I’ve had around the same number of billable hours each month for the last year. I’ve had clients hours fluctuate, I’ve lost some clients, gained some new ones, but it all seems to level out.

About two months ago, I was at a point where I was at the computer from 7 in the morning until 2 in the morning. I still only put in a few hours of billable time - the rest of that time was spent managing projects, staying on top of email, wrangling my children, etc. I was rapidly approaching the ‘burn-out zone’. While I was subcontracting some work, I was still spending way too much time on project management and other administrative things. I wasn’t able to market my business, follow up properly, or eat lunch without feeling guilty for being away from my computer.

So I took the plunge and retained the services of a VA to keep on top of that stuff for me. It’s the best investment I have ever made in my business, and more importantly, in myself.

For the last two months I have had my own dedicated VA. I’ve blogged about her before - Victoria is my lifesaver. I wonder…is this how my clients feel after they start delegating projects to me? It is a glorious feeling.

Victoria and I are in different time zones, so she starts managing my email when her work day begins, and that frees up so much time, you have no idea. I can actually focus on the day’s projects without being distracted by my email. That is saving me at least an hour or two every day.

I’m delegating more and more work that I don’t really have to do myself. My VAs are more than capable, and it prevents me from switching between projects a million times a day which is idle time I can’t charge for.

A strange thing happened this week. I kept feeling as though I was forgetting something. After dinner when the babes were fed and bathed and I would sit down at my computer to work, but my client work for the day was taken care of. Hmmmmm.

Honestly, it didn’t sink in for awhile. Why do I have free time in the evenings? Am I forgetting about certain projects? What’s happening?

Wait a minute. It’s my VA. What a light bulb moment. Now that I am on the ‘client’ side of the VA arrangement, I will be able to market my services much better because I am living the benefits.

When my workday is done (ya, it does have an end now!!!) I am able to follow up with old leads, work on personal projects and my own business development.

Now it’s Saturday and I have options! I can either get my stuff together to give to my bookkeeper so my taxes will get done on time, or work on a fictional story I’ve been wanting to get to forever. I can clean my house, play with my kids, go for a drive, or just read a book.

Who knew life could be this good for a busy entrepreneur?

If you are on the fence about hiring a VA - get off the fence and get yourself one. Preferably Mann Made Time, of course. Never before has my team been so efficient.

My tagline, “When there aren’t enough hours in the day…” has a whole new meaning for me now. When you find yourself feeling that way, give me a call. We really can add hours to your day.

2 Comments »

My business became fairly successful, fairly quickly. I absolutely love what I do. I love, love, love supporting busy professionals, and that has led to my becoming a busy professional!

Everyone knows we are only given 24 hours per day - all of us. No matter how wealthy we are, we can’t really buy more time. However, the smartest among us know that we can free up more time by outsourcing some of our tasks.

My client work must come before anything else I do, and I don’t believe that to be unique to my business. As a result of my priorities, I’ve been falling behind on the administration of Mann Made Time. My email was getting way out of control, and managing all aspects of my projects had become overwhelming, and takes a ton of (unbillable) time.

I decided that it was time to do something about this! I’ve been working with Victoria Santiago for almost 8 months now, contracting her services for several different things.

I’ve mentioned before on my blog that I’ve had her start managing my email. It’s a very tough habit to break, staying out of my Outlook, but it’s starting to run very smoothly. As action items come up in my email, Victoria adds them to my ‘Toodledo‘ list, and ensures everything is entered in my collaboration site. She also set up a top secret Gmail account where she forwards my urgent messages (So I don’t get distracted in Outlook). It’s working out great. We’re almost a perfectly well oiled machine.

The bottom line is, for the number of hours I’ve retained her for, it’s an absolute priceless investment. I’ve got more focus for my important client projects, I have a system in place for delegating work to my other associates, and I’ve freed up time.

If you’re a busy professional and feel like you can’t breathe with the amount of stuff you have on your plate, get in touch with me. My team can help you. I know how tough it is to let go of that control, I’ve done it myself.

And I am not looking back.

And I’m not looking in Outlook, Victoria. Promise

2 Comments »

I’m spending much of this weekend up close and personal with my business. I’m preparing a handbook to give each of my associate VAs to provide them with a detailed look into my company and how I expect it to be operated. I should have done this a long time ago, and I do have a basic policy and procedure document in progress, but this is different. A policy and procedure manual is something for my husband to give someone if I get hit by a bus, so Mann Made Time can survive without me. Have you read Michael Gerber’s ‘The E-Myth Revisited’? It’s all about implementing systems, and my business could stand to be a lot more systemised.

So as I sit here thinking about topics to include in my handbook, and the way I expect my associates to represent my company, it’s really forcing me to think. It’s a wonderful exercise to go through, and I urge every business owner to put something like this in place. Something you’ll be able to give your employees, or your virtual assistant to follow when representing your firm.

You also should have a general policy and procedure manual that could be handed to someone in case of an emergency that takes you away from your business. A wonderful resource, Yvonne Weld’s Guide to Creating a Thriving Business can be found here.

You can not have any good reason for not doing this. If you do, I would love to hear it. Honestly, who can predict what’s going to happen tomorrow? Your back up plan doesn’t do much good if it’s located ‘in the back of your mind’. Get to it!

No Comments yet »

One of my fabulous VAs, Victoria, is just the best at finding cool software solutions. Yesterday she sent me a link to a program that has resulted in the freeing up of a ton of my time and it’s keeping me on the ball like nothing else!

It’s called Toodledo, and you know it has to be good because of the name.

What it is, is a program to manage your daily/monthly/weekly/yearly/wheneverly ‘to-do’ items and goals- hence the name ‘Toodledo‘.

So, you might be thinking, “ya, big deal, another to-do manager”, but listen up! This one is different. It has a super cool Firefox add on so right now, as I type, my list is staring me in the face on the left hand side of my screen.

I’ve asked Victoria to take over my email management because it eats up way too much of my time, and because I upgraded from a free ‘Toodledo‘ account to a Pro Version (for the hefty sum of $14.95/year) I can add Victoria as a collaborator. She can add tasks for me as things come up in my email, so I can deal with them.

I’m one of those people that’s very motivated by crossing off items on a list, so this is just perfect for me. Yesterday I accomplished an amount of work I didn’t think was even possible, because it was all listed right there for me all day. Tasks are organized by folders, which I have set up for each of my clients, Mann Made Time, and my personal items. Since I don’t necessarily need Victoria to know when I’m going for a physical or what grocery items I am out of, I set up my own personal folder as private so she won’t know what’s in there. Not that it matters, because she has enough information about me, including all of my passwords, to completely hack into my life anyway.

Anyway, It also has a very cool feature with the Pro Version that’s perfect for those that procrastinate or are easily distracted. You can tell Toodledo that you have some free time, let’s say one hour, and it will search your hottest or highest priority items and tell you what you could do for that hour. You can even choose one of your folders (or clients) for it to pick tasks from.

It really is a great tool, and you can get an account for free. Check it out!

No Comments yet »

When I was a little girl, probably around four years old, one of my favorite things to play with was a set of ceramic salt and pepper shakers. One was a boy duck and one was a girl duck…a drake and a hen? What’s a female duck called? Anyway, that’s not important. I loved playing with them. They belonged to my great grandmother who lived with us when I was little.

One day when I was playing with the ducks, something went terribly wrong and one of them was decapitated. I was so upset and scared. I was told time and time again to be careful not to break them and here I’d gone and broken one. I’m sure these weren’t very valuable salt and pepper shakers now, but then, they were as precious as gold to me. And I was terrified that my grandmother would be mad at me for breaking one. I remember I wasn’t even really supposed to be playing with them. I’m sure that was to protect me from cutting myself on a sharp edge - I know that now because I’m a mom.

So in my little four year old mind, I hid the broken duck so nobody would know what happened. I covered up my crime. And it was eating away at me.

Of course because grown ups seem to know everything when you’re four, someone discovered that the duck had been broken.

From here, the details are fuzzy, but that was almost 25 years ago.

What I do remember was that my mother told me that I had to tell Nanny what happened. I remember I was crying when I went in to her room to deliver the bad news. I told her what happened. Spilled my guts to her.

She’s gone now, but Nanny, do you know what an important lesson you taught me that day?

She wiped my tears and told me that no matter what, it’s always best to just tell the truth. She wasn’t angry or even upset with me. That was the most important part of the lesson. I told her the truth and she gave me some bubble gum. She rewarded me for telling the truth.

In my adult life, I just don’t lie. I don’t fudge the truth. When I mess up I fess up.

What does this have to do with my virtual assistance business, or any business? Everything!

If I make a mistake - er…when I make a mistake with my clients’ work (which rarely happens by the way, but nobody’s perfect) I don’t try to create a story to cover it up. I believe that you must be honest. Your clients will think much more of you for it.

My own associates are very quick to tell me if a project I’ve asked them to do would be done better by someone else. I appreciate that so much. Rather than trying to muddle through it and eat up hours of my time, they are honest and up front so I can find the right person to do the job.

When you make a mistake will the world end? In most cases, no. It might feel like it at the time. But what feels worse than getting caught in a lie? What does that do to your integrity as a business owner?

3 Comments »