Episode 323: 3 Strategies to Help You Save Time in Your Virtual Assistant Business

Full Episode Transcription:

Arianna Vernier: Now, there are two things that you can invest into your business. Money and or time. Now, money can always, you can always get that back. I know you might not believe me, but that’s true. You can always make more money, but you cannot get back your time. So if you want to save time and replace your income faster, so you can be home with your babies, do the things you love to do and just have more time, then you’re going to need to invest in the skills to do it faster with less mistakes. So in this episode, I’ll be teaching you how to regain control with these three essential steps to get organized and become super productive in your virtual assistant business. These techniques will help you efficiently manage your work from home life so you can have more time to enjoy the things that truly matter to you.

Number one is prioritizing and breaking down your tasks so you can get organized. The first step to organizing your virtual assistant business is to prioritize and break down your tasks. To get yourself organized. So you can do a brain dump and make a list of all of the reoccurring daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that you do to manage your business. Then you want to organize those tasks so you can put similar tasks together and write out an estimate for how long it will take you. So for example, when I. Obviously, I record a lot of podcast episodes for y’all. I have what I need to do for each episode Broken down into a list of tasks. I have similar tasks grouped together So like right now i’m batch recording a couple episodes for y’all And then next week when I do my podcasting block I will write out show notes for the next batch and then the following week I will schedule any social media stuff I need to do, etc. So instead of doing, you know, one episode where I’m like recording it and then doing the emails and then doing the social media and then doing the show notes and then doing the next episode the same process I chunk it into similar tasks altogether so I can stay in that same zone. So it’s easier, it’s a lot easier for me to record a couple episodes all at once rather than just doing one and then doing another one a few days later etc. So you want to think about how can you group similar tasks together so that your brain can stay in that same zone and you’ll be a lot more efficient that way. Now this step is really critical. You have to map out your tasks so that you know what you’re supposed to be doing when you sit down to work. If you have no idea what your tasks even are, just start by making an inventory of what you did in your business today, yesterday, last week. Looking backwards is really helpful so you can see what you’ve been doing and then you can identify those daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that you do on a repeat basis.

Alright, the second strategy to help you save time in your virtual assistant business is to get organized by scheduling your time. Having a structured and organized schedule is really essential to make the best use of your time. Now this doesn’t mean it has to be super like, Rigid and not flexible because if you have kids, you know Nothing ever goes exactly to plan But at least having a layout for what you want how you want things to go Is going to help you and then when things go awry like they always do you should be able to easily kind of shift things around. If you can’t because your week is so so busy, then it’s probably start, it’s probably time to start saying no to some things and prioritizing what’s actually important to you. Now as a work from home mom, it can be kind of difficult to separate your work from your personal responsibilities and I totally get that, but creating a schedule that’s both realistic and flexible We’ll help you find that balance. So there’s two things that I recommend doing to help you when you’re scheduling your time. Number one is using a digital planner to schedule out tasks and set deadlines for yourself. Number two is using an actual paper planner to Write out, like, what your time blocks actually are. So, for the actual tasks I’m doing in my business, all the tasks that you mapped out in strategy number one, the reoccurring tasks, I have those all written out in my digital task management program.

I use Trello. Then I also, for my time blocks of like when I’m actually going to work, when I’m with my kids, when I’m doing whatever event throughout the week, that stuff I write in my Horatio Planner from Horatio Printing. You can look them up. H O R A C I O. It’s an amazing planner. Absolutely love it. But that allows me to see at a glance what my week looks like when I’m working. During my work blocks, that’s when I go to my Trello board to see, okay, what am I actually doing during this work block? Now, if you want, To get your hands on my personal Trello board that I use for my business every week, you can go to ariannavernier.com/free-weekly-planner, and you can literally get a free copy of my weekly planner that I use with Trello. Now, when you have these time blocks, it’s important to set really firm boundaries so that you can keep your personal life and your work life separate. I know if your kids are home with you, you’re probably just working in pockets of your day, but you just want to make sure that you’re not working when you should be focused on your kids and vice versa. So, I know we’re all, as moms, really great at multitasking, but it’s, when you multitask, it’s actually keeping you from doing your best work because you’re not super focused. So as much as you can, try to separate the two and hold those firm boundaries so that your kids don’t see you working 24 7. All right, strategy number three to help you save time in your virtual assistant business is to automate. So tasks that are on repeat, you need to automate them in some way or. If you can remove them from your plate completely. So automation can be your best friend when you, in helping you manage your virtual assistant business a lot more efficiently. It will give you the time and space to get organized in your business. and just be able to breathe. So go ahead and look at your inventory from step one of all the tasks that you wrote out that you do on a repeat basis and find the tasks that you can automate such as social media posting, email marketing, invoicing. There are a ton of different tools and softwares available that will help you manage and automate different parts of your virtual system business.

I have multiple different episodes that talk more about Dubsado, using that to automate your business, scheduling social media, etc. So you can go and find those and listen to those. But by automating repetitive tasks you’re going to free up more time to be able to focus on the aspects of your business that actually matter and that move the needle forward for you. Such as planning, reaching out to new clients, figuring out new strategies. Things like that. So I hope that these tips helped you to get more organized in your virtual assistant business and By prioritizing your tasks scheduling your time effectively and using automation You can really create an organized and productive virtual assistant business that will allow you to just work a few hours a week You know 10 to 15 hours a week but actually See that income level rise and that time freedom rise and all the things. Now if you want help actually honing in on Your business and getting it automated getting these time strategies set up somebody walking hand in hand with you through this I invite you to come and join us in the scaling virtual assistant mastermind In this mastermind, it’s just a select small group of people, and I will have my hands in your business walking you through figuring out what services you want to be offering, how to package them in the most successful way, and Just helping you really streamline your business, focus on what matters and all of the things. So go check it out at ariannavernier.com/mastermind. You can also find that link in the show notes, but I’m so excited to partner with you and help you to grow this virtual assistant business. To the heights that you’re dreaming of. All right, y’all. Thank you so much for listening to this episode and we will see you next time.