1. Mail merge 100 letters
2. Data entry of 75-100 clients in Excel
3. Draft correspondence for client or project
4. Edit and proof a 10-page report
5. Create a presentation with MS PowerPoint
6. Research hotels, meeting facilities, transportation, and event venues
7. Article creation and PR Releases
8. Manage and update calendar
9. Research for a special project
10. Create PDFs’ of numerous documents
11. Research on price and comparison analysis of new technology, software, and techniques.
12. Complete purchase orders for office or home delivery
13. Compile data into a spreadsheet
14. Create an email template
15. Confirm appointments, reservations, etc
16. Label, stuff, stamp and send a bulk mailing
17. Prepare dockets & personalized packets for a meetings, seminar or presentation
18. Prepare a budget, estimate, or invoice
19. Book travel, lodge, and transportation arrangements
20. Schedule teleconference or web conference along with email invitations/ reminders.

Succeeding in business in not just about making money. As a business owner your  goal should be to get the most from your team,  resources, and finances. 

Do what you do best, and outsource the rest.

1.) Integrate creative elements of your organization into the mainstream and out of ‘silos’.

2.) Encourage knowledge exchange, removing communication barriers to improve your ability to handle the unknown.

3.) Practice and encourage experimentation across all levels of the business.

4.) Spark the imagination of others.

5.) Work with skilled professionals like consultants, virtual assistants, accountants etc., to help with tasks and projects that are taking too much of your time and do not require your personal influence and involvement.

6.) Dare to relinquish some control in favour of building more mutual trust throughout the organization. Don’t present your logic – discover logic with your team.

7.) Act despite uncertainty, take calculated risks rather than hesitate.

8.) Challenge every team to prioritise creativity and support.

9.) Reward employees who step outside their comfort zones to innovate.

10.) Strengthen your ability to persuade and influence. Lead by working together towards a shared vision.

11.)Use a wide range of communication approaches. Accept that for customers and employees alike, blogs, internet presence, instant messaging, and social networking are more credible and often faster than traditional top-down communication.

Source: IBM Global CEO Study, 2010

As I shook my head and grinned, I knew today’s project would be tedious. I immediately ran next door to Starbucks for an upside down caramel macchiato with an extra shot of espresso. Sip, sip… and now it’s time to get the job done.

Before I began, I gave the project some thought. There are several ways to manage contacts, numerous applications and software available to help manage contacts. However, I needed to apply the most practical solution for my client’s line of business.

To give you some insight on this particular client,  Jennifer owns a popular cleaning franchise business. She has been running the business for almost 4 years and recently have gained more clientele.  Her goal is to keep her business in operation by family members while she expands. Her 2 sons work with her and they handle all of the contracts and do all of the cleaning.

Jennifer networks and meets potential clients on a regular basis. They exchange business cards, but she rarely follows up. She tells me that most of the clients that she has gained reached out to her. However, she feels that if she was able to manage those contacts better, she would be more successful at building relationships that lead to much more clientele, referrals and the ability expand where she no longer has to do the cleaning, and can just focus on growing the business. Her goal is to hire her nieces and nephews who are out of high school and college so that they don’t have to worry about finding work in this economy.

Jennifer swears by Google and currently uses it to manage her personal contacts. She also uses Google contacts on her iPhone. I’ve decided to continue to use Google Contacts to manage her contacts. This way all of her information is synced right to her phone and she can have easier access to reach any contacts at anytime.  Once all 388 business cards have been uploaded to her contacts, I then begin to organize them for her so that they’re useful. To maintain her database from this point, Jennifer will send cards she’s collected during events, show, and from networking to me once every two weeks.

I’ve also introduced Jennifer to the CardScan by DYMO which will help her keep contacts managed. With this tool she’ll be able to scan business cards into her outlook which is synced to her Google Contacts.

“Payroll is generally a company’s largest expense for a business owner. While hiring interns might seem like a straightforward way to reduce it, Blitstein urges caution: “Obviously there’s a benefit in that you’re trading your time and knowledge for them to work for free, but the downside is they’re working for free. How much are they going to care about your business?”

Another option is to use a virtual assistant. These assistants work from their homes on a case-by-case basis. So if you attend a trade show and collect hundreds of business cards, you can hire one to input the contact information into your system. Fees are negotiated between you and the assistant, but it’s much cheaper than hiring someone full time.” - Businessweek August 2009

I suggest to my clients that they choose 3 things that they DO NOT have control handling on a day -to-day basis. Yes, they all choose three things that does not get their direct attention and allow our Virtual Operations Managers to handle. Now some of you are probably thinking “Just 3?” well this is where we start. I find that 3 is the lucky number that gets people (who are used to doing it all) to slowly build the habit of letting go and delegating. Once they see how easy it was then we take on more task until we’ve reached our goals.

What will you give up? Here are some things that my current clients have asked to be written off:

• “I never want to post jobs that I am hiring for.”
• “I only want to interviewing candidates after they have been pre-screened.”
• “I really don’t want to take calls– unless it’s regarding X, Y, or Z.”
• “I hate ordering supplies.”
• “I wish I had someone to create my estimates.”
• “It would help if someone could managing may contacts and sync my contacts to all of my phones.”
• “I’d prefer if you could handle all incoming communications.”
• “Can you write hand written letters or notes (thank you, happy birthday, Christmas)? If so I don’t want to.”
• “I don’t like sitting in our sales meetings, I just need the reports delivered.”
• “I don’t have the time to research & collect data for my new project, I need someone to do that for me.”
• “I’m behind in managing my personal and professional social media pages.”
• “I need you to downloading leads from my provider’s database and send them to me once a week.”
• “Please upload photos to perspective online profiles.”
• “I’ll need you to handle arrangements for personal and business travel.”
• “Scheduling and Reminders. I hate the fact that I never know what’s next– I just feel like I am going through the motions.”
• “I have hundreds of papers on a box that need folders and filing, let’s start there.”

Theses are some of the few tasks my clients have detached themselves from. You can too! Just try it for 3 months and you’ll see that by delegating you can have more time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Think of it as an investment.  And we all know that with every investment is an anticipation for return on investment (ROI). The ROI should be both in time and money. By working with someone who takes on your tasks, you’ll have much more time to spend on more profiting tasks that only you can handle.

We all showed some thanks over Thanksgiving weekend and Officebeam hopes that everyone enjoyed the Holiday with much love, plenty of food, and the warm embrace of family and friends.

As we begin the Holiday Season 2011 all of us want to add the finishing touches to our ‘Best Year Ever’. Remember: don’t burn yourself out, take it one day at a time.

Part of our goal is to be here when people need help the most.  So we’ve decided to extend our special deal until the end of the year! Please take advantage of this offer– it’s our way of showing how thankful we are to be in business and work with amazing individuals, like you, on a day to day basis.

Enjoy the holiday season and let’s work together to make
this (and every year) ‘The Best Year Ever’!

–Aqeelah A. Rahim | President

I’ve discovered that sometimes clients get nasty when they’ve never seen you. I can’t tell you how many rude emails I’ve gotten IN ALL CAPS, and unfriendly demands come through via text, email, and even over the phone. It’s amazing that I never have that problem when I’ve seen my clients face-to-face via Skype or otherwise.

I though about it and it hit me, I guess it’s sort of the same thing that bill collectors or customer service representatives experience when they are on the phone at a call center. How many of us have gotten ugly with someone we’ve never met and know that we don’t have to face?

I think its very important to connect visually with clients. When doing business, remember we are still human (even though highly dependent on technology) and we still have a natural tendency to want to use our eyes to see how things are. Our visual perception is there for us to interpret information, don’t forget to show people who you are, especially if it will make them more comfortable with doing business with you.

Of course Officebeam is on Skype. You can find the owner Aqeelah on Skype doing EST business hours, just search for “Aqeelah.Taheerah” and someone from Officebeam will be available to chat with you live.

We can’t wait to meet you!

I say we need more innovators, more great thinkers, and more heros of our time. I say this for myself, my children, my family, friends and competitors. Don’t just think “outside of the box”, think beyond it!

RIP Steve Jobs.

Regards,

Aqeelah A. Rahim | Chief Virtual Officer

On Site Social Media

“Do you think the role of Administrative Assistant has diminished?

I sometimes think that administrative support personnel are considered an unnecessary expense with so many management types are doing a lot of their own “paperwork”. For example, I worked at a place once where I had so much work my computer would crash. But as these account mgrs hired Jr. Assistants, I ended up with less work and more time to play.
What do you all think? Do admins need a specialty to get ahead/better pay/more respect?”

Here is what Officebeam had to say…

“Having a specialty will always give you leverage. In the last job I worked, I provided administrative support of a team of Project Managers. Most of them wanted to do their own paperwork. However there was a new policy implementable for mandatory document scanning . The project managers found this job tedious and difficult due to the document control system. The document control system basically gave a specific folder in the new system for every kind of document. Well, the project managers used over 100 kinds of document types. I made it my business to be the “go-to” person regarding document scanning. I even sat on the Document Scanning Solutions Committee.”

To see the complete conversation on LinkedIn, please follow by clicking here

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