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weekend ideas for a busybodied virtual assistant

Weekend Ideas for a Busybodied Virtual Assistant

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You had a very busy week for certain, which is common among virtual assistants, gig workers, or freelancers around the world. Yes, there is this convenience to stay at home or work in your pajamas, but this does not mean that you do not encounter stress or even an anxiousness-causing situation one way or the other. You are still an employee who has to deliver output to your client or employer.

Nonetheless, this does not mean that you should drown yourself with uneasiness until the weekend. Remember, you own your weekend. Thus, there is no client, work, or even pressure that should come your way. If you want to make the most out of it, the first step is to keep yourself distant from your work even for a day or two.

Why? This is due to the fact relieving your mind and body from work could help you regain your strength, vigor, mental alertness, and even immunity from whatever sickness that could affect your feeble self.

There are various ways that you could make your weekend worthwhile. Given below are weekend ideas that could certainly help:

Visit a place you wanted to explore for a long time. Your life is not always about work. You should also have your me time or even a family excursion that could prove this. Try checking out the place you have wanted to visit – it may be a resort, mall, leisure park, or even a historical spot. It is somehow a means for you to reward yourself for the hard work during the past week.

Did you know that traveling could sharpen your mind, broaden your horizon, and even give you that exercise you have always missed? Well, now that you are aware of this, better plan out your next trip!

Find time to exercise. There is no doubt that physical fitness is one of the ways to a longer life. If you will concentrate on working solely, you may end up getting sick from too long sitting or stagnant lifestyle. Be reminded that your body has got to move, your muscles need revving up, and your limbs got to stretch as well.

You do not have to hit the gym as a way of doing this. You can simply check out routines you could do at home. By doing so, you would not regret it for you are not simply keeping your health in check, but also preparing yourself for the week ahead wisely.

Read a book. For some, this is totally insipid, but they are totally missing the heap of benefits reading can provide. Besides the fact you could expand your creativity and knowledge about lots of things, reading could also prevent your mind from lingering into your job-concerned worries.

Plus, books give you the sense of isolation, which is very helpful if you want to spend your weekend at home instead of venturing outside. While you are being transported to another realm, reading a book could maintain your cognitive stimulation. Furthermore, you could even broaden your vocabulary, which, of course, would help you in a lot of ways other than at work.

Join volunteering or charitable programs. If you are a person who prefers to feel fulfilled during your free time, you should try finding out about volunteering programs near your place. You could join an upcoming blood donation cause, whether you are the one to donate or the person to assist those who will. Alternatively, feeding programs or even awareness seminars could also work for you.

This will not simply give you the opportunity to help, but you could also improve your social skills. You have always been at home, so mingling with people in the flesh would certainly be a helpful factor for life.

Try out new recipes for yourself or your family. During the weekdays, it is anticipated that you would have limited time to take care of the cooking for yourself or your family. The tendency is, you buy from fast food chains or consume processed items. This could be deadly, if it ensues. Hence, to counterbalance your diet, you should try out healthy recipes to cook during the weekend.

The weekend is your chance to hone your cooking skills (if you are totally enthusiastic about kitchen work) and supply your body with the nutrients it needs. This could also be a bonding time for your family. Encourage them to join you so that despite being at home, you could find a way to spend the day fruitfully.

You should try out the aforementioned ideas if you want to make your weekend worthwhile. Do not simply snooze all day. According to Dr. Michael Breus, too much sleep could lead to health risks, such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and cognitive problems. Instead, make your weekend as helpful as possible for your mind and body.

 

Respect: A Trait That Every Virtual Assistant Should Have

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Virtual assistants have the freedom to work as they please, as long as they provide the deliverable required of them. They could wear anything and neglect work clothes, if they prefer to. They could even work at their most convenient times, as long as their client allows to. Most importantly, they could spend more at home without worrying about their job. Their laptop is just an arm away for them to take care of things.

However, due to the aforementioned convenience, there is a tendency for a virtual assistant to neglect important factors in sustaining a healthy client-freelancer relationship. For instance, VAs tend to forget how important it is to connect with their employee. Apart from the work relationship becoming automated and seemed machinelike, virtual assistants could become less friendly towards their client.

Be reminded that you are still an employee regardless of the fact you are working remotely. Home-based job does not entail lack of personal touch with your work.

If you do not want to end up your job without a harmonious relationship to recollect in the future, you should start shaping your personality as it should be. One good start is to learn how to become respectful to your client or employer. In truth, there are so many ways to do so.

A few tips below may help:

Always start your shift in a positive note. How could you do this? It is simple. You just have to avoid forgetting the most important greetings – good morning, good evening, or good day. You should always initiate a beginning that would affect your client’s mood positively. Be reminded that positivity is contagious. Thus, make yourself a source of it.

Apart from the common greeting, never forget how essential asking how your client or employer is. No, this is not an act of uttermost comfort towards your superior. This is a way to show him or her that you do care despite your type of relationship. A client or an employer may not say it, but they prefer that their staff at least give credit to them even in the simplest way.

Accept your mistakes and lower your ego. Yes, you may be an experienced virtual assistant or even an accomplished professional outside your remote working space. However, this does not mean that you already have the privilege to disregard the corrections and criticisms of your client.

Hear your employer out when he or she is pointing something that did not turn out right. Accept if you are wrong. Otherwise, explain your side in a respectful manner.

If your employer is wrong no matter how you see it, but he or she kept on insisting his or her side, simply keep mum. Follow what he or she wants to happen, for in the end, the result will convey which of you is right.

Understand the personal space of your client or employer. There are virtual assistants who only focus on work that they forget that their client also needs their personal space. For instance, they still send messages or e-mails during the night despite knowing that their employer may be with his or her family at home already.

Although there are cases that urgency requires you to speak with your client even at night time or beyond working hours, you should always prioritize respecting the time he or she has left for himself or herself. If your inquiry could wait or you could find means to sort out your concern, then you should keep yourself from pressing the send button.

The provided tips above are just a few of what you can do to maintain respect in your personality. You should take note that employers do not retain their staff based on their skills alone, but also on how they deal with their superiors or co-workers.

learn the unheeded power of follow-ups

Learn the Unheeded Power of Follow-ups

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Follow-ups are often considered annoyance, which is why even virtual assistants forget and neglect how important it is. Do you know that it has immense power that you may be missing? Have you ever thought why some marketers usually take note of following up or reconnecting? This is not to cause repetitive offering of their products or services. Instead, it is one way of actually catching a client.

There are also reasons why you should consider follow-ups in your virtual assistance work as early as today. To begin with, the following facts will open your eyes relative to its efficacy:

Keeping your clients organized. It is understandable that clients are always filled with schedules and appointments to attend to. This means that you are hired as a virtual assistant for you need to at least keep your client aware of his or her upcoming endeavors. Yes, they do have calendars and software applications to remind them, but this does not mean that they would always notice it.

This is when follow-ups are best used. Before even a meeting starts, follow up with your client. This will not only help him or her be prepared but this may also open for early cancellation, if an urgent matter arises. At least, you can still reach out to other participants of the meeting and notify them of the unforeseen revocation.

Avoiding deadlines. If your client has a deliverable to submit to the management or company concerned, following up with him or her would definitely help. Similar to what has been indicated earlier, a client is anticipated to be filled with a lot of things to do, so he or she needs reminding.

This also goes the same with you. For instance, you will be missing the deadline if you still have not obtained clarification regarding the instructions of the tasks given to you. If you would follow up, you would urge your client to attend to your concerns right away; thus, avoiding your output from being late.

Tracking the progress of your team. Team leaders would find follow-ups useful, especially if your subordinates have to work in unison. By following up, you could always remind your team members to avoid deadlines and focus on what has to be done. Moreover, follow-ups also prevent your subordinates from procrastinating.

Naturally, when employees are not receiving any follow-ups from their superiors, the tendency is for them to think that they are not being monitored. Additionally, this could lead to lower productivity.

Ensuring seamless transactions with customers. Considering you are working for a client, who has required you to work on invoicing and coordination with their clients for payments, you should also learn the essence of follow-ups. It may be quite disconcerting for you to follow up regarding a payment, but remember that this is part of the sales system. Thus, there would always be a time wherein you have to remind a certain party of an upcoming bill or missed payment. You cannot always rely on the fact that your customers will remember their due dates.

Better customer service. If you are assigned as a customer support, follow-ups are also powerful in making your company’s clients’ experience better. For instance, there is an issue that has been reported to you and you have provided a solution. If you would add a follow-up treatment on how the client is doing subsequent to your support, you would definitely find him or her pleased with your relentless concern.

With the provided facts, hopefully, you would already be encouraged to use follow-ups at work. But of course, too much is never right. Thus, you should reconnect in respectable manner – professional and alike to a soft reminding.

Identifying the Requirements You Need for a Virtual Assistant

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Finding the right virtual assistant is not only about the employee alone. Be reminded that your selection will be based on what you have stated as requirements. There are cases wherein clients somehow point fingers when it comes to unsuccessful obtainment of virtual assistance. Be reminded that in the first place, you are the one to identify what you need for a virtual assistant. You need to think big – you may have actually made a mistake in conveying your expectations for one.

If you want to find someone, who is perfectly fit for your firm or your personal assistance needs, there are pointers you could consider, such as the following:

Identify your time-consuming and routine tasks. You would find out the tasks you need help with if you could specify those that seem repetitive and take much of your time every day. Usually, these activities are clerical and administrative work, such as documentation, e-mail management, calendar management, and even invoicing among others.

Once you have carried out this step, you would be able to list down the skills you would need for a virtual assistant. Take note that not all tasks are meant to be passed onto your VA. Only let go of those that you believe can be handled by a rank-and-file staff and is not that sensitive or critical. Assigning bigger assignments or projects to a VA is advisable once trust is already established.

Never forget to specify your preferred personality. Clients should also give way to pinpointing the personality traits of their expected virtual assistant. For instance, you would need someone who is very organized, for you need that trait to sort out your end as well. On the other hand, you may state that you would rather work with someone who is punctual and can keep up with a strict schedule since your personality is such.

Keep in mind the schedule. There are clients who forget how essential specifying your desired schedule for a virtual assistant is. Be reminded that commonly, VAs have other part-time work as well (which is usual for gig workers and freelancers). Thus, if you do not want any conflicts and you want to ensure the virtual assistant would dedicate his or her focus on your tasks, then a schedule must be set.

Alternatively, if you are a client, who does not mind a free-flowing working relationship with your VA, then it could work as well. You simply have to clarify that you would not bother about a flexible schedule as long as the deliverables are submitted without missing the deadlines.

Special requests are always welcome. Clients have the privilege to ask for VA with traits, which are not normally required. For instance, you prefer someone who has worked with an employer of the same nationality as you. In such way, you would not have issues with the VA adjusting to your culture. Also, you may ask for a VA, who has a keen interest in art and music, for your industry is centered on those.

If you would follow the aforementioned statements, you would have easier means of finding out what you need for a virtual assistant. Once done, you would find out that a good start would definitely give you a better experience in getting virtual assistance.

How to Be an Effective Virtual Assistant to a Busybodied Client

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Clients hire virtual assistants for they are busy and can no longer handle routine or time-consuming tasks. Thus, it is expected that you will encounter someone, who would not always be present to guide you with the tasks every day and give you instruction all the time. You must remember that if you are a virtual assistant, you are prepared to become the most proactive and independent employee you can be.

It is true that you would need training or orientation at the start of your shift. Nonetheless, this implies that following this training, you have to find yourself suitable for work with as little counseling as possible.

If you are struggling to become an efficient virtual assistant to a busybodied client, you can start understanding the how-tos first. Relatively, given below are pointers that could assist you:

Set up a once-and-for-all meeting. You can term it as the once-and-for-all meeting for you will treat it as the first and last call you will have with your client. In such way, you would believe that you need to ask all the questions you need to be answered before carrying out any task going forward. If your client is totally filled with appointments, this meeting will give you a chance to at least get to know him or her. Additionally, you may even get guidelines on some parts of your work, which are quite complicated for you.

Be reminded that the said meeting is very critical. Without it, you may waste a lot of time inquiring every time and waiting for a response after every several hours during your shift. This is not a loss for you, but for your client as well, particularly if he or she is paying you by the hour.

Get as much information as you can about the firm. You would be able to carry out your tasks for a client if you will obtain as many company details as you can. For instance, you would not be able to sort out your client’s e-mails if you are not even acquainted with the people sending them.

Also, by understanding the operations of the company, you would be able to position yourself effectively. A good example is understanding that the marketing department would need your research in order for them to finalize their creation of an effective advertisement. In other words, if you are not aware that they need your input, they will also fail to carry out their part.

Start learning to organize your client. Be reminded that when your client is the busiest person you have encountered, this means that he or she needs you to organize him or her. Most of the time, their schedules are a mess and they do not even know what to prioritize in a day. This is your chance to become an effective virtual assistant.

You could begin fixing his or her calendar and taking care of scheduling his or her future appointments, so that there would be no conflicts to arise. Moreover, you should start sorting out his or her documents. In such way, in case he or she needs something for reference, it would be easier for your client to access it.

Be a representation of your client. You should be confident enough to speak with your client’s colleagues in his or her stead. In such way, you would also be able to anticipate what he or she needs. This is the part wherein you would somehow put yourself in your client’s shoes.

Additionally, if you have easier connections to your client’s contacts, you could do more things for him. For instance, instead of your client confirming a deliverable for your co-worker, you may do it instead. This will save him or her time, so he or she could focus on other tasks.

The aforementioned pointers are essential if you are aiming to become a reliable virtual assistant for your client. Indeed, it will be a rough road at first, but as you get accustomed to it, you would be surprised by how dependent your client to you already.