working with a virtual assistant Archives - Your Chief Simplicity Officer

Banish Overwhelm, Not Enough Customers, Not Enough Money From Your Business

Being a business owner is hard.

It can also be immensely rewarding, both personally and financially.

There are a lot of numbers bandied about, but the SBA reports that only 50% of start-ups last five years or more.

The trick is to be in the 50% who thrive … without becoming a slave to your business.

The top three problems you face as a business owner are how to banish Overwhelm, Not Enough Customers, Not Enough Money from your business.

That’s what this book will help you with.

A Compilation of the Biggest Takeaways, Strategies, Tips and Action Steps Shared by 21 leading small biz experts, trainers, coaches, and authors.

Your editors, Maura Raffensperger and Rachel French, interviewed small biz experts in the areas you care about most and asked the tough questions that YOU want asked. The calls were recorded, then Maura and Rachel wrote a one-page action sheet of the top points made in each one-hour interview – including links to added resources. These folks have helped thousands of entrepreneurs build more profitable businesses with techniques and strategies that work. Now they’re going to teach you.

You’ll have access to the top tips of experts and authors, coaches and consultants, speakers and strategists…all sharing their very best secrets, proven strategies and practical approaches to help make sure THIS IS THE YEAR YOU GO BIG IN YOUR BIZ!

Topics Covered Include:

Marketing
Getting Paid What You are Worth
Time Management
Search Marketing Secrets Revealed
Effective Networking
Secrets of Getting Free Publicity 12 Month a Year
Make Money in Your Sleep/Creating Information Products
5 Tips to Crank Up Your Impact and Results on LinkedIn
How to Be Successful Without Burning Out
Magnetize Your Marketing: How to do Less Marketing and Make More Money

You don’t have to lose your sanity to build a profitable business! You already invest your money and time, but are you sure you’re investing them in the right things? Let the experts teach you how to work smarter in your business – all for only $14.97.

How to Banish Overwhelm, Not Enough Customers, Not Enough Money from your Business book cover

Filed Under: business management, entrepreneurial mindset, Getting Stuff Done, small business marketing, System Development, time management, working with a virtual assistant

How To Be a Winner When Hiring a Virtual Assistant

By Maura Raffensperger 1 Comment

I started working with a new Virtual Assistant (VA) this month, and three steps in the process may help you get ready to hand off some of your work, too – whether you hire a virtual assistant or employee.

I won’t lie – there is time involved in prepping to work with a VA. But a little prep time helps forestall two common reasons why hiring a virtual assistant fails for the business owner.

The two most common reasons hiring a virtual assistant fails for the business owner are:

A lack of preparation by the business owner.
Being unclear on what you want the VA to accomplish.

The time you put into preparation will pay off in a smooth working relationship.

Here are the three things I did as soon as we agreed to work together:

Created an email address for her using my domain (i.e. Cindy@ YourCSO.com)
Made her an admin on my Facebook page
Gave her limited access (yes, you can limit this!) to my Paypal account

Here is why each is important:

When Cindy sends out an email for me, she’s not using her personal email, which would not be recognized by my clients; it is clear to the recipient that she is with my company.
Now I can have Cindy go in and do some routine updates and make changes to my Facebook page.
Cindy can go in and create ‘buy’ buttons to add to my webpage, and process returns for me – without having access to the rest of my Paypal account. What a relief! I didn’t know you could do this until Cindy told me it was possible.

Not sure how to set up 1,2, and 3? Here are the quick directions:

Log into your domain host, click on ’email’, and add a new account. Pretty simple, and takes 5 minutes. If you have a host like Bluehost*, you can call their 24/7 phone support and they can walk you through it. P.S. This also gives you the ability to cancel the account if you change VA’s.
You should already be an admin on your own Facebook page, and will see ‘Settings’ as a tab on the top left of the page. Once in “Settings’, click “Page Roles’, then ‘Add Another Person’. You can choose how much control to give the new user by which ‘Role’ you assign them. Also a 5 minute task.
You must have a Paypal Business account to do this – but you probably do if you are selling using Paypal. This one is not as intuitive, and I ended up calling Paypal for help – so it took 15 minutes, instead of 5. They do have live person support, which I appreciate. Basically, what you need to authorize for a third party to create ‘buy’ buttons for you is ‘API Access’, which is under ‘Tools’ in their menu. Or just call Paypal and let them walk you through it.

By the way, even if you are not ready to hire, you may want to set up some email accounts you can hand off later when you do hire, like support@yourdomainname or accounting@yourdomainname. That way you can train your customers & vendors now to use specific email addresses & not have to re-train them later not to send all email to your inbox.

My next post will cover some other important steps to take when hiring a virtual assistant or employee for your small business.

*Full disclosure: Bluehost is my domain host, and I do make an affiliate commission if you become a Bluehost customer after using my link.

Filed Under: Delegation, entrepreneurial mindset, System Development, time management, working with a virtual assistant

Small Business Hiring Tips: Employee, Contractor, or VA?

By Maura Raffensperger 4 Comments

When you start to think about hiring help for your small business, you may ask ‘What is the difference between an employee, independent contractor and a virtual assistant (VA)?’. There are websites that give you a legal and IRS definition, but I want to give you a different perspective: What would help you the most?

First, let’s define the terms.

An employee takes direction from you. You tell them what hours to work , and may even train them. You pay them either hourly or a salary, and are also responsible for payroll taxes and worker’s compensation insurance. If you require them to work from your office, they are most likely an employee.

An independent contractor does work you request, but set their own hours, and use their own tools. You can give them a deadline and work specs, but they decide how to get the work done. They set their own rates and bill you.

A Virtual Assistant (VA) is an independent contractor who does their work for you remotely. I differentiate VA’s because I think of independent contractors as often being hired per project, whereas a VA is usually hired to work on an ongoing basis, typically in increments of 5 hours a month.

Many solopreneurs start by hiring independent contractors on a project basis, like an accountant or graphic designer. As the business owner’s workload grows, they often hire a VA to take care of repetitive tasks.

Hiring a VA can be more cost-effective than hiring an employee. I remember considering hiring a part-time employee for office help, then finding out that, even though I only wanted someone 2-4 hours/week, the worker’s comp insurance had a hefty minimum and it was non-refundable; even if my one employee quit, I had to pay a year’s premium. It would have been fine if I needed someone for 20 hours a week or more, and knew I would replace that person if they left, but I was ‘testing the waters’, so a VA was a much better choice for me.

The downside is that I had to let go of some tasks I would like done by someone else. I would love for someone else to enter and update my contacts. Easy to direct an onsite employee to do this, but not worth the time it would take for me to scan cards or put them in an envelope and mail them to a VA, with directions. At that point, it is the same effort as me just doing it myself. Luckily social media & automation tools (see my post Keep Your Contacts Up-to-Date Without Ever Entering a Business Card Again) make keeping track of contacts much easier now. And sharing information and files already on your computer is a breeze.

What frustrations have you faced in outsourcing work? I’m working on an e-book to help solopreneurs hire smart, and would love your comments.

Filed Under: business management, Delegation, Getting Stuff Done, time management, working with a virtual assistant Tagged With: small business hiring tips

The 4-Hour Workweek Book Review

By Maura Raffensperger 6 Comments

Who isn’t enticed with the promise of the 4-hour workweek? The book has sold more than 1,350,000 copies worldwide [Wikipedia], and has remained on the Amazon Best Seller’s list from the year it was first published. Just for the marketing savvy of the title alone, this book deserves a read.*

And the book does have good points entrepreneurs can implement about outsourcing and automating, making it worth a read. The problem comes from Ferriss’s definition of ‘work’. It’s obvious from any article written about him that he works almost non-stop. As this The New York Times article noted, Ferriss spends far more than 4 hours per week in blogging, speaking and self-promotion, which Ferriss describes as “evangelizing.”

‘Work’, to Ferriss, is doing something you don’t like to do, solely for the purpose of making money. While it is perfectly reasonable that you would want to minimize the time you spend on disagreeable tasks (and certainly something I train my clients to do), the entrepreneurs I work with like their business, in much the same way Ferriss must like the blogging, speaking and self-promotion he refuses to call ‘work’.

And those regular “mini retirements,” ideally a month off for every two months of work, that Ferriss touts in The 4-Hour Workweek are alluring. But evidently more of a goal than a reality; a 2013 Inc. article reports that Ferriss hadn’t had ‘a proper mini retirement in more than a year now.’ [Inc. April 2013]

What you can take away from The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich is the basic idea of creating some form of passive income to serve as a base for the things you enjoy doing in your business and life, and outsourcing the things you don’t like to do.

On a personal note: His policy on outsourcing felt a bit ‘icky’ to me. Not because there is anything wrong with outsourcing to someone in another country, but because his motivation seemed to be to take advantage of their financial insecurity and pay them a pittance. Reminded me of a WalMart mentality – and that’s not how I want to run my business. I have outsourced work occasionally (through ODesk, now called Upwork) to other countries, but I paid what I felt was a competitive rate. The majority of my outsourced work now is to a Virtual Assistant in the United States.

Bottom line: Read The 4-Hour Workweek, use it as an inspiration for what you can outsource, and consider what you can do to create passive income as an income base.

* Ferriss used Facebook polls to test title ideas

Filed Under: business management, Delegation, Getting Stuff Done, personal organization, System Development, time management, working with a virtual assistant Tagged With: the 4 hour work week, The 4-hour workweek

Incredibly Easy Mind Map Software & App

By Maura Raffensperger 6 Comments

I have found a new mind map software which is very easy and intuitive. If you have tried mind map software and given up because it was easier to go back to paper and pencil, you need to look at SimpleMind http://www.simplemind.eu/. Creating a mind map is a great way to organize your ideas quickly, or even describe a process as an easy-to-follow visual.

If you’re not sure what a mind map looks like, there is a picture below, as well as a short video I created to show you just how easy it is to create a mind map using SimpleMind. In the video, I create a mind map to organize my thoughts in preparation for a phone call to my Virtual Assistant.

What I love is that there is a free app for the iPhone, iPad, and android; and it is as simple as tapping the screen to create the nodes of the mind map. You don’t need to have the desktop version to use the free app, but if you do have the desktop version, you can sync from your iPhone to your desktop and visa versa. You can print your mind maps from your computer to save after you create them, in case you choose not to pay when the 30 days are up.

The desktop version costs about $35 [it’s priced at 24 Euros; I’ve converted the price to US dollars at today’s exchange rate], but they have a free 30 day trial, so check it out. There is a version for both the PC and the Mac.

Filed Under: business management, Delegation, System Development, working with a virtual assistant