This week’s time tip is very simple, but truly powerful.  It involves two parts:

1. Every Sunday morning spend 15 minutes reviewing your calendar for the next 2 weeks.  Make sure you have no conflicts and that you know how much free time you have.
2. Now that you’ve reviewed your schedule make sure you add something to it – time for yourself!  Even if it’s just one 15 minute block during each day, it’s very important to get that little break each day.

Hope you have a great week everyone!

You know when you get excited and passionate about an idea and you want to do everything all at once?  I felt that way about starting my virtual assistant business, but I quickly realized that you have to start with small steps, and work your way up to having everything you want.

So here are my simple suggestions for some good small steps to take for any aspiring entrepreneur.

1. Make a list of everything that you think needs to be done.
2. Break your list down into manageable tasks – for example, instead of draft business plan as one big step, try breaking it down into parts and list each part as a task
3. Prioritize your task list. Which things do you have to do to meet your legal obligations in relation to start-up? Which steps do you have to take to get the paperwork rolling?
4. Make a budget and a financial plan
5. Find a support system – whether you hire some help or find a mentor, don’t try to go it alone!
6. Work your way  through your task list a little at time. DON’T get hung up when there are things you can’t do immediately – just move on to the next task and go back later!

I’m only a couple of months into really running my business, and there are still things I’m working on. But by taking small steps I’ve been making progress every single day. Today, I networked, planned some blog posts, search for VA job postings and worked on my Elance profile.  Tomorrow I’ll do even more!

Virtual Assistants received plenty of buzz in the blogosphere this week. Check out these great posts from people who use and recommend virtual assistance as a business solution.  Then go to my main site and see the virtual services I can provide you to improve your business!

Ed Gandia posting on Freelance Switch has a great post about Outsourcing, specifically mentioning tasks that a virtual assistant can help you with.  I love the note that having a virtual assistant can help your business seem bigger and more professional than some people would expect of a solo enterprise.

Viralblog shares how hiring talented people has improved his business and suggests you hire an assistant to improve yours.

Melanie Benson Strick on the Team Double-Click blog shares 9 Simple virtual Team Outsourcing Tips

Meryl Evans on the BBP blog shares that a virtual assistant can help with transcription

On Infogle there is an interesting article called Virtual Assistant Business about the trend of hiring a VA

And on Twitter @DrMommy said

I have to tell you that VA’s are terrific!! My VA is also a
social media VA so she is fantastic!, Don’t have one?? What r u waiting for?

So, what are you waiting for?!

I’ve decided to add a new feature to my blog!

Every Tuesday I will publish a tip on time-saving. It might be about a new technology, maybe just a reminder of effective ways to utilize time, maybe I will suggest a way to multi-task.  If you have suggestions of great time-saving tips I’d love to hear them, the best way to get them to me is to dm me on Twitter @halosecretarial but you can always comment or email if you prefer.

This week’s Tuesday Time Tip is:

Keep track of your time for 2 days and see exactly where you are spending it.  Did you lose an hour to email, or get sidetracked by a colleague?  Do you spend a lot of time in meetings or on phone calls?  After you monitor your time for 2 days you need to sit down and make 3 lists.

1. Things you have to do
2. Things you can delegate
3. Things that you can eliminate

Now all you have to do is follow through (that’s the hard part – sorry!!)  And if you’re looking for someone to delegate to, remember the friendly VA who blogged this tip!!

This weekend one of the main themes in my twitter account was BlogWorld Expo 2008. I enjoyed all the information that was shared by BlogWorld attendees, via Twitter and of course on the many blog entries that have already been posted – and I’m sure there will be many more this week! My faves so far:

• All the coverage from Sparkplugging!
• This from Freelance Writing Jobs
• Missy Ward’s post incl the joys of BWE on crutches
• Rick Moran from Pajamas Media has a really detailed discussion on the changes in blogging, based on his experiences from BWE

I have only been seriously blogging since this summer, so I wasn’t aware of how exciting this conference would be – I sure hope to attend BWE 2009 though!

On the subject of conferences, I really believe they are a great way to do some in person networking, as well of course as learn some great information during actual sessions.  What do you think are THE conferences to attend during the year?  Do you prefer regional ones or ones like Blogworld that attract attendees and speakers from all over the world? Do you stick to your niche only or mix it up a little?

I think ideally I’d attend a couple of big conferences a year – one for virtual assistants maybe, or something with a legal focus, plus something like BlogWorld or BlogHer.  I also need to get out and do some networking locally, and fortunately that is easily affordable!!

Not that it matters much to me – the life of this work at home mama actuallys means I can work more on the weekends, when DH is home to help out!  I actually enjoy that though, I find it to work well around my family’s schedule. For some people, weekends are much more private and laid-back and they don’t want their work to interfere with weekend activities.

We do like to make Friday evenings a nice family time though, we let loose and stay up a little later than we do during the week.  This Friday we are even going to take the kids to a waterpark for the late afternoon and early evening since my husband has the day off of work after working away for the past week. The kids sure missed him and we’ll all enjoy having some quality time together tonight!

So I’m curious, how do you all spend your weekends?  Do you mix work and pleasure, work a ton, or keep your work confined solely to the traditional work week?  Is it a time to get together with family and friends or are you busy chauffering your kids to activities like soccer or gymnastics?  Do you unwind with some wine on Friday night or head out on the town?!!  Questions, questions!!!

Next week I’m going to start a theme/link post on Fridays.  The theme for the first week will be organization (all about getting organized so you CAN keep your weekends free if you want to) so stay tuned and have a wonderful weekend whatever you are doing!

This post from Kevin (Lexblog) at Real Lawyers Have Blogs is a great read about how Twitter can improve customer reaction to business.  And using Twitter for customer service as discussed by Kevin is exactly the kind of thing a virtual legal assistant can help you with. And let me tell you, fixing customer service issues quickly is key in the fast-paced world of the internet.  If you make a mistake, it can be tweeted, blogged and commented on before an hour is even up.  If you respond quickly, you may not only keep your customer but gain some new ones who appreciate your attention to their needs and see you as keeping up with current technology.

Want an example of poor customer service hitting the internet and spreading?  Read this post over at Mommy Needs a Cocktail – and be assured that the hotel not only lost her business, but the word is being spread out all over.  Her fellow Tweeters know about the problems she experienced, then it was blogged and then that blog was Stumbled.  Guess how many people have heard about the poor experience?

I used to hear the saying “Give a customer a good experience and they’ll tell a friend.  Give poor service and they’ll tell 10″.  Well those numbers have multiplied now – by a LOT.  So keep your customers happy whenever you can, and stay tuned in to the social networks for word being spread about your company.

Get a twitter account and follow people who mention your company. Interact with them, ask them what they want to see happening with your business.  What do they need or want?  If you know the answer you can provide it before they jump ship.  Show you appreciate them just by saying hello and letting them know you are there for them.

Another suggestion is to make sure you have several good google alerts in place that you monitor regularly.  It’s a great way to pick up on mentions of your company, your twitter name, keywords that are important in your business, and even mentions of clients or colleagues that you want to monitor.

Of course the monitoring of twitter and google alerts could arguably take up a good chunk of your time, and you still have a business to run don’t you?  That’s where a virtual assistant comes in – they can easily monitor everything and contact you when urgent things appear, and otherwise give you a summary of everything that’s going on on a regular basis. Depending on the issues you need to stay current on this may take 1-5 hours per week, but the peace of mind you are going to have is worth it, isn’t it? Not to mention the financial costs relating to negative publicity.

Take care (and hey if you are on Twitter – feel free to follow me @halosecretarial)!

I know many of you lawyers out there are realizing the advantages of blogging, every day it seems I find a new (at least new to me!) law blog out there.  Just this week I discovered Lindsey Krolik and MamaLaw.

I bet many of you are inspired by law bloggers like Grant Griffiths, Carolyn Elefant or Susan Cartier Liebel. Looking at someone else’s blog is a great starting point, but after that you still need to actually get your own blog set up, start posting and try and attract some readers. I was reading a great post today over at Chris Brogan’s blog, 50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level.  It’s great for current bloggers, but actually even better for prospective bloggers, as it is best to start out on the right foot in your blogging attempt.  You will make mistakes, we all do, but at least you can avoid some of the pitfalls.

I think all of Chris’s tips are helpful, but if you are just starting out I really, really recommend that you look at tips #4, 6, 11 and 12:

If you’re going to be a professional about your blog, carve out the time to do it right. Never, ever, ever post a “sorry I haven’t posted lately” blog post again. Ever.

It’s okay to use a personal voice. In fact, there’s no point blogging if you’re going to write like a cold robot. But keep personal and useful in balance.

Get your own unique URL. It matters in the long run, especially should you choose to change hosts. For instance, if you move off a blogger account at *.blogspot.com , you lose all link equity and page rank for that domain. This means you’d have to start again from scratch.

Consider moving to a hosted blog

I regularly search for new law blogs to follow in my google reader and I can say that irregular posting and lack of personal voice are two things I notice far too often.  Not much point in subscribing to your blog if you only post 4 times per year or you only post reprints of decisions.  Add some commentary, add your opinion, post at least once a week if you can – and more is better!

As for the unique url/hosted blog – really it’s important people.  There are options that aren’t quite the same but pretty good, but if you go with them (ie a site like typepad) you can find yourself stuck there because you don’t want to lose your traffic later.   And while I think Typepad has a lot of benefits, it’s not cheap, especially if you decide to go with something past their “basic” offering.  If you find a reasonable host and do your own wordpress, moveable type or something newer like Habari it can cost you around $100 to $150 a year, including your domain name! And there are some beautiful free themes available (I love these ones!) Currently I use wordpress and LOVE it – I had no html/css type of knowledge before and yet in a very short time I learned to manage and update my wordpress and even alter my themes a little!

Good luck in your blogging journey!

I was on Twitter earlier today, checking out some new followers and I have to send a quick thanks out to a couple of the lawyers I noticed following me today (yep that’s you Stephanie Caballero, Gerry Riskin and Adam Dlin)!  It’s nice to think I’m starting to reach some of my target audience!  (**found out that my new followers are courtesy of this great post at JDScoop!)

Also on Twitter today I found this article about Twitter!  It’s a great read, especially if you are new to my favorite microblogging/social networking platform.  There is one point in particular I think we all need to remember when using ANY new tool, it takes time to see results.  As noted in the article:

many professionals consider Twitter pretty much worthless on first look. But those who stay for about a month start understanding the value. I didn’t think much of Twitter for 60 days, until my casual mention that I was in Boston landed me a dinner with a nearby friend who saw my post. Since then, I have been invited to speaking engagements in five countries and even get to write a guest column for a prestigious old media publication.

Remember that old, old saying – good things come to those who wait.  Twitter is definitely like that – you don’t get 1000 followers in your first week (not usually anyway!) and you don’t make sales left, right and centre.  But if you interact with your customers and have some patience Twitter will be good for business!

If you are interested check it out and feel free to follow me on Twitter!

Thanks to Jordan Furlong of Law 21, I found this recent article from the American Bar Association, which is very positive sign of the growing acceptance of legal outsourcing, including outsourcing to non-lawyer support staff such as virtual legal assistants and virtual paralegals.

Lawyers with concerns about the ethics should be reassured by the ABA’s opinion on the matter.  A couple of points noted in the ABA article:

U.S. lawyers are free to outsource legal work, including to lawyers or nonlawyers outside the country, if they adhere to ethics rules requiring competence, supervision, protection of confidential information, reasonable fees and not assisting unauthorized practice of law.

And this:

Outsourcing can reduce client costs and enable small firms to provide labor intensive services such as large, discovery intense litigation, even though the firms might not maintain sufficient ongoing staff to handle the work, according to a new ethics opinion issued today.   Ethics Opinion 08-451 details ethics obligations of lawyers and firms that do elect to outsource legal work.

With a recognition of the cost benefits to law firms AND approval as to the ethics of legal outsourcing I think more and more lawfirms will start to take advantage of outsourcing arrangements.  2009 may just be a real turning point in the outsourcing field.