While Freelancing is becoming more popular, especially in today’s almost-post pandemic world, there are still some myths out there about working with a Freelance Admin.
Today, I am sharing my thoughts behind the six most common myths that I have come across.
Welcome back to GinAdmin! I’m Gina Koran and as always, I will be your “hostess with the mostest” coffee! Thanks for coming along on my coffee-fueled journey…let’s jump right into those myths!
Freelancers are only good for one-off projects.
Yes. You certainly can hire a Freelancer for a one-off project, IF that is what you’re looking for.
However, most people who work with a Freelance Admin find that they have knowledge in so many areas that they can turn over more than just a one-time project.
OR, they can use a Freelancer when they DO have a single project that they need help with.
What most business owners find is that by turning over not just everyday tasks, they free up time and energy by hiring a Freelance Admin!
Within the next decade freelance workers will outnumber traditional salaried employees., Adam Heitzman, Co-Founder, Higher Visibility
Okay, sure you can pass on that busy work to your Freelancer. But typically, Freelancers have such a wide knowledge base that you will find that, again you can also pass on other, bigger tasks to your Freelance Admin to put some time back into your schedule!
I’m sensing a trend here! (wink)
Freelancers aren’t skilled, otherwise they’d be working a “job” for a big company
Most Freelance Admins come from some type of “corporate” background.
Having been a corporate admin for (way too) many years, I can tell you that having a “job” for a big company is not so much something I want to go back to. I find much more satisfaction in working independently with companies I choose to work with, especially small business owners.
Why small business owners? Thanks for asking! I love working with small business owners because they are still intimately involved in the daily running of their business. They are still in the trenches, so to speak. They are still passionate about their business.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to sound as if I am speaking poorly of large corporations. It’s just that having been in that world, I simply and personally enjoy and prefer working with small business owners.
On the skill side, Freelancing is so popular right now and there are so many places for Freelancers to gain knowledge that this is a big pile of myth nonsense. Plus, there are so many online communities for Freelancers, that the knowledge-base we have to draw on is truly impressive.
There are many myths of working with a Freelance Admin! Freelance Admins have great work ethic, skills and loyalty to their clients.
Freelancers lack true work ethic
The majority of the Freelancers I personally know work more hours every week than your average employee.
This comes not only from the fact that we take great pride in our work, but very likely – you are not our ONLY client, so we have to schedule our time to make sure we finish the work we’re given.
Plus, we know that if we don’t do the work we’re contracted to do, we can lose that contract. And that’s just bad business.
And because we ourselves are business owners, we tend to put forth the effort it takes to keep the trust of those who have hired us!
Freelancers aren’t employees, so they have no commitment/loyalty to the company
Again, those Freelancers I know take great pride in working with the business owners who put their trust in them to get the job done.
So I simply call hogwash on that myth.
Companies that encourage the use of freelancers will benefit from the increased access to skilled talent and more workforce flexibility, while those that ignore freelancers will inevitably fall behind.
As a small business owner, I can’t afford to hire a freelancer
This is probably one of the things I hear most from small business owners that I talk to. And yes, when you are first starting out on your business-ownership journey, hiring ANYONE can feel like a huge expense.
There are three major points I share with the small business owners that I approach about working with me.
First, you cannot do all of the things all of the time over a long period of time. You will burn yourself out and start to resent the very business you started. I have watched this happen to many small business owners.
And as a Freelancer, it is painful for me to see this happen when I KNOW I can help them. It is especially painful when they have previously said “No, thanks” when I offered my services.
The second point I make is that by hiring someone to do the background work, it frees them up to focus on building their business. Which is the goal, right? You want to BUILD.
Which feeds into my third point, and that is that once you have built your business with a solid foundation, eventually you’re going to need to hire SOMEONE. That someone is going to require benefits, supplies, office space, breaks, vacation time. All the things that go along with hiring employees.
Plus, that employee will not have first-hand knowledge of the background of your business.
When you hire a Freelance Admin, you are strictly paying for the work they are doing for you, so no benefits, etc. And by working with them when you are starting out, they have first-hand, working knowledge of how you want things done! There is no learning-curve by having to hire an admin later and take the time to walk them through every step.
By busting through the myths of working with a Freelance Admin, small business owners can gain some insight into how they can work smarter, not harder!
So when a small business owner tells me they cannot afford to hire a Freelance Admin, my question is: Can you really afford NOT to work with me?
And there you have it. One woman’s opinion on the 6 biggest myths of working with a Freelance Admin.
As always, thanks for stopping by! And I would love to hear from you – the good, the bad, the ugly – so feel free to leave me a comment below. Or pop on over to www.ginadmin.com/contact and schedule a time for a chat!
Outsourcing tasks to a Freelance Social Media VA is a big decision. Is it right for your business?
I get that many entrepreneurs don’t like the idea of outsourcing. I think that this is mostly due to not understanding how outsourcing tasks to a Freelancer can actually be a very smart business decision. Today, I’m going to share ten reasons why I believe outsourcing to a Freelancer can benefit both you AND your business.
Welcome to, or back to, the GinAdmin Blog. My name is Gina Koran and I’ll be your host on this journey into Outsourcing Tasks to a Freelance Admin, sometimes referred to as a Virtual Assistant. I appreciate you taking the time to stop by and see what insight my coffee-fueled brain can share with you!
And while I’m thinking of it, in my last article we talked about creating new habits. In case you missed it, you can find it here: https://ginadmin.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=244&action=edit. Well, it’s been 21 days…have you created any new habits? Let me know in the comments.
So, let’s get started…
#1: Get Your Focus Back
“Once upon a time”…chances are, you started your business because you like to do one or two things and you do them well. Whatever your widget is, it’s your “Zone of Genius” and you love it. Doing it lights you up like nothing else.
But when you’re running a business, you can begin wearing so many hats that you forget about your first love. That widget. The very reason you started your business in the first place gets pushed to the back burner as you put out a million other fires.
Forbes Magazine published an article about working with virtual assistants. There, they talk about how, by working with your VA, you can optimize your processes. In turn, this allows you to get your focus back on the business of building your widget.
Working hand-in-hand with a virtual assistant can be a step forward in the optimization of many of your company’s processes.
Once you outsource and train your Freelance Admin, you have time to focus again. You can spend more of your energy doing the things you love in your business. You’ll also find that by outsourcing, you’re going to be more productive because you can focus on that widget!
#2: Level-Up Areas of Your Business
There are always areas of your business where you know you could be doing better. Maybe you struggle with creating social media posts and graphics to showcase your widget.
When you work with a Freelance Admin, you can level-up these areas of your business. It’s important to look at where you need the most help before you choose to bring on a new team member. If you’re already strong with writing copy, then look for a Freelancer that’s strong in an area such as graphics.
Spending time in the areas that are your business cornerstones, you’ll find that what you’re outsourcing will actually help to grow your business!
#3: Create Time in Your Calendar
What would YOU do with more time in your day that you could gain by outsourcing tasks to a Freelance Admin?
Many entrepreneurs have too much on their plate. Too much everything – except time. If you’ve noticed that your days are packed with back-to-back tasks, meetings, and appointments, then you could likely benefit from outsourcing to a Freelance Admin.
While it’s understandable to have busy seasons in your business, it can become draining and overwhelming if these seasons last for long periods. You can decrease the overwhelm and energy-drain by working with a Freelance Admin. Think of it this way, handing over day-to-day tasks that will free up time in your calendar!
Jen Glantz, an entrepreneur and the founder of Bridesmaid for Hire, wrote an article about how she was spending so much of her time on tasks that were taking her away from building her business. She decided to hire freelancers to take on some of that weight so that she could focus on higher-priority items.
“After a few months of tracking how I spent my time during the workday, I realized that more than 25% of my time was spent on tasks that weren’t a high priority.”
Business owners, especially small business, owners tend to feel that they need to “wear all the hats” and “do all the things”. While this might seem like a money-saving option, it’s actually taking you away from focusing on the bigger-picture areas that you need to work on to grow your business.
#4: Lower Your Costs
Sometimes, the resistance to outsourcing is because of costs. You worry that you can’t afford the experienced Freelancer who would help with your marketing, for instance.
But think about this:
If you sit down and figure that you get paid, for example, $200 an hour to build your widgets, but you often spend ten hours or more a week frustrated by…let’s say marketing as an example, then you’re spending roughly $2,000 a week in valuable time frustrated when you could be making money from your widgets.
Suddenly, paying a Freelancer doesn’t seem so outrageous!
#5: Grow Your Business
Another advantage of outsourcing is that you can focus on growing your business in new and exciting ways. An experienced Freelancer can bring fresh ideas that maybe you hadn’t thought of. Or they may have experience in areas that you don’t and they can help you expand into that area.
In an article by BusinessWire, the CEO of Worksome explains how companies that are willing to consider working with Freelancers will be better equipped to face the changing future of work. Especially as we start to come out of the current world situation we are in.
Corporations that have the foresight and flexibility to engage with this ever-growing pool of contracted talent will find themselves able to better adapt to the changing future of work.
The result of working with Freelancers is a business that can expand in ways you’d only dreamed of before.
#6: Get Early Feedback on Ideas
You can also use outsourcing to get early feedback on ideas. Maybe the first few widgets you launched flopped because you weren’t in touch with what the market wanted. Or maybe your presentation wasn’t what customers expected.
With outsourcing, you can have a Freelance Admin do early research. This allows you to shape your widgets in a way that they’re more likely to appeal to your market.
For example, you might have your Freelancer compile a list of the top 5 widgets that are similar to yours. They can compare the widgets and point out what you can change to make it more marketable. You can use the time it would have taken you to do that research to work on other areas of your business. Plus you’ll have the information you need to make a more competitive widget.
I currently work with a client that will come up with an idea and he’ll send me an email or a text message with the basic idea and ask me to do some research. If it seems like it could be something that will help build his customer base, my job is to come up with a plan for marketing that idea. Whether it’s handing out flyers to customers, writing a blog post, splashing it on social media…whatever is going to be the best benefit for his company.
By handing all that over to me, he can focus on what’s ALREADY working. And I can come up with how to make this new idea work for him!
#7: Create a Better Customer Experience
Ensuring your customers’ experience is positive on your website keeps them on your page longer, and more likely to make a purchase! You can easily outsource this task to a Freelance Admin!
If you’ve been running your business solo for a long time, it’s possible you may have lost touch with what the customer experience is like for someone who makes a purchase from you.
You can have your Freelance Admin audit the system and go through making test purchases. Then they can give you feedback on what the experience was like and how it could be smoother.
One of my clients has me go through his entire website monthly. My job is to click on each and every link to make sure they all still work. Any broken links can be fixed, ensuring his customers have the best buying experience. He understands that broken links will turn customers away very quickly.
This task takes me about 45 minutes…but that’s time he can focus on building a better widget!
#8: Keep Up with Industry Trends
When you have a Freelancer who has your back, you’re free to explore new industry trends. You can look around at what others are doing and analyze how your brand could do it differently or do it better.
Maybe with the time your Freelance Admin is freeing up for you, you can attend some Trade Shows and find those trends!
#9: Stay Compliant
You may also want to consider outsourcing if you struggle to stay compliant with standards in your industry. Your Freelance Admin can research those issues. They can possibly find you workshops or courses that will keep you up-to-date with the compliance issues in the Widget World!
It’s important to find a balance between your work and your life to prevent burnout! Outsourcing tasks to a Freelance Admin can help!
#10: Get Your Work-Life Balance Back
Perhaps the biggest benefit of outsourcing is that it can give you back your work-life balance. Instead of worrying over whether that task got completed or what you need to focus on tomorrow while you’re at your kid’s soccer game, or dealing with client deadlines while you’re sick, you have someone to help you.
When you’re working with a Freelancer, you can focus on taking a step back when life or your health demands it. You can do this without guilt or hesitation. All because you know you’ve left those tasks in the capable hands of your Freelance Admin.
The bottom line is that outsourcing can be a wonderful way to get relief from overwhelm. And create more of what you want in your life. Time. Don’t be afraid to consider the benefits of what it can do for you AND your business!
I’d love to hear from you – what tasks could you outsource that would benefit you and your business? Leave me a comment!
And if you’d like to know what GinAdmin can do to make your life easier, hit me up and let’s chat! Head on over to my contact page and send me a message! http://www.ginadmin.com/#contact
Welcome back to the GinAdmin Blog…I’m Gina Koran, your host and as always, I appreciate you visiting my page!
Today I want to revisit Creating New Habits!
I’ve never been a New Year’s Resolution person. I’m more of a goals person, so this post will revolve around that.
As a Freelancer, I know that there are some things that other Freelancers like myself, as well as business owners and entrepreneurs would like to change in order to achieve the goals we’ve set for our business and personal lives.
And some of that revolves around creating new habits.
We’ve all wanted to change our behavior for the better and create new habits for ourselves somewhere along the way.
Maybe you want to eat healthier and drink more water. Or it could be moving more and taking the dog for a daily walk, which by the way…my pup INSISTS on several times a day, even in the current frigid temps!
Or it could be work related, or spiritual, or… There are just so many areas in our lives that could be improved and made easier if we created new habits.
And I get it – getting into the habit of doing something outside our norm is often easier said than done. We seem to acquire bad habits without any effort, but getting into a “good” habit can be a little more challenging.
You know the mysterious “They”? Well “They” say it takes 21 days to create a new habit. Weird, to think that it doesn’t take that long to form a bad habit. And sometimes no matter how hard we try, it takes us a lot longer to form a new habit.
So how long does it REALLY take to create a new habit?
The “Mom” answer is that it depends.
It depends on your mindset and it depends on how big of a change you want to make from what you are doing now. Brian Tracy has a great post about developing new habits, and in that article he explains that while 21 days is the scientific answer, the bigger the goal, the longer it may take to achieve.
According to the experts, it takes about 21 days to break or form a habit pattern of medium complexity. Habits which are more complex or difficult to incorporate with your lifestyle may take longer.
Remember, it’s different from one person to the next and even from one habit to another.
There are a couple things to keep in mind.
It’s easier to create a new habit than it is to get rid of an old one.
Be prepared to work a lot harder to give up checking your email every 2 minutes or snacking late at night.
Whenever possible, try to replace an old habit with a new one…if you’re wanting to give up coffee, brew a cup of herbal tea in the morning and throughout the day when you would usually reach for your cup of Joe. And just so my friends reading this don’t pass out – giving up coffee is NOT one of my goals.
I have, however, cut back a bit on my pot and a half a day habit. I can quit whenever I want. Harharhar
Create a Vision Board
Keep your goals in front of you as a constant reminder of why you’re creating a new habit.
A constant reminder of why you’re trying to change your behavior is also helpful.
Keep your “reason why you’re changing “Why” front and center and then be prepared to stick it out.
I am a maniac for putting pictures of my goals in front of me, even sometimes on my computer’s desktop so that I am constantly looking at it and remembering why I’m doing what I’m doing.
And yes–it will take some time to make new habits and replace old ones. But it will be worth it in the end.
3 STEPS TO CREATE A NEW HABIT
The first step is to decide what you want that new habit to be. And you have to be specific–you can’t just say that you want to exercise more. Instead, make your goal something like “I will go for a 30 minute walk every single day”.
Deciding what your new habit will be and committing to when and how you’re going to do it is half the battle.
For me, this is a simple one: I’m going to get up every hour and MOVE. Whether it’s to walk out and check on my husband and the dog to see what they’re doing or do a little dance to the music playing in my head.
Ok, to be fair…it’s probably going to be a trip to the coffee pot, but hey…baby steps, right?
Set an alarm to remind yourself to take the necessary steps toward creating your new habit.
For the first few days, it’s going to be smooth sailing. You’re motivated and excited to get this done. Sticking to your new habit isn’t an issue. But after those first few days, you’ll notice that it’s easy to slip back into old habits.
Maybe it’s raining and you don’t really want to go out and walk. Or maybe your day just gets away from you. This is when it’s important to have a reminder.
This is the second step: Set an alert on your phone or add the new habit to your daily task list.
And I’m with you, believe me…I get it. I’ve set my alarm to remind me to get up from my desk and move around. I turn the alarm off and tell myself I’ll just finish this one teeny, tiny, little task. And (as that famous chef says) BAM…it’s 40 minutes later and I never once moved from my chair.
How am I going to get around this? For starters, I’m setting my alarm to be the absolute, most obnoxious, hard-to-ignore noise. I can also “name” my alarm on my phone, so I’ll name it something that will remind me that if I DON’T get up and move, my cranky back and bum hip will remind me ALL NIGHT that I ignored that alarm.
If you’re not good with alarms, schedule your new habits or make them part of your daily to-do list until they become something you do automatically.
My digital calendar allows me to create reminders and a task list. Maybe that will work better for you – just remember to check your list (wink).
Maybe it would be helpful to you if you add the new habit to one you already have. Let’s say you fix a cup of tea or coffee at 4pm, and you want to get in the habit of taking a daily walk. Make the new ritual to go for your walk and THEN come back and enjoy your tea. Then it seems like a reward for completing that “task”.
Choose an accountability partner to help you create a new habit
I find that having an accountability partner helps me the most, and this is step 3.
When I have someone who knows what I am trying to do and will call me out on it, I tend to not want to have to say to them, No…didn’t do that today. It’s easy to tell MYSELF, but when I have to tell SOMEONE ELSE that I didn’t stick to it, I find that I push myself harder to complete a task.
Remember – It’s going to take some time before this new behavior becomes a true habit. If you miss a day, give yourself a break.
Tomorrow, maybe go for TWO walks. Making this new behavior part of your daily routine is going to help you make it a permanent habit, so set those alarms and find yourself a good accountability partner!
I’d love to hear what habit you want to create, or maybe already have…leave me a comment! I’ll cheer you on!
And if you would like to know more about how GinAdmin can help you in achieving your business goals, head on over to GinAdmin.com and find out how I can make your job easier!
Welcome to the very first Blog Post from GinAdmin! My name is Gina Koran ~ and I’ll be your host. For those who don’t know me, or maybe don’t know my background, I’ve been in some type of administrative role for, well…let’s just say a while.
I left the corporate world to be my husband’s office manager, and since then his business has become nearly 100% digital, so basically myrole is to check his messages and a couple to-do’s every morning…and that’s it.
A couple years ago, I was helping my best friend (who is so completely NOT tech-savvy) build her online presence. I was having such an absolute ball coming up with ideas and getting her digital footprint out there, that my husband suggested to me that maybe there were others out there who could use the same help.
And here I am…with my own Virtual Assistant business – and absolutely LOVING the Freelance world.
Now those of you who know me know that while I AM an introvert, I do enjoy trying new things. However, writing a blog was NEVER on my bucket list, but it’s the first step I am taking outside of my comfort zone.
I hope that I can bring you some great ideas, tips, juicy tidbits of information~after all, my tagline IS “My job is to make yours easier”.
So sit back, grab your cup of tea or coffee and enjoy. And if you have something you’d like me to share in a future post, feel free to contact me!
Ok, here we go…
When I was researching what to write about for my first post, I came across this headline from StatusBrew:`
The article was written in 2017, but I can promise you through my own research that these problems are thesame today as they were the day it was written! If you are interested in reading the entire article, you can find it here: https://statusbrew.com/insights/small-business-problems/
6 Small Business Problems Faced By Entrepreneurs
According to StatusBrew, these are the 6 areas where small businesses and entrepreneurs find they need the most help:
Lack Of Proper Marketing.
Getting And Retaining Customers.
Money Management.
Maintaining Online Presence.
Time Management.
Social Media Management Tools.
Now, I’m going to tell you that Money Management…not my area of expertise. I’m fortunate that I’m married to one who takes money management seriously and IS the expert.
However, marketing, getting customers, maintaining your online presence… those I CAN help you with… and along with that, I can help with the time management aspect. How? By freeing up your time taking care of your online presence for you!
And yes, you absolutely CAN do it all yourself, unless you’re my best friend who asked me to explain this “social media thing” to her. (sigh)
But let me ask you this. As a business owner, is it the best use of your time to sit down day after day and come up with content to post?
To decide WHICH platforms you should be posting on?
What days and times are best to post?
AND make images to go along with each post? Because images are king on social media.
What size do those images need to be?
Do me a favor – sit down and figure out how much per hour you charge for making widgets (whatever it is you do for your customers). I have a client that knows to the penny how much she gets paid per widget, per client. And when she looked at some of her administrative tasks, she was like… yeah, I can outsource that. Because she understands that her time is better spent making widgets, not sitting at her desk creating social media posts and all those things the she now leaves to me.
As a business owner, you understand that time is money. So the question is: Where are you spending your time?
Check out the information I read in “US finds exponential growth in freelancers, with no signs of stopping” from Digital Information World:
Upwork recently published its data on how the freelancing market is moving forward. The report shows that about 59 million Americans in the past 12 months provided their services as a freelancer. That represents around 1/3rd of the entire workforce of America.
What this tells us is that Business Owners KNOW that they’re having to do more with less. Has this been going on for years? Yes. However, business owners and entrepreneurs have become EVEN MORE aware of since the pandemic has increasingly pulled people out of the workforce, forcing those entrepreneurs to find other ways to get the job done.
Now, I don’t claim to have all the answers. But what I can tell you is what my clients tell me. And that is that outsourcing to freelancers has become the way to go for many of them. In addition to the time savings, look at the financial savings:
No employee-related paperwork, insurance, taxes, retirement. Freelancer pay these for themselves.
No office space or supply/equipment expenses. Freelancers already have their own.
No paying an 8-hour wage. You get the support when and as you need it.
Go back to my favor (remember you were going to figure out how much you make selling your widgets…)
Now I want you to figure out how much time you’re spending on those pesky administrative tasks…and how many more widgets you could make and sell if you had a Freelancer doing those things for you.
I promise you will find that the old adage “You have to spend money to make money” will make a LOT more sense to you!
Phew…that wasn’t so bad!
Phew! That wasn’t so bad – at least on my end. What do YOU think? Drop me a message and let me know. And if you have ideas of other things you’d like to learn more about, let me know that, too!
And if you’d like to know what GinAdmin can do to make your life easier, hit me up and let’s talk! Head back to the homepage and send me a message! http://www.ginadmin.com/#contact
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