Yay! You’ve realized that you need help to grow your business and have decided that I’m the right person to help you, but you’re not quite sure where we should start…
Step 1: Determining What You Do (aka Your ‘To-Do’ List)
I bet you have a hardcopy Day-Timer or a digital calendar on your computer or cell phone where you keep track of all of your appointments and meetings. You might even track all of your reminders and ‘to-do’ lists with it, but have you ever really noted all that you DO in a day? Or even what you do EVERY day?
What do you DO in a day? A week? A month?
1. Track ALL of your time for a week or two.
2. Track your time in a way that makes sense to you.
For example, in ½ hour blocks, 1-hour blocks or even 15-minute blocks if you have a snazzy Day-Timer with quarter hour sections!
3. At the end of the day, take a few minutes to review your entries and make sure that you didn’t forget to record anything.
4. At the end of the week, go back and label each block of time as a specific category:
Prospective client follow-up
Client onboarding
Task/project management
Social media
Invoicing
Payment processing
Personal
Etc.
Create labels that work for you. Personally, I like to colour code each category so that I can tell at a glance where I spent my time.
TIP:
If the tasks that you do each day vary a lot from one week to the next, you may want to track your time for a month to make sure you’re capturing the majority of what you do.
Don’t forget…
Are there any tasks or projects that you know will be upcoming but aren’t a part of your usual weekly tasks?
For example, perhaps you produce a quarterly newsletter but you’re not planning to work on it for another month or so.
Make a note of all monthly, quarterly and yearly tasks as well.
Step 2: Determining What You Would Like to Do (aka Your Wish List)
Are there things on your ‘to-do’ list that you just haven’t had the time to get to? Or are there projects you would like to do but haven't added to your list because you know that you don't have the time or the skills to tackle them?
What do you WANT to have done in a day? A week? A month?
Are there any tasks or projects on your “I’ll get to that one day” list?
Perhaps you’ve been wanting to shift from your client tracking list currently maintained in a spreadsheet and your separate invoicing software to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that has all things client-related in one place.
Or perhaps you’ve been getting frustrated because you have documents, photos and spreadsheets pertaining to your business scattered all over the place on your computer and you’re wasting time searching for things every day. You’d love to have everything in one place and named in such a way that it’s very easy to find what you’re looking for.
Make a note of those, too.
Step 3: Determining What Someone – Or Something – Other Than You Can Do (aka Creating Your Virtual Assistant ‘To-Do’ List)
Now that you know WHAT you do and what you’d LIKE to do, let’s figure out what you can send my way…
What can you take off of your ‘to-do’ list?
1. Go through your tracked time and decide:
Is this a task or project that only you can do?
Is this a task or project that can be delegated?
Is this a task or project that can be automated?
2. Look at your “I’ll get to that one day” list and ask yourself the same questions:
Is this a task or project that only you can do?
Is this a task or project that can be delegated?
Is this a task or project that can be automated?
3. Move any task or project that can be delegated from your ‘to-do’ list to your new virtual assistant ‘to-do’ list.
I would also suggest that at this time you remove any tasks or projects from your ‘to-do’ list that can be automated and add them to your virtual assistant ‘to-do’ list as well. (Unless of course, it’s something that you absolutely love to do and feel that you would now have the time to complete it.)
4. (Optional) To determine the best way to start working together, look through your new virtual assistant ‘to-do’ list and identify three to five tasks or projects that:
Will save yo the most time if they were passed to me, or
Will ease your anxiety if they were passed to me because you intensely dislike doing them, or
Will have a big impact on your business if you can finally move them from your “I’ll get to that one day” list to checking them off of your ‘to-do’ list because I’ve completed them for you!
Next Steps…
Now that you’ve decided WHAT can be sent my way, we’ll go through HOW to work together in my next blog post Getting Ready to Work to Work with your Virtual Assistant.