The best decision you can make as an online business owner
is to decide to get out of your own way and begin to
delegate those tasks which really don't require your time
and attention. A simple way to do that is by hiring a
virtual assistant.
A virtual assistant is a business owner who specializes in
handling the administrative details of your business from
the comfort of her home office. Now that virtual
assistance has been around for awhile, you'll find virtual
assistants who specialize in different types of
administrative services: real estate, Internet marketing,
and event management, to name a few. You may actually
discover that you could use several virtual assistants in
your business, each with a different specialization.
I can hear you now. You're thinking, "There's no way
anyone can do this as well as I can."
Are you guilty of "I'll-do-it-myself-itis? If so, you've
got much in common with most other online business owners
in the world. We never think that anyone else will give
something the time, attention, and dedication that we will.
And, you're right, to some degree. No one cares as much
about your business as you do. However, if you don't
choose to delegate those things that prevent you from
engaging in business development, marketing, and sales
activities, you won't be in business very long.
Whether you're just starting out or have been in business
for awhile, the thought of bringing on a support team
member can be daunting, and you wonder, "How can I bring in
someone else when it's just going to increase my expenses?"
You need to make the shift to seeing this cost as an
investment in your business, rather than as an expense, and
let go of the need to be in control.
To help you evaluate what you might delegate to an
assistant, take out a piece of paper and on the left side
write, "What I Love to Do" and on the right side write.
"What I Don't Like to Do".
Then, think about all of the functions you manage and roles
you perform in your business, like planning and setting
strategy, marketing, providing the service or product in
which you specialize, dealing with financial issues,
speaking, writing, networking, customer service, order
fulfillment, etc. Most of my clients have three or four
items on the "What I Love to Do" side -- speaking,
coaching/consulting, training, and writing. The remainder
of the other functions and roles fall on the other side.
The items on the right hand side, the "What I Don't Like to
Do" list, will serve as a great indicator of the types of
things you need to be delegating in your business.
Based on my past experience as a virtual assistant and
online business manager for a number of clients, here are 5
tasks should delegate to your Virtual Assistant right away
to help you begin to generate additional income in your
business:
1. Ezine. An email newsletter will help you get
prospective clients into your marketing funnel. Your VA can
format the plain text and HTML versions of your email
newsletter. All you need to do is write your primary and
filler articles each week and forward those to your VA to
format and send the finished product out to your newsletter
list.
2. Media. Have your VA research an industry-specific media
list . This value of this list is in developing
relationships with these media contacts so that you're the
expert they immediately think of when they're doing a story
on your area of expertise.
3. Article Marketing. Write once and have that article
work for you again and again. Have your VA submit articles
you've written to online article databases to increase the
number of links back to your website and to send more
visitors to your website.
4. Strategic Alliances. Once of the quickest ways to grow
your business is by creating strategic alliance or joint
venture relationships. Have your VA research potential
strategic alliance or joint venture partners who provide a
service to a similar audience or whose client base could
benefit from your product or service.
5. Product Development. Got recorded interviews sitting
around gathering dust on your hard drive? How about
information you've created for presentations that you've
never done anything with? Have your VA coordinate the
transcript and audio editing of any recorded files you
might have and help you polish those into saleable
products. Your VA can also help your format printed
material into an ebook, ecourse, special report, etc. and
before you know you, you'll become an information marketer!
What operational aspects of your business could you
delegate to someone else? If you had extra time, how could
you increase the revenues of your business? Give these
questions strong consideration--and use your Virtual
Assistant to help you make more profit with less of your
time today!
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Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business
Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals
learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their
expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To
claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing
Toolkit, visit her site at http://www.OnlineBizU.com . Ask
Donna an Internet Marketing question at
http://www.AskDonnaGunter.com .
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