Virtual Assistance and You

We had a discussion recently about targeting your market; about how it’s important to be as specific as possible about who your market is and how they act. We noted how the more specific you are about this market segment, the better for your business; but that does not at all mean that you only do business with your target market. To the contrary, you’re likely to serve many different kinds of people. Nonetheless, if you deliver your message with a certain, finely-etched individual in mind, you’ll attract the returns you seek.

I’ve often wrestled with this phenomenon. Defining your target market means envisioning your ideal customer in every detail, and keeping current with the experiences of that individual, so that your conversations with them are vital and effective.

During that recent discussion, though, I had a realization: defining your target market is a tool for you, as the seller, much more than it is a way to get customers. That is to say, in the end, the exercise is likely to give you increased business. But going through the process of imaging and defining and following your target market is not about knowing who to court, it’s about knowing who you are.  It produces for you a much sharper picture of your product/service; a much more clearly defined idea of the value you offer.

Let’s consider an example. A cake maker wants to boost her sales, but getting past the gatekeepers to reach decision-makers in her industry is proving troublesome. Then she takes some time to flesh out a picture of her ideal customer. With this information, she realizes that the associated social venues, connection points, and networks are suddenly definable as well; and from that data, she can design communications that speak intimately to the viscera of her audience.

The process she sets in motion then renders the gatekeeper problem irrelevant because her communications are so precisely targeted.

But our baker’s new clientele may, in actuality, be a mish-mash of a multitude of types. All sorts of different people may resonate with her targeted messages. If, for instance, she targets women 40-60 years old, income $100,000+, USA and Canada, she might easily attract women outside that age or income range, men who appreciate the female sensibility of her messages, or people from France or China.

They all come to her, though, because her message is crafted with careful specificity. It’s deftly branded. Its integrity captivates.

This is an ancient rule in fine art: that great art exists in the specific, not in the general.

The baker is speaking from her heart to a certain person in her imagination, a flesh-and-blood vision of someone who could be real. She speaks with respect, passion, and generosity, and her message hits the spot.

Defining her target does not necessarily deliver those exact customers to the baker. What it delivers is her own self-knowledge and ability to express. And with those skills come profits.

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!

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.

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.

Working in inbound marketing can be frustrating because its precepts – which work so well, when applied conscientiously – are foreign to traditional business practices. They’re the opposite of marketing tactics we grew up with. They sound suspiciously soft-hearted, on first encounter. Therefore, very few people know and hold to them.

It’s frustrating when, as  an inbound marketer, you consider warm responsiveness to be basic to good business, for example, but you realize that very few of your vendors and colleagues hold that value.  Unless you serve an immediate need of theirs, you won’t get a response from them at all.

Or when you work hard on good listening skills, and then realize the other person’s awareness doesn’t extend any further than the end of their nose.

Or when you generously give, and then suddenly see that your gifts are taken for granted or even resented.

Or how about this one: you realize the person you’re talking to is completely possessed by fear of identity theft, not to mention AIDS, drugs, crime, terrorists, and Bigfoot, and can’t hear a word you’re saying about sharing and openness on the internet.

If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know I’m involved in an ongoing campaign to spread the good word about inbound marketing in my local area. But sometimes the gap in understanding leaves me gasping.

• Be open about who you are personally?
• Give things away?
• Forget privacy paranoia?
• Mix business and social life?
• Publish my journal in a blog?

These things are anathema in the American South. Still.

So I get disheartened, sometimes, like the Congresswoman yesterday who remarked that philosophical differences between the sides were so great in the immigration discussions that no meeting of the minds seems possible.

On the other hand, I know inbound marketing is here to stay. How do I know that? Because it works, and the old invasive techniques increasingly do not work.

There’s one fellow I know from local networking, whom I have seen at meetings for a couple years now, though we haven’t spoken personally much. I regarded him as a master with the elevator speech, and an accomplished socializer, definitely part of the glue keeping the groups together. Not until today did I learn that he considers himself a student in, as he puts it, “learning how to talk to people.” He’s probably 55 or 60 years old; was a firefighter all his career; only recently turned to selling. There was a look in his eye as he spoke, and the spellbinding clarity of his intention. He is curious about “how to talk to people,” and that means he listens, and gives, and serves, and keeps an open mind. Awe-inspiring.

So there, I’ve now convinced myself that all is not lost, and I can go on preaching the inbound marketing gospel to the insurance agents and realtors in my local groups. If my fireman gets it, maybe many more can and will.

What do you think?

Recently, I parted ways with a contractor because we couldn’t agree on price. Though it was a cordial disagreement, it still hurts. I had hoped the partnership would be mutually beneficial, but her policies and mine differed to such an extent that an ongoing exchange was obviously not going to be possible.

In another case, a favorite client asked me to do some payroll prep work. It took a full meeting between us and an hour of reviewing the info on my part before I screwed up the resolve to tell him he should find someone else for the job because accounting is just not my bag.

I’ve gotten better at detecting such misalignments in my almost-three-years as a virtual assistant. Awhile back, I might have overlooked small or even not-so-small discrepancies and miscommunications in the interest of getting and completing the work.

Over time, though, I learned that it’s not worth the heartache. If you can’t trust your virtual relationships, or if you are not providing surefooted trustworthiness from your end, the partnership will not work. Period.

If you detect a glimmer of mismatch, which is not resolved speedily, you may as well say farewell. Virtual relationships depend on a few points of intersection that must be infallible. Your faith in the other is what makes it work and you can do nothing of value without that faith.

For anyone who has made a profession of helping others, for people who work as administrators, helping others to realize their plans, it’s just plain difficult to turn anyone down. The whole point is to be of assistance; it goes against the grain to say no. Virtual Assistants are ‘can do’ people, after all.

So VAs in particular suffer from can’t say no syndrome, but it’s common as well amongst people of all kinds who are in the start-up phase of business.

Come to think of it, it’s a phenomenon that appears in youth, whatever the context. Adolescents, for example, are famous for not saying no. An adolescent is usually far more in love with love than with the particular ‘other.’ Was your first teenage romance a solid investment, founded in well-placed trust? Or was it a crazy fling with no basis in reality? As you matured, you learned to say no to some of the many possibilities in the world of romance, right?

Similarly, when you enter the work force for the first time, you are anxious to take whatever job you are offered. It’s only later that you get picky.

So it’s no surprise that as a business owner, building your own clientèle entails the same discernment and selection.

I’d like to avoid having to be selective in person, in the moment, though. That is, I’d like to be organized sufficiently and communicate appropriately,  so that the people I interact with are entirely self-selecting, and already in full awareness of my policies.

Yes, that’s most likely the real challenge before me. The next step in the continuing saga; the rational growth of my enterprise. I must better ensure that my message attracts the right prospects for me. That way, no one’s time will be wasted and everyone’s potential will be maximized.

In life, in business, in relationships, we refine the definition and thus mature to reach a golden age of understanding, I do believe, don’t you?

I’ll let you know how it goes.

A few recent observations:

• I feel a strong urge to share with you this article by David Castro, an Ashoka Fellow, on the subject of social entrepreneurship, because it really took my breath away;
• I’ve been offended, lately, by the aggressive presence of political and religious representatives in business networking meetings, and feel like ranting on the trend;
• I remember that profound old maxim of creative production: weed out those parts you love the best, and then you begin to approach a worthy work of art.

These thought threads intertwine; and in describing how they do so, maybe some usefulness can be extracted.

•  Castro’s article is compelling and challenging. Social entrepreneurship is defined as establishing repeatable systems that create value, where value is defined as receiving more than you put in.

How is it possible to harvest more than you plant? The metaphor proves the point: what actual harvest is inferior to the lowly seeds that started the whole thing? The harvest is blessing beyond any discernable effort.

Even though expressly for-profit, as opposed to Castro’s focus on non-profit entrepreneurship, any business may benefit from understanding this natural law. What kinds of inputs will yield returns far richer than their sources? How can you organize in ways that realize surplus, and therefore ensure experimentation and growth?

•  My particular geographical region tends to be somewhat parochial, if not downright backwoods, when it comes to religion and politics. You have to expect a dominant contingent of redneck mentalities wherever groups are gathered here. I know this and generally manage it tolerably, but lately, it’s gotten out of hand. Preachers rail at us in their 30-second elevator speeches; Tea Party cavalry keep us hostage in their 10-minute presentations.

Certainly I will defend to the death your right to whatever convictions you choose. But this is a country where we agree that separation of Church and State is ideal; and where respect for trade supposedly levels all playing fields.  I come to these meetings for commerce, not to be sermonized.

•  An insidious force working against your forward progress may be your own sentimentality. Consider this scenario: you make something, anything, a creation that involves (and is intended to communicate) your imagination, self-expression, and choice-making. Included is a part of it – perhaps the original whim that gave you inspiration, or some other small piece that fell miraculously into place just when you needed it – there’s a part of your creation that you love especially, more than the rest.

When you come the point that you know that that very piece is the one that must be deleted, when you see that without that one beloved bit your creation will finally communicate with the greatest clarity, then and only then do you approach true completion of your project.

So there’s the pattern:

1. Surplus for survival.
2. Separation of trade and opinion.
3. Exile sentimentality.

• I like Castro’s article because it suggests answers can be found in working smarter, more holistically and more realistically.
• I dislike proselytizing in business networking meetings because it suggests answers can be found in what someone else tells you to believe.
• I use the teaching about throwing out the part you love the best because it suggests answers can be found when I get out of my own way.

Yes, just a few musings on business life. A motley crew of perceptions. But the whole is far more glorious than the parts; the harvest is far richer than the tiny seed.

How about you? What has possessed/obsessed your thought recently?

• Brick and mortar service business.
• 20 year history.
• Owner loves it but works too much, would like to have some time off.
• Finds it hard to delegate. No one can do it as well as she.
• Just opened second location.
• Several thousand in debt.
• About 10 on staff.
• Can’t see the forest for the trees.

This is what I worked with today, and I confess, it left me gasping somewhat. What a mess challenge. And yet, I believe it’s a relatively common situation with American small businesses. It’s the logical result of the Puritan Work Ethic.

Here’s how wikipedia.com defines that legacy of all multi-generation Americans:

“The Protestant Work Ethic (or the Puritan Work Ethic) is a concept in sociology, economics and history, attributable to the work of Max Weber. It is based upon the notion (of) the Calvinist emphasis on the necessity for hard work as a component of a person’s calling and worldly success and as a sign of personal salvation. It is argued that Protestants beginning with Martin Luther had reconceptualised worldly work as a duty which benefits both the individual and society as a whole. Thus, the Catholic idea of good works was transformed into an obligation to work diligently as a sign of grace.”

Now, that might be hard to follow unless you’re a student of theology or history, but basically it means that many millions in our society live, and especially work, under the thumb of guilt. If we’re working hard and not getting anywhere, we assume that’s because we’re not working hard enough.

A subversive new idea is beginning to infiltrate, however. (It was introduced ages ago, but evolutionary change is slow.)

Note that the computer age not only backs this new idea but insists on it.

The new idea is to work smarter, not harder.

Are you like my friend? Do you feel as if the faster you go, the ‘behinder’ you get? Though you try to stay positive, is a quietly insistent thought intruding, suggesting there must be a better way?

My friend has a wonderfully optimistic outlook, despite her underlying awareness of the hamster wheel. I would like to help her see alternatives. Not a easy task when you’re working with someone who’s going at a gazillion RPMs all the time.

My friend let slip that she loves doing layout design and graphic arts. She also told me that a pressing task today was adapting a contract template to a specific case – something she does not love to do.

I tsk-tsked her and said she should be doing those things she loves, delegating those she does not. This is the only way to maximize resources.

Yet her Puritan Ethic won’t allow

• indulging her loves,
• giving any of her work to others to do,
• spending money or time on something that will make her own life easier.

Would removing her debt allow her to open up to alternatives? Probably. But times are cruel, right now. Rare is the small business that is not carrying at least some debt. We can’t let lack of funds defeat us.

Now, far be it from me to find fault with the aforementioned Ethic or any of its proponents. But I humbly suggest that the scenario as above described is to be found everywhere and it is a situation in which a virtual assistant can make all the difference.

Just sayin’.

In a local biz group, we’ve been talking about SOPs. You know, those interminable step by step delineations of exactly how anything and everything that has the slightest thing to do with your company and its operations, all pinned down in careful black on white for posterity and whatever emergencies/exigencies might, may, or could possibly happen.

SOPs. Standard operating procedures. Are yours properly spelled out? Or are you like me, procrastinating on this one little necessary business duty?

Ostensibly, we create SOPs so that knowledge about how to complete any task for the business can be quickly and uniformly shared with new employees. It’s the franchise premise: create a detailed-enough manual, and your biz can clone itself. If  you’re Michael E. Gerber, author of The E-Myth, the standardizing of your processes and systems is the pivotal key to business success.

Now, I am a planner through and through. I believe and live by planning, for all endeavors. I like the process of planning, and I like using a plan as I proceed.

But creating SOPs is another matter entirely.

Writing plans is creating the future; writing SOPs is tabulating the present.

Writing out your standard procedures is bean-counter activity. It’s taking inventory, listing all that exists.  And to me it is terrifyingly dull.

(Is that why a great deal does not get done in life – because the dullness of the task actually terrifies us? I’m not afraid of hard work, but tedium is horrifying and to be avoided at all costs. )

But I know that writing out my SOPs is, indeed, key to my business success, and I know I must accomplish this monumental task, and the reason I know that has nothing to do with franchising or sharing with employees, since I’m a solopreneur.

I know that writing out your business SOP is the same as learning about something by drawing it.

When you draw an object, you come to know it in a detailed and intimate way. You realize things about it that you didn’t realize previously.

It’s the same with writing out your operating procedures: you come to know your biz in new and profound ways.

So I’m going to get down to it, one of these days. Soon. I promise.

In the meantime, if you’ve got any hints to make the job more palatable, please comment.

While I mainly emphasize my work in inbound marketing these days, I also offer writing services; and in that light, this post focuses on business writing. Copy writing. The choice and configuration of words on the page that convey your business’ meaning.

Like a bus driver on holiday, I’m hyper-aware of the writing I wade through every day online. I can’t help but notice the rarity of decent business writing, and  the still more rare existence of excellent business writing.

I read a post yesterday that emphasized improving your writing skills. The best part of the post was its title (as is often the case, have you noticed?).  ”Copywriting with a Bite to Hold Your Reader’s Attention.” Just the use of that word, Bite, made the whole thing worthwhile.

So of course, I thrilled to read Jason Fried’s take on the subject in a post published more than a month ago; a post that’s still collecting comments. Fried says,

“In nearly all cases, a company makes its first impression on would-be customers or partners with words — whether they’re on a website, in sales materials, or in e-mails or letters. A snappy design might catch their attention, but it’s the words that make the real connection. Your company’s story, product descriptions, history, personality — these are the things that go to battle for you every day. Your words are your frontline. Are they strong enough?”

Fried, founder of 37signals, nails it brilliantly when he later adds, “Remember: It’s not about telling a story. It’s about telling a true story well.”

Telling a true story. Not necessarily a factual story; just one that pierces the heart of your meaning. That is as close as possible to the truth you want your market to receive.

And telling it well, because a true story is a terrible thing to waste by telling it badly.

So to do your business copy writing really well, you have to chew and swallow two big chunks. The first is soul food: the intimate vision and understanding of your meaning in mundane as well as mythic proportions. The second is epicurean: the application of science and precision that will best convey that deep soul meaning, considering all the variables.

Nike’s tough-it-out, persist to the goal, indomitable athlete videos paired with “Just Do It” is a concise example. More complex is Fried’s exhibit from Saddleback Leather:

“All of our products are fully warranted against all defects in materials and workmanship for 100 years. If you or one of your descendants should have a problem, send it back to me or one of my descendants and we’ll repair or replace it for free or we’ll give you a credit on the website (be sure to mention the warranty in your will).”

- which I find hilarious. It’s hyperbole, of course, but that very exaggeration makes the company’s dedication to their warranty somehow more believable than the norm. The meaning they want to convey comes through with aplomb, and this is all that’s important.

What is the really true story that you want to tell in your business? And how can you improve your telling of it?