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

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