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.

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.

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.

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.

How extraordinarily fortunate I am! Every work day, I interact with people from all over the globe. And every work day, I also interact with local people, in person.

Please pause a moment and consider the awesomeness of that. I’m an everyday person, not a big wheeler-dealer, not a politician or celebrity. Yet my habitual work brings me in contact with the world; while remaining in contact with my immediate sphere. I live in a universe of the macro and micro continuously juxtaposed.

Predictably, the local world is far more personal and powerful in its effect on me than the global world. But it also tends to lag far behind in terms of self-awareness and technological advancement. So it’s with special pleasure that I’ve been observing lately a certain awakening on the local level. After more than two years of campaigning about inbound marketing and social media among networking groups in nearby cities, I’ve been noticing lately a definite, nascent glimmer of understanding. They’re beginning to ask questions, they’re getting this info from more angles than just mine, and they have decided it’s necessary to investigate.

Which results in business for me, of course. Hallelujah.

But more importantly, the same dual experience of daily life which I know as a virtual assistant- an interchange between the globe as a whole and the room in which you happen to ‘geo-locate’  right now – has become the norm for a great many more people than heretofore. Not so long ago, when I mentioned Facebook or Twitter, eyes would roll. As it is now, ears perk.

The technology allows for all the world to see itself in whole, and in part, at any given time.

To see itself both in a space and in space: both at a location and in relevance to all locations.

Whew. This is not to be dismissed as trivial. World view, never before so large as it is today, forms all responses to life, whether physical, metal, spiritual, or whatever.

No epiphany can soar without its symbol. Let this one be a symbol of hope, because we can only hope that the awareness to which we are privileged parties via the internet may be our strength and not our mere indulgence.

It was fun reading through this case study by Inc. magazine about virtual working. The participants, on the whole (if you believe the article’s author), preferred the routine of going in to the office every day, vs. working from their homes. In short, they were creeped out by the virtual work experience.

Employees missed the office, saying they felt their lives became less dynamic; rather than clear delineations of work and non-work environments, they felt as though they were at work all the time.

However, the author of the article does admit that, given the right circumstances, virtual work can be entirely satisfactory. Allow me to quote him:

“… most virtual companies build their cultures from scratch, hiring the sort of people who want to work remotely, who don’t want to be friends with their co-workers, and who like being a long distance away from their bosses. Virtual companies are also, crucially, run by CEOs who are able to derive a sense of personal fulfillment from this arrangement. Many entrepreneurs speak of the flush of pride they feel when they walk into their offices and see the people they have created jobs for and the culture they have fostered; Matt Mullenweg gets that same rush from looking at a map and seeing his employees scattered across the world.”

I’m tempted to suggest to you that those who prefer the commute and the water cooler are simply afraid of change. They’re just sad lemmings rushing toward their demise rather than choosing new alternatives. But that would be entirely unfair. The workers in this particular case were located in comfortable uptown digs, and they clearly benefited from the social and intellectual rewards of their daily interactions.

So we have to face the fact that some will be nurtured by an brick and mortar office environment and others will live more happily in their home workplaces. Who’s surprised? The world was ever thus divided in two.

The dichotomy points to the need, however, to apply caution when hiring employees or when contracting for virtual assistance. Does the person you are considering have a well-developed awareness of their best working habits? Are they happiest when working as an employee, or are they more suited to independent work? Which type is most appropriate for your needs?

It pays to be aware of this burgeoning dichotomy in the business world, because confusion can be costly. Your in-house employees should naturally thrive on their routines, and your virtual contract partners should perform best via their chosen MOs. But when you cast a contractor in an employee position, or an employee in a contract job, you’re asking for trouble.

In the field of virtual assistance, some service providers approach the work from an employee mentality, even to the point of offering to spend set hours ‘in the office’ each week. On the other hand, a great many VAs are remote operators, and your relationship with them is that of a vendor or B2B supplier. Know which type you need when seeking a VA and you’ll greatly speed your process.

An especially savory triumph of the internet is that it allows us to expand our existence into a larger definition of self; it is a more expansive set of accepted tools for work and self-expression.  Whether office workers or independent agents, we can each choose our preferred way of working.

The web makes it more obvious than ever that we are authors of our own destinies.

• 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’.

Here’s the third and final installment in my What is … mini-series. Having examined the contemporary roles of virtual assistant and social media marketing assistant, we’ll wrap it up with a look at the inbound marketing assistant.

The way I see things, the virtual assistant designation applies to anyone who provides contracted administrative computer and internet help to businesses. A social media marketing assistant is more specifically working in marketing for clients, especially in terms of execution of a social media strategy.

An inbound marketing assistant helps with marketing, too, but in a more comprehensive way. Duties may include activities both online and offline. In the inbound marketing capacity, your assistant may function more as a consultant and strategist. The emphasis here is on creating that mega-magnet which attracts customers to you, as opposed to traditional broadcast advertising models. Inbound marketing includes social media, website design, tracking and measurement, email newsletters, direct mail, and advertising, as appropriate for the individual situation.

Looking at these related-but-different definitions of VA, SMM assistant, and inbound marketing assistant, I’m struck by one thing in particular. This one thing helps to understand and define virtual assistance. The salient characteristic of all three roles is that they require attention to the big picture, while working intimately with the tiny details.

VAs are people who live on these two levels simultaneously all the time. We may offer specialized services, but we do so with a watchful eye on your goals and overall operations. Somewhat like alternative concepts in healing, we work with awareness of the whole organization, not just isolated parts.

Perhaps it could be said that a professional is one who confidently assumes such a bird’s eye view. A VA is admin turned professional. And a VA that specializes in inbound marketing is part of the current re-visioning of marketing as a concern of the whole organization, and not something relegated to one department.

No one took exception to my last entry here, though – at least in my little mind – it tested the edges of what it means to be a virtual assistant. But since there seems to be no objection so far, I’m going to push the point a bit further.

It was after I started working as a VA that the phenomenon known as social media began to impinge on my consciousness. Actually, it was a full year later, in late 2008, that the awakening happened: I heard the clarion call of social media as a marketing and branding uber tool. I was dazzled, swept away, and things have not been the same since.

The advent of social media (detestable as the term sounds in ear – can’t we come up with a better name for it?) meant that I could synthesize so many objectives. I work with small businesses as a virtual assistant, centering on planning, can-do admin, and meaningful evaluations – all with the purpose of building brand.

Which is a long way of saying, I am a virtual assistant because I work as a partner to you and your business. I’m invisible but always there; a fellow eye on the big picture as well as a structure for follow through.

As a VA, I want to serve client businesses holistically. As a social media marketing assistant, I use thorough understanding of client objectives and operations to speak their messages faithfully.

A SMM assistant is the one who helps you stay current with your online networking updates of all kinds. The service can be the key to successful internet branding and selling, which is relatively inexpensive as marketing goes, but a hungry monster when it comes to time. Assigning updates of many kinds to an assistant is a no-brainer.

Before your objections flood the comments, let me say that I do not advocate ‘ghost updating’ in any way. Updates that are generic are an entirely different thing from those that reference personal life. The latter can’t be faked online, so don’t even try.

But there are a host of duties that can be shared with a SMM assistant, making life once again both livable and profitable for you as small business owner. Your SMM assist can:

• Edit and upload (or schedule) blog posts, tweets, Facebook, LinkedIn or other network updates;
• edit and distribute articles;
• add tags to media content and upload;
• complete profiles and account information on relevant sites;
• monitor alerts for your keywords and participate appropriately;
• manage social media groups and comments;
• build pages on Facebook, HubPages, etc.;
• optimize your website copy for search engines;
• monitor your traffic, reputation, and other stats and send you reports;
• so much more, I can’t even think of all the possibilities.

Social media is so much about being consistently there. Sort of like the old brick and mortar imperative: the store’s gotta be open 7 to 11. Somebody’s got to be there. In social media, the time requirement is not so strict, but it’s there. Be sporadic in your updates, have long unexplained absences, take an extended vacation and your efforts deflate like an old balloon.

Your social media marketing assistant assures your presence is solid online.

BUT (and this is major) your SMM assistant also represents you. So find one who will eagerly learn the totality of your biz and take you on as a partner. A virtual assistant, for instance, may well be a ready candidate!

I started up my virtual assistant business in November of 2007. That’s a mere 2.5 years ago, yet so much has changed. I still consider myself a virtual assistant, but hardly ever use the term anymore.

In the early innocence of way back in ’07, a virtual assistant was someone helping businesses and professionals from a remote location. I was drawn to the industry because I had served as an administrator all my adult life and I loved the idea of working it as my own business, in which I could maximize my time and skills by serving more than one boss at a time. So much of an administrative assistant’s time is wasted sitting in the office, waiting for the boss to get it together. I was never any good at pretending to be busy.

Like many of my colleagues in the industry, however, my good intentions ran headlong into a wall of reluctance on the part of business owners to work virtually. They had a hard time understanding how it would work, how it would benefit them.

I think many VAs start out hoping that the work itself will define their niche offering; we think it’s the clients we manage to attract and the kind of work they need done that will shape our services. If they’re looking for marketing, I’ll do that; or if they want scheduling, email management, websites, writing, reports, bulk mailings, customer relations; whatever it is, that’s what I’ll become.

Except it doesn’t work that way, of course, which we quickly realized.

Some VAs still try hard to defend their general-ism.  Indeed, you can find many VA agencies who are proud of being a ‘one-stop-shop’ and whose list of services reads like a Chinese menu.

But for the most part, VAs have turned to specialization and found success by specifically naming the services they offer. We are writers, or marketers, or legal assistants; we do bookkeeping, or concierge arrangements, or we manage your affiliate program; we build blogs or Facebook pages, or produce your online event. We are focusing on a few chosen skills, instead of trying to be everything to everyone.

Interesting how this messes with the original concept of a VA. A great many of us were admin assistants previously, and we thought of ourselves as the ‘secretary,’ the all-round ‘Gal Friday.’  We brought this concept into our own VA biz, and then realized it doesn’t work so well in the open market. A virtual assistant used to be thought of as an executive secretary, delivering work digitally. With so many of us now specializing, that definition doesn’t work anymore.

I’m a copywriter and inbound marketer. My work is location-independent and delivered digitally. I assist business owners and managers in the smooth operation and success strategies of their organization. I refer fellow VAs when I’m asked for skills that are not in my specialty area.

Come to think of it, perhaps that’s really what makes me a VA: I am part of the network of VAs who communicate with, educate, mutually support, and refer one another across the globe.  Maybe it’s a tribal thing.