Episode Summary

In this episode of the Make Space for More podcast, host Melissa Swink discusses five common goals that virtual assistants can help leaders achieve. These goals include increasing revenue, achieving work-life balance, learning new skills, improving health and wellness, and building work relationships. Each goal is explored in-depth, with practical examples of how virtual assistants can provide support, streamline tasks, and ultimately help you reach each goal.

Key Highlights:

• Reverse-engineer your goals by working backward to see how you can get support to reach each of them. 
• Virtual assistants can help you make more money, improve your work/life balance, learn new skills, improve your health, and deepen professional relationships. 

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Hi everyone, welcome to the Make Space for More podcast where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink, and in today's episode, we're going to talk about five common goals a virtual assistant can help you achieve. Now, I love offering practical advice to help you gain leverage over your time. And this can look like figuring out what we should be focusing on and what we should be doing more of.

things that maybe we should take a look at or consider eliminating. Like maybe moving forward, there's no longer a space for that in our lives or our businesses. I love offering ideas for systematizing and automating the things that you're doing on day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis in order to help you save time and also money, really, because no matter who would be performing these tasks manually,

There is a way to often streamline or automate these for a very low or no cost in order to free up lots of time and ultimately money as well. And then of course, delegating. That is something that I talk about frequently on the podcast, talking about building a team and really leveraging help from others in order to scale your business or organization. But today we're going to approach these.

These are the five most popular goals that entrepreneurs, executives, professionals, and individuals have set for themselves. So you may be able to figure out goal number one, make more money, whatever that means for you. If you are a business owner, maybe you're like, okay, last year we made X and this year we wanna make Y and we're looking at bumping up from whatever it was from last year, we're looking at

Maybe you have a 2X goal or a 10X goal, or maybe you're looking to increase, you know, by a certain dollar amount every month in your revenue, whatever that looks like for you. Also, feel free to translate this if you're in the nonprofit space where maybe you're looking for additional sponsorships or you're looking for additional donors, things like that. But basically, just more revenue generation or more capital generation, whatever this looks like for you and your organization.

And The way that we can make more money ultimately boils down to three things. We can sell more, which is really a quantity thing. you know, maybe we served 50 customers last year and this year we want to serve 75 or 100. And so if that's the goal and that is the mean from which you are intending to make more money this year, a virtual assistant can help you with maybe some outreach activities, really going back through maybe a list of potential clients that for whatever reason,

did not move forward with working with you in the past and we want to reach out to them again, kind of check and see where things are at and see if there are opportunities to work with them in the future. Maybe this is reaching out to potential referral partners, people who are in similar businesses as you and serve a similar clientele or market, but do not offer the same services as you. Whatever this looks like,

a virtual assistant can help you with some of those outreach activities. Just giving you one example of how you might be able to leverage their help there. Okay, maybe the second way to make more money, and maybe this is what you're pursuing this year, is to sell bigger. In other words, more of a quality over a quantity approach to making more money this year. And so maybe this looks like for you increasing your prices or changing up your packages, selling larger packages.

And if that's the case, a virtual assistant can help you make sure that your marketing channels are in alignment with the new pricing and the new packages that you're rolling out for this year. So this could look like simply making some updates on your website, making sure that pricing is up to date or current packages and service offerings are up to date, current products are up to date, things like that. Maybe it is working with your social media.

your copywriters or your content creators to make sure that, hey, this year, this is the type of client that we're looking to work with. These are the services we're going to be focusing on. You to make sure that your marketing is in alignment with what you plan to focus on selling this year. And the third way we can make more money is to sell different. So sell more, sell bigger, sell different, which would mean launching something new. And so if you're planning on, say,

launching a new course this year, or maybe you're gonna be launching a new membership or a new revenue stream, a virtual assistant can help you with planning that launch and those promotions and coordinating all of that. So just a couple of examples, if you intend to make more money this year, that is how a virtual assistant can help you do that. Those are just a couple of brief examples. If I went through all the ways that a virtual assistant can help you achieve some of these goals,

we would not have enough time on this podcast to cover all of that. And you all would get bored. Like, especially if you were like, that's not really my goal this year. This isn't relevant to me. Fast forward, skip. So we're just going to give this, you know, kind of a concise example. And then certainly if you have more specific questions about how some of these ideas might fit into the goals that you've set for this year, feel free to send me a message. Happy to answer any questions or expand upon something further.

Okay, goal number two, greater work-life balance. I realize that one's kind of a general one. This could apply to business owners. This could apply to those in corporate careers, but achieving greater work-life balance. And I think for me, at the end of the day, when I often hear people talk about this, they really just want to be more intentional with how they spend their time. And so, of course, the first thing that comes to mind is working fewer hours. Like maybe we say,

you know what, I am going to make sure that I leave work or I log off the computer by, you know, 3.30 PM every day or, you know, 5 PM every day, whatever that your lifestyle looks like for you. And so then we can focus on other things and just be completely unplugged. So of course, if one of your goals is to work fewer hours or put more parameters or boundaries on your working hours versus your non-working hours, you know, of course,

offloading busy work and other tasks that are just consuming your time to a virtual assistant. Number one way to go on that. I have lots and lots of resources for pooling ideas together for what you might be able to hand off to somebody else. And then thus bring up your plate, not with the intention to fill it with other things, but just to be able to work the schedule that you intend to work. Another idea,

of achieving greater work-life balance. And again, really just spending your time more thoughtfully and intentionally could be hiring help, whether that be at home or at work. So maybe you've decided that, you know what, I feel stressed about trying to make dinner and get the kids to activities, or maybe I've started taking a dance class. That's just a general example. I'm not taking a dance class, but you get the idea.

of maybe there's something that you want to be doing or maybe you're going to be training for a marathon or a triathlon this coming year and you know what, you're like meal planning and cooking and prep and the cleanup is too much for me. Maybe it's a matter of having your virtual assistant help you. Are there some food prep options local to me or is there a subscription service that would meet my needs and what I'm looking for?

A virtual assistant can help you source that and then ultimately move forward with onboarding that person or signing up for that service, whatever that might be. So of course that can work at your job as well in your business. So maybe you've determined that, you know what, I am really tired of managing my own podcast and I would like to hire a podcast manager so that that person can edit.

and ultimately put them on the web and send them out into the world wherever they may be. So that might be something that a virtual assistant, if they don't possess those skills themselves, could say, hey, I would love to help you hire a podcast manager, just to give you some ideas there for hiring some extra help when you need it. And also, there's something to be said for just overall being more present. So oftentimes, and I know I'm guilty of this,

I know many others struggle with this as well, is just because we have left the office or we've logged off the computer for the day doesn't necessarily mean that's when our brain shuts off. Like sometimes I'm circling around a problem in my mind or maybe it's like, you know what? I have another idea for that person I was talking to, or you know what? I think that we should move in this direction instead. I'm kind of having second thoughts about this or you're trying to solve a problem.

Overall, being more present is something that I think that many of us are striving to do. And so a virtual assistant can help you be more present by overall providing more organization and structure for you. I think within the last couple of weeks, you'll have to check. One of the previous episodes recently was about a project management tool called Asana. We particularly use Asana. I know there's many out there.

But one of the things that I talk about in that episode and certainly in past episodes is how we try to cram so much into our brains and we rely on our brains to keep track of things and remember things and keep track of our to-do lists and our goals and our priorities. And that just makes it really hard for our brains to just stop and be present because they're holding so much. So out of the brain into a system of some kind,

whether that be organized files or organized lists or organized to-dos and projects and things like that through different systems, a virtual assistant can help you set those up so that you're able to be more present during your off time. goal number three, learning new skills. So I'm gonna go ahead and repeat some of these over and over and over again. Freeing up time, we wanna free up time for reading or doing courses or taking classes.

whatever that looks like for you, again, taking a look at what can I release and ultimately hand off to somebody else so that I have the time to say log off by 4 p.m. on Wednesdays because I want to take the pottery class at my local art place, for lack of better terms, art place, pottery place, whatever you want to call it, you get the idea.

I'm losing my words today. We've all been there. But you get the idea, is if you want to invest that time or you want to take that course, you need a free up time because we have so much on our plates. So having a virtual assistant take over some of the things that you've been holding onto, really good time to reevaluate that. Now, another way a virtual assistant can help you with learning new skills might be doing a bit of research first. Like maybe you've decided

I am very interested in becoming a better photographer this year. That's going to be helpful for my family where I can really capture those moments and it can be helpful in my business because I can capture better behind the scenes work that I'm doing with my clients or my team. And I just want to learn more about photography. So a virtual assistant can ask you a few more details about what the, to help determine the criteria in terms of, okay, we want to

become a better photographer this year, and they can gather up some information from you to learn more about what you're looking for, what your expectations are, and ultimately do that research and figure out is this an online course? Is this an in-person course? Or what are some of the ways that you might be able to learn more about this and then help you determine what learning path is going to be best for you? Similarly, then once we've determined

I'm learning this skill, here's the mode through which I'm going to be learning that skill. They can help you with accountability and also action plans so that you stay in momentum and you make consistent progress, especially if it's a self-paced course or you're reading a book and trying to apply some of the concepts in the book, it would be really helpful to have a virtual assistant asking you or helping you determine your progress. Maybe you're going to do

one chapter of the book a night and then send your virtual assistant a voice memo of here are some of my takeaways and here's how I think we can apply this to what we're doing. Or maybe it's determining this is a self-paced course, there are 12 modules, I'm gonna do one module a week and helping you stay accountable from that standpoint so that things don't slip through cracks because I will tell you that life will get busy, work will get busy.

or somebody gets sick and then life just gets derailed and having that extra accountability and a plan to complete the things that you're actually learning to develop and hone in is going to be huge. Okay, common goal number four, improve your health. So health and wellness goals. And you might be thinking, how can a virtual assistant help me with my health and wellness goals? Like that's usually not something that we put hand in hand, those two don't usually go together.

I'm going to say it again, number one, helping you free up the time to do this. So whether you plan on incorporating some daily movement into your morning routine and getting that in before the day starts, or if you plan on logging off consistently on time or even a little bit earlier than you normally have to attend a spin class or go to the gym or whatever that looks like for you, again, having a virtual assistant

free up some time. If you were going to free up even 30 minutes a day, what could you hand off to your virtual assistant? If you're looking to incorporate movement in the morning and get a workout in before you start your day, maybe it's a matter of having a virtual assistant triage your email for you. Delete what needs to be deleted, file what needs to be filed, respond to what needs to be responded to if it's a common question or an inquiry that's come in, and then

Ultimately, when you log in your email, you just need to respond to very specific things. Maybe that's a way that you can free up a half an hour of time in order to get your workout in before work starts that day. Just giving you another example, freeing up time. It's going to be a refrain for a lot of these if you haven't picked up on that already. Again, similarly to learning new skills, maybe helping research trainers or coaches who might be able to help you.

Maybe you've decided, you know what, I feel like my digestion's just been really off. I'm thinking that maybe there's some gut health stuff going on. Who can help me solve that problem? Is there a local provider who can help me resolve this and look into some of the health challenges that I've been facing? Or is there an online provider that can mail a test kit to my house so I can have some things further evaluated?

you can have your virtual assistant help you do some of that research. And I know for me, it's really easy to get lost down a rabbit hole where all of a sudden I'm just scrolling and scrolling and figuring out my options. A virtual assistant can help narrow down the top three recommendations they have for you based on what your health and fitness goals might be. And then similarly, hiring that help, determining what is going to be the best gym membership for me.

if I'm looking to start working out after work? What are some of the things that are important to me? That they have certain classes or they have a certain schedule or they have certain equipment or maybe they have a smoothie bar because I'm going to be going there early in the morning and I want to grab a protein shake before I leave and start work for the day. Again, making up that criteria, but a virtual assistant can help you determine your options, your best options for improving your health.

freeing up your time in order to be able to do that. Okay, the last common goal that we're gonna talk about in today's episode is just overall building and deepening your relationships. Again, maybe not necessarily something that you would think a virtual assistant can help you with, but there's a couple of different ways that we can do that, whether they be personal or professional relationships. And for one, maintaining a CRM tool. So this would be, of course, more on the professional side of things.

But first of all, even just maintaining a list of all the people that you've had contact with over the last, know, whatever duration of time, maybe you want to go back, everyone I've spoken to in the last year or two years or five years, and just keeping tabs on making sure that you're connecting with them regularly. A virtual assistant can help you not only pull and put together this list of contacts, also get them put into a system so that they can monitor, hey, you have not touched base with so-and-so.

since last summer and it's time to check in with them. Having a virtual assistant can help you with that. Another thing could be meaningful contact. And this could be personal and professional, if I'm being perfectly honest. So that could look like gifts. Maybe you want to send anniversary gifts to your customers on every year that they celebrate with working with you, or maybe they've hit a major milestone in your work together.

and you want to acknowledge and reward them for that, a virtual assistant can certainly help you with sending electronic or handwritten cards, curating gifts, maybe they're more personalized, maybe they're more standardized, but doing that on a regular basis, again, just to share your gratitude for your customers and to celebrate their wins with them as well. Now, this can also work on the professional side of things where maybe you know that

Grandma's birthday is coming up and you always send her flowers. Or, I guess on a completely different note, maybe somebody has passed away and while you're not able to attend the funeral because it's far away but you're thinking of them, maybe it's sending a sympathy card and making a donation to the organization that they specified in the obituary. These are just kind of general examples but

Again, even if you personally do not have the bandwidth to maintain all of this yourself, you can ask for help from others like your virtual assistant in order to make those meaningful contacts. Okay, lastly, also scheduling time to connect. So face-to-face time, right? Whether it be on a Zoom or a Google Meet or even face-to-face and getting coffee or lunch or organizing a dinner, your virtual assistant can help you not only manage your calendar,

and then also carve out time for those activities. So maybe you say, want to make sure that I take my referral partners out for lunch once a month on a rotation. So maybe I have three people who send a lot of business to me throughout the course of a given year. I want to have those people on a monthly rotation so that I am treating them to lunch and really spending that time.

and showing my gratitude and even help them grow their business and where they're at or encourage them wherever they're at personally as well and spend that time. So I hope that this was helpful for you from looking at this from another angle of, okay, this is ultimately a goal that I've set for myself or this is something that I've made a priority and now how can I get some help in order to see those things to

to bring those to fruition or to accomplish whatever goal I've set for myself. So that being said, if you know a business owner or professional who is obsessed with their work, doesn't care about any of this other stuff, this episode's not for them. Let's be honest. But I would say for the vast majority of people, we are truly interested in increasing our success. We are...

committed to really living out our purpose. And we also want to do all of this with balance and be with our loved ones, be present. We want to live a rich and full life, not only monetarily, but also when it comes to relationships and connections as well. So if that is you and you know someone who would be interested in learning more about how they can get help with achieving some of their goals and having that well-rounded life.

please share this with the first person who comes to mind. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope you found it helpful and I will be back next week with another episode of Make Space for More. Have a wonderful day. Bye bye.