by Karen Petrauskas | Jan 18, 2018
Are you a business owner that could do with an extra pair of hands at certain points throughout a month? You’re aware that it wouldn’t necessarily make sense to hire a part-time assistant at this point in time, but an extra pair of hands is definitely needed in order to keen you sane and on top of your workload! Sound familiar?
Many business owners when they are starting out (or are not quite at the stage of hiring more team members), fall short because they don’t have enough time to get the vital and necessary things done in order to stay afloat. A lot of business owners when they first start out tend to work odd and ‘around-the-family’ hours just to get work completed. This is all well and good and of course complementary that there is commitment and hard work involved – however is it at the detriment of your health, or your family, or your social life?
This is where a freelancer worker or a Virtual Assistant (VA) comes in. A freelance worker is there to suit your business and will work the hours that you ask of them – when they are needed – and nothing more. You won’t be stuck with a huge salary to pay at the end of every month and you are able to stay on top of your finances in regards to paying for what work you need doing.
Here are 4 benefits to hiring a Virtual Assistant or freelancer (rather than hiring an employee)
You’re hiring an expert
Hiring an expert in a given field rather than an employee that may or may not know how to perform a particular task (and who could take a long time to complete that particular task) is a much more cost-effective way of getting a job done. Hiring an expert will give you peace of mind that they will complete a task for you, in a timeframe you specify and to a high standard. This is reassurance that your tasks are completed well and effectively.
A freelancer will have a wealth of knowledge in their given field and will provide a pool of resource for you and your business. One off tasks or on-going projects – you can hire one freelancer that can cover the lot or a selection of workers to complete individual tasks. The decision is yours. This is the way that freelancers and virtual assistants work and they expect to be used for one-off tasks.
You’re saving time and money
Hiring a full time or part time employee takes time and effort. Advertising a position, recruitment, interviewing, awaiting a start date – followed by being required to provide holiday and sick pay plus other benefits for employees. Let’s be honest, not everyone has the time to go through all that and especially if you are just starting out in business. Whilst is may be nice to have someone full time with you to build rapport with, recruiting an employee is not always the most cost-efficient way to spend your budget.
Hiring a virtual assistant has many cost benefits and a freelancer that works from home provides a great cost-saving expense to start with! No office space required. No equipment required. Simply hire your assistant, request the work and receive the work. You will only pay for the work that they are performing on your behalf.
You’re receiving a variety of skillsets
When you hire an employee, you are limited to their individual skill set. This can be great if they have every skill that you require and can be on hand to cover everything you need. However, how much more sense would it make to hire virtual assistants who performed the individual tasks for you. A selection of people, all with different expertise and willing to work together to bring your business together. You will end up with a pool of resources, contacts and connections that you know you can rely on anytime you need a task completed. If you choose to work with a bigger VA company, they will have team of assistants who can manage your workload and although you would be getting a variety of people working on your projects, you’d have one point of contact and one avenue of communication, making the process even more streamlined.
These freelancers could also bring ideas to the table that you had not even thought of, with the passion of growing your business and seeing potential in avenues that you may not have even gone down. It’s a case of a second pair of eyes that are focused on your business success.
You’re also getting flexibility
Most virtual assistants or freelancers are used to working with a variety of clients, all at the same time. They are highly organised people and manage their workloads well. Therefore, you have the ability to call on them whenever you need a task completing. Not working the usual 9-5 but need something completing in an evening? A freelancer will be there for you.
Working with a freelancer will give you way more flexibility than you could imagine and if you’re used to sticking to a 9-5 regime, it’s a great thing to realise that there is assistance for you 24/7.
It works both ways too as often a freelancer has chosen this career to work around other commitments or family circumstances and therefore is looking for a more flexible approach to working. You may be working on a project during an evening and send the required work over to your VA when you wrap for the night. Depending on your VA, you could wake up in the morning to the completed project in your inbox!
Flexibility is key to working with freelancers and as long as you are open with them and keep good lines of communication going, they will do their utmost to provide a loyal, outstanding level of service to you and your business.
Hiring a virtual assistant or freelancer is a sensible move for many small business owners and entrepreneurs who simply don’t have the time, funds or resources of a larger organisation when it comes to employing more team members. Building relationships with VA’s and knowing you can rely on them to complete your tasks at hand is a reassuring thought and a way to be able to let go of the mundane and daily repetitive tasks and go out and enjoy the parts of the business that you love to do.
Why did you start your business? What is it that you want to achieve? Go back to the basics of these questions and get motivated again to push yourself in the direction of your first passion, knowing that you will succeed if you have a good backing and a solid, reliable team behind you.
If you’d like to discuss the opportunity of hiring a virtual assistant, our team would love work with you. We offer a range of services that you can rely on, so get in touch for an initial free consultation.
by Karen Petrauskas | Jan 9, 2018
There are certain times throughout the year when we are looking for a little motivation or inspiration to get our acts together and be able to move forward. Whether that be with our business or personal life – a little nudge can be a great encouragement.
So why are inspirational or motivational quotes so important? They lift your spirit, they give you food for thought and they encourage you to keep going, keep trying and to help you push forward towards your goals.
Everyone needs them at some point and often we don’t even realise! So with that in mind, we thought we’d put together some motivational quotes to help you if you’re going through one of those moments at present.
“Think about how you want other people to perceive you before you move forward in action” – Karen Petrauskas
“Start the week with a positive attitude and let the rest of the week flow with positivity” – Karen Petrauskas
“Often your first thoughts are the right ones – believe in yourself” – Karen Petrauskas
“Dream big and set your goals high – if you want it bad enough, you have it in you to succeed” – Karen Petrauskas
“You are who you are – you were fearfully and wonderfully made. So let your creativity flow” – Karen Petrauskas
“Be true to what you believe and don’t change your views to fit in with others – stand out from the crowd and be YOU” – Karen Petrauskas
“Do what comes naturally and follow the inner voice. First thoughts are often the best” – Karen Petrauskas
“Delegate the things you’re not best at and push forward in the things you love to do. Good business sense” – Karen Petrauskas
“Learn the art of delegation – so that you can experience more of life and thrive on what you enjoy to do” – Karen Petrauskas
“Stop and take time to notice the world around you. Learn to love life and appreciate all it has to offer” – Karen Petrauskas
We hope these will inspire you for the year ahead. If you’re looking for a helping hand in moving your business forward with online marketing this year – get in touch, we’d love to help!
Why not plan out your social media motivation quotes throughout the year with our FREE to download social media planner. Here you’ll find lots of awareness days and monthly hashtags to keep you inspired from January to December!
If you’re anything like us here at KJP Creative, you’ll love Pinterest and Instagram – and now it’s simple and easy to schedule all your favourite inspirational quotes into your social accounts with no fuss at all! You can start for FREE as well – Join Tailwind and start pinning TODAY 🙂
by Karen Petrauskas | Jan 3, 2018
With the new year just starting out and a new chance to make a difference – now is the perfect time to make some adjustments and make some fresh and exciting decisions for your business.
January is usually about new year’s resolutions and making a choice to do something differently. But how often does this end up falling flat after a short period of time? So, this year, why not decide on something that has been on your heart for a long time and you know that you will achieve?
What can you do this year that will make it your best year ever? What one thing will ensure that you achieve your goals and make your dreams come true that you haven’t tried before?
We’d like to inspire you to get out of bed and make this year YOUR SUCCESS year!
1) Expand your knowledge.
Do something new. Over the next month (use January as an ideal time) try something new – something that you’ve not done before. And then try to do something new every day. This could be something small like going for a walk, or reading an interesting article each day. Or perhaps it could be something like planning your week’s diary or setting yourself to-do lists. Small things that you can keep up every day for a month – and really commit to doing them every day for the whole month of January. You’ll be surprised at what this will accomplish. It will expand your knowledge in so many ways and open up your eyes to new ideas and fresh inspiration.
2) Push yourself.
You know what you can and can’t do, you know what is within your comfort zone and the things that you’ve stayed away from to stay ‘comfortable’. This year it’s time to step out of your comfort zone and try new things. Life is easy if it’s comfortable but how much more will you get out of life and the things that you want to achieve by pushing that little bit harder? Think of something that perhaps you’ve wanted to do for some time but it’s been just out of reach or not an easy thing to do. Why not try to accomplish this task and surprise yourself at what you can achieve. Once you’ve done one thing that you thought you couldn’t achieve it will be easier to do more. Keep this up throughout the year, use January as the starting point but don’t stop next month… Keep pushing on towards your goals and you will accomplish bigger and better things for both you and your business.
3) Believe in yourself.
Easier said than done, right? Believing in yourself and pushing yourself to go further, reaching for the goals that you’ve only dreamed of will build your confidence and allow you to do more – and achieve more. Believing that you can do something is the first step in actually achieving it. Self doubt and worry will only delay success which is easier to say than to actually put into practice but is worth the effort. Love what you do, love the dreams that you want to achieve and believe that what you set your mind to do – you will achieve!
4) Focus on your goals.
Know what you want and go for it. Daily chores and tasks have to be done but always set aside time to focus on your targets. Make lists, write them down, stick post it notes where you can see them every day and really allow yourself to focus on your goals. Seeing them written down whether that’s on your mobile device, in your diary or on the fridge – seeing the physical target words written down will allow your mind to keep them at the forefront of your thoughts. If you lose focus on your goals, your business will lose its competitive edge.
5) Commit to success.
Many businesses fail after a very short period of starting up. 70% of business fail within 10 years. A lot of these could have been prevented if the business owner committed more to making a success rather than accepting the way things went or pushing through on their goals. Commit to delivering real value to your customers. There are probably a large number of businesses providing the same service as you, so with this in mind, you need to commit to providing real value in order to compete and beat competition. And knowing your ideal audience is a good place to start. Commit to finding out more about your customers, your ideal target audience, your demographics, consumer’s needs… only then will you have a true idea of what is real value and then be able to provide that professional, outstanding service.
Looking ahead into the new year of 2018, spend some time working out what it is you really want to achieve this year and create a plan of how you’re going to achieve it. Plan, preparation and action is the best way to create success and be heading in the direction of your heart and your dreams.
We’d love to hear from you if you’ve got a clear vision on how 2018 is going to be successful for your business. Comment below. And if we can help or advise in any way, get in touch!
by Karen Petrauskas | Dec 29, 2017
Can you imagine life now without social media? For a trend that people thought would likely never take off or at least stick for only a short while… businesses and organisations have marvelled in its influence and have grown further than they ever thought possible by utilising the power of social media.
People spend so much time on their mobile devices now, whether that be a smart phone, tablet, iPad or laptop – digital marketing is here to stay and to stay on top of the marketing game, social media must be incorporated within a marketing strategy for a business to succeed.
So as we approach the end of the year and look forward to 2018, what should we look out for within online marketing to achieve success?
Video marketing
Video marketing is expanding rapidly and so many people are jumping on board with this trend that it is definitely something not to be missed.
With Facebook Live, Instagram Stories and Snapchat – to name the most popular – incorporate these into your marketing plans and you will see an noticeable increase in your social media engagement. People love watching live video. In fact, 80% of users said they’d rather watch a live video than read a blog post – and according to Facebook, a live video will get 3x more views.
Why live video?
- Can show behind the scenes footage
- Can introduce team members
- Promotion of events
- Portrays a real-life brand
Everyone loves to know the truth behind what they are buying into, and using video in your marketing will provide trust and uniqueness as well as a better customer experience.
Content Marketing
With so much competition and everything being so widely available via digital channels, it is more important than ever to be authentic and original. Content marketing is vital to build brand awareness and demonstrate industry knowledge.
Customers would much rather read about an organisation and learn about them from an article, than be confronted with an advert. Adverts have their place, of course, but content marketing is in a league of it’s own.
Content marketing can be shown in different forms; blog posts, articles, videos and infographics but all contain meaningful information that increases awareness of a brand or product.
Anyone that runs a business will also know that content marketing can become time consuming which is why it often gets left behind but don’t stress – a Virtual Assistant can provide a great service to write content for your business so you don’t need to let this part of your marketing plan fall down.
Marketing Strategies
Planning your marketing is just as important as implementing your marketing. It can be easy to jump on every trend and social media platform that you come across, but it is essential to evaluate and work out what is best for your business to provide the best success rates.
Writing a marketing strategy will all enable you to look at your brand competition, see what you already have in place and what works / and doesn’t work which then leads to creating a plan to implement and move your business forward – being focused on your business goals and objectives. If this is something that you’re not sure on, look to a professional marketing agency that can provide this service for you (KJP Creative can help!). If you are serious about growing your business, the initial cost of having a strategy created for you will easily be recouped in the results of successful marketing.
Images
Just like live video, imagery is extremely effective in your online marketing. People love to see images which is why networks like Instagram and Pinterest are a huge success. Images allow a brand to be creative and show uniqueness. Images can be portrayed in many ways to show different aspects of a business and can also be accompanied be other mediums to tell stories and create brand awareness.
And you don’t have to be a graphic designer to produce great images. Using free graphic platforms like Canva, you can produce industry standard creatives.
There are many trends that will be become essential in online marketing success in 2018 but above all else, customer experience is the most important thing to remember in order to satisfy the customer as well as the growing competition.
Ensuring that your customers have a great experience from start to finish will be the ingredient that keeps a client coming back for more. Being involved and interested in what a customer is looking for and how their journey progresses throughout their time with you is important in business growth and product development.
Make the most of your digital marketing throughout 2018 and look to implement strategies that best fit your business objectives.
If you’d like help in moving forward with your online marketing, get in touch, we’d love to help!
by Karen Petrauskas | Dec 19, 2017
Everyone wants to accomplish as much as they can in the quickest time frame but often this comes at a price. Being quicker at something is not always the most effective way and can often lead to a negative result at the expense of your business.
Being productive at work, whether you are an employee in an office, a freelancer working from home or an entrepreneur starting a small business, it is an important aspect to learn if you want to be successful.
If this is you and you’re looking for tips on being more productive in the work place, then take a look at our short list of things to think about to achieve productivity.
Learn to say no
If you’re a small business owner or freelancer just starting out, you may feel that you have to accept and tackle every job that comes your way. But you don’t have to! How important is the quality of your work? This should be at the top of the list in terms of business objectives and if this is compromised at any time, it will have a knock-on effect in your business.
Learning to delegate or working with others could be a solution if you are finding that there is just not enough time in the day. Delegation is not a way of giving up or defeat – it’s a way of managing a growing situation that you know could be handled better.
Start with tasks that you know are time-consuming or you simply don’t have time for but you know they have to be done. Hire a Virtual Assistant for those small takes, just a few hours a week and be assured that they will be completed whilst you focus on other parts of your business.
Say no to other jobs that you simply cannot fit into the puzzle. It is better to say no than to do a bad job – word of mouth and reputation is extremely important for any business, especially a small business that is trying to grow. If it’s a job that you know fits with your business but you personally don’t have time – is it something that you could hire a freelancer / virtual assistant for?
It’s about working out a way of managing your time and workload and staying focused on what you enjoy in your business.
Prioritise
We all have a hundred and one things on our to-do list and as the above point, there are times that we have to say no. However there are also times that we need to prioritise what we are doing and put order into our days.
Prioritise the work that comes in, work through tasks in order of importance. Often a good tip is to complete the tasks that take the most amount of time first, knowing that once that is done, you’ll have more time to focus on the rest.
Use lists to help you with your workload. Wunderlist is a great app that you can use on the go and will sync with your laptop so wherever you are you’ll be able to see what needs doing and what you have completed. It may seem tedious to start with but when you get the hang of working with lists and prioritising the tasks on them, your working week will become more manageable and you’ll be able to see what comes next each step of the way.
Manage your time
It’s extremely easy to get side-tracked and start one thing and then start something else halfway through. Managing your time properly will enable you to know how much time you spend on each task (especially useful for freelancers or virtual assistants who charge per hour) and help you to work to deadlines more efficiently.
Using your lists, work through your workload in order. If you’re charging per hour, be sure to use a stop clock or online app that helps you track exactly what time you are using.
Using an online calendar is also a great way of ensuring that you stick to your timeframes and with reminders being set, you can be sure to get each task done as and when they are required. Don’t forget to schedule phone calls or meetings into your calendar as this is time away from your day that you have planned to complete other work. Along with this comes scheduling time to check emails and messages. This should all form part of your daily lists and be entered into your calendar. It may sound silly but actually managing your time effectively means you need to know where all your time is being spent – and this is a great way of keeping track.
If you work from home and have family commitments, have your desk ready for working when you come home from the school run and then you know that you’re ready for business from that point on. Discipline is very important when working away from an office and getting in to a routine takes practice but is definitely worth it.
Stop multitasking
May sound an odd thing to put on this list as multitasking is often taught to be a good thing. But multitasking can often lead to mistakes and work not being produced to a high standard.
Use your lists and your priorities to organise your work load and work on one thing at a time to produce great results that clients will be sure to recommend you for.
Less is more when it comes to your productivity in the workplace – get tasks done more effectively and efficiently by not multitasking at work.
Take breaks
Yes, you want to get more done and you have a ton of things on your to-do list … but being productive is about time management managing your workload well. If you schedule breaks into your working day, it will enable your mind to re-focus and re-charge.
Grab a snack or a coffee, perhaps go for a walk and get some fresh air and definitely step away from your screen! Allow your body to have a break, ready to come back refreshed and ready to start again. This will make you more effective in your work.
There are many more things we could add to this list but remember that your business is your livelihood, it is a part of you and in order for your business to grow and to be successful, you need to a good reputation and your recommendations matter. Staying on top of your workload and being more productive at work will bring great benefits to you, health wise and also to your business.
If you’d looking for a helping hand in achieving any of the above or are looking for a Virtual Assistant to be your pair of helping hands, then get in touch!
