Now that the blog’s been live for roughly a month, it’s time to do a review of everything that’s led up to this point. While it’s only the first month, we have plenty to go over.
For example:
How have the virtual assistants been helping?
What behind the scenes issues have there been?
Let’s review what’s worked.
First, the negatives
There was an issue between me and the other assistant, Mae.
A major communication issue.
I noticed that my writing was edited and reworked for the final publication.
From my perspective, I take pride in every single word I type onto a document. I format my content in a certain way. Blogging is a style and a skillset.
In Mae’s eyes, she was using a plugin called Yoast SEO. She decided to edit my writing to make the Yoast SEO plugin go green.
Makes sense. Yoast SEO supposedly helps you get ranked by search engines.
However, I felt that my knowledge of SEO and writing would suffice, without the use of a third party tool. Yoast SEO didn’t factor in the human behind the blog.
After a bit of back and forth, we finally came to a civilized agreement.
I focused on the writing, which is what I was hired for, and she focused on the uploading and social media, which is what she was hired for.
It was a headache, but we resolved it within the week.
Another major issue was that my client realized he couldn’t delegate EVERYTHING.
There were parts of Drip and his social media profiles that he needed to do himself.
This was a lesson in recognizing that while you could delegate almost your whole business out, you still need to put your personal touches on specific elements.
There was another communication issue as well, though this wasn’t the fault of the virtual assistants.
My client had a vision in his mind of what he wanted the aesthetic of the website and social media content to look like.
Mae chose stock photos and relevant imagery that contained virtual assistants.
My client couldn’t figure out how to communicate that his vision was less about virtual assistants, but more about buying time and delegation.
The words weren’t coming to him.
Luckily, Mae figured out precisely what he was looking for and swapped out the content. This is a testament to her skill set as a virtual assistant. She basically “read his mind” through the confusion.
Lastly, there was a struggle in the naming process of the business. He initially chose a domain that he purchased in the past, but it didn’t feel right.
Did he want to use the words ‘virtual assistant’ in the domain name?
Is there a shorter domain name that he could use?
Eventually, he felt that Deleg8te is the perfect name.
He wanted others to relate to a name where you shouldn’t be held back from what you want to execute. You can delegate your tasks out to a virtual assistant or find a way to outsource it. The word ‘delegate’ kept sticking to his mind.
Not having that perfect domain name set us back from getting content published. We needed to know what this was going to be and what it was going to look like before we pushed the work out into the world.
What did work
Despite a few shortcomings, plenty of things worked out through the first month.
Upwork, Trello, and LastPass have been great software. We’ve been communicating through Upwork’s messenger system. Trello has kept everything in one place. LastPass has kept information secure and on a need-to-know basis.
Overall, his vision is set and we put together a strong foundation for this blog to grow from, during this short first month. He’s got the domain name that he’s wanted and we’ve started to publish these blog posts.
Moving forward, we’ll be sharing knowledge and information on how to save time through delegating and outsourcing. There will be checklists, worksheets, and personal files that we’ll publish to help you understand the process of delegation.
Next month, our focus will be on fears and concerns surrounding the hiring process of working with a virtual assistant. Learning to lead and delegate is a mental journey, as well as a financial one.
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