Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Today we are going to talk about something that will help you manage your time better in your VA business.
Today’s Quote: Time is what we want most, but what we use worst. – William Penn
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Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
I am going to talk today about some time saving solutions for Virtual Assistants.
Now, I am not talking about speed. I never tell you to work faster.
Well that’s not entirely true.
I do talk about keeping a good work pace. I’ll get to that later.
But there are 4 simple things you can implement in your business that can help you work more efficiently. And working efficiently helps you save time.
Efficiency helps you use the time you have as wisely as possible.
Productivity means getting things done.
Efficiency means working smart.
Like William Penn says, we all want more time. Why is that? Because we are spending too much on things and we are running out of it when we don’t need to.
For a VA, time is literally money. Your clients pay you to do work, often by the hour.
But you physically take the time to do the client work, and that is how you charge them. So your time is their money.
And in order to earn as much money as you can, you need to be productive and efficient.
Here are some things you can do to help you do that:
1 – Checklists
I am a huge advocate of using checklists.
You can set them up in Google Sheets or Trello or a project management t system or even printed on paper.
Where they are doesn’t matter, as long as they detail the steps that you need to take to complete any task.
And they need to be checkable. Like I mean you can check off the tasks as you go.
I have done this a number of ways.
Some things I printed on paper and put in a transparency sleeve. I would check things off with a dry erase marker. Wipe it clean and reuse it next time. Really, I did! Simple is always best and at the time I used several checklists that way.
I have also made simple shareable spreadsheets. When I needed to share with client, it made it easy to detail all of the steps to do a project, and we could also add in deadline dates and who was responsible. It was easy to see the project status at a glance and what was coming up next.
Now I use Trello but I have also used many other project management systems. Online checklists are great, as long as everyone uses them.
But Tracey I hear you ask … why do I need a checklist for things only I do? I know the steps. I don’t need a checklist.
Well, yeah you do.
The brain saves soooo much time when you don’t have to think about where you stopped and where you need to begin again.
You can also look at a checklist and do just a couple of things on it if you have some time now. You don’t have to sit down and do a 2 hour task all at once.
I love it for my podcasts. I have 20 steps on my podcast creation checklist. I do a podcast every week .. of course I know how to do it. From doing my research to creating images, writing my script, recording it, editing it, many steps.
But every week I use the checklist. Because it means I don’t need to do it all in one sitting. I can do my images one day if I have some time, or just feel like it. I can look for quotes for 10 upcoming episodes if that’ what I feel like doing. By checking it off the checklist I know what needs to be done for each episode at a glance. Efficient!
I can help you design checklists for everything you do in your business. If you don’t already have procedures for everything you do, we can start with those. Get more time back in your schedule!
2 – Templates
The next thing that will help you with efficiency is templates.
Newsletter templates, email templates invoice templates, image templates, onboarding templates, rfp response templates, task and project templates.
You name it, you can probably create a time saving template for it. And if you can, you should.
Creating templates for your client work helps you churn out more stuff for them.
You can do a month’s worth of newsletters faster. You can create eye catching and branded social media graphics with templates.
It is about more than efficiency and speed.
I love templates. I think everyone should use them.
Why do you want to recreate the wheel every time you sit down to create a social media post?
Now again I’m not talking about speed. At least not directly.
I’m going to back up just a bit here to talk about task pricing. Deliverable pricing. It’s how I teach you to bill your clients. Why? Because when you bill your client for the deliverable, it doesn’t matter how fast you do it. The faster you do it, the more you get paid.
I have an episode about billing by deliverable, so I’ll tag that in the show notes below, but suffice it to say I teach you to bill that way because then you are billing for your expertise, and you don’t lose money by being more efficient.
It helps you FIND ways to do things more efficiently because you can do more in less time (but the client pays the same).
Anyway I digress…
By creating templates you can get more done in less time. But still get paid for your expertise.
I don’t teach skill stuff like Canva, but I sure can help you define where you can implement templates in your business to increase your work flow probably tenfold.
3 – Habits and Routines
Next comes how you work every day. Your habits and routines.
Oh yes, you guys know I love to talk about this stuff!
Why? Because it works!
If you have ever read the book Atomic Habits, you will know about habit stacking which I think is really cool.
It means stacking a new habit on top of an existing one, and it’s a great way to create an efficient routine.
My husband takes his daily medication after he brushes his teeth, and he never forget to take it. I should take a page out of his book actually ha ha.
But the point is that is a great example of habit stacking.
If you have trouble forming new habits, try doing it that way. Add on one thing at a time to something else that you always do anyway.
How many days do they say it takes to create a new habit? 21? So do it for 3 weeks and then it should become a habit. You can move it to anywhere you want then. And maybe stack other stuff on top of it too!
A great example of creating a new habit is taking 20 minute every morning to do your social median check ins. I actually challenge you to start this today.
I firmly believe that a lot of VAs spend wayyyy too much time on social media, and they don’t have specific objectives for what they are trying to achieve with it.
What are you trying to do? Get clients. How do you get clients? Daily business conversations. That should be your daily objective on social media, so make it a habit, part of your morning routine.
Take 20 minutes and decide which groups you will go to, or which platforms. Connect with how many people. How many likes, shares, comments? Be strategic. Do it daily. Stop after 20 minutes.
I promise you, you will get better at it with practice, and you WILL get clients from it. In 20 mins a day. Yes, 20 strategic minutes.
I can teach you what to do and say in those 20 minutes that will get you the clients.
And the last thing you can do to save time in your VA business is
4 – Regular Cost Benefit Analysis
This is a tricky one. How much automation do you bring into your business? What about subcontractors? Getting help to do what you do is the last time saver for today’s episode.
Doing a cost benefit analysis is easy. Basically you are looking to see if paying for a person or service to help you with your work makes sense.
You compare the cost to the benefit.
Here’s an example
- You manually create social media post captions for your clients every week. It takes you 3 hours each week to create the captions, and then to repurpose some of it for social media images.
- You then use Canva to create images with that content. Another 90 minutes.
- You then download each image from Canva, name it and store it in your shared folders. That takes another hour.
- Then you post the content to your planner and schedule each post to go out. That takes another 90 minutes.
So we are looking at 7 hours to do that task. If you are billing the client at 40/hr, that is $280 a week.
What could help you do it more efficiently? Post planners that can pull in csv files of content with image urls, for one.
A sub to help with the Canva part maybe, for another.
Templates for Canva images, definitely.
Weigh out what these things might cost versus how you are doing it now.
Sub doing Canva work means you can pay out 2.5 hours at say 25/hr $63.50, and you can then take on more clients to do the other steps. Would that make sense for you?
Bringing on more clients brings you in more top line revenue and helps you get more work done.
Anyway that’s just one example, you see how cost benefit works to help you make decisions.
Analyzing your revenue and workflows regularly is an excellent way to save you time as you get busier.
How does that all sound??
Time Saving? I promise you it will be, give some of it a try.
Especially that 20 minutes a day connection time. It truly is a game changer!
I’m going to leave it here for today, so I save us both time ha ha!
But I want you to know that I can help you do this stuff in your business. That’s literally the reason I am here. To help you become a ridiculously good VA.
Need Some Help?
This is exactly what I help VAs do. As a Virtual Assistant coach and trainer, I help you set yourself up for success, helping you fix the specific things that are going wrong in your business. When we work together either privately or in a group we talk specifically about your business and you – there is no one stop solution for everyone when it comes to service businesses like VA businesses.
I’ll help you get clarity around your issues, and cheer you on as you walk through the steps to fix them.
I’ve helped hundreds of VAs through their challenges and got them on their way to growing their business and the lifestyle that they dream of.
I’d love to do the same for you.
You can work with me privately, or you can join The Virtual Circle, my mastermind group for Virtual Assistants. Check it out at www.YourVAMentor.com/TVC (the virtual circle) – I bet it’s exactly what you need to start running the VA business you dreamed of.
Reach out to me if you are interested.
That’s all I’ve got for you this week, see you next time!