So why don’t I have it yet?

Because I’m lazy and tired. Or you can blame it on my kids. Or you can blame it on having to take care of the kids while my husband works at the laptop next to mine. Whatever the reason…I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. It’s uploaded in my WP backend and ready to go, but it requires tweaking and I’m just not that into tweaking right now.

You see, sometimes I’m very driven. I get things done. I can go from domain to full-on blog waiting to be marketed in one day. But that doesn’t happen every day. I’m not flaky, exactly, but I’m also not consistent. I work when I don’t want to, sometimes, but right now my biggest job is managing the business that has services I don’t sell. Managing Director is my title not because it sounds pretty, but because that is what I actually do.

But on those rare moments when the baby is napping, the girls are at school, and all is quiet…sometimes I choose to blog rather than work. It’s the closest I get to relaxing, and I don’t want to give it up and be super-uber-productive all the time.

It’s a reward for the hard work I put in this morning. (And there was a lot for one little bitty morning!)

Blogging

Blogging is great. I love it. But if you’re selling services that are knowledge based and you blog, you’re telling people how to do your job. You’re also telling people that you spend a lot of time blogging and that could make a potential client wonder if you’re going to be blogging while you’re on their clock.

Of course this is a moot point if you sell blogging services. But, if it’s design you sell you need a portfolio, not a blog. Blogs take time and even if you enjoy it, business blogging for fun is not running a business, it’s supporting a hobby. Because business is about return on investment.

Facebook

Stop with the fan pages! There is this huge clusterf*** of virtual assistant fan pages on Facebook and I’m pretty sure the only people who are fans are other virtual assistants and friends/family of the person who started the page. These pages are not going to get you clients as effectively as other methods of marketing.

Again, the exception is if you’re selling Facebook services. But make sure on your fan page you don’t give away your overall strategy for how you will get traffic to that fan page.

Twitter

The universe is on Twitter. If you’re on there you have to make sure you’re standing up and standing out. Why is your business advice better than everyone on Fox Business Network that has a Twitter handle? Why is your marketing advice better than the marketers that already have thousands upon thousands of followers? Why YOU?! Because you can’t compete with what’s out there – get yourself out of the competition entirely by making youself different.

I’ve moved on from Twitter because other than seeing some people say some fun stuff and get good blog links…it’s too crowded. I got my first direct message yesterday telling me how much bigger my penis could be if only I click that link. As a chick, I’m not really worried about my penis size…but you get my point.

A Big Way You Can Shoot Yourself in the Foot

My biggest pet peeve is seeing re-tweets on Facebook. It’s annoying and tells me you’re lazy. Other people who don’t know you’re importing your Tweets (which, depending on your target market, might be a LOT of people) think you’re using weird text speak and may be too advanced for them.

If you have your Twitter connected to your Facebook, be smart and don’t retweet or post stuff that will look stupid as a status post on Facebook. Don’t ever assume everyone understands what you’re doing….and just because someone else says it’s a smart idea, don’t assume they are correct or successful doing it.

Sometimes, and for some business owners, it makes sense to import those Tweets to Facebook..but know you’re that person before you start doing it. Don’t assume that because you’re doing it you’ve made the right choice.

So…who’s doing it right?

In my opinion, Kelli Claypool is doing it right and doing it well. From automating tweets in a responsible, non-offensive way to knowing when to be spontaneous and when to “set it and forget it” – she is the person I look up to and want to be more like as I become a more responsible business owner and less of a “chicken with my head cut off” business owner going 20 different directions at once!

You can find Kelli over on Facebook or at one of her websites:

http://BusinessAndLearning.com
http://www.briefcasediva.com
http://www.DivaTalkRadio.com 

• “Do you have to call someone?”
• “Do you pretend you’re working?”
• “Do you get in trouble?”
• “Do you get mental health days?”

I usually laugh because the problem isn’t about sick days, it’s about how I work vs. how most people work.

I generally don’t have to call anyone when I’m sick, because if I’m in the middle of a project I can send over an email to any clients – on a “need to know” basis – letting them know I’m not available. I try not to actually tell people I’m sick if I can help it, because I just don’t like to – it’s probably a holdover from being an office manager back in the day and wondering anytime someone called off if they were really sick or just saying it for a day off.

But when you work from home and have your freedom, you work on deadlines, not for eight hours a day. Sure, this can be difficult when you have a big deadline and might work through the night once in a while, but it’s more than worth it when you’re laying in bed sick, knowing no one is going to get mad at you or threaten to replace you!

Sometimes doing the same thing starts to get you less results and, as a result, less money.

When that happens, it’s time to take a look at what you’ve been doing and see if there are ways to shake it up and either get more cients, add more services, or do something else entirely.

I was looking at my business last month and thinking, “What can I do to make this … better?” I was making money but really needed to kick it up a notch. Doing the same old thing every day was giving me less and less in terms of both satisfaction AND money.

So what’s a business ower to do?

The free preview call for Business Building Blocks helped me start thinking in a different way about myself and my business. I was able to step back and see how I could turn my little business into a real, live bigger business.

Maybe you have more faith in yourself than I do and can see yourself with a million dollar company – but I only focus on the next step so I don’t feel totally overwhelmed by the thought of having to run a large business.

Either way, this free call with Ali Brown will help you focus on what you’ve been doing…and what you want to do from here on out.

Let me know how it helped you once you listen in!

While I am glad I got a phone call and this got sorted out – I did not realize that people thought this post was mean. I was confused and a little hurt, but I did not intend to be mean. I think I need to work on my professional communication style. It’s not something I’ve ever been known for and really feel quite awful that anyone at VAnetworking.com thought I was personally angry at them. I wasn’t. I was just trying to work through my feelings.

Yes, I have feelings. Shocker, right? LOL

Once you’ve made your transition from a Virtual Asssitant to the next step of your business transformation, you may still be referred to as a VA by some people. Mostly VAs. That’s okay, nothing wrong with it, that’s how people knew you and know you and no one likes change.

But, eventually, you’ll find you don’t have a lot in common with the people you used to be around and then one day, they will disappear.

One of the main differences I’ve noted between Virtual Assistants that are Forever VAs vs. Transitional (or stepping stone) VAs is confrontation.

I’ve never met a Forever Virtual Assistant that would hear the word confrontation without cringing. I knew VAs that just disappeared forever rather than explain to a client that they were quitting due to poor treatment or late payment or some other very real reason that the client should know about so they don’t do the same thing to the next person.

Telling someone the truth is not mean. You can be up front an honest without being nasty or spiteful.

That is how I would have liked to find out I was booted from moderator status on a VA site. Simply, quickly, a two sentence email would have sufficed. Not just finding out I was locked out of half the forum and had no access to events when I went to visit the site to answer some questions and give some advice.

It puts me in a weird position. I would never pay for a membership to something that I only go to give advice on and never receive it. So…paying to help others isn’t really a route I’m willing to take. Which I’m sure they knew. So it seems that they didn’t want me around anymore. I wasn’t contributing enough. That’s okay.

I understand VAs don’t like confrontation, even when it would be the kindest route to take. So I hold no animosity for what happened and just wish everyone over there luck and a fast path to the place they desire to be. Even if they don’t particularly want me around anymore.

Things change, and the only options are to accept and move on or mope and waste energy.

Have you confronted anyone recently? How did it make you feel? Did it have a good result?

Someone was a day late on a deadline. Didn’t let me know they were going to be late, they just "forgot" the deadline. Didn’t even bother to make up an excuse.

My absolute favorite … a contractor did the shoddiest work I’ve ever seen. The two articles I had her write were all KINDS of "English as a second language" and I was livid – I mean, I spent the same amount of time rewriting them as I would have spent writing them from scratch. It was wasted money in my opinion.

Unfortunately, I have yet to find a decent way to tell someone, "If you produce crap work, I’m not paying you." Because the contractor doesn’t know my standards and what if they think I’m just being an ass trying to not pay for work. But really, this work was AWFUL.

Then…to add insult to injury…I got this via email:

I have completed the assignment as requested. 

I will invoice you today for the total of $100 ( $50 per article, 2 articles completed).  Please advise what address to send invoice to.

There is a 10 day grace period for payments to be received after which time I charge a ___fee of 7% = $7______ per week late fee.

Thank you and I look forward to doing business with you in the future.

My brain almost exploded. So not only did I receive work of such a low quality it had to be entirely redone, if I didn’t pay for this awful, low-quality work within ten days (which was NOT mentioned when she took the assignment. You don’t get to give me your payment terms WITH the invoice – bad form) she was going to charge me a weekly late fee.

What gives a contractor the right to the expectation of a late fee when I don’t have the expectation of high quality work?

Because the assignment was NOT as requested. It was crap.

I have heard from other sources the writer DOES have a normal handle on writing and grammar. My only thought is that maybe it was subcontracted out to someone for whom English really was a second language. Which I could have done myself if I wanted to do that much editing.

It stinks, because good writers are difficult to find and out of the seven we hired for this project only three really impressed us. One writer never sent her sources, one was late, and then there was this. I’m down to four writers.

Maybe that will be enough for the time being.

This hasn’t happened to me directly, but has happened to someone I know personally.

They hired someone for a project and the person just…disappeared….for three days!

I’ve had people late on assignments before, but never has anyone just been gone for three days. Which is good because I have no idea how I would deal with that.

Here is a tip for the self-employed. If you would get fired for doing it at Starbucks, don’t do it to the person paying you to do the work from the comfort of your office. You can’t just decide not to go to work for three days and not let anyone know in advance. Really. To come back and explain after the fact there was an emergency, cold, flu, or other problem is a joke.

If you think it’s okay to do that because the person paying you will "understand" think of it this way:

Your boss at Starbucks has been sick before, but you still wouldn’t have the balls to just be a no-call, no-show for days and come back and your manager would "understand" – you know better.

So what makes someone think that work is different when they do it from home?

I think that people assuming unsubscribes are freebie seekers is a way to try and bring a little comfort to a situation that might hurt personally. I mean, you’re giving them a free newsletter – why would they leave?

If it is just one person here and there comfort yourself not by putting them down or insulting them by assuming they are a cheap ne’er do well – assume that what you had is not what they wanted and try to be okay with that – don’t take it personally.

But if you’re finding that people are signing up, getting your free report and then unsubscribing right away – make sure you’re sending quality and not making a bad first impression.

• Have at least one person, preferably three, look over your free report or bonus gift to check for grammar, spelling, and that you didn’t start to ramble for four paragraphs on page seven.
• When you have people look the report over, try to find one person that does not know what you do (family can be great for this). Then, make them guess what services you offer from your freebie/giveaway. If they guess wrong, check to make sure your message is on target.
• Have someone with an editor’s eye look over your piece to make sure it is a good piece of work. Better to be a page short and packed with content than ten extra pages of fluff.

Budgeting for your business can be tough too, especially if all your money is going in and out through your personal account. While it is risky, as long as you keep good books you can show the IRS at anytime the difference between your personal purchases and your business purchases and stay in the good graces of the government.

At least until you can get a business checking account.