Writing an ebook
Lynette Green

This week – Writing an ebook

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This week instead of writing the usual blog about some work we have been doing directly for a client, I thought I would write about something else that we have been working on in Virtual Head Office, which has been quite a labour of love for me.  I’ve just finished writing my first eBook which is due to go live on Amazon on Monday 23rd November.  It’s not the novel I’ve always had ambitions of writing one day, but something much more closely related to Virtual Head Office, and close to my heart.  The book is about networking events, how to prepare for them, how to get the most from them when you’re there and how to follow up afterwards.

Ever since we started our Office Drinks networking events back in 2010 I’ve answered all kinds of questions and imparted various pieces of advice to new networkers, many of them slightly nervous about attending networking events.  These questions and tips I’ve put in to a book for anyone to download on Amazon.  My main motivation for writing the ebook is to make people aware that networking is actually not that difficult if you break it down in to different steps, and as much as I want to show people how to do it, I also want to give people the confidence to go out there and actually do it.

Writing an ebook has been a massive learning curve for me, but a hugely enjoyable experience, and definitely something I plan to do again.  (In fact there is another book already in the offing as we speak…)

This week, I have been in the final stages of getting everything formatted and prepared, ready to go live on Monday.  I’m happy and excited as well as nervous and apprehensive of what sort of reaction I will get when the book is actually launched as no doubt there will be rough with the smooth along the way.

Either way, I know that on Monday an ambition that I have had since I was a little girl is about to be fulfilled and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Pay As You Go Telephone Answering
Lynette Green

This Week – Pay As You Go Telephone Answering For A Start Up

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We’ve fairly recently started working with a new business, who are using our pay as you go telephone answering service.  The company are brand new having just started trading at the beginning of the month.  The three owners of the business are all employed full time currently and are looking to build up the new company to a certain level of turnover before they actually go full time in the business.

Initially this business team are going to work during the evenings and weekends, perhaps taking the occasional day off from their day jobs as they want to retain the income that they currently have.

They wanted to have the appearance to the outside world of being open for business throughout the working week and wanted to look at the most cost effective option.  Using pay as you go telephone answering they will only pay for the calls they use, so for them as a start up it allows quite a lot of flexibility.  The majority of start up businesses that we work with don’t have huge volumes of calls in the first instance, they tend to build up gradually over time.  Working on a pay as you go basis means that they don’t pay for large bundles of calls that they don’t yet need.

Their calls are answered by our team here, who are handling the callers enquiries, taking messages which are then sent on via email and they call back at their convenience, this allows then to carry on without interruption to their day jobs, as they can just check their messages when they are on breaks.  So far we’ve only answered a couple of calls for them, but it’s nice to be able to share in the excitement of our client when they get their first business enquiries come through.

Pay As You Go Telephone Answering

Virtual Business Address For Start Up Construction Company
Lynette Green

This Week – A Virtual Business Address For A Start Up Construction Business

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Starting a business is an exciting time for anyone, and something that we get a lot of pleasure from is working with those start up businesses and being able to share the excitement with them.  This week we started working with a new client who is in the process of starting his business and he wanted a virtual business address to give his business a local presence without giving out his home address.

The business owner has set up a construction business.  He’s worked in the family business for several years and has just decided to go it alone.  He wants to be seen very much as a local business and will use the virtual business address that we have, as well as the local telephone number we have provided him with as part of his marketing to show that he’s a local business and to help give him credibility.

He approached us right at the start of his start up process as he wanted to use the virtual mailing address as his registered address with Companies House when he set up the business, so he came in with his ID and started the virtual business address before then approaching Companies House to set up his business, enabling him to use this address from the outset.

Since the beginning of the week we have received mail from him which has included his certificate of incorporation as well as letters from suppliers from whom he is setting up trade accounts, as again, an established office address helps to give a professional impression.

As we always do with our business address clients, we have been letting him know as soon as mail has been arriving for him and he has been calling in to collect it.

It’s been great to see his enthusiasm every time he comes in and to hear about the work he is already picking up locally.  Seeing him pull up outside in his branded up van with his local mailing address and telephone number on and how proud he was when he got out of it brought a smile to my face as well.

 

Virtual Business Address

Time Management Skills
Lynette Green

Time Management Skills

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Time Management Skills For Business Owners

When you’re running a business there’s one thing that you never have enough of – time.  Improving your time management skills will have a significant impact on your productivity, your work life balance and the performance of your business.

Successful people have effective time management strategies to help them achieve their goals.  Here is a list of 10 time management techniques that will help you to get the most from your day.

  1. Take time to plan every day. Half an hour sitting planning your day is time well spent.  Have a clear idea of what you want to achieve not just by the end of each day, but also an objective for each call you make.  This will help you to stay on track and to focus and motivate you throughout the day.
  2. When you plan your day make sure you batch similar tasks together. For example, check your emails and respond to them at certain times throughout the day and deal with them all at once.  Don’t respond to emails and calls when they come in.  Plan your day to deal with them all together.  You will rattle through tasks a lot quicker as you are in the mindset for fulfilling that particular task and won’t need to flit between activities.
  3. Have a default diary. Every week you should have a diary of dealing with certain tasks at particular times.  This can always be referred to when planning out your day and ensures that no tasks throughout the week or month get missed.  If planned correctly this also means that if tasks are in your diary you can forget about them until they come up in your diary freeing up your mind to concentrate on the matter in hand.
  4. Use the Pomodoro Technique. If you’re not familiar with it, the Pomodoro technique is a technique whereby you set a timer for a certain period of time, say 25 minutes and in that amount of time you do nothing but concentrate on the task in hand and do not accept any interruptions.  At the end of the allotted time you can have a short break for say 5 minutes where you could grab a drink, a healthy snack or maybe check your social media, and then get back in to the next batch of time.  There are a number of free online timers that you can use to help with this.
  5. Always tackle the most important task of the day first. There is a finite amount of decisions anyone can make in one day, so as the day wears on it becomes increasingly more tiring and therefore harder to make decisions.  Fulfilling your most important tasks of the day first will not only sure you are performing at your best when you carry out those tasks, but also that when you have completed the most important task of the day this will boost you confidence for the rest of the day.
  6. Don’t multitask. Multitasking simply means that you are not giving your full attention to any one task.  In reality people who multi task don’t perform either task as well and take longer to do it.  Focus on one task and see it through to completion before moving on to the next task.
  7. Always work to goals. Have clear goals for where you are going, both in the long and short term, which will be broken down to specific goals for each individual day.  There should not be anything on your list at all which is not in some way goal related.
  8. Reduce meetings. Make sure that you are not participating in any meetings that are unnecessary as they are extremely time consuming, both in terms of the meeting itself and travel time.  If a half hour telephone conversation could achieve what you would achieve in an hour long meeting which you needed to travel half an hour each way to attend then it’s a no brainer.  If your meeting is essential then go with a clear plan of the objectives you need to achieve, keep it precise and ensure you stick to your time plan.
  9. It’s common for entrepreneurs to want to do everything themselves, but the sooner you realise that it’s simply more efficient to get someone else to do it the better and the quicker you can get on with driving your businesss forward and delegating or outsourcing all the non-core areas of your business.  You will soon see the difference in the amount you are actually achieving as well as the liberating feeling of being able to concentrate on what you are good at any what you enjoy while others deal with everything else.
  10. Wherever you can automate.  Have automated emails prepared for handling particular enquiries, automate your invoicing, your social media and plenty of other things besides.  It may take you a little while to set up automating your tasks but once they are set up you will reap the rewards.  It is the fastest, most efficient and cheapest way to get anything done.  (Read an example here of a client who is using automation to speed up his enquiry process).

I hope that these time management tips have proved useful to you.  Implementing even some, if not all of these will make a huge difference to your productivity.

Do you have any further tips to share on how to be more productive or to improve your time management skills?  If so we would love to hear so please do feel free to comment and as always if you know anyone who you feel would benefit from this then please do feel free to share with them or on social media.

 

Time Management Skills