot is here for you. Stepshot allows one to record the steps to be completed in a process or how to perform a specific action and then share this recording with your teammates. This app will save you training time as the team member will always have a reference to revert back to, if required, and can easily be used when onboarding.
- Slack
Slack is a communication tool that will allow you to have group chats, individual chats and keep private notes, all in one application. One of the biggest advantages is that Slack allows you to create multiple channels that can be specific to a task, a project, a discussion, etc. and the ability to only have specific member assigned to various channels. This will allow decisions to be made quicker, to get information out faster and allow swifter turnaround time.
- Hiver
Allows you to setup shared mailboxes within Gmail which will allow you to easily assign emails to teammates, track the team member and the status of response, meaning that your company will never miss an email or an opportunity again.
Not only will delegation free up your time but any one of these applications will be beneficial to the process. Remember delegation is key and if done right you can build a strong and successful team around you.
