This year I’ve discovered a “new” productivity hack, and I discovered it 35,000 feet in the air.

On a couple recent flights I found myself knocking out a ton of work during what would otherwise be “wasted” travel time.

I wrote blog posts and emails, did some editing for a client, watched a training video, and listened to podcasts.

Why is the airplane such a productive place?

My theory is that it meets many of the criteria for a successful work block:

• Limited distractions (no Internet)
• Confined space
• A looming “deadline” (landing)

So how can you emulate this without buying a plane ticket?

I think there are a couple ways to get it done.

First, turn off your WiFi.

This is probably the biggest one for me. I’m usually too cheap to splurge for the slow and often-unreliable airplane WiFi, so I’m effectively off the grid for the duration of the flight.

That means no email, no Facebook, no Twitter, no nothing.

And by default, that means more focus on what you CAN do offline.

Second, set a timer.

For years, I saw being trapped in a tiny uncomfortable airplane seat for hours as a necessary evil to get to my destination.

But I’m starting to see it as a blessing in disguise. It means I have uninterrupted time to knock out whatever I need to get done.

You can imitate this feeling on the ground by setting a timer and turning off the WiFi, and not allowing yourself to get up until you “land.”

What do you think? Do you use flying times productively, or do you think this “hack” can help you even in the office?

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I thought I was so smart when I set this up! And then it backfired horribly…

For the last couple years on the Virtual Assistant Assistant site, I’ve had a little survey tool that people could fill out and get personalized recommendations.

Each time someone completes the form, which I set up for free using Google Docs, I get an email.

Then I’d manually email them my recommendations. My process has improved over time, but was still manual.

At first, I manually wrote out the messages individually, until I’d covered each combination of answers.

After that, I’d just search my inbox for a survey response with the same answers, and copy and paste.

But searching the inbox each time was kind of a pain so I created a template file I could refer back to and copy and paste the template response each time.

But pulling up the template file grew tiresome, so I created a series of keyboard shortcuts using the Auto Text Expander plugin for Chrome.

And that’s really how I would do it. People would even give me a hard time (and rightfully so) that I didn’t have a virtual assistant on this low-level task.

A little ironic, right?

Well, a couple weeks ago I tried to get smart and figure out a way to automate and outsource this task.

Since each survey response comes in with the subject line, “New Virtual Assistant Survey Submitted”, I set up an If This Then That “recipe” to send an email to Fancy Hands each time a new message with that matching subject line hit my inbox.

Each Fancy Hands email was a new task request to their virtual assistants.

Inside the IFTTT recipe, I gave instructions for the task. I included a link to the “answer key” file in Google Docs, and asked the virtual assistant service to email the survey respondent on my behalf (cc-ing me), with the appropriate template.

What I forgot was that Fancy Hands sends a confirmation email that they received your task, using the same subject line as what you sent them.

When that confirmation message hit my inbox, because it matched the IFTTT recipe words “New Virtual Assistant Survey Submitted”, it triggered another task request email.

Which triggered another confirmation message.

Which triggered another task request.

Which triggered another confirmation message.

And on and on and on, more than 50 requests in total before I got back to my computer and could figure out what happened.

(Thankfully they refunded all those nonsense tasks.)

My fix was to disable the Fancy Hands auto-confirmation emails, and am working on tightening up my IFTTT recipe to make sure it works as intended.

Turns out, I also could have changed the subject-line in IFTTT.

I have high hopes that this automation/outsourcing combo will ultimately save some time and maybe even start a few conversations.

What do you use If This Then That for?

I know I’m barely scratching the surface of it’s automation power, but I’m eager to dive deeper into it. Definitely open to hear about any cool recipe suggestions you have, or if you like the more business-oriented Zapier more.

Let me know in the comments below!

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It’s been nearly 10 years since my first “outsourcing” experience, yet just last week I crossed a new barrier I never had before:

My inbox.

In the past, I’ve had my virtual assistant send templated messages on my behalf, but they were sent from an alias account.

We had it set up so that she could send email “as” me. To the recipient, it would look as if it had been sent by me, and replies would ping my regular inbox, but all the action was from her account.

This time around, I’m trying something a little different. I’ve given up on those faux-individual messages because they didn’t generate much response.

Instead I’ve been drafting actual personal messages, though a much lower volume of them, and still based on a pre-written template.

This has become a bit of a chore so I was excited to learn about a Gmail feature that allows you to “delegate” access to your account without sharing your password.

Look under Settings > Accounts and Import > Grant access to your account.

(Currently the user you grant access to must also be a Gmail user. In my case, we just had her create a new Gmail account for this purpose.)

There’s a high level of trust involved because now when my assistant logs in, she can see my entire inbox and 10 years of Gmail history.

But I’m betting on the fact she has better things to do than to read my mail. Let’s hope so anyway!

It’s always something I’ve been a little nervous about, but finally the frustration and pain of this repetitive task go the best of me.

So what she’s doing for me is following a process to draft emails and save them unsent. She’s filling in the to and from fields, subject lines, inserting a pre-written template, and including some research about the individual which I’ll then use to personalize the message.

It’s been only a couple days but this is already a big time-saver and headache saver. Instead of pulling information from several different sources, now I just look in my outgoing drafts, write a couple lines of personal notes, and off they go.

It’s really streamlined and only took about half an hour to set-up and train her on this task.

I can revoke access at any time.

I’m curious, have you ever delegated email access like that before?

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Do you believe in Magic?

Because that’s the name of the new texting-based virtual assistant service.

How it works is you text your requests to their special number and an anonymous virtual assistant makes it happen.

For instance, you could ask Magic to book you plane tickets, deliver groceries, or send a gift to your mom.

It’s free to sign-up and they just tack on a convenience fee to whatever purchases they make on your behalf.

To get started, just text “MAGIC” to 83489.

(I just texted and got a message back that there’s a waiting list 17,000 people deep! They say you can advance your position by tweeting about the service or skip the line entirely by paying them $100 a month.)

Apparently there’s quite a pent-up demand for this kind of service!

That response is perhaps why Fancy Hands has joined the game as well, with their new Orri app (currently only available for Android devices).

Orri works similarly, though you can also include non-purchase tasks like research, appointment-setting, and making phone calls on your behalf.

Orri is available without a Fancy Hands membership and is just billed out at a rate of $0.34 a minute.

Some are calling it a glorified Google, but I’m sure there are use-cases where it would come in handy.

Hat tip to Stephen in Detroit for letting me know about Cloe, another texting-based concierge service. Currently on wait-list as well.

What do you think? Would you use this kind of on-demand virtual assistant service?​

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Every business reaches a point where it needs to expand. This is usually great for the business; expansion means more customers, more income, and ultimately, a more successful business model. However, it comes with its own set of challenges, one of the largest of which is the need for help running the business.

If you’ve reached the ceiling of your own capacity — after all, there are only so many hours in the day — what do you do?

We’ve already covered the benefits of a virtual hire over an in-house employee, but what about another option — an intern?

If the work you need done doesn’t require specialized training, such as paperwork, filing, scheduling, or organization, maybe an intern is a reasonable option instead of a virtual assistant.

For businesses, the notion of getting potentially free help in the form of an intern is what makes the idea so attractive.

But both interns and VAs come with pros and cons, and different businesses may value one over the other — but both can be an invaluable help for your expanding business.

Hire a Virtual Assistant?

A virtual assistant is one that works from home and provides his or her services remotely, without coming in to your business’ location. Virtual assistants are usually self-employed, although there are also virtual assistant companies that oversee dozens or sometimes hundreds of VAs.

Virtual assistants work as independent contractors and not employees, which means that they offer their services to their clients and then bill them later; clients do not need to pay employee taxes, insurance, or benefits, and are not bound legally under an employer-employee relationship.

Compared to an intern, a VA will usually have several years of business experience, although backgrounds will naturally vary. They provide their services through communication means such as email, phone, fax, Skype, or online work spaces.

Although virtual assistants can perform a variety of tasks, they are best suited for work that can be done virtually, such as scheduling or organizing a calendar.

They can also conduct business calls (such as contacting clients), or do writing and work online. Virtual assistants do not take up office space and may not require as much training as an intern, and can usually be available throughout the day.

According to Chris Ducker, “I think interns tend to focus too much on ‘the experience’ and ‘learning’ rather than actually ‘performing’. I’ve had two – both didn’t work out the way I wanted / needed. So… now I hire team members!”

When I was looking to make my first hire, I explored the idea of an intern since we live very close to a community college campus. But after some research I found that a remote worker would be a better fit since I was working from my home office.

However, the lack of physical presence can be a drawback; for example, if you need to explain something in person, or have your assistant do work that can only be done in the office.

(img source)

Hire an Intern?

The other option is to hire an intern, which can be paid or unpaid. A paid internship is a temporary position that has the eventual goal of hiring the employee full-time with the company; however, this is not binding.

An unpaid intern, on the other hand, works without being compensated. Since the U.S. has stringent labor laws, unpaid internships must meet very strict requirements in order to be considered legal.

An unpaid internship must meet criteria established by the court case Walling v. Portland Terminal Co. in order to be legal by U.S. federal law; among these include the educational nature of the internship, as it must provide training to benefit the intern instead of exclusive benefits for the company.

Unpaid interns usually work in order to receive this training so that they can have experience to apply for paid positions.

In college, I had a couple paid internships and interviewed for a couple unpaid ones. Ultimately I decided against working for free even though I know the experience would have been valuable.

Interns, paid or unpaid, can do work for the business that requires an in-person presence; they can file, alphabetize, or sort paperwork, as well as maintain the office space and help with any other work around the office. Even if they don’t physically work from your office, interns are generally local hires, which may sit better with you than hiring someone overseas — especially if the rates are comparable.

Interns usually need to be trained, but once they are, they can conduct specialized work for the business.

Paid interns are usually hired by large businesses that can take on the extra cost; however, a small business can look into hiring an intern if they are looking to expand and would like to train an employee before hiring him or her full-time.

An unpaid intern can also be hired by either, and works well in an environment where he or she can receive one-on-one training.

Some of the benefits of an intern can include training an employee without having to shoulder the costs of having him or her on the payroll full-time, while that person is producing less work than he or she would after the training.

Interns can also allow for a slow ease into expansion instead of hiring multiple full-time employees at once. Because they often provide an in-person presence, communication is easier than with a virtual assistant (and there’s rarely a language barrier), and physical tasks can be carried out. However, the main drawback is training; your business will have to put in the time and effort to train the intern to perform whatever task is needed.

Scott Barlow, of Happen to Your Career, offers this advice:

“I’ve hired many more interns than I have VAs, 10 Vs 2. There is a different motivation set. Not in a good or a bad way just they want different things. Interns primary focus is to learn and gain experience.

“This can work out really well if you hire an intern that has a track record of being able to teach themself AND you are far enough along that you have clearly defined and have available for them the “training materials” they will need so it doesn’t take up all your time trying to teach them. Now obviously that last statement is also beneficial for a VA or anybody you hire.

“Interns can work well if there is potential that you might hire them afterwards in a more permanent position. This allows you to trial them at a lower rate while they are learning. Keep in mind the in the US both state level and federal level government agencies have cracked down and are in the last 18 months, really enforcing the definition of what’s considered an intern (for unpaid internships).”

Ultimately, the decision of whether to hire a virtual assistant or intern is up to each individual business. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks, but both are an essential help for an expanding business.

Your Turn

Have you worked with virtual assistants or interns?

Which did you hire? Would you make the same decision again?

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This is a guest post by Korbett Miller, a virtual manager extraordinaire.

If you need help turning your business systems into a well-oiled machine, check out his book De-Mythify: Finding Freedom in Your Small Business.

I know I have had some great experiences with hiring a virtual assistant.  I know I have also had some horrible ones as well.  When I started to create Forms and Checklists with systems I have had a great results from the people who work with me.

This reminds me of a great story from a friend of mine named Thomas. His first job was cleaning police cars in the small town where he grew up.

His instructions were minimal:

“Clean the cars and whatever you do, not get the car wet.”   

What that really meant was do not get the radio equipment wet on the inside of the cars. But when Officer Bob came back and saw that Thomas had only lightly dusted the inside and outside of the cars, he was unceremoniously relieved of his car-washing duties.

We make assumptions about our descriptions and instructions of work for our staff.

Nick’s Notes: I was definitely guilty of this with my first VA hires. I’d been doing certain tasks for years and couldn’t comprehend why my brand new hire just wasn’t getting it!

When we take the process of creating our systems very clearly for our virtual staff, it may take more time on the front end, but the time savings for you over the long haul will help immensely. Investing in your process documentation may not be the most exciting activity, but it’s one that will certainly pay off many times over.

One of the most useful ways of creating a system in your business is using Google Drive. Anyone can get a free Google Drive account with up to 15 GB of storage, which is more than enough to create  very clear standard operating procedures with pictures, videos, charts, and checklists.

The system is accessible from anywhere with an Internet connection and can be easily shared and edited amongst team members.

So what are the qualities that make up a good system?

A Good System is Teachable

A system is useless unless it is taught to others. If you make it so easy that it can be taught to someone in elementary school, it has the best chance of succeeding in the long term.

It’s almost like creating a perfect recipe. You must be able to measure the results, change the process when needed, and always be on the lookout for better ideas.

I recommend to the readers of my book to use the free Camstudio program.  I think there are some more elaborate options, but for most people Camstudio will allow them to record tasks and train their VA or staff members.

Nick’s Notes: I use Jing for videos up to 5 minutes, and Screencastomatic for longer videos.

You need to learn how to use the screen capture program. CamStudio is a free program that is available for download. All you do is record your YouTube video by creating a movie of what is going on your screen and giving a voiceover narration of the steps you are taking.

Nick’s Notes: You can set your YouTube videos to “Private” or “Unlisted” to limit who has access.

A Good System is Predictable

Are you getting the results you envisioned for your efforts?

Be very careful not to confuse activity with results. When creating a system, you should have the outcome in mind. What are you expecting the process to accomplish? You should be able to see your workplace clean, cupcakes made to specifications, error-free payroll, or whatever it is you expect.

If you are not getting the results you seek, go back to the system.

Nick’s Notes: After a few weeks of errors and “unexpected results,” I had to revisit my process documentation and teaching. I actually had my virtual assistant explain to me their system as they understood it, and filled in the gaps from there.

In my profession, I have trained police officers. When interviewed after being shot or when trying to resolve some unbelievably intense situations, almost all of them responded, “I just fell back on my training.” Amazing.

You need to create training and accountability systems to ensure that all work done in your business has predictable results.

When you delegate work to your staff, they should feel responsible for the segment they are in charge of.

Nick’s Notes: Indeed, cultivating a culture of responsibility is really important, even in a virtual team. You’ve got to find some way to make your VA care about the end result of their work and how it fits in the big picture.

A Good System is Reliable

A system can be wonderful, but only when it functions properly. Just as the phone needs to be answered appropriately and a customer complaint handled in a particular manner, systems are created for uniformity and reliability.

How do you ensure this?

Training is a crucial step that ensures the reliability of a system. In fact, when a new system is created at work, even the existing staff will need training. The role of ongoing training in the business world is enormous.

Reliability is achieved from the capacity to perform a task.  This happens only when you make sure that everyone understands the system and you have proper accountability practices (checklists) in place.

From my 18 years of being a business owner, it seems that the more cumbersome a system is, the lower the chances it gets executed as intended.

1. If it’s difficult for your staff to know when a system should be triggered, there is a low probability that it will be consistently ran.

Google Docs allows you to assign the forms to be ran by placing them in a folder.

Another way for you to make sure that the system is run consistently is to have a staff member create a bookmark for the form.

You will first need to view the live form to get the link address. Note that the staff will not be able to modify the form, unless you give them that permission. I will show you how to do that in the next section.

The live form should look like this:

Once I have created the live form, I would copy the web address.

I would have your virtual assistant create this system of folders and bookmarks to organize their tasks. (We are going to work from within the Chrome Browser for these examples, but any other browser will work as well.)

From the Chrome menu, I choose Bookmarks, then Bookmarks Manager.

I then create the TO DO folder under the Organize tab.

Once this folder is ready, your VA can drop the web address for your Google Doc Form.

For example, when your VA now opens the link in their browser, they will see the “Clean the Bathroom” instructions.

Several other strategies can be implemented using that folder.  You could create “Monday-Friday” sub-folders in “TO DO” if you have different tasks for each day of the week:

2. If there is not a way for you to check at a glance the output from a system, it will be difficult to follow up with the systems.

• You can monitor checklists remotely from your computer or tablet.
• You will be able to see if the system was run.
• You can check everything even when traveling.

If you want to check if the checklists were run, choose “View responses” from the toolbar:

When you open the form, you will see the responses in a spreadsheet. You can pan left and right with the mouse or cursor to see the responses. The first Column A is a timestamp as to when the form was submitted, so that you can see when the system was run.

I have one challenge with this though. Every time a form drops the responses in this table, it puts the new response at the bottom. I get around this by manually sorting all the data in the sheet by the timestamp column “Sort sheet Z-A.”

In teaching you how to create systems using various features, I may have inadvertently made the responses lengthier than they need to be. For most of the tasks that you ask someone to do, a simple yes or no response is perfect. It helps you get a load of information by just scanning the document. If I need the question ‘why’ answered for anything, I chat with that staff member. It’s a simple way to monitor. For each 20-step checklist, it should take your eye 5 seconds to see if there is a problem.

Your Turn

What systems or software do you use to communicate your systems and processes to your virtual assistant?

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This week I discovered a couple embarrassing bugs on two of my websites.

In the first case, the sidebar was mysteriously not showing up on certain pages.

Ugh, how long has it been like that!?

In the second case, the pagination was messed up. When you would click on “Older posts”, the URL would advance to “page-2” but the content would be the exact same as page 1!

Ugh, how long has it been like that!?

Now in the past, I’ve recommended a service called Tweaky.com for small website fixes like this. But they’ve been getting hammered in the reviews lately and apparently are re-branding into an entirely new company — Elto.com.

So I thought I’d try a different angle:

Fiverr.

(One of my favorite places to start for any outsourcing project.)

I searched for “wordpress fix” and sorted by “high rating.”

I found a couple sellers with excellent feedback to test out:

1. wordpress_seo
2. tremonty89

I was impressed!

Literally within minutes, my sidebar problem was fixed, and a few hours later, my pagination error was gone too.

Total cost: $10. (vs. what would have been a $78 minimum over at the-website-formerly-known-as Tweaky).

My new recommendation?

Check Fiverr first.

Have you had any success (or other experiences) w/ Fiverr? If so, please be sure to stop by the Fiverr page at VirtualAssistantAssistant.com and drop in a quick review!

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One of the questions I get most frequently is how to securely share your credit card details with your virtual assistant, so they can make purchases and arrange travel on your behalf.

Like any transaction — online or off — there is still a certain level of trust involved, but there are a few ways different virtual assistant companies handle your private information, and there is another way you can keep your data secure with freelance VAs as well.

Option 1: Reimbursement

The most secure way to share your credit card information is not to share it all. With the reimbursement method, your VA completes the purchase and bills you for the appropriate amount.

To prevent abuse, written confirmation should be required because you don’t want any surprises showing up their expense report.

“Last week week when you were stressed out and said you really could use a trip to Hawaii, I took the initiative and booked your plane tickets. First class, all the way!”

Fancy Hands employs a variation on the Reimbursement option that lets their team of assistants make purchases on your behalf (after written approval) using the Fancy Hands company credit card. Then, they just bill the card you have on file with them for your subscription for the amount of the purchase.

I’ve only tested this once, but it’s executed fairly well. Currently, it’s limited to transactions of $100 or less though.

Option 2: LastPass Access

LastPass is one of my favorite online tools, and it’s free! The browser add-on saves your website passwords and auto-fills login forms so you don’t need to clutter your brain with all those logins anymore. I love it.

The cool thing about LastPass is you can share your account access for certain websites securely by simply going into your LastPass Vault, selecting the site you want to share, and entering in the email of your VA. Then, when they go to the site, LastPass will help them login with your information but they’ll never see the actual password.

The way to use LastPass to have your VA make purchases on your behalf is to set them up with account access for sites where your credit card details are already stored in your account. For example, you probably already have a credit card stored with Amazon, Delta Airlines, PayPal, or any number of other sites.

For security, only the last 4 numbers of the credit card is ever visible inside those sites so your VA will be able to login and make purchases on your behalf without ever seeing the full credit card number.

Option 3: A Secure Virtual Wallet

Other VA companies have a “virtual wallet” or similarly-secured area of your profile where you can store sensitive information like passwords, credit card numbers, and frequent flyer accounts.

This data is afforded the same level of encryption as a website’s shopping cart pages, but when it comes time to make the purchase, someone from the VA company will still have to access it and be able to see the full credit card number. The security features limit access to only those who have your permission, and this method works well as long as the trust doesn’t get abused.

Option 4: Naked Trust

If you’ve been working with a freelance virtual assistant for a long time, you may trust that person implicitly. In that case, you may just read off the details of your credit card to them over the phone and have them store it in a secure place in their office.

This method was enthusiastically espoused by Kevin Zittle during the Elance Work Differently Summit I attended.

While this option seems pretty cavalier, keep in mind it’s in your VA’s interest to keep your credit card data secure as well. After all, they probably want to continue the relationship for the long term, or at least get a referral or recommendation when you’re done. If they start making unauthorized purchases, they’re burning their bridges with you and potentially jeopardizing their entire future in the industry.

Liability Protection

One last thing to note is that most credit cards now come with a zero liability fraud protection guarantee against unauthorized purchases. That doesn’t mean you still shouldn’t be careful with your credit card information, but it does mean that should your data get compromised, it probably won’t hurt you financially.

What method do you use to keep your credit card secure when working with virtual assistants?

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