Planning For The Unplanned In Your Virtual Assistant Business

For those that follow my blog, you probably noticed that I have been "Missing in Action" for over a week! Well my life went into a temporary "tail spin" early last week as I needed to fly back to Canada to attend to an urgent matter. Needless to say, all my priorities and important business activities were shelved for the week!

Have you ever had one of those weeks, where you had a full plate of work priorities, tasks and deadlines only to have them to swept by the wayside as a result of an emergency or sickness?

Well, after this week, I realized that I have never really given a lot of thought to "Planning for the Unplanned". As a Solopreneur, I have built my business around "me" and so when emergencies happen, work tends to not get done as I have not put in place the proper contingency plans!

So, the million dollar question.... How can you truly plan for those "unforseen events" in your life so that your virtual business stays on track?

Well, after processing this one a bit.... here are a few principles or ideas to consider when "Planning for the Unplanned":

1. Find a "Delegation Buddy".

For those of you that own a Virtual Assistance practice, it is good to align yourself with another virtual business owner who offers some similar services as yourself so that you can "scratch each other's back" when those unplanned events surface in your lives. Yes, you might lose some earnings during that time, but the important thing is to continue to maintain a high quality service for your clients.

A "Delegation Buddy" might also come in handy during those fast-growth times in your business when your client base and projects are growing like crazy.

2. Define your Weekly Priorities.

A few weeks ago, we hosted an event with Freshbooks CEO, Mike McDerment titled, "Virtual Nirvana - How To Remain Inspired and Productive When You Work Alone". In this webinar, Mike talked about the principle of laying out your weekly priorities on Sunday Evening before the week gets going. You want to clearly define what work activities are most important and MUST get done this week. I usually like to break my work tasks up into "Must Do" and "May Do" lists. The May Do would be great to get to, but not imperative that they get done that week.

Let's say an emergency hits you on Monday (as it did with me last week)...By knowing those priorities that must get done, this helps you to know the minimum that you need to accomplish or possibly delegate to someone else. Of course, there will be times where this is not possible and you need to be honest with your clients that that the project deadlines just have to be pushed back temporarily.

3. Prep your "Emergency Email".

Now, this might come across a bit "anal-retentive", but you might want to go as far as prepping a "generic email" that basically says an "Urgent Matter" has arisen and that you will be out of the office for a specified period of time. Believe me, when a crisis or urgent matter hits you, it is hard to think and it is nice to have an email template in place to you can just copy and paste to your clients. Something to think about...

At the end of the day, emergencies and urgent matters will happen in your life, so you want to be prepared and ask yourself: "How would I keep my business moving in the right direction if I suddenly needed to step away for a week or so?"

These are things we just don't think about until unforseen circumstances surface in our life.

Food for thought....

Google Tools - A Productivity Gem

I know many of you probably have a Gmail account and may use Google Alerts and track your RSS feeds with Google Reader. But are you leveraging the wide array of Google tools to maximize your productivity? I am currently having a "love affair" with Google tools as I find that the more I incorporate the web apps into my daily work activities, the more organized and productive I am.  Here is why I am loving Google these days... I am tracking my work emails with a Gmail account and have actually added my other work emails via the POP tool into Google Mail to consolidate all my mail activity into one location. I am then using Google Calendar to track my schedule, meetings, and urgent time-sensitive tasks. Google Calendar has a cool feature that delivers email alerts at 5am in the morning with your scheduled appointments and activities. From a multi-tasking standpoint, I like that I can be writing an email and then quickly jump into Google Calendar to update my schedule. I then track all my spreadsheets and work documents with Google Docs, which again is nicely integrated into the Gmail Interface. I have all the VAs and contractors I work with use Google docs which enables us to quickly share and collaborate on documents. Not to mention, you can track all RSS feeds with Google Reader, which makes it easy to review existing feeds and add new ones.. Now, I know there are many other great productivity tools and web apps on the market, but my personal opinion is that it is hard to match up against the integrated, user-friendly and easy to access elements of Google Tools. In short, Google Tools ROCKS!

One Hour to Becoming a Highly Productive Virtual Assistant

For those of you who follow this blog, you might recall a post I wrote a few days back where I asked if anyone knew where I could buy a "Productivity Pill" that would instantly transform me into a highly organized, productive, and efficient virtual guru! Well, although I am still in pursuit of the elusive productivity pill, I did come across the next best thing.....Zen Habits, "Top 20 Productivity lists to Rock Your Tasks". It will take you a good 45 minutes to an hour to process this Top 20 list of productivity gems! As you are skimming this post, you might be saying, "But Craig, where can I find a hour in my day to read all these posts - I am too bogged down with my priority tasks." My Point Exactly! So, here is what I recommend you do.....If you have a laptop, vacate your VIrtual Office (the usual place you work), head down to the closest "swanky" WIFI Cafe, order your favorite beverage (Mine would be a Non-Fat Hazelnut Latte), find a cozy corner with a comfy couch, take a moment to let all the worries and stresses of the day drain out of you and then take a hour to read these 20 posts... Doesn't that sound like sheer bliss? Enjoy your "Productivity Boot Camp"!

Where Can I Buy A Personal Productivity Pill?

Does anyone by chance happen to know where I can buy a Personal Productivity Pill which completely eliminates all disorganization, scattered thinking, poor use of work time and overloaded schedules and replaces it with focussed planning, heightened efficiency and exponentially increasing daily productivity? I would flll that prescription in a heartbeat. Now, don't get me wrong, my personal productivity is probably better than the average person and yet I am still bogged with jumbled priorities, overloaded schedules and simply too much work to do! Can you relate? This week I reflected on why I left the regular 9-5 hustle and bustle for the Virtual World - Freedom, Flexibility and more time with my wife and kids! Yet, I looked at my schedule over the last month and realized that I have been chained to my laptop 24/7 with the growth of VAClassroom and many other things on the go. My work/life balance was totally out of sync. Fortunately, I have the distinct privilege of being married to a wonderful woman that can "set me on the right track" when I get off course:) But seriously, as I reviewed my projects and schedule, I quickly realized that I had forgot to implement any of the productivity and organization principles I teach in my courses. I have always prided myself on being a well-organized, productive entrepreneur, but with the fast growth of our business and many competiting priorities, I got "out of sync" with how to maximize my work productivity, while preserving my home life! Can you at all relate? Anyways, I dusted off my cover of Getting Things Done - The Art of Stress Free Productivity by Management Consultant, David Allen, which previously provided me with some invaluable tools for maximizing my productivity. Of course, all those tools remained in the toolbox last month and were not implemented whatsoever - I was too busy to implement them:)! If you can totally relate to what I have experienced, then I would highly recommend jumping on Amazon and ordering "Getting Things Done". I would also recommend the blog, ZenHabits as they provide some awesome tips for maximizing productivity and preserving work/life balance. Or if you hear of a Personal Productivity Pill hitting the market, please let me know - I will be first in line!