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How to read a book in ten minutes a day

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Mon, 24 May 2010 12:09:34 +0000

We’re all busy. Life moves at a rapid pace and we do our best to keep up. Reading becomes one of those things that gets put on the shelf (pun intended) because other things become a priority. And yet, when we do get to read, we enrich our lives and our businesses.

I know a lot of people who say that they’d like to learn to speed read, but very few of them actually do it. The perception is that it will take some time to learn. Actually, it’s very easy and even if it does take a bit of time, it can reap huge rewards of saved time in years to come.

I learned to speed read in high school and the reward for that small effort has been tremendous. It really doesn’t take much time; it actually takes more discipline than time. In fact, you’ll be speed reading by the time we’re done this issue and since this issue will take less than 10 minutes to read, you’ll learn to speed read in 10 minutes!

Even though I speed read, I still can’t read a book in ten minutes using speed reading alone (I’ll tell you why at the end). I combine speed reading with another technique, which I call “Focused Preview”. Together, these two techniques enable me to read a book in 10 minutes, and get valuable insight out of what I read.

Technique # 1: Focused Preview

The first technique is focused preview. At first it seems like skimming (which some of us did in school when we realized that we hadn’t read the textbook for a quiz that day). There is a skimming element but what I’m recommending is far more intentional. I should also point out that this technique really only works on business books. Fiction books – which you might read for pleasure – won’t require this step. But if you do want to speed read a novel, just skip down to technique #2.

Step 1. Start with a goal in mind. Decide what you want to get out of the book. Write down a list of questions or goals. For example, let’s say that I’m reading Jim Collins’ book Good To Great. I might write down questions like:

What is considered a “good” company?
What is considered a “great” company?
What are the steps Collins recommends?
What are 3 things for me to consider in my business?

You might have more questions but I’ve found that 3 to 5 questions is sufficient. If you have fewer than 3 questions, be careful that the questions aren’t too broad. You can usually figure out what questions you want to ask by looking at the title, the back jacket, and the inside jacket. That should be enough. Duration: 1-2 minutes.

Step 2. When you have your questions, open to the table of contents and read it. Between what you’ve read on the jackets, and what you’ve just read in the table of contents, you’ll have a good idea of the scope of the book. You’ll start to see where your questions are likely to be answered. Duration: 30 seconds.

Step 3. Start flipping through the book. Most business books have subtitles and they might have illustrations/chart/graphs, etc. Quickly turn the pages and read every title, subtitle, and every illustration. No this isn’t cheating. This is like building a foundation or like drawing a map by quickly running the route you intend to take. Once you start speed reading, in the next section, this preview will prove to be invaluable. Duration: 2-3 minutes.

At this point, you might not be able to answer each question adequately, but you should have enough of a foundation to have a feel for the book. Try it a couple of times. You might not feel confident on the first book, but you’ll build up your experience and you’ll soon get the hang of it.

Technique #2: Speed reading

Speed reading is not skimming. In some ways it might accurately be called “scanning” but that is often misunderstood. Speed reading is difficult to describe but much easier to instruct someone in how to do it.

First, be aware that when you read something, your brain “speaks” the words in your mind. That’s because we learn to read this way in school. Our teachers taught us to read “See Jane run” as three individual words and whether we read it out loud or say it in our minds we read it as 3 words. A huge part of speed reading – and the part that takes the most discipline – is to stop doing this. You don’t need to say those words in your head. You just need to look at the words and move on. Your brain still registers their meaning. In fact, you will not only read faster but you’ll also read with greater understanding when you read larger sets of words at once. That’s because you don’t see “see Jane run” as three separate words but as a single concept. The closest thing I can compare this to is when you watch a movie at the theatre and sometimes you see the numbers counting down on the reel before the film actually starts. It’s so fast that your mind doesn’t have a chance to say “4″, “3″, “2″, “1″ but you saw them and you understood their significance. In the next paragraph, don’t say the words in your head. I’ll bet that you can still read it. (And, I’ll bet that you forget by the end of the paragraph and catch yourself reading each word again – that’s the constant battle for all speed readers).

Second, use your peripheral vision. When you read, your eyes go all the way to the edge of the line and then back again to the start. But they don’t need to because humans have a wide range of vision. When reading a book, imagine a barrier about 1 inch from the end of each line. Your eyes will stop there and you’ll still be able to see beyond it. In fact, some speed readers imagine every line in a book divided into quarters. Then they simply look at the connection point between the first and the second quarter (allowing their peripheral vision to take in the first half of the line) and then they look at the point between the third and fourth quarter (allowing their peripheral vision to take in the second half of the line). And they just bounce their eyes back and forth between each of these two points all the way down the page. If you notice that speed readers run their hands down the page of a book, this is one of the reasons. They are setting up boundaries for their eyes.

Third, trust yourself! We don’t notice it when we’re reading but we go back and re-read a lot. A LOT! It’s unintentional and totally unconscious and speed readers work hard to break themselves of the habit. Just push forward. This is the other reason that speed readers run their hands down the page of a book – in order to force themselves forward. When I learned to speed read, one of the instructions I received was to cut a long, thin hole out of an index card and use that so that I could only see one line at a time and then simply move it down the page. Of course I don’t use that card anymore but it was good practice in the early months.

These are the basics of speed reading. Just reading them sounds simple. Implementing them is challenging… and maintaining consistency is really hard!

Now that you know how to speed read, it’s time to turn your attention back to the process I was describing earlier to get through a book in ten minutes.

So you’ve spent the first 3-5 minutes doing a focused preview of the book. Now it’s time to spend the remaining time speed reading the book. There’s a good chance that you won’t need to read the whole book to answer your questions. And, because you already scoped the book and read all the titles and subtitles, you’ll know where quite a bit of the information is and how it is organized. This will allow you to go to the area you want to read, speed read it to answer your question, and then move on.

Reactions

When I tell people about this technique, a common response is that you’re not actually reading. However, I am confident that by doing both of these techniques – and STARTING with asking some focusing questions – you will actually get more out of the book than someone who picked it up at a bookstore and read the whole thing cover-to-cover and put it on their shelf.

This is not cheating. We’re not in school and you’re a busy person. This is a focused use of your time to get the best content that is the most applicable to you. And believe me, when you go toe-to-toe against someone who read the book from front to back, your business will always be the bigger beneficiary.

Alternatives

An alternative to this method is to subscribe to a book summary service like www.summary.com. These do have some value but, in my opinion, they just encapsulate the teachings of the book into a smaller version. On the other hand, the 2-technqiue process I’ve described above makes you the master over your reading and helps you to approach each book with the intention to pull high value business answers out of it.

Going beyond

If you practice technique #2 and are able to speed read consistently, you may find that you want to speed read all your books front-to-back, including business books and novels. Although I have dropped off in the past couple of years, I used to read at 1500 words per minute so a 100,000 word novel would take about an hour. I may not have been able to read a book in ten minutes but it’s a far cry from the time it takes most people to read because the average reading rate is about 200 to 250 words per minute

About this article: This article is an archived edition of Heather Villa’s Tips in 10 email series, and is no longer included in the existing email series. To read similar articles to this one, please subscribe to Tips in 10 at http://www.tipsin10.com

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Find the Real Tools and Reduce Your High Tech Costs

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:25:15 +0000

If you are a small business owner, you are likely inundated with marketing messages everywhere you go about the latest in cutting edge business technology. Every new device comes with the promise that it will unchain you from your desk and earn you thousands of dollars. It can be easy for a business owner to be swept away in the hype. To help sort out the market and decide what you really need, try asking yourself a few basic questions before you purchase new business technology:

Does This Product Add Functionality I Actually Need?
An extremely popular business device is a cell phone. If you use your cell phone solely to make and receive calls, chances are that your current phone does that just fine. What is the point in paying $300 for a new phone that provides internet access and GPS, and lets you watch television, if all you will do is make phone calls?

What Level Computer Do I Need?
Another popular business device is a computer. Computers become obsolete almost as soon as they hit the shelves. However, there is no need to try to play catch-up with the evolving market. Choose a computer that is approximately two steps ahead of what you need now, in terms of RAM, hard drive size and components, and you will be all set for years to come. Unlike games, which constantly compete to provide the “best” playing environment, business software evolves much more slowly. Your Windows XP computer will be able to run business applications for a long time, despite the recent release of Vista. In fact, investing in new Windows builds can actually cost you a great deal of money, as you will be forced to upgrade all of your software as well.

Will I Use the Software Frequently Enough to Invest?
You may not consider software in the same category as business devices but its necessity and complexity in use certainly qualifies it as a very popular and required devices. In general, businesses can be classified in three broad categories: Very Small, Small to Medium, and Large. Very small businesses can often be run using software that was designed for personal applications. Large businesses will produce enough volume to make expensive software purchases worthwhile. Small to medium businesses, however, face a bit of a dilemma. They have likely outgrown the ability to get by on personal software applications. Yet it may be difficult to justify an expensive purchase of software that may be only rarely used.

Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:00:37 +0000

With innovative ideas such as mini-retirements, outsourcing, and the paradigm the “New Rich,” the book The 4-Hour Workweek written by Timothy Ferriss received rave editorial reviews upon its release in April 2007. The book also reached the New York Times Bestseller list almost immediately, and continues to be a hot topic of discussion all over the internet.

In The 4-Hour Workweek book, Ferriss, an entrepreneur and self-proclaimed ultravagabond, outlines his philosophies for financial freedom, guiding readers through the process of breaking free from the usual preconceptions most of us have about work and responsibilities. He also covers the subject of fear, how many are paralyzed by being afraid of failing, how to define those fears, and then how to conquer and overcome them.

Deemed as the blueprint for those who are overworked or who are looking to find their inner entrepreneur, The 4-Hour Workweek book emphasizes learning how to outsource and take advantage of the wonderful world of virtual assistants. The book also contains Q&A sections after each chapter, with Q&A being questions and actions, rather than answers. These sections offer helpful exercises designed to guide one through the definition phase of Ferriss’ mnemonic DEAL process, which stands for definition, elimination, automation, and liberation.

The term The New Rich was coined to describe those who are practitioners of the DEAL, which according to the book, can briefly be described as:

Definition: Definition is how to get past your fears, pinpoint what it is you want, and calculate what it will cost to achieve your goals.

Elimination: The elimination aspect of DEAL refers to the principles of time management skills, and the detrimental effects that come from a lack of those skills. Ferriss talks about the differences between efficiency and effectiveness, and explains the 80/20 rule, which focuses on eliminating the minor details that actually waste 80% of your time and life, and instead concentrating on the tasks that produce real results.

Automation: Automation refers to the task of building automatic sources of reliable income. This portion of the book details how Ferriss himself has many people working on his behalf in the form of outsourced vendors that generate income under his careful instruction.

Liberation: After your life has been successfully automated, it’s time to liberate yourself from the usual confines of work and geographic locations, becoming mobile, but still productive.

Some of the other techniques and ideas included in the book are:

Discovering how to reduce your workload in half in as little as two days using the principles often implemented by economists in Europe

Learning the differences between absolute and relative income
Learning to value performance over presence
Why some are able to travel the world without quitting their jobs
What an automated cash-flow muse is, and how to create your own
How to exchange long work weeks with shorter periods of work peppered by frequent mini-retirements
How to obtain free housing, worldwide
How to obtain airfare at costs of up to 80% off
How to have a meaningful life after work

Get your copy of the 4-Hour Workweek book and start making changes in your life!

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Expand Your Business with These 3 Tips

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:23:00 +0000

There is an old saying that holds true even today: “Success breeds success.” In the early days of your business, you were likely concerned with simply staying afloat. Lining up consistently paying customers may have been difficult and you may have gone for long periods with little business. However, something happened since then that caused you major success. You may have signed a deal with a very important client. Perhaps word of mouth advertising spread. Maybe you were simply in the right place at the right time. Whatever the reason, you are now successful. In fact, you may be reaching the limits of what your company was designed to do. The next logical step seems to be expansion. However, unguided expansion can lead to innumerable difficulties, even causing the business to fail. Here is what you need to know to expand your company responsibly.

Tip #1: Consult Your Business Plan
If you have a well-written business plan, use it to guide your company’s growth. Keep your mission statement and vision statement in mind at all times. Re-read your long term goals and objectives and develop a short-term plan for expansion that fits with your long range objectives. If you do not yet have a business plan, it is critical that you write one at this time. There are many guidelines available on the internet to get you started. Remember that your business plan will shape not only your current expansion but your company’s long term growth. Consider utilizing the services of an expert to make your business plan the best it can be.

Tip #2: Perform Market Research to Target Expansion
Whether you are considering adding a new product to your line, opening an office in a new city or simply producing more of what you already make, it is important to understand your market. The costs associated with expansion are often high and can be crippling to the company if the expansion does not do as well as expected. You must understand who you are targeting, what their specific needs are, how you will meet those needs, what you will offer and when the new offering will become available. Employing an outside market research firm can be extremely helpful at this time.

Tip #3: Outsource
Once you are ready to go forward with your expansion, your workload will dramatically increase. Allow yourself the time necessary to develop your company’s expansion by outsourcing many of your day to day tasks. You can outsource some of the work to a virtual assistant and some of the work to freelancers and consultants, depending on the projects.

Expanding a company can be an exciting and profitable venture. However, without guidelines and controls in place, it is easy for the company to lose its focus and ultimately become spread too thin. Use your business plan and market research to create targeted slow growth that will be able to be develop properly. Outsource as many daily tasks as possible in order to focus on your new expansion. With proper care, your company’s expansion can flourish, breeding additional successes

Time Off: Do Small Business Owners Get Any?

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:41:46 +0000

If you run a small business, you may find yourself quickly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work that is required. Not only must you juggle constant deadlines from a wide range of clients, but the housekeeping tasks can be immense. From bookkeeping and accounting to cost estimating and project management, the small business owner can quickly become overwhelmed.

But at the same time, trying to take time off for business owners is extremely difficult. With so much to do, it can be extremely difficult to break away at the end of the day. Twelve or fourteen hour workdays may soon become the norm as you try to keep your head above water. Success breeds success, leading you down an ever busier path. No matter how much you love your work, sooner or later you will begin to feel ready for a vacation.

When a business owner considers taking some time off they inevitably begin asking themselves:

What will happen during your vacation?
Will you be able to completely clear your schedule for a week or two?
What happens if you do?
Will you lose track of important clients, or possibly even lose work due to the inability to get things done in a timely manner?
Will you lose out on future clients simply because you were unable to answer your email before someone else was hired instead?

There are no simple answers to these questions. Every business owner’s personal, vocational and financial picture is different. However, a basic truth holds for every person on Earth, whether or not that person is a business owner. We as human beings need down time. We need time to relax, spend time with loved ones, and have fun. Not allowing yourself some time off is a sure path to burnout.

Here are some tips on how to take time off for business owners

Begin by outsourcing as much as possible. A virtual assistant can transform the small business experience for the business owner who is struggling to keep up. Your virtual assistant can manage many of the day to day tasks of business management, from bookkeeping and accounting to answering phones and email. He or she can also manage your calendar, sending you reminders of important upcoming events. A VA can work as many or as few hours as you require, and those hours may change by the week, month or project. The cost of a VA is generally much less than that of recruiting, hiring, training and retaining an employee.
Plan your vacation well in advance. Work longer hours to get as far ahead as possible before you leave town. Let your clients know about your vacation well ahead of time. Plan realistic project deadlines that account for the time that you will be away.

Working during your vacation is a viable option, as long as your work hours are limited. There is little point in paying for a hotel room that you will sit in for days on end, working. However, setting aside an hour a day to check email and return phone calls, and perhaps one or two days a week to complete work tasks is a reasonable goal.

Let your VA work for you while you are on vacation. Arrange for him or her to answer your phone and respond to emails. Have anything that requires your attention forwarded to your voicemail or email for you to respond to at your leisure.

Balancing work and downtime can be difficult for any business owner. However, time off is essential to mental health and stability. Outsource those tasks that you do not need to personally handle and structure your schedule to allow for vacations. The peace of mind and refreshment of mind, body and spirit are worth the effort.

Trying To Go it Alone: Why It Is Less Productive To Work Alone

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:14:23 +0000

Many small businesses begin as one-person operations. A new small business owner may have neither the budget nor the workload to justify hiring employees. In the early days, this generally works just fine. A small business with a slow stream of work usually allows its owner plenty of time to focus on all aspects of each project.

However, success tends to breed success. Soon you may find yourself with a steady stream of projects. You may even get to the point of turning down projects that you simply do not have time to complete. The decision then becomes, do you continue to do it yourself, or hire someone? It can be a difficult decision. But you must take into consideration that continuing to work alone can be counterproductive.

There are several reasons for this:

No business owner is good at everything
You probably have a natural aptitude for the work that your business produces. You can quickly and easily turn out finished projects that are of the highest quality. Other types of work, however, may not come so easily to you.

Perhaps you have trouble producing high quality written work. You struggle with putting words together in just the right combination to convey your meaning. Consequently, preparing written reports, ad copy and other documents takes you an inordinate amount of time. Or maybe math is not your strong suit. While words flow quickly out of your fingers, you struggle to understand spreadsheets, complete payroll and perform other tasks that involve long strings of numbers.
No matter what your weaker area is, you will find yourself dedicating extra time to those projects. You will lose valuable productivity simply due to a natural weakness.

No business owner has time for everything
The sheer quantity of tasks that must be performed by a small business can be onerous. Even if you are the rare person who is equally talented in all aspects of business management and production, performing them all by yourself ensures that you have less time to produce your main product. Every task takes time to complete.

So you have to make the decision, should you do it yourself or hire someone?

The solution
You may not be ready to hire an on-site part time or full time staff just yet. That’s okay; after all, those costs can be high when you factor in overhead and equipment purchases. But there is an intermediate step you can take: Outsourcing. Whether you choose a virtual assistant to work consistently with you or a freelancer to take on specific projects, you can scale up or down or hire on an as-needed basis.

The advantage here is that you can start small and slowly build your business in an organic way, rather than hiring an employee and hoping that you’ll get enough extra business to cover their wage. Outsourcing your work is the way to go!

Incorporating Outsource Staff into the Routine of Your Office

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:20:56 +0000

As a business owner you are comfortable with the daily routine of your office. You know the intricacies of your workplace and are comfortable with the workflow. You can see the friendly faces of your employees in every cubicle or behind each desk. Your business has a rhythm and when you achieve that rhythm, everything seems to go so well.

What happens when you decide to use the services of virtual staff? How does that impact your traditional office? What adjustments will you need to make? These are good questions and the answers can help you easily navigate the transition.

Robyn is the president of an online publishing software company and found herself faced with these same questions. She transitioned from working at a newspaper to operating the software company. Robyn was used to the daily interaction with other employees and discovered that there are some adjustments to working in the virtual world. Robyn shares three helpful tips when making this addition to your company.

First, “An employer must be intentional about creating a bond with a virtual employee,” Robyn states. “When you are in a traditional work environment, that interaction comes naturally, but when you deal with someone that you may never actually meet, building that relationship and establishing a bond of trust takes a little more effort,” Robyn continues. Of course, working on the relationship is part of the outsource staff member’s responsibility as well.

Good communication is essential to forming an effective working relationship, no matter where your employee is working: Establishing a good working relationship with your outsource staff is just as important as the relationships you have with your in-house employees.

Next, Robyn encourages other business owners to establish a schedule or routine with their outsource staff. Since these offsite staff do not necessarily have set hours, the employer and virtual workers need to agree upon what is expected in regards to a work schedule and the duties to be performed. Having a pre-determined list of expectations can prevent any confusion in the future and keep the lines of communication open.

Finally, implement all of the available technologies to keep the work flowing between employer and outsource staff. According to Robyn, the more you make use of things like instant messaging, teleconferencing , faxing and emailing, the easier the communication will be. “Don’t limit yourself to one method of keeping in touch. Be sure your offsite employee has all of the software that is needed to complete the work you have assigned,” emphasizes Robyn.

About the author: Heather Villa, MBA CMA MSM, is a Business Coach and Entrepreneur. She helps business owners achieve success in operations, productivity, project management, and social media. Read her other articles at http://hireheathervilla.com/resources/articles/ and visit http://heathervilla.com for more information.

Disclaimer: © 2009 Heather Villa. Permission is granted to repost this article. Article must be published in its entirety, including author bio, and all links must remain intact.

Get More Done with On-Call Help

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:30:19 +0000

Business owners who are advancing from the solopreneur to a staffed organization can’t always make that leap from one to the other cleanly. They will often discover that there is an intermediate step in between, although not everyone knows this.

It’s true! In the steps between running a business on your own and running a staffed organization, you need to get more done (so hiring makes sense) but you don’t always have the money to hire a part time or full time employee.

There is a step in between that, though, and is called “outsourcing”. This is where you have staff for your business, but they aren’t employees; they are freelance professionals who specialize in the area of work you need. This level of scalability is the perfect way to grow a business while avoiding the high costs associated with adding staff.

Virtual staff might include virtual assistants or freelancers who are hired online and who deliver services that help the business.

There are numerous advantages to this often overlooked intermediate step:

There are no overhead or equipment costs associated with virtual staff: That’s because they’ll work at their own places of business not yours. This allows you to run a vast multinational conglomerate… out of a spare bedroom.

Since qualified virtual staff can be acquired through a VA firm and freelancers can be acquired through a freelance site (like Guru.com), a lot of the “footwork” is taken care of: The VA firm hires and trains their VA’s while Guru gives business owners an easy way to view a freelancer’s feedback from employers on past contracts.

Their time is scalable: With an employee, you need to pay them a minimum number of hours each day that they show up. But if your work is sporadic (which is often the case during the growth period of a business), it can be costly to pay employees who might be needed one week and not needed another week. A VA, however, can have their hours scaled up or down with no expectations. And freelancers who work on a project basis will only need to work when you have a job for them!

These are advantages to any business that needs to make that all-important (and often difficult-to-navigate) step of advancing from solopreneur to multi-staff business. In fact, some businesses get to this stage and realize that all of their needs are met and they can continue to grow with scalable virtual employees.

As a business coach, I see many businesses that use this model successful, with the business owner hiring virtual staff, handing out projects, and empowering the staff to run the business. The job of the owner, then, turns into one of delegator as he or she identifies tasks and manages who receives them and how they are completed.

A Checklist for Staffing Up

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:14:24 +0000

When you are considering the possibility of hiring staff – whether that staff includes a virtual assistant, an onsite assistant, freelance consultant, or an entire office of staff – you want to make the right decision as quickly as possible and get the role filled. After all, every passing day without a person in the empty role will cost you money and time! Print and use this article as a checklist to review resumes and to make sure that you cover these points during your interview.

Experience
This should be one of the main considerations when looking at a potential candidate. You need to determine how much experience he or she has working at the tasks you want them to do. It doesn’t mean that they must have performed the exact role, but they should at least have experience in the tasks you need done. For example, a branch manager who is applying for the job of marketing manager might still be well qualified, just because they did marketing while a branch manager. Insist on and check references. Be sure that the experience listed matches what you are seeking.

Integrity
This trait is particularly important if your employee will be dealing with confidential information. Again, reference checks are invaluable and a background check should be considered when client confidentiality is important. Integrity can be a difficult quality to measure so you might have to rely on instinct a little.

Professionalism
This is always important in the business world. If your employee will be dealing with clients via the phone or email, it is imperative that they are able to conduct themselves in a professional manner. How do they conduct themselves on the phone? Do they have a pleasant speaking voice and use proper grammar? A thorough interview as well as a writing assessment can help you make this determination. And seriously consider doing this same assessment for all employees, not just front-office employees, because these people might answer phones in a pinch or they may end up becoming managers when your business grows further.

Initiative
This is huge, but it’s often missed. In my opinion, it’s the second-most-important quality after integrity. A person with initiative may not always do a perfect job, but they’re also not going to sit around and wait. They will be assertive, proactive, and a self-starter. Watch for candidates who seem to think “outside the box” and resist hiring employees who seem to be timid and who need a lot of guidance. You don’t want to spend your time micro-managing people or cleaning up after their messes! You will want to ask how they handle obstacles or difficulties in completing a task and how they manage their time when working from home.

These qualities are imperative in every staff member you hire, whether virtual assistant, freelancer, or employee. Use this article as a “checklist” to ensure that they possess these qualities before you hire them.

About the author: Heather Villa, MBA CMA MSM, is a Business Coach and Entrepreneur. She helps business owners achieve success in operations, productivity, project management, and social media. Read her other articles at http://hireheathervilla.com/resources/articles/ and visit http://heathervilla.com for more information.

One Small Step for Business

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:46:38 +0000

Have you ever wondered what separates a headlining “superstar” of an industry from the rest of the pack? What makes Seth Godin or Tony Robbins or Jeffrey Gitomer a thousand times more successful than the rest of us? There are plenty of potential answers (and certainly, I believe it’s a combination of factors), but there is one factor that I believe people have overlooked.

I believe that many successful people seek help early: They realize they can’t do it all so they bring someone else on board. While I don’t know the exact details of the 3 people mentioned above, I do know many successful people and one of the things they have in common is that they have help: They have people to whom they can delegate work and they recognize that they can’t do it all themselves.

I don’t think that’s a new concept to business owners, but many small business owners who might be reading this might be thinking, “but I don’t have the revenue to support an employee, nor do I have the time or office space (or employee liability or software licenses or equipment or desire to post a job opening).

This is where another step comes in that I believe is the perfect step between the solopreneur and the growing multi-employee enterprise:

Assistants. And, specifically (thanks to today’s web-based interaction opportunities) virtual assistants.

Now, you might be wondering: “How can an assistant make any difference?” Here’s my answer: Assistants can be used in every aspect of a business organization to help with administrative work, bookkeeping, and customer support. By taking care of these tasks, the business owner has recaptured time that was formerly spent on important (but non-revenue-generating) tasks. Even though they are spending money on an assistant, they are still earning more money, making their time even more valuable.

As an example, consider the consultant who bills $100/hour and spends 4 hours a day consulting and 4 hours a day on marketing, administrative work, research, bookkeeping, scheduling, and more. While they might bill $100/hour, they only bill 4 of their 8 working hours; so their effective rate is only $50/hour. But when the consultant hires an assistant, they might pay that assistant $20 for 4 hours of work per day and the assistant does the marketing, administrative work, research, bookkeeping, and scheduling. This leaves the consultant spending $80 per day on an assistant, but they now have an additional 4 hours of potential billing time! They could do another 4 hours of consulting to earn an additional $400 per day, or they could do a couple more hours and hit the golf course.

But an assistant can do even more. If you find the right assistant, you can even give them some of your marketing, sales, and customer service work. In some cases, they can do some of your revenue generation for you (depending on the product or service you provide, of course).

This is the concept of “scaling”. Many small businesses stay small because they feel that it’s too big of a leap between solopreneur and multi-employee enterprise. But there IS an intermediate step: the virtual assistant. They’re affordable, skilled in many things, and you can scale up your virtual assistants by several iterations long before you ever hire your first employee.

And that is how you make the step forward.