Is there a business category out there that you despise? Mine is project management. I don’t like details. I don’t like admin work. But I do love being organized, on schedule, and making sure that all of our sh*t gets done in a timely manner. The solution to eliminating tasks you don’t like: a virtual assistant!
I have Kristina and the answer is, no, I won’t share! Ever since I on-boarded her, I’ve never looked back. I want this kind of relationship for your company and there are plenty of other virtual assistants out there with strong administrative backgrounds and experience.
The entrepreneur mindset is very go, go, go. Are you going too fast and making mistakes? Let me be the first to point out that I’ve made plenty because I want to go too fast and I’m not always organized. Making sure all the components of my business stayed on track was an ingredient that was missing. So, I use Monday.com and have my VA run it. This is an affordable software program for a business of almost any size.
Our first venture utilizing Monday.com was CES. With any event, there is extensive planning involved and CES requires a lot of work. Our tasks consisted of getting appointments, getting t-shirts made, preparing our booth, and creating business cards, just to name a few.
On Monday.com, you are able to assign task owners, the steps to get that task completed, and the deadline. It will show you how much each individual has completed or give you the ability to create a full report to have a visual overview of your progress!
Another project on Monday.com was to hire a new VP of operations. We have just completed this two-month task. He’s an absolute badass guy named Benjamin. I call him Ben-jammin or Ben-Jesus.
He’s our supply-chain savior and we are pumped to have him on our team. Well, hiring someone of Ben’s caliber takes a lot of work and there are 15-20 steps that follow in this process. Who is doing what? We’ve got to write a job description, review the candidates, interview candidates, create a compensation plan, etc.
People need to be held accountable and that’s what Monday.com does. And guess what? I don’t have to enter all of the data in detail. Kristina does it (or someone else could do it). So on my VA and I’s one-hour weekly review, we go through the open list of all of the projects we have at Monday.com and see if everything is moving in the right direction. Additionally, your VA can do all of the following-up if someone or something falls behind.
If you don’t want to utilize Monday.com, VAs are specially trained in Excel, Word, and Gantt charts, you name it because these programs are universal all over the world. Here is an example of a basic Excel spreadsheet we utilized as a project tracker.
These are the kind of obstacles that can cause a business to flop prematurely or startups to never come to fruition. It’s not the lack of cash flow, it’s the organization. Get into the habit of having good follow-up tools, technical tools, or accountability systems in place to make sure everything’s running in the right direction. A VA is a great addition to any project manager’s toolkit.
