Wearing Too Many Hats?

Wearing Too Many Hats?

by | Oct 15, 2022 | Blog, Delegating

It’s inevitable. As a small business owner, you will wear many, many hats.

Customer Support Manager
Marketing manager.
Bookkeeper.
Content developer.
Coach.
Technical support staff.

But while this type of task juggling is to be expected, you have to be aware that not all of your hats are created equal. Marketing outweighs bookkeeping, for example, because without marketing, there will be no cash to manage. And Customer Support.. well without Customers, you have no business!

Not only that, but you have to consider how much time you’re spending in each area as well. If you spend all day tweaking the design on your website and put off sending an email to your list, what have you gained?

Sure, you might have a prettier website, but you lost an opportunity to drive traffic to your offer.

To effectively grow your business (and keep your sanity) it is important you learn how to work smarter and how to best use your time, by following these 2 very important tips.

 

Start by Prioritizing Your Daily Tasks

We all have different skills and sweet spots when it comes to the tasks we want and need to do. You might love customer support and hate bookkeeping, while someone else enjoys the numbers game and doesn’t like dealing with the help desk. But regardless of your personal preferences, one thing is certain: money-making tasks should be at the very top of your to-do list.

That might mean product creation, email marketing, client outreach, webinar development, or something entirely different. Identify those money-making tasks in your business and be sure to prioritize them every single day.

Know the Difference Between Important and Urgent

In his classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey recommends prioritizing tasks based on a time-management grid. Every task is assigned to a quadrant of the grid, based on whether it is urgent, important, both, or neither.

Once you know where a task falls on the grid, you’ll immediately know what you should be working on. For example, marketing and planning are important but not urgent. A ringing phone is urgent, but not important. The sales page for your new program, which is launching tomorrow, is both urgent AND important.

So before you prioritize your daily to-do list, think about where each of your tasks falls in the quadrant, and schedule them accordingly.

Will you always be working on the best task for right now? Probably not. Nor will you always use your time as wisely as you could. But by making a conscious effort to organize and prioritize your days and delegate, you’ll find it’s a lot less stressful and overwhelming to manage your small business.

We also recommend delegating to a team that has a variety of support services, like Smart To Finish. We have helped our clients grow their businesses, for almost 2 decades now, just by delegating tasks such as customer care, email marketing management and much more!

Happy Delegation Day!

by | Aug 28, 2020 | Blog, Delegating

“Are You Tired, Overwhelmed And Overworked?
Do you want to have support in your business but don’t even know where to start?

 

Are you staying up late at night trying to figure out how to setup an email campaign or broadcast?  

We dare you to do something about it. 

Discover why delegating is your secret weapon to have more time, energy and happiness. (Oh and of course business growth!)

Introducing… the Delegation Dare.

A 10-Day Virtual Intensive to train you how to change your mindset and learn the  key strategies to make delegating work for you.

Here is a recap of what you will receive when you join…

🤗 A private Facebook group where you will access daily trainings and live Q&A calls.

📃 Templates, checklists and action guides to use as tools in your learning.

💻 Includes 10 hours of virtual assistant support hours!

📩 Goodies in the mail to help you with your delegating practices! 

🛎 Includes a 30-minute bonus session to map out your delegating strategy!

Here’s what some of our clients have to say about delegating to us:

“The easiest techie girl I’ve ever worked with and she knows how to make things pleasing to the eye. Plus, I love knowing if I’m in a pinch or my website has a glitch, she will find a solution fast! Amber ROCKS!”  – Jeanna Gabellini

“Where most entrepreneurs get stuck in everything ’tech’ it takes to market their brand and sell online. There’s no need to do it yourself, or even figure out what you need. Smart to Finish is a great resource for busy entrepreneurs who need virtual assistance and tech support.”  – Ali Brown

How to Get Massive Support in Your Biz

by | Apr 5, 2018 | Delegating

Guest Post by Jeanna Gabellini

I’ve been called a control freak, multitasker, goofball, magnificent manifester, and just plain ole freak. I can relate to all of them. However, the one that used to really irritate me is when someone said I wasn’t a good delegator.

Why? Because I see how often it doesn’t even occur to me to ask for help. I’m used to figuring stuff out with my Inner Business Expert (aka Divine Guidance) or whoever is coaching me. After years of being single and a solo-entrepreneur I created a bad habit of handling everything myself.

I cured myself once I had kids. My time and energy was poured into feeding, bathing, cuddling, playing, and cleaning up after my boys. I realized quickly that the only way to stay sane was to expand my circle of support.

There is no way to generate a huge increase in revenue, and sustain it, if you’re not tapping into the expertise and support of other people. Even if you have a GREAT team and you think you ask for help often, see how much more support you could receive!

Ask yourself:

  • Who could help me do this better, easier, and faster?
  • Who could help put a unique spin on my idea?
  • Who could challenge my beliefs/story on this topic?
  • Who could introduce me to more ideal clients?
  • Who could help me get the word out about my products, programs, and services?
  • Who does social media, marketing, websites, or systems really well?
  • Who could assist me in the office or house with the stuff I can’t get to?
  • Who is a great leader?
  • Who is awesome at brainstorming?
  • Who would support me in getting WAY outside of my box?
  • Who makes me feel good?

Challenge yourself to come up with at least 5 people for each question.

Next, ask yourself, “If I had full permission and knew I’d be seen in a positive light, what would I ask for specifically?”

Check in and see if you’re playing it safe. You want to ask for help so that you can dramatically increase the quality of your life and the amount of abundance you experience.

Imagine that being selfish was really about self-love or being self-full (which it is).

Now it’s time to ask! What’s the best way to ask, especially if you’re not in a position to pay for help?

Simple. From your heart. You don’t have to promise to do something in return. If you know you can be of service to them and you feel inspired to offer that service, by all means do it. However, it’s not critical in this process.

When you have an idea, you’ll always have access to the resources, people, and money to actualize it. But you have to take the first step.

Asking for help is the easiest way to get from where you are to somewhere even better.

And if you get stuck on who and how to ask… ask your Inner Guidance for help. 😉

Jeanna Gabellini is a Master Business Coach who makes it effortless and exciting for conscious entrepreneurs to attract all the clients they want without doing more, working more, or marketing more. Grab her FREE audio on dialing in your biz here: http://masterpeacecoaching.com/freecd

Top 6 Tasks You Can Delegate to Your Virtual Assistant

Top 6 Tasks You Can Delegate to Your Virtual Assistant

by | Aug 22, 2017 | Delegating

We get it. You built your company from the ground up, and you have been wearing many hats to make your business a success. You’ve been doing your own marketing, bookkeeping, design, and the like, and it’s starting to become impossible to help your business grow. It’s hard to turn over control of your daily business tasks to anyone else. But when you learn how to let go of the reins and find tasks you can delegate to a virtual assistant, you will find that you can get back to what you love doing: running your company.

If you’ve never hired a virtual assistant before, you might not know what sorts of tasks they are capable of doing. Virtual assistants are more diverse in their skills than ever before. With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of the top 6 business tasks you can assign to a virtual assistant to get you started. We’ve divided them up into different categories: administrative tasks, marketing, design, website setup and support, research, and writing/editing:  

Online Business Support

  • Invoicing and bookkeeping
  • Calendar management
  • Travel arrangements
  • Managing emails and phone calls
  • Project tracking (Teamwork, Asana, etc.)

Marketing

  • Social media scheduling, posting, and managing ad campaigns for Facebook, Twitter, etc.
  • Email marketing campaigns
  • Customer relationship management (Infusionsoft)
  • Sales funnel creation and management (Clickfunnels, Leadpages, etc.)
  • Client management

Design

  • Web page design
  • Ad design
  • Banner design
  • Logo design
  • Infographics
  • Business plans
  • Ebook cover and layout design
  • PowerPoint design

Website Setup and Support

Research

  • SEO
  • Competitor analysis
  • Project-related searches
  • Report data

Writing and Editing

  • Blog posts
  • Reports
  • Ebooks
  • Proofreading

And this is just a sample of what a virtual assistant (or better yet, a team of virtual assistants) can do for you. It’s up to you to decide which business tasks you can delegate to a virtual assistant (or virtual assistant team like we have here at Smart to Finish). But once you start delegating tasks, we promise you won’t ever look back!