The Environmental Virtual Assistant

VA’s are finally getting recognition!  Visit here to read an article on WebWire “Virtual Assistant Tops Today’s Show Work at Home Business List.” And Canada will be having its first Virtual Assistant conference.  Wish I could go, but I can’t even make the annual conference for the IVAA this year – I’m going to try for next year, though.

I’ve thought a lot about how a VA can benefit the environment, but was not able to find as many articles as I thought I would on the subject.  I found plenty of articles on global warming of course, the latest being the ice-shelf-hanging-from-a-thread-story.  Side note:  whether or not you agree on how we are affecting global warming, you surely must believe by now there IS global warming!  Don’t get nervous – today is not about global warming, I promise.

But just to use common sense, just look at our ridiculously crammed roadways during rush hour!  I’m willing to bet that 25% of those cars need not be on our highways.  (Did you know that 75% of all statistics are made up on the spot?)  While I’m not suggesting that we should turn our society into people who stay in their houses and over time forget how to interact with other people, I am suggesting that if more people would work from home there wouldn’t be as much:

• pollution from cars
• noise pollution
• accidents (statistics again)
• stress-related health issues from commuting

Not suggesting that everyone should become a VA (just hire one), I know I’ve found that you can get more accomplished at home than in an office.  When I worked in an office I was constantly being interrupted by the phone, emails, my boss, other employees . . .  I don’t know how I got anything done!  That’s why I ended up working nights and weekends — and I could get a full day’s work in a half day on the weekend.  Until someone else came in to work and thought it was a great time to chat (sigh).  But I thought at the time if I had the appropriate hookup at home and could work from home, I’d get 50% more work done (I love statistics).  And I did try the PC Anywhere hookup.  That works just fine if you’re one of those tortoises on that high speed internet commercial where they love things S-L-O-W.  That was stressful to me because when I click on something or try to download a file, I expect it to be NOW.  We’re so spoiled with high speed internet, aren’t we!?  Thankfully there are better programs than that available now. 

Back to my point . . . if employers would invest in setting up some of their employees to work from home just one or two days a week, think of the savings – to the employer, the employee and to everyone else who has to commute.  This is my idea:  You say to your boss, “Boss, I would like to work at home two days a week.  I’ll gladly take $1 or $2 per hour less on those two days and I feel I’ll be more productive.”  You say to yourself, why in the world would I take an $8 or $16/day paycut?  You’d have to do the math, of course, but I’ll bet unless you work very close to home you’re spending more than that in gas and car repairs (I think the mileage reimbursement is currently $.485 / mile), not to mention tolls, time wasted traveling, etc.  Your boss gets a slight $$ savings which will add up over time if you include payroll taxes and the like, you get to stay home and not waste that money, you get to be more productive because you have the serenity of your home office, and for two days a week you’re not polluting with your car.  That, my friends, is a win-win situation. 

And you’d be that one person that’s made a difference.  It’s like that in anything we do – people argue that one person usually doesn’t make that much of a difference, but if that one person multiplies into 100, 1000, or 10,000, then all of a sudden, it’s a big difference.  We’ve all heard these suggestions:  if half of the population drives 1 day less a week, uses no plastic bags for a week, watches 10 less hours of TV per week, etc., etc.  But really!!  It DOES make a difference!  Give it a shot!

VA’s take that to the enth degree.  They work from home all the time and, therefore, are helping the environment by not polluting with their cars.  It’s not a world-saving thing to do, but it’s a start.  And if you hire a VA to help you with things, you are helping the environment as well!

The Personal Side

Kitchen cabinets are almost finished. We went to hang the last one and of course it doesn’t fit.  I must admit the rest of them look awesome, though.  Upstairs bathroom is almost finished, too – new tile floor, new countertop and sinks, new bathtub fixtures – looks pretty good!  Painter is here painting the dining room – WHAT?  I hired a painter??  Yes – I could watch all the DIY and HGTV programs in the world – and STILL not become a good painter.  I’ve been painting rooms for over 23 years (that’s how long I’ve lived here), but it’s very OK – not great.  So since I LOVE my dining room and it’s the first room you walk into – it seems to be the most earthy room (the chair rail is unfinished barn boards and the windows and doors are framed in it) – I’ve hired a professional.  I did all the prep work, of course.  That doesn’t sound like alot, but as with everything I’ve done in this house, nothing is easy.  You see, about 8 or so years ago I thought it would look great to paint the room with texture paint – the kind that has the gravel in it.  And it did look really nice (except where the wall meets the ceiling and I messed up).  So guess what?  Yep!  I had to sand the entire room to smooth out the gravel.  Why not paint it in gravel again?  Because of all the smooth spackled spots to repair the walls where the house had settled and where the original dry wall guys did not do a good job.  Like I said:  nothing’s easy.  So Mike is here from Scott Gribling Painting.  Mike is the nicest guy next to Scott – so professional and friendly – and he’s doing an awesome job!  I would highly recommend calling Scott if you need anything done – and btw, his specialty is all kinds of texture painting, too.  Check out his website!

The Business Side

Hire me.  OK, ok – I’ll say more than that (I wasn’t going to, though). 

Having a Virtual Assistant helping you manage your workload is a cost-effective was to bring you peace of mind.  In thinking of hiring a VA, there are certain things you should look for in a VA.  You should make sure that a VA you are considering hiring is experienced at whatever you are looking to have accomplished.  Look at his/her resume as if you were going to hire that person to work in your office.  Speak with them on the telephone – not just by email.  Choose a local VA if you would like to meet that person first; however, most VA’s never actually meet the people for whom they are doing work — and that arrangement is based on trust.  If you are not the trusting sort, give your intended VA a small task to perform and judge the way they handle that task.  Did they simply complete the task as requested or did they go the extra mile:  did they give you options; i.e., you say:  make me a hotel reservation in (city) for (date).  An experienced VA will ask questions:

• are you traveling for business or pleasure?
• will you need a flight or travel arrangements?
• how many people will be staying in the room?
• are you attending a convention or meeting?  what convention/meeting and where is it?  is the room being booked with a group?
• what type of room are you expecting?
• do you have any special needs – internet service, a desk in your room, etc.
• do you require a restaurant or a pool in the hotel?

Then the experienced VA will respond with a list of hotels in the area with room rates for all the types of rooms offered at each hotel, including whether or not they have a pool, what type of restaurant(s) are in the hotel, amenities provided – and whether or not the rates are different if booked through the hotel or online.  You choose from the list and she then makes the reservation.  It’s a good little experiment to see how thorough your VA is.

Ask your potential VA some general questions:

• what time he/she would have available for you each week;
• how much notice is needed for a larger job (be prepared to give some details);
• are they generally available for last-minute jobs;
• do they have the background you are looking for in a VA (legal, medical, corporate);
• do they need to have a certain background to perform the work you are looking to get done?     

Come up with a list of parameters that you are looking for in a VA.  Start looking for a VA NOW — BEFORE you are so crazy behind you say don’t have the time to find one.   Post a job on virtual assistant sites such as IVAA.org or DVVAA.org if you don’t know how to find one.  As I’ve said before – you NEED a VA!!  Wouldn’t it be great to have a VA you trust that you can just email tasks – do this, do that – and it gets done just like that!  Searching and finding the right VA for you will be the thing you’ve ever done – trust me.

Recommended Sites

See The Personal Side above for Scott Gribling Painting and visit his website. 

Have a great weekend!

Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

484-919-0637

www.ptconciergeservice.com

You Need a Virtual Assistant

Even if you don’t realize it yet, you really do need a Virtual Assistant.  In this blog I’m going to go over some of the scenarios with which you could utilize a Virtual Assistant – today I’ll concentrate on small business owners and entrepreneurs.  Now if you don’t have any stress and you’re able to handle everything in your life and it all gets done – I want to meet you!  I feel like I need a VA sometimes.  Because, of course, I’m doing everyone’s else’s stuff and my stuff gets the appropriate back burner.  (Like the kitchen cabinets . . . )

as always, feel free to scroll down to “The Business Side”

The Personal Side

I have met a lot of people recently – could be all the networking events.  I really do enjoy networking and meeting new people.  And it’s interesting to find out what they do (and how I could help them, of course), but it’s really interesting to tell them what I do.  First I test the waters and say I’m a Virtual Assistant.  I’d guestimate that 75% of them have no idea what I’m talking about, they smile and nod politely, which is just fine because then I get to tell them!  The other 25% who know what a Virtual Assistant is either has one, knows someone who has one or has just read an article about VA’s.  I, of course, would love to insert here how environmental VA’s are (not counting driving to the networking events – carpool if you can!).  I will do a future blog on all the societal benefits of working from home.  Anyone who knows me knows that I have been referred to as a tree hugger since I was in high school.  Back in the – insert decade, I’m not going to –  I started to spout about global warming and what the industrial age has done to our planet, the ozone layer, etc., etc.  Most people looked at me like I had two heads, my mother would just say,”are you going to get up on your soapbox again?”  My father would just gently chuckle.  And the sad part is I still get the same reaction today from more people than I would care to admit.  It’s inconvenient to be environmental. (hey!  reference to Al Gore and I didn’t even realize it!)  Don’t get me wrong – I am not the quintessential environmentalist.  I still use plastic bags – but I try to reuse them if they haven’t had something gross in them.  I bought the cloth shopping bags from Giant and I forget them in the car sometimes.  But I will not allow chemicals on my lawn, and my brick patio would look much better more often if I would treat the weeds.  I’ve tried vinegar and lemon juice, boiling water – but the best thing is just to weed wack the patio.  I have been a staunch proponent for decades about not using chemicals outside that will eventually get in our water sources.  I do truly believe we are poisoning ourselves and our children with the use of chemicals on our plants and in the animals we eat, as well as the additions to our preserved food.  You see, my teenaged daughter had cancer a couple of years ago – a rare cancer usually found in people over 55.  She’s absolutely fine now, but what the heck?  My girlfriend’s daughter recently had  thyroid cancer . . . we’d better find a cure to cancer very soon since our children’s children will be the ones to suffer from our lack of responsibility.

But I draw the line at becoming a vegetarian – I LOVE seafood and chicken.  Never met a piece of sushi I didn’t like – except for sea urchin, of course.  (It has the consistency of snot.)  I would prefer if the chickens were free range and killed humanely and we hadn’t poisoned our fish supply with mercury and other chemicals, however.  OK, ok – I’m done – my mother’s voice just got inside my head.

BTW – anyone see the commercial where the tree walks across the pasture and hugs the environmentally friendly house; two guys are standing in the pasture – one looks at the other and says, “house hugger.”  I LOVE that commercial!!

 The Business Side:

Your business is doing great!  Calls are coming in, products are going out – services are being provided, the phones are ringing non-stop, you’re getting 500 emails a day . . .  but you’re so overwhelmed with everything that you’re not taking care of the details that are necessary to run a successful business.  Remember:  you’re in this to make money and time is money – don’t waste it!  It’s not unusual for me to hear, “I’m so busy I just can’t get all my emails answered in a timely fashion,” “I’m so busy my invoicing is falling behind,” “I’m a week or more behind on correspondence and the piles are growing on my desk.”  These are really just a few of the things I am constantly hearing from people I run into.  I ask them – have you thought about hiring someone to help?  “No – I can’t afford to hire anyone else and I don’t have the room or the time to set up extra equipment for someone else!”  Why put yourself through that?  And yes, you CAN afford to hire a Virtual Assistant!  I don’t know what YOUR time is worth, but I’ll bet it’s way more than $25 – $35 an hour!  And not having time to do your invoicing?  If that’s true – no wonder your cash flow may not be where you need it!  And there is nothing worse than piles that accumulate on your desk – after a while you’ll forget something important that will cost you.

There are typing services out there – all over the world.  If you just need to dictate and have someone type it – you need a typing service.  But that is NOT what a Virtual Assistant is all about.  When you develop a relationship with your VA, it’s exactly the same as having your own personal assistant who is right next to you.  A good VA learns about you and how you would like your work done.  It’s a learning process, of course, but one that is well worth it.  Please take a second to check out a couple of articles found in Entrepreneur.com.   Still can’t figure out what a VA can do to help you?  See this article – Top 10 Reasons to Hire a Virtual Assistant.  Or this one!  Do yourself and your business a favor – make the time to hire a good VA – then you’ll be on your way to getting your business (and your life) in order! 

Miscellaneous Stuff

I met this really nice guy at a networking event.  His name is Will Quinn of Quinn’s Office Furniture & Design.  I’ve been wanting to get a little side table/work station/file cabinet piece of furniture thing for some time but couldn’t find just what I wanted.  Will, who I’m sure has much bigger fish to fry, went out of his way to find me a cabinet (after trying to understand what I was talking about) and actually brought it to a meeting we attend so I wouldn’t have to pay shipping.  Wow!!  Big thanks to Will.  I now have a great desk surface with shelving for my files and supplies at an affordable price.  You should really check out their website – great furniture!  Some day I’ll hopefully get him to design and furnish an office for me (how do you insert a dream cloud here?)

The Food Critic

Ok – went out to eat last night at a place I’ve been to before once.  Geryville Publick House owned by Greg and Terri Lepore.  Greg is also an attorney as well as a bar owner, and I used to work with him over 20 years ago!  It was great catching up with him after all these years.  Nice.  The bar is a historic building which he refurbished and it looks great!  The bar is one of those nice, heavy wood bars with stone walls – really beautiful!  We started with a cheese and fruit plate and tuna appetizer.  The cheese plate had a sliced apple and grapes, small rounds of bread and 3 different cheeses that complimented each other nicely.  The tuna was chopped in small squares – raw – and seasoned perfectly over greens.  Nicely done!  I had a burger – yes, I eat ground red meat a few times a year – and it was fantastic!  Nice, warm, casual atmosphere.  If you’re in the mood for great food in a beautiful bar served by very competent and friendly waitstaff, go to the Geryville Publick House! 

ok – that’s it – I have to go work on the cabinets again, or still, or whatever . . . some are even hung up now and they look great!  I’ll put a pic on here for you when they’re actually finished.  Have a great weekend!

 Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

484-919-0637

www.ptconciergeservice.com

Let it Snow!!

Hi everyone!

The Personal Side 

As I’m sitting here nice and cozy inside my house with a nice fire going and a cup of coffee on my desk while it’s snowing outside, I am once again reminded how much I just LOVE this Virtual Assistant thing!  I turn my head for a moment to gaze out the window at the beautiful winter wonderland and once again thank God for lots of things:  my health, my family, a roof over my head – and most of all – that I still have the peace of mind to take that moment to look out the window and appreciate the beauty of nature.

Why so happy this morning?  Well, not all that long ago I would have been up early (same as now), but ran outside to shovel, clean off my car, let it run to warm up and waste gas, and then hope and pray some idiot on the road was not driving if they didn’t know how to in this weather.  All to get to a work environment that was run inefficiently, the employees unappreciated, the boss subject to temper tantrums – just to finally get back home feeling wiped out and frustrated because of all of the above.  Don’t get me wrong – I actually love pressure and time deadlines.  That’s when I’m my most efficient, so I didn’t mind the daily deadlines and the long hours.  It’s when you know everything could be run so much more efficiently, you see the wasted money and no one will listen to your suggestions – either because they feel they know best or maybe they just feel threatened if someone else knows best?  I’m not sure, but I think some of you reading this know exactly what I’m talking about.

But here I am – warm, safe and snug sitting here at my computer.  And as you’re reading this, I sincerely hope that anyone driving in snow this morning made it to their destination safe and sound.  And I hope you get home before the freezing rain starts!

The Business Side

You already know what I’m going to say.  Did your in-house staff make it in this morning?  If they did, will they stay until the end of the day or will they leave early to make it home before the ice gets too bad and the ride home is a nightmare?  And how much time will be wasted talking about the drive in, the drive home and the weather in general?  And will you pay them for the whole day?  (Of course you will – you’re not an ogre!)  How much actual work was done for the day? 

I’m not telling everyone they don’t need office staff in-house in certain situations.  You may need a receptionist, a file clerk (or combination) to handle the physical paperwork in your office.  But what if you really had something you needed done today and your administrative assistant couldn’t make it in?  What would you do?  If you had a Virtual Assistant (like me), not only could I pick up overload work for your in-house assistant and work with her, but today wouldn’t even be an issue.  One telephone call or email with instruction and it would be taken care of in an efficient, cost-effective manner.  You would pay me for actual work done, and it would be returned to you by the end of the business day – to your office or your home – wherever you are and wherever you need it.  I have to put in a disclaimer here:  you can’t give me a 3-hour project to do by the end of the day at 4:00.   I’m not a magician – but if it were an emergency you could most likely have it by the next day.  That’s why the best clients a VA can have are clients that communicate and work WITH their VA.  It’s a wonderful thing!

Just Because

I recently went to see Cyrano at the Academy in Philly.  It was wonderful!  The actors were great and I loved most of the voices.  Not to mention it was a favorite childhood story of mine.  But what I really wanted to let you know if that if you’re ever in the area, please stop in for dinner at Estia – directly across the street from the Academy.  We walked in without a reservation – it was a Wednesday night – and we were warmly welcomed by the hosting staff.   (Almost all of the hosting staff – but I did get the one hold-out to smile with my outgoing charm 🙂  )  The restaurant was decorated very tastefully and was not overdone.  We were ushered to a table next to a wooden rail, up a step from the rest of the restaurant.  With our bird’s eye view we were able to casually watch everything going on a bit below us.  The wait staff was very cordial and professional. 

Next to us on our little riser were stone columns with flowing-type material covering the lights above which gave a beautiful billowing appearance as if you were outside on a perfect day with a slight breeze.  There was no breeze, of course, but that’s what was created in your mind’s eye.  Our waitress was absolutely wonderful, handing me her little flashlight so I could read the menu – yes, I forgot my glasses AGAIN!  As if that weren’t enough to make your dinner wonderful, then came the exquisite food.  I ordered calamari which was stuffed with different Greek cheeses.  You were served 4 whole calamaris on a beautifully decorated plate – plenty for an appetizer.  Then came the Mediterranean salad – which we shared – also wonderful with the feta and olives.  For dinner we each ordered Chilean Sea Bass (I know – you’re not supposed to order that any more because we’re eating too many of them and killing them off – but this was special!)  each prepared differently.  One was prepared with a red sauce and vegetables; one just grilled with a delicate lemon and herb taste – I don’t want to say “sauce” because it was not a sauce – on wilted spinach.  I wish I had the words to describe to you how delicious the fish tasted – it melted in your mouth and I wanted to make every single bite last as long as possible to appreciate every flavor it encompassed!   I would highly recommend this eating establishment – stop by if you’re in the area and give yourself a real treat.

That’s my restaurant critique.  Who knows when I’ll visit a restaurant that I love that much again.

Oh, and for those of you who remembered I was supposed to be blogging on VPN’s, my computer person has not had a chance to get the information to me yet.  I promise it will happen eventually.  Thanks for keeping up!

Oh, and no – my kitchen cabinets are not finished yet (sigh) – so I’ll let the HGTV.com site up for awhile yet – it may be up here quite some time actually.

 Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

www.ptconciergeservice.com

VPN’s – NOT

I know I said last time that I was going to write about VPN’s, but I’m going to make you wait one more week for that.  I’m getting the scoop from a pretty savvy computer lady, but she’s off to the islands (L U C K Y).  So when she gets back I’ll finish my VPN blog – I really value what she has to add.

Soooo . . . what to do, what to do . . .

The first thing that comes to mind is a good friend of mine who was the first person I went to when I decided I wanted to start my own business.  She had started a concierge business years ago and every time I saw her she looked pretty darn happy about it.  So a couple of years ago we sat down and I picked her brain.  She willingly gave me pointers, tips, references – anything I needed.  But at the time it just wasn’t the right time for me.  Skip to the present . . . she is still giving me pointers, tips, references – and dragging me (not screaming) to some pretty great networking functions.  She has also gone off in a different direction and took instruction on doing voiceovers.  I will put both of her websites on my blogroll and if you have the chance, please visit them.  Oh, her name is Deb Reast, and her concierge company is Yours, Mine and Hours – isn’t that great?  She’s not virtual which makes for some pretty lucky companies and individuals in our neck of the woods. 

The Personal Side:

My kitchen is being remodeled now for over two months.  There are no contractors holding us up – only time, mother nature and copper are holding us up.  I got the bright idea to put copper inserts on the cabinet doors we were refacing.  Let me tell you a little secret about copper – it’s a very, very soft metal.  (duh)  You can’t even bump it with anything lest you get a ding in it.   The obvious thing to do is to stamp some sort of design on it to hide any imperfections.  Sounds easy, doesn’t it?  Not so much.  I looked at Home Depot for hours; I looked at Walmart; I searched my house and shed – NOTHING.  A month later with the cabinets in all stages of remodeling, a dear friend of mine came over, looked at them and said – what about a brick?  I thought she was hitting the bottle a little early in the day, but it turned out that a brick with the corner rounded a bit, covered with a cloth hanky and rolled on the copper gives quite a unique little random design.  SUCCESS!  (thanks, Laurie!)  So that just leaves gluing the moldings on, clamping them, sanding the ends, ironing on the wood veneer and painting them.  Piece of cake!  I have a recommendation:  if you are able to afford to have someone come replace your cabinets for you – DO IT!! 

The Business Side:

I bet you’re wondering what business could possibly have to do with my kitchen cabinet project.  It’s easy!  If you have a project to do that you know you want done right and right away, you should go to a pro.  If you’ve never written website content, will you sit there for hours trying to figure it out or will you hire a VA – like me ♥ – who knows how to write content and use keywords to get your website noticed by the search engines?  If you’re an attorney and need a brief typed and you type with two or three fingers, are you going to sit there and type it with all the proper formatting, citations, tables, etc., or will you hire a VA – like me ♥ – who types over 100 wpm and has typed dozens and dozens of briefs?  It just makes sense to hire a VA to help you with anything you need done by a pro.  Or hire Deb to help you run your restaurant, or go to your office to help you fill in the blanks – if you’re lucky enough to live close to her.

OK, back to the kitchen cabinets – I’m getting there . . . really I am.  Visit Deb’s sites – go ahead – now’s a good time – what are you waiting for?

Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

www.ptconciergeservice.com

484-919-0637

Email Management

Emails – A Technological Miracle / A Technological Nightmare

The Personal Side

 I LOVE emails!  I love getting them from friends, clients and colleagues . . . I love how fast communication has become.  Why, I can pose a question to a friend or colleague about anything and have the answer back right away!  My business runs on emails – I can complete a project or task and  ¦send¦ – off it goes!   I can type faster than I can write, and if I type something and then change my mind or think of a better way to say it . . . ← ← ←    AND anything can be said in an email with a higher comfort level than if you were to say it in person or on the phone because of the editing factor.  What a great mode of communication – I just LOVE it!!

And then there’s spam.  When you were listening to Monty Python singing the spam song (spam, spam, spam, spam . . . it’s going through your head now, isn’t it?), did you ever think that one day the word spam would bring such an angry response from within the very depths of your soul?  I personally wish the most tragic of fates to spammers – how do they sleep at night?  I have two email boxes.  One for my business, of course, and then there’s the personal one.  Why oh why did I respond to that ad to do a survey?  It’s got to be them that sold my email address, and then THEY sold my email address, and so on and so on.   They said they wouldn’t!  I now get over 200 junk emails a day which thankfully go right into the junk email box – but I still get over 100 emails that make it to my inbox.  So I ignore it for a couple of days.  Bad move.  Eventually I’ll have to look through it and delete, delete, delete – it seems like hours!  I REALLY don’t have the time to spend going through it – I have other things to do!  So now the thing I absolutely love becomes a nagging ritual of the worst kind.  My business email – YEAH!!!  My personal email – MERDE!!! 

The Business Side

So here you are – you get to the office, get your coffee and sit down for what you believe will be a fantastic, productive day!  Why you’ve got your Virtual Assistant all lined up to take up the slack, you’re feeling refreshed and are ready to take on the world.  You turn on your computer, you go to your inbox . . . and the day just took a turn for the worst.  By the time you sort through and respond to all these emails, the morning will be half over!  You can’t ignore them – what if there’s something time sensitive or something important you’ve been waiting for?  And amongst all these emails are spam that got through, email ads that may be interesting to you, and customer/client inquiries that you need to answer.  But what if when you went to your inbox in the morning your emails were already sorted for you –  the spam cleaned out, the easy customer inquiries answered, the emails of possible interest put in a folder awaiting your review in your own time, and the important emails put in a folder for you to review first.  Some of these emails you need to answer yourself – no way around it.  But wouldn’t it be nice if you could jot a note in response and have someone else put it in a professional-looking format?  That’s what I do.  ANOTHER great thing about VA’s!!  So before you’re in the office ready to go, the evening/overnight emails are sorted and all ready for you.  With instruction from you, the easy factual questions have been answered and you need only look at your “important” folder if that’s what you want to do right now.  The other stuff can wait until you have a moment.  When you find the right VA for you, it’s a working relationship – the same as if your assistant was sitting right next to you.  Questions!!  I KNOW you have questions!  Give me a call or email me – I’ll respond!

Next up:  VPN’s

Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

nickeyh@ptconciergeservice.com

http://www.ptconciergeservice.com

484-919-0637

Productivity – Don’t Leave Home Without It!

pro·duc·tiv·i·ty       (prō’dŭk-tĭv’ĭ-tē, prŏd’ək-)  noun

The quality of being productive.  (sigh)

pro·duc·tive      [pruh–duhk-tiv]  adjective

having the power of producing, generative, creative:  a productive effort

 HAVING THE POWER . . .

That is absolutely the truth – YOU have the power to be productive.  It’s your business – what do you want from it?

 The Personal Side

After having observed the corporate world for over 20 years, I’ve made a few common-sense observations.  For one, it seems to me that people in management positions sometimes forget how they got there and that they were once the people under them.  Not the really good ones, of course, but unfortunately a fair amount.  I believe productivity suffers when management forgets to utilize the talents they have sitting there in front of them.  They get so hung up on the word “managing” that they mentally pass by the team aspect of their job.  They start to dictate to their team and fail to recognize that their team has great ideas, too!  A good Virtual Assistant is just that for their clients – a team member with great ideas!  I recently met with a client at a Panera’s Bread – a halfway point for us.  (Yes, I will meet with a client if it’s convenient for the both of us.  If not, we can IM to chat.)  He took the time to sit down with me and explain not only what he wanted from me, but why and what he was trying to accomplish in the end.  What a difference that makes!  Expected Research + Extra Research Ideas Because I Understood the End Result = Happy Client.   THAT’s making my clients’ businesses more productive!!

The Business Side 

In your own business, you have goals, aspirations – and tons of things you need to get done!  Do you have the time to do everything yourself?  A smart business entrepreneur knows that he or she needs an assistant to help them get their business off the ground and continue to climb.  It is simply impossible to do everything it takes to start and grow a profitable business by yourself.  If you take the time to develop a working relationship with a VA (just as you would with a non-virtual assistant), you are immediately giving your business the boost it needs with all the cost-effectiveness we’ve talked about before.  Take the time to explain not only your expectations of the work to be done, but also the end result you’re looking for.  You will then have a valuable relationship with a VA that understands your needs.

For example, you say:  I want you to find me NY bankruptcy attorneys.  I would get you a list of NY bankruptcy attorneys with their contact information.  However, if you say:  I want you to find me NY bankruptcy attorneys in the southern counties because they generally charge less who would be willing to work with me on a matter where my client has a case (summary of the case), etc., the information provided would be very different.  We would discuss the matter between us and realize the best way to handle this would be for me to call the attorneys I’ve found and ask them if they would be willing to speak with you about being co-counsel in a matter, etc., etc. – and provide you a list of attorneys waiting to hear from you.  What a difference THAT would make in your time management and productivity!  I could go on with examples like this one that occurred between me and one of my clients, but you have work to do – and so do I!

Next Up:  Email Management

Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

http://www.ptconciergeservice.com

Save Your Money!

Welcome back!

The Personal Side:

During my time served in law offices, I used to look around and marvel at the waste – the wasted time, the money thrown out the window.  Don’t get me wrong – I believe that most law offices are run tightly and efficiently.  I just wasn’t familiar with them first hand.  Without getting into great detail, I’ll give you an example.  When your staff is completely bogged down and work is coming out of their ears, they’re coming in weekends and staying late nights, wouldn’t you look for ways to manage the workload more efficiently?  Your staff will eventually get burned out and make more mistakes – it’s human nature.  Maybe hire a part-time staff person, perhaps on a temporary basis, to catch up on filing, closing files, rearranging files –  small but necessary tasks that your staff was having trouble keeping up. If I were managing an office, I certainly would not have paralegals filing, photocopying large jobs or closing files.  Would you rather have your $25 per hour staff filing or getting work out the door that you can bill – some of it that they can bill – and hire part-time staff at $10 per hour?  That’s one small example of people just not thinking about the big picture.  Like hiring Virtual Assistants.   In staying with the law office scenario, you hire a VA to do overflow work at $35 / hour.  You turn around and bill your clients the usual $75 / hour paralegal fee and your staff is now happier because they are not insanely swamped,  and we all know a happier employee is a more productive employee.  Your initial thought may be – $35 / hour!  I only pay my staff $25 / hour!!  Really – do you?  How much a month do you pay for their medical benefits?  How does it impact you when they are out sick or on vacation?  Are they working for you every second they are sitting in your office taking up space and working on equipment that you maintain?  Hmmm – I wonder how much you are actually paying them per hour.

The Business Side:

What business owner doesn’t want to save money (and time – usually one and the same)?  I just can’t think of any reason why an entrepreneur or small business owner wouldn’t want to use the services of a virtual assistant.  Actually – any size business that has overflow or a project to get done that doesn’t want to bog down their staff.  Let’s look at the facts (bulleted just like a tie would want to see):

• no payroll taxes
• no extra equipment / space
• no equipment maintenance
• no sick days
• no snow days
• no vacation days 
• no benefit packages

That’s right, folks.  Virtual assistants are never too sick to work, being snowed in doesn’t affect us in the least, we have our own benefits packages and we are never on vacation when you need us!  We obviously own and maintain our own equipment and you pay us directly and 1099 us at the end of the year.   What a deal!

Don’t waste another day without your very own VA!  Give me a call any time and we can discuss whatever your needs may be, whenever they may be.  Because again – that’s the beauty of having your own VA.  We’re there when you need us for as long as you need us – and that’s how you pay us!

 Next:  What this Virtual Assistant can do to help your business get going, stay going and improve productivity.

Hello world!

I am so excited to start blogging.  What took me so long?  Wish I knew.  Can’t go back . . .

I’ll be sharing what I do, how I do it, why you should connect with me and all sorts of great tips and ideas.  So visit me often and see what I’m up to!

The Personal Side:

I am also very excited about the whole virtual assistant thing.  How could I have gone into an office every day – a very poorly run office – and just put up with it for all those years??!!  Oh yea – the paycheck and benefits.  Now I remember!  But here’s the thing:  one day you will wake up and realize that life is so very short on this earth, if you have the chance to change it, you must grab that opportunity!  I am one of the lucky ones – that opportunity arrived and I have definitely grabbed it.  And if you are reading this and wondering how you, too, can be your own boss – make a plan.  Decide what it is that you love to do and what you are good at doing.  I was in a place where I was wondering why I went into this line of work (which is a different story for another time).  I started wondering what it is that I truly wanted to do.  Then I realized I really love what I do – it was just the environment in which I was doing it!  It’s funny how you can get caught up in the environment you spend so much time in – look the other way when you see how wrong things are, actually trying to justify the means to an end.  And some people will never realize what they do is so wrong – or they just don’t care.  You definitely can’t change other people – but you can change yourself and feel good about yourself and what you do!  So if you are unable to make such a drastic change but really want to – make a plan!  Get set up, do your research and save money.  You will truly love yourself for it and the world will look even more like the beautiful place it is.

The Business Side:

My future blogs will detail exactly why it is so beneficial for someone to have a virtual assistant and why virtual assistants are NOT just a typing service.  The client base is vast, and even if you do have a specialty (mine is law), you can assist virtually anyone with virtually anything.

So stay tuned!!

Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

484-919-0637

www.ptconciergeservice.com