Virtual Assistance and You

As a website builder, I had to smile with a wince when I read this question in a forum recently:

“…what does one do when their designer doesn’t seem to be listening to them? One of my sites is being rebranded and we’ve hit a snag 3 weeks in – every time I say I want a certain colour, I get something different … I’m at a loss as to how to proceed – don’t want to end the contract but when I say turqouise 3 times & I get green instead (after saying I don’t like green) I’m not sure how to communicate! Really could do with some ideas / insights here thank you so much!”

Communication. Nothing works without it.

The challenge is magnified enormously when you’re working location-independently. While this style of business is increasingly attractive, the temperament and protocols to operate properly are by no means set.

If you’re standing at the counter of your local printing company, you can point to their color chart and say, “This one.” When communicating virtually, you need the hexadecimal or RGB number or whatever. Unfortunately, we don’t all share the same level of technical know-how. Not so many have ever heard of hexadecimals.

Using digital means to communicate requires at least one of two things: a parity in knowledge about any fields discussed and technology used; or extreme skill in listening, articulating, educating, and empathizing on the part of the virtual worker.

Virtual assistance is all about the latter, of course. It’s incumbent on us, the individuals who call ourselves virtual assistants, to acquire (yea, master) the skill of virtual communications.

And it’s no slide, believe me.

In the above example, the customer was incensed that the word, “turquoise” didn’t seem to be communicating. The designer was likely thinking, “I keep giving her turquoise and she’s still not happy.”

How can this discrepancy be resolved?

The seller has to take total responsibility, of course. It’s a very cool opportunity to develop your service to your customers and fellow human beings. You must listen and provide with true generosity. And in the process, you will likely profit.

You have to recognize where the barriers lie (confusion about colors, for example)   between you and perfect understanding on your clients’ part and work your way through them. Provide charts, samples, other resources and guides. Over-communicate. Know that “turquoise” is not a sufficient identifier for a color.

You have to help your clients become your ideal customers.

And just so you know: I am preaching to myself. Doing business increasingly becomes a matter of communicating better with my clients. I’m thinking about checklists, guidelines, questionnaires, introductions of many sorts: ways to make the process of building a website or producing copy or establishing a social media presence much simpler for the site owner. The more streamlined for them, the more pleasant for me!

As a caveat, I know the marketing world doesn’t recognize perfection in any lasting sense, and every design is a new challenge. So it remains that each job is unique. But the more we can eliminate unnecessary misunderstandings, the better.

Finally, I want to note that the ultimate value of virtual assistants may well be our expertise in virtual communications, since we fundamentally depend on it. We can serve as guides for our clients in the intricacies of being digitally understood.

Categorizing and marketing

When it comes to your relationships, your clients, your colleagues, contacts, and suppliers, it’s tempting to categorize them and set up automated systems based on assumptions or aggregate descriptives about them.

The possibility of categorizing – i.e., labeling groups of people with certain shared characteristics – has triggered the past century or so in advertising. Some Henry Ford idea of standardization has blinded us to anything else but a mechanized version of human life.

But people are not essentially mechanistic. Our differences are both subtle and enormous.

Do you judge rather than serve?

Are you positively paralyzed by the fracas over the “Ground Zero” Muslim community center? Could we possibly be more splintered, more divided than we are over this issue? (The whole thing makes me sad.)

I realize I have a palpable fear of certain political viewpoints. I am actually afraid of those who espouse certain affiliations. I feel threatened by them.

These realizations cause me to re-assess. To have such extreme responses bodes no good. I am believing in my categories instead of perceiving the individuality of every moment, person, and situation.

Do you agree that there is a difference here?

You can hold to the hard line, insisting that everything can be categorized; or you can open to the reality that there is no categorization, that every instance is unique.

The tools for service

It is, of course, a lot easier to sort things into boxes and deal with them in bulk. But real life, nature, and the environment around us all suggest that it’s a lot more complicated than that. Especially when it comes to other people, shortcuts created by generalizing are costly if not completely destructive.

So thank goodness for social media, giving us the means by which to address our ‘public’ one by one. The technology has an uncanny way of expressing solutions to needs we hardly knew we had! But our need to serve rather than judge surely preceded the internet’s explosion.

That thing you do …

The old ‘billboard’ outbound marketing had to die. People do not want to be categorized, so any system that perpetrates categorization is doomed from the start. People want to be seen in their individuality, and it is the extent to which you can convince them you see them accordingly that you win their trust, and patronage.

Applying this maxim to the continual search for my ideal client, it becomes clear that there’s no final definition of that elusive personality. The person who resonates best with me may actually fit a multitude of ‘profile’ types. I can no more hope to predict the type than I can resolve the “Ground Zero Mosque” question.

Ultimately, que sera, sera, right? If I be what I be, you be what you be, and we meet through the internet or anywhere, then you are my ideal client. At least until proven otherwise.

People are at their best when using their native gifts. The fat person who dances beautifully; the gentleman who becomes a farmer; the introvert who inspires millions: these are examples of the deliciously contradictory nature of personality. One’s native gifts are not defined by others because they can often contradict outward appearances. We each must find our own core skills.

Always, my thinking stems from the assumption that every sentient being has something to offer by way of helping others. To be alive and whole is to share and empathize.

But identifying your core skills is not easy. A great many of us forever remain blind to the best uses of our energies.

Those who do identify their native gifts and use them for the benefit of others have the opportunity to live harmoniously and with relative ease. Examples might be a someone who loves cooking and writes cookbooks; or someone who is a natural public speaker and delivers speeches for a living. Or perhaps someone who is an expert housekeeper and works cleaning houses.

A large portion of the workforce have no idea what their core skills are, or never consider the question. They’re just glad to have a job. Generally, no one questions it: individuals fit into job descriptions; job descriptions do not change to fit individuals.

Increasingly, however, alongside disillusionment with corporate careers, many are copping a new paradigm. They are responding to a new imperative, one that echoes from inside their deepest dreams as well as down the canyons of social need today. It’s a sort of desperation, maybe: finally we turn to our inner selves for answers, all else having failed.

Creating a job means you have done all the homework of self -and-other research, consciously building a livelihood from your core abilities.  It means you have approached the challenge of making a living from the perspective of compassion, as opposed to the perspective of self-protection. You  have figured out how to translate your talents into gifts.

But what are your talents, and how can they be configured as gifts? It worries me that discovering your answers may take most, if not all of your working life. But perhaps, if you start searching right now, you’ll find the answer just around the corner.

I would be honored if you’d share your story about defining right livelihood in your life. Please comment!

Personal branding – a concept generally recognized as a recent invention, product of the post-corporate world – is really an old idea, of course. What could be more ancient than the repercussions of reputation in the experience of homo sapiens? Since Cain and Abel, since Heck was a pup, what we are in the minds of others in large part determines our happiness and comfort.

Among artists, personal brand goes without saying. You can’t achieve success in the art world unless you courageously and skillfully present your brand. Eons ago, I worked in the theater quite a bit, mostly because I was fascinated by the power of human expression. I learned about the voice there and that’s the aspect of personal branding that I’ve taken as my subject here.

It repeatedly strikes me that people do not brand themselves with much awareness when they say their own names. When intoning your name, as a first-time introduction or speaking on the telephone, or in any of the other numerous instances in which you are called upon to state your name, do you do so clearly, proudly, powerfully?

So often people mumble their names. If it’s an appropriate time to utter your name aloud, believe me, your listeners would prefer to understand you and even be able to repeat what you said. You are not asked your name frivolously; the questioner really wants to know. Do you wish to be branded favorably by that questioner? Then please say your name with clarity and confidence.

What if your name is difficult to pronounce, or otherwise distinctive? Present it with full good-natured knowledge of the way it generally is received. Give explanations that are brief, kind, and appropriate. Do not take offense at the world because your name is not easy to get or remember. Help us out a little, because we want to like you.

I’ll say that again. We want to like you. Often, when I hear people say their names over the phone or in a group, I think they’re so afraid they won’t be liked that it’s impossible for them to present themselves clearly. This is wasted fear, though, because your listeners have no reason to dislike you and every reason to see you as a potential friend and ally. Not everyone, but most people will view a new acquaintance from this positive vantage point. We’re looking for friends, not enemies.

So please be aware of how you say your name to introduce yourself in every situation. Consider how you can present your Self with more generosity and genuine compassion. How can you say who you are in a way that truly complements the personal brand you hope to impart?

This blog has a modest readership, and I gather that most of you are fellow virtual assistants.  If you’re not a VA, you probably work with VAs or you’re looking into working with one. Whichever of these categories defines you, it’s likely that you’re a solopreneur, or at least an entrepreneur, working your buns off to realize a dream.

Most of my clients are people involved in work that is close to their heart. They may have had previous employment in corporate circles or other organizations, but now they are committed to realizing the best expression of themselves, the best gifts they can make to life.

Usually people don’t work up the gumption to go into business for themselves until later in life, if at all. But since our economy is so fragile, more peeps nowadays are leaving the corporations to venture out on the high wire of their native proclivities, presuming to make a living through in-depth experience of whatever thing(s) they are passionate about. The risk involves blood, sweat, and tears; and then the simple heaven of knowing you gave it your best shot. You might succeed and you might not, but you will not wonder what if.

Most VAs will know what I mean, because we are business owners who usually start out as solo efforts, whether we stay there or not. We know what it is to depend on your own belief in yourself.

There are so many others, as well, who will relate to the compelling drive to find their best expression, who do not want to settle for what others want them to be. It takes a lot of courage to stop working a safe job in favor of doing something that comes more naturally to you. A barrage of ancient rules and taboos gets in the way, not to mention the paralyzing fear of loss.

Being who you most profoundly are, submitting to the vision quest in search of how your core self can be most useful to both your self and your fellow human beings, requires huge strength and ongoing faith. It’s certainly not the easy way out.

The current limelight on branding as a concern of every individual shows that the trend towards increased self-employment is not just a blip on the radar. Personal branding is about taking responsibility for the chain of events that is your career, both where you plan to end up, and every step on the way. It’s your life, not your boss’ or your father’s or some other leader’s. You are the center of your universe. Because of this, strengthening your core skills is always in your best interest.

Many don’t recognize a core skill apart from their daily work as it is. But for those who feel a disconnect between their occupation and their compassionate pre-occupation, proceeding to your own business or practice is inevitable.

And if you’re on that road, it’s my advice to do all you can to find company. Seek out places where you can find others similarly realizing their dreams, who can support and sustain you. It could make all the difference.

We editors are a cranky bunch, always hacking away at misspellings and grammatical errors. Our rules, I’m sure, seem arcane to many.

As I’ve often pointed out, excellent written English is so far from the norm online that proper use of the language would seem to have lost all value amongst us.

There’s a core problem with ignoring good language, though: when ‘anything goes’ in language, communication is compromised. We could go so far as to say, the more tightly disciplined the language, the more powerful the communication. So when you start accepting any number of variations on the rules, you must also accept that you will not communicate as well.

Imagine saying something to another person and you really really care that the other person hears and understands. Do you speak differently than when you are not so intent on communicating something?

When representing your business in public, for marketing or any other reason, how much do you care that your audience (those who ‘audit,’ who hear) really gets your message the exact way you intend it? If you care much at all, then use of language is your central concern.

Communicating well is far different from merely spelling correctly or using complete sentences. It’s so much more than your spell-or-grammar-checker can catch that it belongs in another world entirely. The nitty gritty rules of writing are foundational, to be sure. But communicating well is where the pedal hits the metal.

Please consider these samples. Though well-meaning, each of these misses the mark the writer intended, and ends up instead conveying only a lack of careful proofreading or, it must be admitted, a lack of intelligence.

“With a Methodist mother and a Southern Baptist father, Clinton’s fiancé, who is Jewish, will invite another religious perspective into the family.”
What’s wrong: Clinton’s fiancé (subject of the sentence) is Jewish; it is Clinton who has the Methodist mother and Southern Baptist father.
Said properly: Clinton has a Methodist mother and a Southern Baptist father.  Her fiancé, who is Jewish, will invite another religious perspective into the family.

” … looking to ameliorate my skills and further my experience in the financial domain.”
What’s wrong: it would be very bad for you if you ameliorated your skills. Best to be sure you can state the definition of a big word before you use it – especially in any branding statement!
Better way to say it: “… looking to build my skills and experience in the financial domain.”

“I love Chocolate and it was just like , no better than most!”
What’s wrong: Was it really no better than most?
Better way to say it: “I love chocolate and it was like – no, better than most!”

” … he attributes Kurlan & Associates as a large part of his success.”
What’s wrong: ‘Attributes … as’ doesn’t make sense.
Better way to say it: ” … he attributes a large part of his success to Kurlan & Associates.”

“I’m in the business of helping independent professionals maximize their billable hours by handling their administrative support needs.”
What’s wrong: I hope you can see that though we might infer the meaning here, the language tries hard to obscure it.
A better way to say it: “I handle administrative support needs for independent professionals so they can maximize their billable hours.”

Note that in each of these cases, the best use is that which serves the reader’s understanding with most power and precision – and often the most simplicity.

Writing should be used to communicate, if you’re going to publish it. Do it with your reader firmly in mind. Serve his/her interests and nothing else. Create and polish your messages like love letters, because if you are selling anything, that’s what they have to be.

Any virtual assistant will tell you there’s an art to developing virtual relationships.

I wish virtual meant the same thing as virtuous, but it doesn’t. Yet virtuousness can take you a long way in the virtual universe.

I wish we had a better term to apply to those activities and relationships that come about because of the internet: specifically, the relationships that are not likely to involve face-to-face encounters. All those peeps we know and love but have never seen in person – our friends, followers, fellow social media hounds, online business liaisons – those folk with whom we now co-exist, digitally speaking: they’re our virtual communities, and they each have their own virtual quirks and eloquence.

Your online communities are as full of peculiarities as any local networking group, corporate unit, or sewing circle. A key to skillful use of the internet is to constantly perceive the person behind the words, and to respond / speak to that person. No matter how imposing a facade they present, every business online is still made up of real people, and it must bend to the transparency rule or accept eventual failure. Your design may be sleek or sloppy, but really it’s you that matters, you whom we seek and with whom we become virtually acquainted.

The web may be digital, but on the other hand, it’s eminently humanist.

Being ultra sensitive to nuances and hyper-tuned to ways you can be of assistance is the skill of an online community builder. (Note: everyone using the internet for marketing purposes is an online community builder.)

• Have you ever worked with someone who needed you to complete their project, but simply never read your messages to them?
• Have you encountered the type who pushes you with deadlines but refuses to tell you what is expected?
• What about the cohort who passionately exchanges ideas with you one day, and then disappears for a week?

There are a million ways we fall short in the demands of virtual relationships, because the web is a harsh master (mistress?) Each of us must conceive the extent to which we will become involved in these relationships, and then stick to our convictions. But there’s no doubt about it: the more constant your presence, the more valuable your return will be.

However, it takes more than constancy. If you’re always there, but full of spite and venom, that won’t work either. So being there, with both passion and compassion are required.

For a virtual assistant, the process is intensified, since we forge such new virtual relationships all the time. We learn every day to listen more acutely, speak more responsibly, react more judiciously, and to be more sensitive to our client’s state of mind and being, through the tangles of cyberspace.

I’ve become more patient, and I have increasing confidence in my ability to navigate the delicate get-to-know-you process when it’s digitally-based. While I have a long way to go still, it’s good to know how warm, alive, and real-life the virtual world can be.

I’ve been working administratively since 1973. Through nearly all of that time, the ideal of the multi-tasker was held up as the highest achievement. If administration is carrying out the dictates of the planners, multi-tasking is the best way to serve their lofty ideals, because it makes several employees out of one, and gets the job done no matter what.

And anyway, it’s a high. When you’re responding to demands from many quarters at once, you’re dancing. Flit here, pause there, do a pirouette and end up on top.

Multi-tasking is endlessly entertaining, while you accomplish the oft-labeled-impossible task of serving many masters all at the same time.

But it never lasts. Have you noticed? The one constant in multi-tasking is burn-out. The nerves fray, the attention eventually wanders.

So how can we benefit from multi-tasking without fizzling like firecrackers?

By applying it consciously, rather than compulsively.

The business person who is always tracking several threads at once and therefore never available for focused,  eyeball-to-eyeball experiences is useless 99% of the time.  You know who you are.

This is not to dispense with multi-tasking altogether. Using it to take care of mundane responsibilities can be tremendously helpful. But continuing to multi-task when your activities lead you into realms of personal contact, decision-making, or any higher-level thought can be detrimental to growth.

Note that multi-tasking can be addictive. It’s also admired, in a general sense, so the addict is encouraged in  his/ her affliction every day, in a vicious cycle that few people understand or even realize. I’m thinking of one friend who is actually successful in business.  But she won’t become any more successful than she is; she will stay at her current level, because she’s addicted to multi-tasking.

To multi-task in a conscious way means that you can turn it on and off at will. It means whenever you are with another person, you turn it off, because when you multi-task while communicating in person, you give the other less than their due respect. We owe one another more than that, no matter who the other is. In person (or in direct one-on-one conversation of any kind), focus is key and without it you risk being offensive.

As in my friend’s case, multi-tasking leads to negligence in other areas of life, often the personal needs that are ignored while you Accomplish with phenomenal speed and acumen.  It’s these suppressed urges that eventually demand your surrender. Just because you can juggle like a wiz doesn’t mean you’re entitled to sainthood.

Though you may think it hard to believe, life is even more multi than multi-tasking.

If you use the web for business, you surely know that building your opt-in list and sending email newsletters is the heart of your marketing.  For some time now, focusing on recruiting subscribers and increasing your inner circle fan club has been regarded as best practice if you want to grow your biz.

But, also for some time now,  the spam filters have been wise to email marketing software, summarily dumping many a well-meaning post. And, though you have ten on your list, who’s to say eight of them are not deadbeats who may open your post but never read it? Email client software that shows the top part of each email when you click on it in the list will report that the email was opened. But there’s no way to know if it was actually read.

The fact is, if one-third of your recipients open your email newsletter, you’re doing extraordinarily well. And if 20 percent click on your links, you might be on a terrific roll. Most stats are far below these levels.

Now, email marketing can be done very inexpensively, so we may as well keep doing it. But since we’re doing it, we should figure out how to do it better.

We want to be more effective, more compelling, closer to our clients than we are.  Yet email marketing, to be meaningful, has to have an enormous top of the funnel. The more people you’re mailing to, the more people are likely to actually read your messages. So you have to appeal to a wide base, while creeping closer to intimacy. It can be tricky.

But however we might frame things, in practical terms email marketing is perhaps terminally threatened by spam filters and pervasive ADD. So the question is, what can work better in its place?

The concept of the landing page, perhaps, begins to fill the bill; or micro-sites, as described in this article. In both these cases, the standard would be to send a short, plain text email, with a link to the online page.

Why is this better? While reserving the right to – eventually –  judge it not better, after all,  I might suggest that with such a system, you’re efficiently capturing those people who are most interested in your product. You’re not missing those whose spam filters would hide your html email; or those who have no time to read a lengthy post.

The subsequent online page, the link you provide in the text of your email, may include sub-pages, interactive elements, and other tools. It will contribute to your search engine optimization, and remain indefinitely in your website cache.

It’s a strong contender for html email replacement, IMO. What’s your take? Or are you successful enough with emailed newsletters, and not looking for alternatives? Sure would like to hear your comments.

It’s interesting that the internet is rising to such ascendancy during one of the worst times, economically speaking, that the world has seen. While we are struggling with everyday survival, the internet is taking us to unprecedented heights of thought and societal awareness.

Whether one is the result of the other, I don’t know and won’t attempt to explore here. But because the juxtaposition is so startling, it demands notice. Somehow, the technologies, practices, and cultures of the web are involved in our happy future. The omnipotent and largely free internet suggests possibilities for not only coping but succeeding in major ways despite our material and ecological woes.

But there’s no denying that establishing a strong presence online is an acquired skill, gained through patience and humble learning. The norms of the ‘net aren’t easy to describe to the uninitiated. How often, when discussing social media, have you heard someone sneer, “Reading what kind of sandwich you had for lunch is not interesting to me. What a waste of time!”

Yet, online branding being the multi-faceted dragon that it is, your lunchtime ham on rye can actually be a not-insignificant part of it.  That is,  internet protocols are a new mixture of work and play; and mastering the mix makes artists of us all.

As he so often does, Mitch Joel nails it.

From gossip and soap operas to professional wrestling and reality television, we love following and burrowing ourselves in the lives of others. So, why is it any shock that Facebook has over 500 million accounts?

(You’ll really enjoy Mitch’s post. Go ahead and check it out. I’ll wait.)

Mitch points out that the internet plays well to our natural propensity for being seen. We have a natural need to be recognized by others, and online participation allows that in a big way. Of course, if I’m to be seen, I must also see others; and it’s been observed that success online is proportional to your genuine interest in others. So the 80/20 rules applies here as in so many other places: 80% listening, 20% talking.

Amazingly, the internet takes us back, in a way, more than forward. It demands old-fashioned manners, and it judges a business more by its reputation than by its looks. Its terrain feels like a frontier, and its laws have yet to be created. It seems like an adolescent: lithe, pimply, emotional, self-righteous, hopeful, and ripe with all the glories of young adulthood.

But whatever else it may be, the web lets us share in enormous amounts compared to just 20 years ago. That’s what’s really new about it. And when we share this way, our ideas about work and play and  mission and branding and purpose are profoundly affected. Your ham-on-rye-ness may or may not be attractive to my grilled cheese-ness. Keeping this data in proper perspective and order is the challenge: but it’s data we need (even crave!) and use nonetheless.

If you’re still waffling, not wanting to tackle the internet’s challenges, consider how it is bringing us closer to our true selves. Why deny yourself, or your business, such a pleasurable profit?