Cheer up for 2009

The Wall Street Journal recently reviewed a book by Tom Rath, a workplace consultant at Gallup and co-author of the upcoming book “Strengths Based Leadership.”

In his book, he advises that in today’s economic downturn managers follow 5 simple steps to motivate and inspire employees.

1. Be candid.

Any hint that managers are holding back the truth about the company’s health will likely stoke fear. “In a lot of cases the truth right now is ugly, but that’s something leaders need to be transparent about,” Mr. Rath says. “If they don’t, it creates a buildup of fear and paranoia.” And that hurts productivity. “If all those thoughts are running through your head in a given day, it’s just hard to get your job done,” Mr. Rath notes.

2. Show you care.

“Leaders sometimes are hesitant to really show that they care what’s going on in the personal lives of their employees, but the best managers we have studied clearly do know what’s going on,” Mr. Rath says. This doesn’t mean prying into private matters, but rather showing an interest in the employee’s life outside work, through simple, small gestures like asking what employees are doing for the holidays.

3. Provide stability.

Despite the turbulence, employees want to know the company will continue to exist, move forward and keep the same values. “It’s a manager’s job to help employees understand what are the things they can count on being there – that are not going to change,” Mr. Rath says. Maintaining the gist of traditions is key. If the company always has a holiday party but had to scale back this year, managers should still arrange some sort of gathering, for example.

4. Create hope.

Even if most of the news is bad, make sure to let employees know there are things they can do to help the company. Tell them what they can focus on to make a difference. Even steps as simple as strengthening client relationships or sharing knowledge with co-workers are things employees can throw their energies behind.

5. Focus on employees’ strengths more than their weaknesses.

When times are bad – especially during performance reviews – it’s easy for managers to harp on what an employee has done wrong. But that can sap motivation and make them dislike their jobs. Mr. Rath recommends managers spend maybe 80% of their the time talking about an employee’s strengths, and 20% on things they should improve.

 

Good advice for any economy, I think.

 What do you think of his advice and what is your opinion?

New Year, New Attitude, New Outlook on Life!

Holiday meltdown

Post-Holiday “letdown” is how I see it. Sort of like coming off a sugar high or any other substance induced mania. During Christmas, some outside force drives us to over spend, over eat, over indulge; and when we’re finished we feel guilty, poor, and fat. Is it any wonder that New Year’s is all about making resolutions to be better than ever before? Everyone seems to be all about refocusing and replanning, prioritizing, budgetizing and looking at how to recover from all that over doing it.

 

It’s important to remember with all of this “resolutioning” going on, that a positive attitude is the best defense against the post-holiday woes. Rather than letting the stress compile and bury you, look at each task one at a time with the attitude of gratitude and positivity. It sounds silly and new-agey, but mentally committing yourself to turning your negative mental attitude into a positive one, can help to increase productivity and greatly impact the outcome of your work.

 

If you need to, play inspirational music, buy a calendar with relaxing artwork, subscribe to a “meditation by email” service (do you have a favorite? Comment it below and I’ll blog it!) and spend 15 minutes per day to focus your mind before committing to your work. You’ll find that it can change your entire workspace. 

 

 

A lot of positive things can actually come out of a recession; lots of small businesses actually thrive and become big businesses during a depressed economy. Keep that in mind. It can change your entire day! 

 

So what are your business resolutions for the New Year? How are you preparing for growth this year?

One of my favorite composers for inspiration themed music is Steve Halpern. Email me for retailers. I work at a client’s office several hours per week and we all find that productivity, positivity, and creativity significantly increase thanks to music playing in the background. I loved it so much, I purchased a sleep CD for my daughter’s room and she has slept listening to it for at least 8 months or so. It helps her go right to sleep even at nap time.

Level the Playing-Field With Big Business

Lately we’ve all watched in horror as government has been asked to bail out big business again and again. But what is being done or us little guys? Here are a few tips to help actually level the playing field and keep your small business competitive. Contrary to what you might be inclined to think, outsourcing can actually reduce cost, improve productivity, and help you to meet the demands of keeping pace in today’s business world.

Always Stay in Touch with Your Clients
Even a small business can stay in touch and meet the demands of incoming email and phone calls by hiring a virtual admin assistant. In today’s fast-paced world, people are less likely to leave messages or wait for several days for an email reply. People are used to having customer service agents who answer 24 hours a day. They expect a reply within minutes—especially when asking for a quote or answers to questions they have about your products or services. Being available to answer these questions can make or break the sale!

Virtual assistants can be trained to answer emails in your voice through a series of “auto-responders” that are more sophisticated than the basic “Thank you for contacting Company XYZ We will contact you later. Please go our competition who has time to answer your email right away”. By using a virtual assistant to answer your emails and telephone calls during business hours, you are able to handle incoming emails and phone calls in a timelier manner. Virtual Assistants help you to level the playing field with big business!

Look Like a Pro at the Holidays- and All Year Long
Don’t sweat the Holidays or wonder if you’ve forgotten someone’s birthday! Get your virtual office admin to not only write, address, and mail cards and notes, but even to find the right gifts at the right price. In fact, you can even hire someone to do all your personal holiday shopping. With so many services and gifts online, the need for arm wrestling with sales clerks at the last minute is a thing of the past!

There are great services like SendOutCards that offer package incentives. They will print cards in your handwriting, allow you to upload cards in your personal design, and attach personal gifts and gift cards (some at discounts depending on the package you purchase). Better yet, your virtual assistant can set it up so that the system will send out a card on your significant other’s birthday or anniversary every year and you’ll never find yourself in the doghouse!

Refresh Your Web Content and Make Minor Changes
Don’t get caught in April with Holiday lights and Turkeys on your website because your web guy is in Cancun (or you can’t afford the fees!). Your Virtual Assistant can change out any outdated web content with revised content appropriate for the New Year.  Most Virtual Assistants have surprising knowledge of website applications and can make minor changes.

As an added bonus, most Virtual Assistants make excellent ghost writers. Given almost  any topic a good virtual assistant can conduct independent research, draft articles and short stories, and present quality copy. You will want to make your own adjustments to the copy to add your own “voice” but most of the work will be done for you—and the amount of time that you will have saved will be worth it.

 

Maggie Ruch is a Virtual Assistant who offers affordable options for growing businesses. Check out her website at www.assistspeakers.com where you can get her free eBook “5 Tips for Finding the PERFECT Virtual Assistant”.

We Are Living in a Virtual World and I am a Virtual Girl

“How do you do it all?” people ask me.

You see people know that I have several small clients in addition to the one almost full time client that eats up most of my free time—in addition to my full time responsibilities of motherhood and wife(hood?). As I explain it, I have help. I have a trusted and well-trained team that I rely on for “pieces” of projects of non-sensitive matters.

Still, managing several deadlines all at once, keeping track of billable hours, and hopefully growing my own business, requires a great deal of what we once called “multi-tasking”. I say “once called” because new research suggests that what we thought of at one time as multi-tasking may not be multi-tasking at all. It may actually be our brain switching very quickly from one task to another.

Since having my child about 13 months ago “mommy brain” has thoroughly set in so I give my brain cells all the help I can get! I use technology to multi-task rather than relying on the old rust-bucket upstairs.

Here are a few tips to help you when you have many tasks, clients, and/or employees to manage:

1)      I always keep invoices up to date and log my hours as I go. As each subcontractor reports in (they have been trained to report their time for certain clients) I log the appropriate time for both the subcontractor and the contractor.  This only takes about 5 minutes to set up bi-monthly and a minute to follow through with daily, but the headache it saves me come time to send out invoices is immeasurable!

2)      I devote blocks of time to each client and set aside that time in my electronic calendar in Outlook. I also use my reminders in outlook to make emails “pop-up” that require my attention on certain days and at certain times so that my schedule does not overlap. If something comes up that requires more immediate attention, just like an employee at a corporation I “clock out” for that client and “clock in” for the other.

3)      When I send out a task to my subcontractor I always send the instructions with examples, a tutorial with screen captures, passwords (if needed) and deadlines. (I love visual examples!) This eliminates too many back and forth emails wasting time. If I don’t hear back from a subcontractor within a few hours I call them to follow up (they may be out of town or ill!) All of my subcontractors are tried and true and have never let me down on a deadline! The training materials may take me 15-30 minutes to prepare, but the hours saved in costly damage control are well worth it!

4)      Don’t get too caught up with technology—but don’t rely too much on phone calls either. In other words always have a backup. Make a few phone calls from time to time to add a sense of the “human element” to virtual contractors, but always make sure to follow up anything important or sensitive in an email. It’s difficult to prove what was said in a phone conversation, but you can always hold a contract employee accountable for the content of an email.

5)      I set aside some time every week for “catch up” where I can look through emails, catch up on my tasks, and just get some work done that was not priority #1 all week but that still needs completing. Of course last on my list are always my personal business goals, but I get about 5 minutes to think about them!

Cashing in on Social Networks

Okay so I’m a bit of an outsourcing hypocrite. I advise hiring a professional to design and develop your website (it’s a headache, don’t do it yourself) but my website has been my own project from start to finish. It’s been a labor of love—as has been my logo—which is why it is still a project in my head—my branding, my business cards, nearly everything business related has been done by me and I don’t recommend it. (That little peice of art you see is my own cut and paste jobby!)

You see I’m doing this on what you call a “shoestring budget”.  I’m a mom and my husband and I were already struggling before I decided to become self-employed. (Enough of my boo-hooing right? My dauther’s beautiful and I get to see her every day and spend all day with her! I wouldn’t trade it for the world!)

Anyway, as a woman business owner struggling to make it in a depressed economy, I feel the pressure to make it on my own, so it’s easy to think that I have to do everything on my own. That’s actually not true. You see with the vast network of the World Wide Web available to me there are literally thousands of people willing to extend their own personal advise, opinions and years of experience. While they can’t physically do the work for me for free (would be nice if they would!) they will be more than happy to give me the feedback, love and support I need to get my business FULL SPEED AHEAD.

So cash in on your social network and use them as your NETWORK. They are your peers. Ask for advice. Ask for their opinions. Ask for feedback. PR and marketing consultants get the big bucks to get insight into what drives people to click, read, and buy. Consider it your free online marketing study.

Keeping Ahead in a Technical World

Once upon a time in a land far, far away…

We used to live in a world where mass mailers, TV and radio advertising, and telephone solicitation actually worked for small businesses. Now, thanks to technology (TiVo, Subscription Radio and IOPDs, and who actually looks at their junk mail anyway?), people have found more and more ways to dodge advertisers from small and large businesses alike, leaving small businesses (who have small budgets to work with) behind the competition!

Thanks to technology, our world of communication has changed and our marketing strategy has to change to keep up. So how can your small business keep up? By keeping your business tech-savvy, you can gain the same advantage that bigger businesses have over small business! Hiring a virtual assistant is the perfect way to do that.

A great Virtual Assistant is trained in:

·         Web technology

·         A three-way approach to social media, blogging and search engine optimization for powering your small business advertising

·         Creative and innovative marketing strategies

·         Professional remote access to keep you connected

 

 If you’ve been looking for one person who can combine all of these talents and who can do it for a relatively affordable rate, look no further. 

Download my complimentary needs assessment and fax it to my fax free number at 888-439-6528 and let’s get started today!

Stop wasting time and money on marketing strategies that DON’T WORK!

Why I work so hard!