Karen, Bronx, NY

If you have worked in one or both of these systems and are confident that your skill sets are proficient to expert, please email me at info @ virtualassistantindustry.com, subject line “Click Bank”.

Please feel free to send this information to someone you know who is expert in these systems.

Thank you!

Denise Griffitts, Virtual Assistance Industry Expert

This week I am delighted to welcome to the show Executive Coach, Brand Strategist and Bestselling Author, Libby Gill.

Libby Gill worked her way through college as a waitress on the Queen Mary. She has been a tap dancing bear, a talking Christmas tree, a soap opera actress and a hand model.

She also headed up public relations and corporate communications at major entertainment studios including Universal Studios, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Turner Broadcasting and was the branding and PR brain behind the launch of the Dr. Phil Show.

Libby is now an internationally respected executive coach, brand strategist and bestselling author of bestselling YOU UNSTUCK: MASTERING THE NEW RULES OF RISK- TAKING IN WORK & LIFE and founder of MyAccountabilityClub.com.

She’s been featured on the Today Show, The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, CNN, Oprah & Friends Radio Network, NPR, the Dr. Phil Show, and in Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, O magazine and
many more.

Our topic will be “Staying Accountable to Success”

• Accountability is a big theme in Libby’s work and in her new book “You Unstuck”. We will be chatting a lot about accountability and how Libby defines it.
• What does accountability have to do with personal success?
• As a coach for entrepreneurs and executives all over the country, Libby has gotten a lot of people unstuck. Does she ever have trouble holding herself accountable?
• Why do we get so excited about our goals and plans and then just lose steam over time?
• Libby references a lot of scientific research in her book. I will ask her what data she found most enlightening.
• I will be asking Libby to share some specific strategies we can learn to hold ourselves accountable.
• And much more!

If you have a specific question you would like me to ask Libby Gill please email it to me at info@ virtualassistantindustry.com prior to the show. You can also join us on the line or in the chat room!

Your Partner In Success Radio Show

When: Friday, April 16 , 2010

Time: 9 am PST, 10 am MST, 11 am CST, 12 pm EST

Where: Your home office telephone or computer.

Website: Your Partner In Success Radio Show

Call-in Number: 347-843-4988

Please be sure to login to the chat room to ask questions during the interview.

We look forward to “seeing” you!

Weekly Recommended Resource

Lisa Manyon of Write On Creative created a free press release tool called Write On Creative Press Release Producer that I use and recommend. This wonderful tool requires just two easy steps:

1. Input your information in the required fields.
2. Hit “Display My Press Release” and your draft release can be viewed and copied on the following page.

And don’t forget to click on the “Grab Your Free Stuff “ icon at the top of the page to receive your free copywriting action plan from Lisa.

I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing Lisa on my BlogTalkRadio Show, “Your Partner In Success“. She gave our audience some really terrific tools, tips and advice about copywriting and how to get people to pay close attention to the message that you are delivering. If you didn’t have an opportunity to listen and download yet, you can listen here.

I have a client who put up his own WordPress site.  It’s nice and functional – the problem is he copied and pasted all his content into WP pages from another site we built about 2 years ago where we had put everything in from Dreamweaver or Word (and that worked – it was a Sitesell site).  So the formatting is askew in some cases since he’s not allowing the css built into his template to do its job.  His other site did well with some tables we had set up – WP not so much.  Most of the pages are ok because they are static. 

There are a few pages that we change monthly based on his upcoming teleseminars.  Every time I update those pages, the formatting goes bonkers again – bolds show up where they shouldn’t, font sizes change and things that were left justified are centered, etc.  Every time it’s something different and the page keep morphing like a bad Sci Fi movie.   I’m thinking it’s because everything originally came from another site and wasn’t entered into the page allowing for css to do its thing.  Is that the case, oh WordPress Wizard?  

I have to fix this page and I’m thinking I will just do it from scratch and manually put the content in a new page using the WP formatting.  If I do that, how do I get that page to be named the same as the old one without removing the old one (in case he decides he wants to go back to the crazy page)?  Also, I assume if I change the font style and size in the css for say the paragraph format or the Header 2 format, that will filter through the entire site, correct?  (He seems to think if I do it will change for THAT page only – he’s a dabbler and drives me crazy cleaning up after him.)

Thanks for your advice, Denise – I appreciate you and value you very much.

Blessings,

Brenda Zeller

Answer

Hi Brenda, 

YES – copying and pasting content from an old site is the problem and I would recommend rebuilding that page (or those pages) from scratch. 

As for creating a new page (without removing the old one) – what you will need to is change the permalink for the OLD page, then publish a NEW page and make sure the permalink is set to be the same as the old one.

And yes, any changes made to the main theme stylesheet (style.css) will apply to the whole wordpress site, not just an individual page.

Hope this helps! 

Denise

Great customer service lets your customers and clients know that you value them and you want them to be happy enough with your customer service to refer you to their circle of friends, family and customers. In short, great customer service is about reaching out and forming a relationship. How do you go about forming such a relationship? By remembering the one true secret of good customer service and acting accordingly; “You will be judged by what you do, not what you say.”

These are examples of some truly great customer service experiences that I had lately and wanted to share with you.

Grasshopper Virtual Phone System for Entrepreneurs

Grasshopper

Hi, this message is for Denise Griffitts, (Click here to play message from Grasshopper)

This is Jonathan Kay, I am the Ambassador of Buzz here at Grasshopper. I actually just left you a voicemail but wanted to follow up with an email as well. I wanted to reach out to you as I really enjoyed your article “Does Your Small or Online Business Have a Toll Free Number”. First off, it was important to me that I connected and thanked you. Really appreciate you giving us the vote of confidence. I feel like people really don’t take enough time to just say “thank you”, so that is what I wanted to do.

I was excited when I saw your article as I was not familiar with The Virtual Assistant Industry prior to it! What else do you guys work on? Anything at all I could be a resource for, or something I could help with?

Thanks again.

Jonathan

(I did call Jonathan back to thank him and we had a great free-ranging chat on business, customer service, blogging and the Virtual Assistance Industry. Thank you Jonathan!)

Dominoes Pizza

A week or so my husband and I were both down with a miserable (and lingering) case of the flu but knew we were going to survive it when hunger pangs in the form of a rabid desire for pizza hit us both. I don’t normally like to order pizza but our survival that day clearly depended on somebody besides me cooking food for us.

It was a cold and rainy day and we didn’t want to infect the poor delivery person with what ailed us, so left this envelope on the door with a tip. The lady ran back to her car in the rain, grabbed a pen and some masking tape and put this back on our door and then gave a quick ring on the doorbell to let us know that our order had arrived. I was impressed! Now that is customer service and we definitely let the manager of her store know how much we appreciated that very kind gesture.

I would really like to hear of superb customer service that you have received. Please share!

Denise, I have looked at all of your websites and understand that you are a professional web developer as well as a virtual assistant. Very impressive!

My question to you is this. My website is not professionally built but I did what I could with the limited resources that I had at the time. It is an HTML site. Do you recommend that I move to WordPress.com?

Thank you in advance for your answer.

Monica, San Diego, CA

Answer

WordPress.com versus WordPress.org

Hello Monica and thank you for stopping by. If you could send me the URL to your website I will be happy to look at it and make recommendations for you.

I can answer your WordPress question though. You NEVER want to have your business or professional blog on WordPress.com.  The distinction between WordPress.com and WordPress.org is a very important one and one that tends to confuse a lot of people.  WordPress.com allows you to build a blog but you are hosting your site on their servers, meaning that you cannot upload critical plugins, or post links to affiliate programs. Without the ability to upload plugins you will only have a blog. You cannot make it look or behave like a true website. There are also many miserable stories of people having long-time blogs hosted on WP.com only to have them shut down for a program violation. You do not want somebody else to be in charge of your business presence.

What I recommend you do is to do is install WordPress on your own server and use your own domain name. WordPress.org is free blogging software that you should be able to install directly from your C-panel. You will need a solid web host and for this we recommend HostGator.

If this is a project that you will be undertaking on your own, there are many great WordPress tutorials and forums available on the internet. Ben Cope, “The Internet Genius” offers a great FREE WordPress Tip of the Day series that are very helpful.

I hope this answer helps you and please visit again and often to submit questions about the Virtual Assistance Industry.

To train with Denise Griffitts to become a highly technically savvy, highly paid, highly sought-after Virtual Assistant please visit Virtual Assistance University.

**You have permission to reprint in your publication or to your website/blog any articles by Denise Griffitts found on this Website as long as Denise Griffitt’s name and contact information is included. Denise Griffitts, Virtual Assistance Industry Expert, http://askdenisegriffitts.com, info @ virtualassistantindustry.com.

Hi Denise.

What do you tell people when they say they can hire virtual assistants overseas and pay them $3.00 an hour? What are the pros and cons of that? Have you posted any blogs on the subject? Do you have any good articles I can read so as to know how to respond to people when they say this?

I also have had people tell me that they have tried to use virtual assistants in other countries and that they experienced problems in communication because they didn’t speak good English and they also received documents that were full of language, punctuation and formatting errors. I believe you get what you pay for and I don’t know how anyone can expect to receive quality for $3.00 an hour.

I would really appreciate anything you could tell me on this subject and any blogs or articles you can refer me to. 

Thanks!

Debbie Forte

Answer

That is a great question Debbie and I will do my best to answer it for you.

My motto is and will always be, “Do What You Love and Outsource the Rest!” Now that is an easy premise for me to put forth, but what does it actually mean to the entrepreneur who badly needs ongoing assistance to build and grow their business?

As a business owner you realize by now that running a business, be it a traditional brick and mortar business or an online endeavor is one of the most time-consuming things one can think of. Your life as you knew it changed dramatically the moment you became self-employed. Being your own boss and enjoying creative freedom is for many, a dream come true. But honestly, how many hours have you spent on the dull, uninspiring, and extremely time-consuming work of keeping a business running? Across the board, entrepreneurs of all descriptions describe the biggest drawback in their business life as the drain of the daily minutia that chews through hours and drains creativity.

As a business owner, you end up wearing multiple hats. You are your own accounting department, marketing department, sales, tech support and customer care. On especially bad weeks you might find yourself spending more time on these tasks than on actual billable work.

Hiring a Virtual Assistant, someone who can take care of things you don’t have time for, can help you build and grow your business while retaining the creative passion that launched you into entrepreneurship in the first place. You can now find Virtual Assistants offering pretty much any service you might need assistance with, from administrative to social media marketing to web design.

If your business is in its infancy, or if you have a very limited budget you may be considering outsourcing some of this work to other countries. At this point, especially if you’ve read Tim Ferris’s The 4-Hour Work Week, you might be thinking about hiring an offshore Virtual Assistant, probably based in India or Philippines. You can find many of these “Virtual Assistants” on Elance.com, Guru.com and similar sites. You can also find them by performing a simple Google search by using the term “offshore Virtual Assistant”.

Offshore VAs can offer a wide variety of services, including some very technical ones such as web design. And their rates are incredibly low compared to their colleagues in the US and Canada. It is not uncommon to post an RFQ on Elance and receive bids with rates as low as $3 per hour. Virtual Assistants in the US and Canada, on the other hand, set their rates to an average of $30-35 per hour and some go as high as $70 per hour, depending on their core competencies.

Given these wildly different rates, making a choice seems like a no-brainer. Pick an offshore VA and save both time and money, right? You might feel a twinge of guilt over sending work overseas, but then you have to think of what’s best for your business, don’t you?

You’re absolutely correct – your business interests should be your top priority. That’s exactly why the “no-brainer” choice, the one based solely on cost differences, might not be a good one for your business, and may actually hurt it.

Most bestseller business books and top-of-search-engine articles on the subject will wax eloquent about all the potential benefits of cheap overseas labor. But search for “offshore outsourcing problems”, dig deeper into Elance reviews, and talk to fellow business owners who tried this option and you start getting a more balanced picture.

Most of the complaints about offshore vendors in general and Virtual Assistants in particular mention issues such as language and cultural barriers; inadequate communications from vendors; lack of experience or specific skills, especially when it comes to creative services; cost and time overruns; lack of project and process continuity; and need for close and continuous supervision.

While some services might be well-suited for offshore outsourcing, others simply are not. Consider content creation – all those articles, press releases, blog posts, newsletters that businesses now use as part of their marketing. Even if, and it’s a big if, the content is grammatically correct, there’s still the relevancy issue. It is unrealistic to expect an offshore Virtual Assistant to communicate effectively with target audiences that are distant in terms of geography, language and culture.

Cost and time overruns are not unique to offshore vendors. But they become much more difficult to control when combined with inadequate communications and cultural barriers. If choosing an offshore Virtual Assistant, you need to make sure to communicate early, often and state your concerns or requests in a very clear way, all of which can become very time-consuming.

Another very common complaint is the amount of close supervision, if not scrutiny, that is required when working with offshore assistants. Sure, even if you hire a local VA, you might have to do a bit of hand-holding at first, just so that your assistant learns the ins and outs of your business as and your management style. But any close supervision beyond this adjustment period defeats the entire purpose of hiring virtual help. Keep in mind that the VA you decide to work with is ultimately going to help you build and grow both your business and your online presence. A highly technical, highly competent Virtual Assistant actually partners with you to help you meet and exceed your business expectations. You should be able to have complete confidence that your VA is treating your business that same way she/he treats their own business. As if it was the most precious thing in the world!

The extremely low rate of offshore services is the reason behind yet another commonly-cited problem. Virtual Assistants who charge such low rates make money on volume. With hundreds and even thousands of clients and projects, they simply don’t have time to ask all the questions, review the alternatives and advise you of the best ways to handle specific tasks. Another issue is that they primarily work on one-off projects. For example, instead of dealing with just one project manager for all your tasks or projects, you might end up communicating with several people.

This is exactly the opposite of how higher-paid Virtual Assistants approach their clients’ work. Even though many accept occasional projects, they build their businesses around ongoing work with a handful of clients. These Virtual Assistants go beyond simply completing the tasks assigned to them. They approach each task while keeping the bigger picture – their clients’ business goals – in mind. As small business owners, they relate especially well to their clients’ concerns.

On the other hand, offshore VAs are mostly employees of virtual assistance companies. It is simply unrealistic to expect an employee in India to really understand the issues facing a business owner in the United States or Canada.

We all look for bargains. Keeping costs down definitely helps maintain a healthy bottom line. But when looking for a Virtual Assistant, a business owner needs to remember that a VA is much more than simply an implementer and that price and value are not the same. There are potentially many hidden costs and lost opportunities hiding behind a low rate offered by offshore Virtual Assistants.

To train with Denise Griffitts to become a highly technically savvy, highly paid, highly sought-after Virtual Assistant please visit Virtual Assistance University.

**You have permission to reprint in your publication or to your website/blog any articles by Denise Griffitts found on this Website as long as Denise Griffitt’s name and contact information is included. Denise Griffitts, Virtual Assistance Industry Expert, http://askdenisegriffitts.com, info @ virtualassistantindustry.com.

We all use them either physically or in my case, on my various desktops. Truly, I would be lost without them!

Why you should download this FREE program.

To train with Denise Griffitts to become a highly technically savvy, highly paid, highly sought-after Virtual Assistant please visit Virtual Assistance University.

These are online resources that will help you develop, gain knowledge, find new information and absorb new ideas.

Enjoy!

This Weeks Recommended Resource

WordPress Tip of the Day is a free video podcast from the “Internet Genius” Ben Cope that delivers high-quality video training for WordPress in 5 minutes or less every day in a format that is easy to follow, easy to understand, and always free!