by Virtual Assistant
(June 09, 2012)
Hello everyone,
I am the virtual assistant working together with Francis on this website. All posts which start with Blog Post by VA will be written from my point of view.
So here is my first ever post 🙂
Couple of days ago, I researched a method where I can download many stock photos free of cost. Normally it costs you a minimum $1 for each photo, but I have managed to download tens of photos without paying anything.
Of course the method is 100% legal and you can download these photos under their TOS.
I will write another post about how to do it sometime later in detail.
Taking A Day Off – Get Your Virtual Assistant to Take Over
by Francis
(June 11, 2012)
Today, I felt like taking a day off. If you employ a virtual assistant, it’s good manners to let him know if you are not available suddenly.
A short voicemail sent to him via email may be sufficient. To make most use of both your and your VA’s time, give him some instructions, too.
In my case, I asked him to prepare the stock photo research which he discussed in his last blog post, as well as researching deeper into the training modules from SBI.
- If you are interested in hiring a personal assistant, I have laid out the exact steps of how to do this.
How I see the future of outsourcing
by Virtual Assistant
(June 12, 2012)
Hi Everyone,
Today we hired some Newbies to our team for a fairly short task. Both providers did an excellent job and have impressed both me and Francis with their extraordinary skills and hard work.
So the future of the outsourcing is very bright and I think we will see some more skilled and hardworking virtual assistants.
Working With a Large Team
by Virtual Assistant
(June 13, 2012)
As I said before that yesterday we hired a couple of new providers to our team.
While communicating them I realized that it’s a real tough job to handle so many providers at the same time.
You get messages from all of them back and forth and in the meantime you are also working on your own tasks.
Ethical Outsourcing – Is It Doable? I’ll Make It My Mission to Teach You How!
by Francis
(June 15, 2012)
As you may know, this blog still is pretty young. So there are many directions we will be able to go.
But it going to be about outsourcing stuff from your life to virtual assistants.
Just outsourcing is not enough. We have to ask ourselves some hard but necessary questions first.
How can we outsource ethically?
I’ll make it my mission to teach you, step by doable step, how to not only
- get a trustworthy virtual assistant to do stuff for you
but also how to
- be able to sleep at night (that’s a biggie!)
- be able to justify having some other human being on the other end of the world work for you.
I’m in the middle of working out some more blog posts. Stay tuned for news from me.
And I hope you enjoy the news from the point of view of my VA (Virtual Assistant) as he supports my work and research with my websites.
See you soon!
Outsourcing to Pakistan – I’m Looking Forward to Get a Glimpse Behind the Scenes
by Francis
(June 16, 2012)
My virtual assistant is from Pakistan – but the subject of outsourcing to this country is of course pretty controversial.
My VA agreed to give me a look behind the curtains, farther than the classical media normally allow. This is interesting!
Don’t worry, I won’t make my blog into anything political. It still will be the number one place to learn hands on about hiring an ideal helper for your outsourcing needs.
To stay tuned, make sure to subscribe to this blog via email!
Know The Strenghts And Weaknesses Of Your Assistant And You
by Francis
(June 18, 2012)
If you are looking to hire a virtual assistant, you should first know what sort of assistant would be your most effective partner in real life.
Would you need a strict, organized partner?
Would you thrive with an ally that means your best but also givey you all the free room you need?
If you don’t know yet, do some soul searching.
In my personal case, I am creative and all-over-the-place, and I appreciate a highly organized VA that encourages me on my way. That is the best environment I can get when I am looking for a virtual team that makes results.
If you want to find out exactly how you best go about hiring a VA, read this post.
Comments for Know The Strengths And Weaknesses Of Your Assistant And You
| Sep 18, 2014 | disorganized to organized by: JomvieI think I can pass on one of your standards of being organized—sometimes. :DI am grateful to be working with you for being given this kind of opportunity where I can hone my skills in organizing about any kind of stuff—literally or not. I am not the one mentioned in this post, but I am one of those who have been trained and employed under Francis’ company. |
| Sep 18, 2014 | There is strength in chaotic creativeness by: FrancisBut for that alone, I think I alone am more than enough for any team ;)All in all being organized is learnable. And there are tools to help with that. I wanted to report about project management tools for some time, perhaps in another post. Sometimes it’s all about priorization. Finding the task that makes a big difference and doing it first. There are many things one can do once you have an online business. Too many things. But the number of tasks that make a definitive difference on your bottom line are, in principle, quite limited. It’s about focussing on those tasks that makes the difference. |
Pros and Cons of One Dedicated Virtual Assistant
by Francis
(June 19, 2012)
Train one person really well, and you save lots of time giving instructions. There will be less misunderstandings, and you can rely on each other (for work and for results, respectively).
Downside: you need a backup plan for when the cooperation ends one time. No one expects you to work with one VA for a lifetime. And if yes, good for you 😉
I’ll teach you how to prepare for the change of a personal assistant with minimal time loss in a future post.
But if you have had a good assistant, be sure to leave him with more than a mere “”thank you”” as a feedback.
Feedback is enormously important for a VA!
Get Things Out of Your Head and on the Table – Tell Them to Your Virtual Assistant
by Francis
(June 21, 2012)
My head is always full of ideas. As a web-business owner, it’s hard to keep up with all the ideas, the potential projects etc. And actually doing any of them.
I call it inspiration overload.
There is a good way against that. I like to send my VA a long voice recording, where I “speak my ideas off my chest”. They don’t need to be perfect for now. Nor are they often well organized.
But my virtual assistant can always take care of organizing all those ideas in doable action steps, in categories, by priorities.
This alone makes a trustworthy personal assistant an invaluable asset. Not only for any business owner. But for any creative persons with too many ideas for their time.
I’m sure many of you fall into this category 🙂
Expanding My Team Again
by Francis
(June 24, 2012)
My VA and me got back in touch with an assistant I have worked with over a year ago.
We had a very productive cooperation at that time and I’m trying to work out some take-home lessons for you, dear readers!
How would you like some insights behind the scenes, and possibly directly on the desk of an assistant working on the other end of the world?
I thought so 😉
Letting Your Virtual Assistant Work Out Your Web Page Creation With HTML From A Word File
by Virtual Assistant
(June 25, 2012)
It takes time to build a webpage correctly. Even with a good content management system, you still fiddle around with HTML until the page looks just right.
But you could be doing something else in that valuable time. You could be
- building more content,
- sharing your expertise
- or managing more cash flow to your business.
- You could also just do nothing and chill out, your choice 😉
My solution?
I outsourced the process of course.
After teaching my VA each step along the way with screens, video recording and voice messages, he knows the process as well as I do now.
A huge time saver. And another reason why you should consider hiring a VA for your online business, if you have one or consider having one.
Writing Pages With A Tag Team Combo With Your Virtual Assistant Feels Like A Breeze
by Francis
(June 27, 2012)
OK, now I know I got your attention.
Creating a website is actually sometimes hard work. Although it is very much worth it!
Still, I remember the times when I did all this stuff all alone. How did I ever manage to do it?
This new site, ideal-helper.com, grows at a much more rapid pace.
One reason is probably, that I already have more experience building webpages.
But the main reason is, that I can team up with my virtual assistant to produce this content – that actually looks pretty fine in my opinion, btw.
I don’t think I’ll go back to working online alone any more. Depending on my budget, I will always have one or several virtual helpers hired and ready to help me out.
Interesting Discussion About My Virtual Assistants Beginnings of Online Work
by Francis
(June 28, 2012)
We have an interesting discussion going on in the comments of this post.
Don’t be shy to join this – or any other – post and ask away. Be as personal as you want, we don’t hide and won’t bite 😉
Update:
Having my VA work from Word files into websites works great. This has at least doubled my productivity and I am far ahead in schedule.
Which means you’ll get to read more insteresting stuff about outsourcing much sooner!
—
Now back to the interesting discussion I mentionned above…
Outsourced Interviews about Mechanical Turk Workers
by Francis
(June 29, 2012)
I am curious about life behind the scenes of Mechanical Turk workers. So, I designed key questions for an interview of several Turkers around the world.
Stay tuned for the results, I am sure they will be eye opening.
And if you did not know about Amazon’s outsourcing service, where you can give tasks to micro-virtual assistants, then you should check out my post about Mechanical Turk!
Teaching My VA to Manage This Very Site for Me
by Francis
Ousourcing on a real life example. As we speak, this website and blog are partially managed by my personal VA.
I teach him everything there is to know about building and maintaining a website business.
He helps me run it in a way that lets me focus on what matters.
Typical win-win situation, right?
Interact With Us! Your Opinion Matters the Most!
by Francis
What would you choose if you had to decide between hiring someone with a fixed job or an hourly job assignement?
Take the (new!) poll and let us know!
Explaining My VA the Blogging Feature on My Website
by Francis
The screen recording software Jing is not only free and awesome, but also very useful to explain things to your VA.
- Watch here a video how I give instructions and feedback to my virtual assistant by using a screen recording software.
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