Planning Ahead

[PRMom]

For those of you in business for yourself or planning to finally start your own business in 2011, I hope you'll join me for a webinar series focused on helping small business owners to grow their business by working with a virtual assistant.

If you yourself are planning on starting or growing a Virtual Assistance business you'll definitely want to join us in January.

To learn more, read on... 

Here’s the Scoop

One of the things I’ve learned working for organizations and my own business over the last 15 years, is that you can only achieve so much yourself before your rate of growth/success begins to level off. If you want to raise the bar on your income goals, you’ve got to learn to outsource when appropriate.

Outsourcing isn’t something that’s just for big business it’s actually ideal for small businesses. Outsourcing is really just about shaving off tasks and projects that can be more efficiently done and more affordably executed by someone else.

One of the best outsourcing secrets are independent service providers known as “Virtual Assistants.” Virtual Assistants are basically individuals who have expertise in a particular business area and offer their services to offline and online businesses…virtually.

By virtually I mean that you don’t have to have this outstanding support person at a desk in your home or street office.  He or she works from their own office down the road or across the country.  Some business owners have never even met their virtual assistant in person but have enjoyed productive working relationships for years!

Virtual Assistants specialize in all kinds of services from maintaining and updating websites to transcription and book-keeping.

My Experience

I’ve worked with virtual assistants while I was employed in a large organization that simply didn’t have the budget to hire another person to handle certain administrative tasks on a temporary basis. So I sourced out a Virtual Assistant in my region for the work that needed to be done and was so impressed by the service and convenience of working with this local, independent professional.

Since starting my online business in 2007, I’ve worked with a number of Virtual Assistants for different needs in my business, from membership database set-up, to keyword research, to copy editing. Each experience was great. I avoided wasting time procrastinating about a task and instead got the task done quickly, accurately and affordably by someone proficient at what they do.

Meanwhile I was able to direct my attention and time to where it needed to be: looking ahead, marketing and generally doing the kinds of things an entrepreneur should be doing to grow a business.

But don’t just take my word for it, read here what one of the leading online marketers (and someone I’ve had the pleasure of working with) Nicole Dean has to say about outsourcing here.

The January Event You Don’t Want to Miss

A few months ago I realized that what was probably holding a lot of entrepreneurs back from hiring a Virtual Assistant (let’s call these pros VA’s) was the misperception that they either couldn’t afford a VA or wouldn’t know how to work with one.

I thought to myself: wouldn’t it be great to offer small business owners – including virtual assistants – an opportunity to explore exactly how outsourcing tasks to a virtual assistant can actually grow a business.  I also thought that this very same event would also offer some insight to virtual assistants interested in finding out which services are in demand by entrepreneurs.

That was the thinking behind the creation of the Small Business Study Webinar Series: The Virtual Assistant Factor. Once a week for four weeks, attendees will get access to interactive, live presentations (with slides) lead by dynamic business owners. Here’s the list of presenters by date:

January 20 (Intro): Crissy Herron, owner of Indie Biz Chicks, has been featured on Fox Business News and published in Venus Zine and Etsy magazines. Crissy will offer insight into why businesses should consider incorporating podcasts into their marketing plan and she’ll also explain how working with a VA to make this happen is such a smart decision.

January 20: Christina Lemmey is the owner of Multimedia VA and is an experienced service provider offering multimedia support to small business owners. In addition to offering technical support Christina also offers voice overs for recordings and is an excellent editor.

January 27: I found Michelle Schoen online when I was trying to find a video that would explain how to use video in my business. Michelle seemed to be everywhere and it’s no wonder. Her professional videos are well executed and extremely popular. Michelle is an IT/design expert who worked at IBM and AT&T for several years before becoming an entrepreneur and setting up her own Virtual Assistant business. She’s now a trainer for VAs and I’m thrilled to have her in our lineup. She will be talking about planning a virtual event to grow your business and she’ll be able to answer a lot of practical questions virtual assistants might have from a service perspective.

February 3: Staci Jansma is an up and coming Virtual Assistant who is fast establishing herself as the “E-Commerce” queen. Do you need to get a shopping cart set-up or make your website more “purchaser friendly”? Staci will explain how a VA can make your online ecommerce dreams come true.

February 10: The last speaker in our series is someone who has an inspiring story to tell. It begins something like this: A single mom with a degree in chemistry and a dead-end career starts her virtual assistance business with zero clients and grows it to great success. She is now an established online entrepreneur with various popular products and services. This is of course no story but the real life experience of my friend and popular online marketer, Angela Wills of Marketers Mojo.

So are you ready to attend an interactive seminar, where you’ll be able to view visuals and slides and ask questions of each presenter online…all from the comfort of your own home? If so visit www.smallbusinessstudy.com/webinars and click on the order link to order right away. At $37 for 4-hours of presentations (1-hour each week) it’s a great deal….PLUS you’ll get access to the audio and video recordings from every session.

Here’s a bonus you’ll want to keep in mind:  if you order before December 23 you’ll get 10% off – just use the following coupon code: D9BBE4.

Happy Holidays!