Virtual Freedom. Chris C. Ducker
Are you struggling to stay up to date with or roll out the following types of tasks on a regular basis?
• researching competitors’ websites for lists of products and prices
• compiling a list of local events that you could sponsor or where you could exhibit
• combing your blog’s analytics to find out which pages or blog posts are receiving the most traffic
• keeping your social media channels updated and interesting for followers
• getting featured in local, national, and industry-related press
• transcribing your online videos and podcast episodes to use as future e-books and in info-graphics to promote your products and services
• keeping your calendar updated so you don’t miss an important golf date with your top client
Delegating these small tasks begins freeing up extra time for you each day. Ten minutes here and thirty minutes there can add up quickly. Delegating also gets rid of all those unresolved items you’re carrying around in your head. As David Allen points out in his book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, this is one of the critical factors that will allow you to focus.
“Your conscious mind, like a computer screen, is a focusing tool, not a storage place,” he writes. “You can think about only two or three things at once. But the incomplete items are being stored in the short-term memory space. And as with RAM (random access memory), there’s limited capacity; there’s only so much ‘stuff’ you can store in there and still have that part of your brain functioning at a high level. Most people walk around with their RAM bursting at the seams.”
It’s crazy how many things you’re probably juggling in your head right now. But it’s stuff that needs to get done, right? So it has to go somewhere. This is where your superhero syndrome begins to kick in, leading you into thinking that working harder is the solution. But again, the real solution is not longer hours—it’s leverage.
As entrepreneurs, time is our most valuable commodity (MVC). Money will come and go, but once you’ve invested your time into something, that time is gone forever. It stands to reason that if there are any actions we can take as business owners to free up more time in our daily routines, we should take them.
Hiring and working with a GVA will help you do just that. Think of your GVA as a personal assistant (PA). Aside from bringing you a cup of coffee or picking up your dry cleaning, GVAs can do all the same tasks that an old-fashioned, in-office PA could handle.
Here are just a few of the tasks a GVA can take off your plate so you have more space in your mind and in your workday:
• perform online research
• make online purchases (have the GVA use a prepaid credit card with a small amount you can fund and monitor each month)
• update your calendar
• make a dinner reservation
• draft your latest blog post or upload your YouTube videos
• send your spouse a gift
• or, if you’re single, send e-mails to potential dates on Match.com or eHarmony—yes, really!
• update your Facebook status with prewritten posts
• order more business cards
• collate a list of articles from online news sources and e-mail you with a weekly update
• send a follow-up e-mail or letter to new contacts you just met at that conference you attended
• book your biannual dental cleanings and then update them on your calendar
You’ll see that this list is just the beginning of how a GVA can help you achieve freedom on a day-to-day basis. Furthermore, the GVA role is just one of many different types of virtual workers that are out there and ready to be put on your team. The question is, what else can you get virtual assistants to do for you?
You’re about to find out, thanks to a very simple, quick, and effective exercise.
Creating Your 3 Lists to Freedom
Your first step toward freedom in any situation is to begin identifying exactly which tasks you want freedom from—and the types of workers you’ll need to handle those tasks. This is why at my speaking engagements, in podcast interviews, and even in traditional press appearances on the subject of virtual staffing, I always include my 3 Lists to Freedom exercise. It’s incredibly eye-opening, and it gives everyone a customized list of activities to work from as we move along.
Before you start putting together your three lists, let’s consider all of the activities you’ll need to incorporate. First, take a moment to think about all of the activities your business needs just to maintain itself—these are the day-to-day tasks such as customer service. Next, consider all of the activities needed to grow your business; this might include content creation, for example. Then, go through and highlight the items that you enjoy doing personally. Now you’re ready to create your 3 Lists to Freedom.
1. Tasks You Don’t Like Doing
This is any task that makes you cringe or procrastinate. Anything can be on this list—except for selling. Selling needs to be one of your top priorities because it’s the lifeblood of any business, and no one should know your product or service better than you.
Do you routinely reply to customer service e-mails, perhaps answering the most basic of inquiries? Are you still laying out and formatting your own blog posts? Does this stuff drive you nuts? Put those types of things on this list.
Australian-based James Schramko is one of the most popular Internet marketers operating online today. He is incredibly successful. James started working with virtual assistants to simply handle work that he didn’t want to do himself anymore. The result is SuperfastBusiness.com, an extremely systemized online offering with well over fifty (yes, you read that correctly) VAs running his business for him around the clock.
2. Tasks You Don’t Know How to Do
Be honest with yourself. Don’t let superhero syndrome kick in here. I remember trying to design and develop my first blog on my own using a premium theme. It took me eight hours of work, and I still wasn’t happy with it. Why? Because I’m not a bloody web developer, that’s why!
Sit back and genuinely think hard about this one. Ask yourself questions such as
• Are there tasks you’re currently doing that could be completed faster by someone else?
• Are there projects you’re handling that could be wrapped up in a better, more professional way?
• Are you trying to cut costs by dabbling far outside your areas of expertise?
Business coach and podcaster Jaime Tardy hired VAs to manage the web development and online marketing side of her business, EventualMillionaire.com. Why? Because she simply didn’t know how to do it herself and admitted the fact, instead of trying to teach herself.
3. Tasks You Feel You Shouldn’t Be Doing
This is the list I want you to give the most thought to. It’s usually a huge eye-opener for business owners because it gets their internal wheels turning about how they’re currently running their businesses. More importantly, this list helps you see how you want to be running your business in the future.
Some questions to ponder:
• Which tasks should you simply never touch—meaning you could eliminate them from your schedule entirely, making way for more important