Posts Tagged "outsourcing"

3 Things to Consider Before Hiring a Virtual Assistant

Posted by Erin Blaskie on Aug 16, 2011 in Virtual Assistance | 2 comments

Virtual assistants can be an amazing addition to any business.  Virtual assistants provide support to business owners but do so from their own home or office.  Assistance can come in the form of Internet marketing, social media, web design, administrative support or any other area of support that the business owner may need.

Virtual assistants are a huge asset to business owners that need support but who do not want to spend the time and money on hiring, managing and paying full-time staff.  The beautiful thing about a virtual assistant is that the business owner doesn’t need to pay for taxes, benefits or vacation/sick days.

In an article on MSN’s Business on Main called, “How Do I Hire a Virtual Assistant“, the multiple authors involved with the article share their tips on hiring a virtual assistant and provide advice to all types and sizes of businesses.

However, before you hire a virtual assistant, there are three things you should consider before you set out to hire one.

Erin, You’re All About the Money!

Posted by Erin Blaskie on Aug 9, 2010 in Business Tips | 20 comments

This weekend and past week, I’ve had the unfortunate experience of dealing with a non-paying client.  Generally speaking, we collect pre-payment on all services and then keep detailed time logs of the work that is complete.  We allow our clients to have a period of time to look over the time logs and if they have anything they are unhappy with or wish to clarify, they can do so and we work with them to ensure that they are satisfied.

Every once in awhile, I’ll meet a client who is just awesome.  Or, at least it starts that way.  The client is happy, excited, we finish some really great work for him/her and over time, develop a relationship that seems like it’s going to last forever.  That is until the client runs out of money.  Now, we do our best to help our clients make money but we can only do so much.  For example, if we suggest that the price on their newest program is ridiculously high and they don’t adjust it, it is not our fault if they do not sell seats into that program.

So, this past weekend, I was dealing with someone who had obviously run out of money.  How do I know this?  Their eChecks have come back NSF (non-sufficient funds) at least three times and the time between invoice and payment was getting longer and longer.  Now, since we had entered into an awesome relationship, I had allowed them to pay-as-they-went.  Yes, I know.  Stupid mistake on my part in hindsight but this person seemed like a trustworthy person who had appreciated and loved the work we had done to date.

It’s Social Baby Day! #socialbabyday

Posted by Erin Blaskie on Apr 15, 2010 in Social Media | 0 comments

It’s Social Baby Day in the web-o-verse and we thought it would be fun to share photos of our team at BSETC when they were much, much younger…

Can you guess who these cute children are?  Leave a comment!

#1 — Who is this precious baby??

#2 — I’m in love with the tie… Seriously.

#3 — Berets for babies were totally in style back in the 80s…

#4 – Our team member is the bright eyed baby on the left!!

#5 — Our geek-in-training is the guy on the right! He and his friend made that giant keyboard!

#6 — This trio is ADORABLE but our team mate is on the left hand side… So cute.

#7 — Look at this cute little Gerber baby!!

#8 — Omg, how cute is this little girl??

#9 — Another beautiful little girl… (whose daughter looks identical!!)

#10 — This picture just makes me smile… SO adorable!!

#11 — Another gorgeous little girl

#12 — Our team has a lot of feminine energy and here’s another beautiful girl!

#13 — Another one of our cute team members!

#14 — Although this little girl is a bit out of the baby stage, she still qualifies as one of our team member’s younger selves!!

The rest of the team was either too shy or unable to send pictures but we’ll get some of the others soon!!

You’re Only Successful Because

Posted by Erin Blaskie on Mar 2, 2010 in Business Tips | 15 comments

I have the utmost respect for entrepreneurs.  Regardless of their situations, they all share a common personality trait – the desire to succeed.  Nobody enters into the business world looking to or wanting to fail.  Nobody goes into it saying, “Well, if it does work out, that’d be cool.”  No, most of us hit the business world with the desire to create something bigger than we can imagine and we go into it thinking, “This WILL work!”  It’s our drive and our tenacity that allow us to stand amongst the entrepreneurial crowd with pride.

Until you meet those people who tell you, “You’re only successful because…”

I have come across a few women, over the course of the past six years, that have attributed my success to one key fact – I haven’t had any offspring yet.  Put aside the idea that I may very well be a driven, focused, motivated individual who wants to create a business that is sustainable, successful and a lot of fun to be in AND I’d probably have this drive regardless of whether or not I’ve also given birth to children…  Nope, it all boils down to how underused my ovaries are.

Now, I know that the men reading my blog may not be having my particular issue (mostly the underused ovaries part…) and I think it might be pretty specific to the female generation. Women can have difficulty sometimes with comparing themselves to another women in a similar situation.  So, when a woman is feeling like she isn’t as successful as the other woman she’s speaking with, she makes excuses as to why she isn’t there yet.  Generally speaking, the excuses are pointed directly at the other woman.

“You’re only successful because your husband has a great job and you can afford to take it slow.”

“You’re only successful because you’ve got a great support system.”

“You’re only successful because you got lucky and met the right contacts early on.”

When I hear any entrepreneur use these lines to compare themselves to another entrepreneur, I like to gently remind them that it doesn’t matter how the stars align and how perfect a scenario is, when it comes to running a business and being an entrepreneur you’ve either got it or you don’t.  The willingness, the drive, the motivation, the focus, the desire… you either have those traits or you don’t.

We don’t know a person’s history unless we’ve walked in their shoes and we’ve gone through what they’ve gone through.  We will never know and it’s time for us to put down the, “You’re only successful because…” and change it to, “I admire your ability to…”  Changing your attitude toward other people’s successes will allow you to experience your own success more fully.  You will be able to fully stand in your achievements and say, “I did this.  I created this.  I have the ability to succeed.” without attributing it to any other outside factor.

What do you think?  Have you ever been told that you’re only successful because…?  If so, what did you reply or how did you feel?

One-on-One Coaching is Not Always a Perfect Fit

Posted by Erin Blaskie on Feb 17, 2010 in Business Tips | 14 comments

Let me present you one of my most recent case studies.

I’ve always said (screamed aloud?) that one-on-one coaching without implementation was a complete waste of time and money.  It seems though that everyone and their brother is still rushing to hire expensive coaches that give them a lot of direction, a lot to think about but very little follow through.  Sure, they might give you a pretend spanking (ooo la la, let me grab my whip!) if / when you don’t do your “homework” but in all reality, does that kickstart you into action?  I’m betting that it doesn’t.

So, I tried it.

Yep.  I created some one-one-one time with Erin and I made it available to a select group of people — ten to be exact. I wanted to see what the experience was like from the coach / strategist side and how I could finally prove that one-on-one work without implementation was crap.

I’m going to be admitting to you what some people may call failure but what I call a success.

However, before I continue, let me make something really, really, really clear.  I have A LOT of great information, guidance, strategy, ideas, etc. to give to people. Throughout these experiences, I did and continue to provide really great service.  However, it was clear to me that there were two groups of people.  #1 — The strategy implementers and #2 — The strategy non-implementers.

A handful of these people aligned our strategy calls with direct implementation to my team.  For these people, the results paid off instantly and it became a really fun way to spend our time.  We’d dream up the next big thing and my team would make it all happen.  Just like that.

The rest of the group would get fired up on the call, be really into everything we’d discuss but they’d walk away and implement nothing.  Then, they would show up on the next call either providing a reason why they didn’t do it or they would tell me the coaching style just wasn’t working for them.  Totally cool… I didn’t take offense.  When they asked to discontinue their coaching with me, I agreed with them 100%.

Why?

The coaching style had nothing to do with it. The client was excited on the phone, I gave them fabulous ideas, I told them what they needed to do but when it came time to pass the torch to them, the torch sizzled out and died.  They didn’t do any follow through, didn’t want to hire a team to implement so therefore nothing got accomplished.  My guess is that they’ll go and hire another coach to learn the exact same thing.

What the coaching client missed was that they were firing themselves.  They had failed in their part of the bargain.  I had provided the strategy but there was zero implementation being done. No one is going to run your business for you unless you specifically hire for THAT position. Hiring a coach or a strategist is getting someone to give you ideas, tell you what to do next but the actually leaping (or walking / running / jogging) is up to YOU.  If you need ACTION, hire someone who can do a combination of both strategy and action or hire a team to work on outsourcing in your company.

So, I lost two coaching clients.  I am not at all upset or embarassed by it because I wanted to learn whether coaching on its own was effective or not and in this particular case, it was not.  It was actually highly ineffective and led to the breakdown of a potentially great scenario.  It also made me realize that I have to be really clear up front with people that I have zero interest in working with non-implementors.

What do you think?  Is coaching one-on-one without aligned action or implementation a waste of time?