Answering Your Questions – Part 5 and Final

[OPENING]

4-25-2013 3-20-59 PMAs I was sitting at one of my offices away from home (Brig O’Doon), I decided to ask a gentleman sitting next to me if he knew what a Virtual Assistant was.  He didn’t (AND he worked for Hewlitt Packard).  Perfect opportunity.  I told him a virtual assistant was anyone who assisted someone virtually.  He said that made perfect sense.  Smart guy – not everyone clicks on the idea right away.  Great person to ask what he would want in a Virtual Assistant.

First thing was

[Memorandum of Understanding – see last post, Part 1]

Next

[Time Zones – see last post, Part 2]

Communicating

[see last post, Part 3]

Feedback

[see last post, Part 4]

Comments from others include:

What type of cell phone do you have?

The concern was that if you had different cell phone accounts, there may be too many minutes used by the client.  I would like to mention that it won’t be a problem for your VA (or certainly shouldn’t be) – I’m talking about a client that may be concerned about using up their minutes.  Skype is the answer.  You don’t have to use the video aspect of it – and I rarely do – but it’s free and is always my preferred method because if I’m speaking with a client, I can easily share my screen – or theirs – to look at something we may be discussing.  Skype can be on your phone also, but would use your data, so that may be an issue as well.

What are you going to do?

This is something that should be discussed during your first contact with a potential VA.  But what if you know you need help, but are not sure what it is that a VA can do for you?  That’s where your VA should be able to help.  Also, before your first meeting, take a week to make a list of everything you do, then review your list and see what it is that YOU have to do, and discuss your list with your VA.

After hours / emergency help / weekend help

Again, something to be discussed when you decide what type of assistance you need and when.

Resume

It’s absolutely fine to ask your VA to produce a resume so you know the background your VA is coming from, how long they’ve been in business, etc.

That about covers it.  Questions?  Give a shout – I’m happy to discuss them with you.

Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

info@ptconciergeservice.com

484-919-0637

www.ptconciergeservice.com

Answering Your Questions – Part 4

[OPENING]

4-25-2013 3-20-59 PMAs I was sitting at one of my offices away from home (Brig O’Doon), I decided to ask a gentleman sitting next to me if he knew what a Virtual Assistant was.  He didn’t (AND he worked for Hewlitt Packard).  Perfect opportunity.  I told him a virtual assistant was anyone who assisted someone virtually.  He said that made perfect sense.  Smart guy – not everyone clicks on the idea right away.  Great person to ask what he would want in a Virtual Assistant.

First thing was

[Memorandum of Understanding – see last post, Part 1]

Next

[Time Zones – see last post, Part 2]

Communicating

[see last post, Part 3]

Feedback

Also important to him would be to have a feedback loop, or way of communicating how things are going.  That is actually one of the toughest things I deal with in my business, so I was thrilled to see that someone was interested in this.

I find that people generally don’t like to give criticisms or discuss things they’d like to see improve.  They sometimes would rather just move on to someone else, and the VA is left wondering why.  This is not only counter-productive to the client, but is like re-training employees, one after another, instead of working with the current employee to train them the right way.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that VAs are employees or necessarily need to be ‘trained’ with technical issues, marketing, social media, etc. – but we are not clairvoyant, either.  Without learning your business, how you work and your expectations, we are left guessing and learning at a much slower rate than if you would just communicate what you’re thinking and what you want!

[final Q&A coming up next]

Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

info@ptconciergeservice.com

484-919-0637

www.ptconciergeservice.com

Answering Your Questions – Part 2

[OPENING]

As I was sitting at one of my offices away from home (Brig O’Doon), I decided to ask a gentleman sitting next to me if he knew what a Virtual Assistant was.  He didn’t (AND he worked for Hewlitt Packard).  Perfect opportunity.  I told him a virtual assistant was anyone who assisted someone virtually.  He said that made perfect sense.  Smart guy – not everyone clicks on the idea right away.  Great person to ask what he would want in a Virtual Assistant.

First thing was

[Memorandum of Understanding – see last post, Part 1]

Next

The next thing he said that would be important to him, would be to know what time zone his VA is in.

Depending upon what type of work a VA will be doing for a client, that’s pretty important.  A seasoned, professional VA will know to bring that up in your initial conversation of what type of tasks you will be doing with your VA.

Time zones wouldn’t be an issue with a multi-VA company that has VAs all over the country, however.

Benefits?

For example, if you’re on the West Coast, it would be great to have a VA on the East Coast who would have everything up and running for you by the time you roll out of bed.  And if you’re on the East Coast, a VA on the West Coast can easily be working into the evening your time.

Working with a multi-VA company can provide you coverage from early in the day to late in the evening if that’s what you need.

[next – part 3]

Nickey

Answering Your Questions – Part 1

As I was sitting at one of my offices away from home (Brig O’Doon Coffee House in Ottsville, PA), I decided to ask a gentleman sitting next to me if he knew what a Virtual Assistant was.  He didn’t (AND he worked for Hewlitt Packard).  Perfect opportunity.  I told him a virtual assistant was anyone who assisted someone virtually.  He said that made perfect sense.  Smart guy – not everyone clicks on the idea right away.  Great person to ask what he would want in a Virtual Assistant.

First thing he said

was he would want some type of a memorandum of understanding. That’s always a great idea. It is a great idea to have a simple recap—in writing—of what you will be doing for your client as well as what your client expects you to do. I know that, in my business, I want to develop a trusting, long-term relationship with my clients, so starting out with a memorandum of understanding is great; but almost every single time, my clients add things for us to do, and the relationship evolves.

So a memorandum of understanding may be best initially, but hopefully that would just be a starting point.

Stay tuned for more Q&A

Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

info@ptconciergeservice.com

484-919-0637

www.ptconciergeservice.com

Another New Year’s Day

Every single year on New Year’s Day I try to do everything right; I clean, exercise, eat right, work a little, and do everything I feel I should as a way to ensuring a great year to come by doing everything the “right” way.

Today I woke up feeling less than well.  You know, the typical sick, body aches, stuffy head hoping we have some Nyquil in the house for tonight.  I did manage to walk the dog, go through some old mail, read some old Newsweeks, look at my email once – missing a client request – and made soup.  Other than that, I slept most of the day.

Briefly I went through the head trip – oh no!  I didn’t do everything perfect today – what will that do to 2011?  You know what it will do?  Nothing.  Nothing I don’t do this one day will change how well this year will go for me, my family and my business.  It’s what you do every day – every day when you wake up and decide that today will be a GREAT day and you will do everything you need to do to improve your life.  Every single day is a new day and you have the chance to improve your future – and that’s what I will do – starting tomorrow.

Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

info@ptconciergeservice.com

What do you do?

Here’s how the conversation goes:

“What do you do?”

“I’m a virtual assistant.”

“Oh.”  (polite head nod)

“Do you know what a virtual assistant is?”

“Well – no, actually.”

“A good virtual assistant can do anything that a non-virtual assistant does, except from her own home, with her own equipment over the internet and email, at a huge savings to a business owner.”

“Oh.   So what do you do?”

(polite smile)

If you’re a VA, you’ve heard this same conversation many times.  I think we lose sight of the fact that because we’re on the internet and virtual, we see people every day who know exactly who we are and what we do and how we do it. 

I belong to a networking group and we meet every week.  Every week I do my 30-second commercial  and every week I see the blank stares of people who really don’t know what I do.  Maybe I’m not clear; maybe I should just list everything my company does, but … well… I just couldn’t do it in 30 seconds!  So I say things like – whatever you would have an assistant sitting next to you do, we do.  More blank stares.

To practice, I’m going to list everything my company and team members do:

• General admin
  • Typing correspondence, documents
  • Transcription
  • Client contact
  • Scheduling
  • “Make things happen”
• Legal assistance; i.e., working for an attorney – not providing legal advice 🙂
• Travel arrangements – vacations to complex business itinerary
• Personal assistance
  • Doctor’s appointments
  • Find a plumber, etc.
  • Research on anything you need; i.e., new car, vacation spot, etc.
  • Post an ad; i.e., Craig’s List, eBay, etc.
  • Plan a party
• Email and calendar management
• Event planning – personal and business; small or large
• Bookkeeping (see http://www.BookkeepingVAs.com)
• Website design, management and maintenance
• Database management and maintenance
• Social medial marketing and management
• Research
• Proofreading / Editing
• Copywriting – website content, articles, press releases
• Email newsletter creation and management
• Article and press release distribution
• Logos and rebranding

I could go on, but will you remember?  My task:  finding out how to get the word out.  I am open to any suggestions! What would YOU do to get the word out?

Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

NickeyH@PTConciergeService.com

@nickeyh

Skype:  nickey.personaltouch

Good Morning America’s Clip on Virtual Assistants

or better titled:

I just wrote an incredibly long piece on this clip, describing how GMA did NOT capture the essence of what real virtual assistants do, going into great detail about how VA’s do it better than what they showed, but every time I looked at it, I couldn’t help thinking that I was being just a bit snarky.

So I waited a day and tried to rewrite it.  Still didn’t like the essence of it.

I’ve narrowed it down to this:

Dear Good Morning America:

Way to NOT capture what real Virtual Assistants do and bundle the term “Virtual Assistants” to 3 cheap companies that didn’t do a good job.  (of course they didn’t – what do you want for $2?)

OK – feel myself getting snarky again.  I’ll end with:  I’m just hoping people won’t judge all VA’s by that clip and not find out more about what we really do.

It’s always disappointing when the media doesn’t do a good job, isn’t it?  Shame on you, George!!

Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

www.ptconciergeservice.com

What Does Skin Care have to do with Virtual Assistance?

Even though I’m a Virtual Assistant, I run into really neat people (especially since I LOVE to network).  One of those really neat people is Nancy Provan who sells Arbonne and is in my BRG group.   I decided to interview Nancy who has had a fascinating life.  Oh – did I mention it’s DR. Nancy Provan?

Nancy grew up in Detroit and graduated from Farmington Hills High School.  She attended John Hopkins at Baltimore for her undergraduate and attended med school at Michigan State University.

FIVE DAYS after she graduated from med school she married her current husband and moved to Indianapolis.  She completed her post-grad and got called to active duty in the Navy.  She served her three years at Willow Grove Naval Air Warfare Center as a GP who took care of active duty, dependents and retirees.

In 1997 she started her family and continued it in 1999, 2001 and adopted a little girl from Guatemala in 2004, staying home all this while to do the hardest job ever – mom.

In 2005 she discovered Arbonne as one of her sons had severe eczema from birth to 4-1/2 years – which was completely cured by Arbonne’s baby care skin  products.  Within two weeks of starting the products, her son was healed!  That was enough for Nancy and she started selling the product herself, hoping to be able to reach as many people as possible and tell them about this great product.  And as far as I’m concerned, coming from an MD is all I need to hear!

But truth be told, I use Arbonne and have for years.  As soon as I heard how there is no animal testing done, all ingredients are vegan-certified, there are no added fragrances, no mineral oil (which a lot of products have and is bad for your skin – it’s a petroleum by-product!), and all products are dermatologist-tested.  That’s right!  AND all testing is done by clinical scientists!  I wonder if I could be one of their guinea pigs for keeping skin young – looking …  oh, right – no animal testing.

But I’m thrilled to know Nancy and know that I’m getting my product from an MD who is passionate about selling the product for all the right reasons!

Soooo – if you have skin (hehe), you should try this line of products.  Even my husband – who is allergic to EVERYTHING – can use their hand cream.  (He could probably use other stuff, but won’t try it!)

OH – HEY NANCY – got anything for poison ivy?

Give her a shout – she’ll fix you right up with whatever you need – men, women AND children!  Besides, when she gets too crazy busy, she’ll need a VA, I’m sure …

http://www.nancyprovan.myarbonne.com

Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

nickeyh@ptconciergeservice.com

Best Mothers’ Day Present!

I haven’t had time to blog in a very long time.  Business has taken priority and my clients’ work has become more important than keeping up with my own “stuff.”  I am not unhappy about it – I am just the proverbial cobbler’s “children.”   (Maybe I should get a Virtual Assistant LOL!!)

With Mother’s Day coming up, I wanted to do something special for my mother (goes without saying).  She’s 82 and in great health, but you really never know, and I don’t want to be left behind wishing I had done this or that … no regrets!

I’m in a pretty cool networking group out of Doylestown, BRG, a fairly laid-back group with some great people.  It takes time to develop relationships — which is for a blog at another time.  My point is there’s a really bright and sunny entrepreneur in my group, Lorna Fitzgerald, who runs Life’s Images by Lorna, a photo scanning business.  So I got to thinking how great it would be to have a DVD made for my mother of pictures from her childhood to the present!  Of course I have about as much time to do this as I do to blog, but yesterday I stopped by my mom’s and my daughter was there with her munchkins, and I decided to grab my mom’s photos and go through them.  Between the two of us, we bullied her into letting us look at old photos, etc., and grabbed a bunch without her knowing.  BTW, my mom was an incredibly beautiful woman in her day.   So now I’m totally into it and can’t wait to go through the mountainous stack of my photo albums to pick out some photos to put on the DVD (I may be exaggerating here just a bit).  But it will be well worth the effort!

The thought of preserving these photos on a DVD that she can pop in any time to look at is by far the best present I could ever give her.  Preserving memories and having them somewhere other than in boxes you never look at just can’t be beat!

So what are you doing for you mom this year on Mother’s Day?  Try to think of something unique – you could always contact Lorna.

Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

nickeyh@ptconciergeservice.com

www.ptconciergeservice.com

Follow me on twitter:  @nickeyh

It’s Not All Small Stuff

I almost lost my daughter last Friday.  No, I’m not kidding and no, I don’t mean in the relationship sense.  My daughters and I are best friends.

I mean drowning – in the ocean – in Jamaica.

It was really weird, because from the moment she told me she was going to Jamaica with friends, I felt unease.  That is really not like me – normally I would say Wow!  Great!  Have a fantastic time!  But something was just nagging at me …

Fortunately for me, she told me the story after she came home, knowing that would be the best way for me.

It all started with a trip to the beach.

She and one of the girls had been out on the catamaran on Thursday and had the most beautiful experience, that when they went back to the beach on Friday, they cajoled  their third friend into accompanying them, even though she was fairly adamant that she didn’t want to go.  The sky was sunny and clear, except for a little darkness far away towards the other side of the island.

About 5 minutes into the trip, the wind started kicking up and the guide attempted to turn the catamaran back to shore  — without success.  He then had the bright idea for all of them to go to one side of the thing to give him the leverage to turn.  As the waves were kicking up, a good-size wave came up under the catamaran and dumped them all into the ocean.  Nicole and Amy were freaking out at first, trying to swim toward the boat.  The guide yelled for them to stay away from the boat, and in an instant they found out why – it violently righted inself and took off like a shot.  There they were – out in the ocean – not even able to see land.

As the boat took off, Nicole and Amy became instantly calm, knowing that there was nothing good that would come from being hysterical.  After all, they both are moms of three and have seen hysterical up close and personal.  Now, in case you’re wondering why I’m not mentioning friend #3, she was hysterical the entire time and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

The guide at this point didn’t seem very worried and told them to all hold hands – that he was sure someone would have seen the boat flip and would send a rescue boat for them.

It was at that point the guide, whose name was Patrick, started to peer down into the water, looking around.  When Nicole asked him what he was looking for, he told her his face was getting dried out from the salt water and he was just getting it wet.  Kindly of weird since by now they were in the middle of a full-fledged thunder, lightening, pouring rain and violent waves type of storm.

So there they bobbed, getting dunked constantly by the waves, being force-fed salt water by the ocean and trying to remain calm.  About what seemed like 15 minutes or so into the ordeal when they didn’t see any boats, Patrick wasn’t looking very assured at all.  He wasn’t hysterical, but I believe the phrase “he looked scared shitless” may have been used.

After Amy and Nicole tried to sing for awhile (Row, row, row, your boat – where the hell are the boats?), they realized that they were being pulled farther and farther out to sea.  If they caught a good wave and were lifted up, they could see land – not their beach, but what looked like a small island in the distance.  Nicole and Amy decided to swim toward the island, even though they knew they would not be able to make it.  Patrick was telling them – no!  stay here!  But at that point they didn’t think bobbing in the middle of the ocean was the best plan either.  They started swimming in the direction of the island, with friend #3 in tow, and Patrick following.

You’re probably wondering about the boats.  Well, they did see the boats and tried to yell for them, realizing they were just wasting their strength because the boats looked like little dots and of course couldn’t hear them.  And there was a lifeguard on the beach that did see the boat flip over and immediately ran for a wave runner.  Another wave runner and two other boats followed and were looking for them the whole time.  It’s a very big ocean, however …

Long story short(er), a guy on one of the boats noticed “birds” flapping in the distance and wondered what the heck they were doing in the middle of a storm.  Yep!  That was them!  When Amy and Nicole were finally deposited into one of the boats, it ran out of gas at which point Nicole yelled “Are you kidding?  You rescued us in a boat that didn’t have gas?”

No, I’m not kidding – you just can’t make this stuff up!  So they were told to jump into the other boat as the boats were violently being smacked together, and they made the 20-minute boat ride back to shore.

Patrick finally confessed to looking in the water for man-o-wars which can wrap around your legs, causing painful stinging, numbness in the limb and respiratory distress.  Nice.  I would have been thinking sharks, but  what do I know?

I can’t possibly tell this story as humorously as Nicole can (because I’m still trying to find the humor in it), but I did manage to laugh while she was telling it – she has an amazing sense of humor (husband and 3 kids – I guess she has to).

Talk about seeing what’s truly important in your life.  I always try not to sweat the small stuff – and I think I’m very good at it.  But this was not small stuff …

I hope I never ever have to go through what millions of mothers have gone through – because this close call was as close as I ever want to get.

Nickey Hollenbach

Personal Touch Concierge Service, LLC

http://www.ptconciergeservice.com