Tired, stressed, overwhelmed? Have you considered getting some help? This week I chat with Chris Ducker, from Virtual Staff Finder, about how you can lighten your load using Virtual Assistant services. Plus I answer a listener question that is right on topic, and a dedicated listener offers up some advice on the best microphones to use on the road.
Listen up as Chris Ducker shares some expert outsourcing tips to help you find a Virtual Assistant to get some tasks ticked off:
- How to run efficient meetings.
- How to figure out what your time suckers are and get that time back.
- What is the ‘three list to freedom’ and how it can help you get clear on the tasks you need to outsource.
- What steps you need to take to start outsourcing.
- Resource tools for managing your virtual assistant(s).
- What tasks a virtual assistant can do to help you.
- How to find the best general VA.
- What is a Virtual Marketing team.
- And plenty more.
So there you go, make 2014 your year for removing yourself from the business to do other more important things, like working on your business.
Listener question and feedback
- Jennie Miller from Designers Agency asks about outsourcing tips for someone just starting out on a budget.
- Content Grasshopper offers some tips for ‘on the road’ microphones and provides some tools for intros, outros, and auto uploading a podcast.
Coming up
- A reflection episode, where I will discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of 2013 and what is to come.
- In the next few episodes, I have fireside chats with an expert retailer, a #1 drummer, and a council worker who created his own TV show.
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Until next time, may your marketing be the best marketing …
Timbo Reid – Marketing Speaker
Host of Australia’s #1 Marketing Show
virtual assistant services
Grab My 10 Marketing
6 thoughts on “How & why to use a virtual assistant.”
Timbo,
I listened to your podcast yesterday, New Year’s Eve, in Perth. Outsourcing has been a mixed pain-n-pleasure for my business. Wanted to start by sharing a great article about outsourcing from Entrepreneur:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/204652
Timbo, I love outsourcing! So what advice do you and the fellow marketeers have for managing cash cycles?
Let me continue the conversation with my ebb and surge experiences with outsourcing.
Two years ago, I inadvertently stumbled into an awesome, reliable outsourcing relationship while talking with one of my fellow contractors. I am a writer; he is a web developer. We enjoy working on projects and found that without planning, we had common work-ethics.
Business surge:
In casual conversation with him, I discovered that he loves working with micro-businesses and support-type of web coding. About half of my clients are sole-proprietors, and small businesses. The other half of my writing is done for ad agencies and web design firms. Outsourcing my colleague’s services has been just-in-time, as-needed, and right-size for the micro-business, We already had the trust – so the work took off from there.
Business ebb:
Balancing the accounts receivable cash-in-hand with the forecasted work and paying outsourced contractors. Remember my colleague I just mentioned and several successful collaborative projects with him — that’s awesome!
— Until, I hit a surge of work. *Without advertising*, I was getting referrals and inbound calls. Yay! But, I was throttling the work, because I just couldn’t produce that much copy in the amount of time I had available.
I’ve been in a seasonal cycle of interns – training great people and increasing my work capacity. (BTW, training people and seeing there success is very rewarding.) Again, a compound surge of success, but “ohhh,” I can’t (won’t) use my interns on additional assignments until I have cash in the bank to pay for their great work.
Business scalability:
You get the idea. If I was digging for clams, I’d love the ebb, but somehow I feel a bit empty – want to fill those writing opportunities, but don’t want to get stuck without enough cash to pay my great people on time. Looking at the article I just shared, I contemplate – am I looking at the wrong outsourcing?
Should I rethink my invoicing and instead structure my outsourcing for the bookkeeping instead of the core business of writing?
What are smart methods for 1-person, lean business manage the great success and safely grow my capacity?
¡Grateful for your time and podcast!
– Shauna
Wow, what a great interview. I have heard Chris interviewed a number of times, including on Entrepreneur on Fire and this is the best interview yet, Lots of great tips for anyone looking at outsourcing. I will definitely now be getting his book. Thanks.
Thanks Christine … so glad you benefitted from it. And thanks for the kind words about mine being the best interview yet – it means a lot.
Thanks for the kind words, Christine. Appreciate you listening in on the chat with Timbo. It was a great chat… I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Great to hear what some of the pain points are for using VAs and that its unrealistic to expect a super Assistant in real life so why expect one online. Will be digesting this and the other discussion points as I figure out the marketing strategy for my own VA offerings in the future. Thanks
My pleasure, Tina. Thanks for tuning in.