Growing my VA business with Get Clients Now!
Get Clients Now!, by CJ Hayden, outlines a 28 day program designed to help you find clients for your service business. This post, however, is not a book or program review. It is a record of what I learn as I work through the program to see if the program will help me get clients now.
I started the program in mid-May, when a post appeared on the Virtual Assistant Forum about a reading group forming to go through the book and work the program. One thing the book notes is that it is better to work the program with a group, so you have support and encouragement. I don’t often participate in reading groups because I usually find I don’t have the time to keep up with the reading or work involved. But something told me this would be a great opportunity, so I signed on. One of the best decisions I’ve made this year!
To work the program you first choose which area you are stuck in. For me, as a new business, owner, I need to fill the pipeline with potential clients to contact and with referral sources. For more details on areas you may be stuck in, and on the ingredients to select to get you out, please see the web site where you can download the table of contents and a sample chapter.
So far, my group has had three weekly calls on Skype. (Not only have I been working the program, I’ve also had the chance to learn Skype!) I really look forward to these calls; they have been very supportive, informative, and a lot of fun! I have a feeling that we’ll continue to be a support group for each other after we finish the program.
For the first call, we read the first 3 chapters of the book, and completed the first half of the action plan. There was a lot of information there, but overall, it was easy to do. For our second call, we read the fourth chapter and finished the action plan. This is where it got more challenging. Trying to narrow down the areas we were going to focus on to help me reach my goal was hard – there were so many that I was either interested in or believed I needed to do to get my business off the ground. After much reflection, I selected the correct number and was ready to begin.
What do I think of the program so far? I like it! It is very straightforward, and can be adapted to focus on the area you are stuck in, and pick success ingredients that play to your strengths. I can see returning to the program as my business grows and I need to work another area.
And now we are actually working the program – I’ll talk about how it is going in the next post…..
Updating Your Thinking
Have you ever realized that a thought you’ve had for awhile, possibly for years, wasn’t really working? That there was another way to look at the situation that had never occurred to you before?
Well it happened to me last week. Nearly two years ago I received a gift of a coffee maker. This was a “fancy” one, complete with a built in grinder. I would have never purchased it for myself, since I had a separate grinder that worked quite well, but it was a gift from a good friend who knew I loved my morning coffee, and who had – and loved – the same coffee maker.
I also knew that her grinder had stopped working after a year and she had to purchase another one, so I decided to keep my old coffee maker “just in case” mine broke. My old one also had an espresso maker on it, and even thought I only used it a couple of times, I wanted to keep it “just in case” I decided to make espresso.
Do you see where this is going? It FINALLY occurred to me that if the grinder breaks (and it hasn’t in nearly two years of daily use), the coffee maker will still work, and I can grind my beans with my small grinder (yes, I still have it). I also had not even thought of pulling the old one out to make an espresso. I don’t drink espresso that often; if I want one I’ll head down the street to a coffee shop and let them make it.
My old coffee maker, which still worked very well, was simply taking up space in my home. So I loaded the coffee maker in my car along with some other items I was ready to let go of, and took them to a local donation center.
It felt good to let it go—–but I also felt a bit foolish for not realizing the options I had earlier. So I am trying to learn from that, and I am taking a hard look at many things and thoughts in my life, to see which ones are no longer true for my life.
How about you? What thoughts are you holding on to that you can let go of? Are you a small business owner who thinks you have to do it all yourself because no one else would give it the proper attention? That you cannot afford to hire anyone to help you? That spending your valuable time doing tasks you hate is better than handing it off to someone else, allowing you to focus on what you do enjoy?
Hiring a Virtual Assistant is something worth thinking about. A VA may be more affordable than you think, and certainly more affordable than hiring an employee. Think about it – you don’t pay for vacations, holidays, or lunch breaks. Since a VA is an independent contractor, they depend upon doing a good job to receive repeat business and referrals.
Consider giving you thinking an update. Consider a Virtual Assistant to help take care of tasks that you don’t enjoy, freeing your time on what you went into business for in the first place.
