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Global Recycling Day

Today is Global Recycling Day. As a scuba diver, I have seen for myself the effects of waste in the sea and the amounts of rubbish washed up on the shoreline.

Whenever possible, I try to use eco-friendly products and recycle as much as I can. Which got me thinking about the working office environment and how we can adapt to an eco-friendlier way of working.

Here are some ideas:

 Paper

      • Use recycled paper.
      • Use scrap paper for notes.
Printer Cartridges
      • Use refillable ink cartridges.
      • Recycle ink cartridges.
Lighting
      • Use energy saving LED light bulbs.
Stationery
      • Use eco-friendly office supplies.
      • Use refillable pens and pencils.
Equipment
      • Consider using second hand office furniture.

 

Thank you for reading.

Anne

 

Strawberry Office provides administrative support to small businesses, and lifestyle management to busy people.  If you are interested in outsourcing your administrative work, contact me by email at  anne@strawberryoffice.com to arrange a free Discovery Call.

 

 

How a VA can help your rural business grow faster

Working for yourself is often a labour of love. It takes time and dedication to run your own business, especially as you’ll inevitably end up doing everything from marketing to bookkeeping, yourself – and this can really slow the growth stage of your business. So if you’re thinking you want to grow faster, it may be time to look at how a VA can help.

But if you’re wondering how a VA can help you grow faster, here’s a brief overview of the different ways they can!

Help you get your back office organised

This is one of the first areas that tends to get neglected, when you’re trying to do everything alone. A VA can help you set up the necessary systems and processes you need, to run more efficiently – and better organisation inevitably leads to faster growth.

How a VA can help you with flexible time and help

A VA is able to not only help you with the tasks you need, but also at the times you need them for. By knowing the specific tasks you need them for, (such as invoicing, filing, data entry and website maintenance) you’ll only be paying for your VA for the time needed to complete those tasks.

Project management and event coordination

Many rural businesses are linked to hospitality or wedding industries, especially if they’ve converted buildings on their land into wedding and corporate event venues. Often though, business owners aren’t used to handling the logistical side of this type of business, and struggle to coordinate everything. How a VA can help here, is they can take the reins and improve the management of it all. They can help you ramp up the customer experience and overall levels of satisfaction – leading to an increase in word of mouth marketing, feedback and an uptake in bookings.

Help get your business online

If you want to grow faster, you need to be visible online. But digital marketing and online profiles are often neglected, due to a lack of knowledge and expertise. A VA can take on these tasks for you, ensuring you have a consistent and visible online presence. By working on your website and blog, content marketing, email marketing and social media, they can improve your SEO – meaning an increase in site traffic and ultimately, sales.

Free up your time

And of course, that leads onto the number one reason how a VA can help your business grow faster. A VA can help you free up your time, so you can be where you need to be. Regardless of whether that gives you the freedom to work on the areas of your business that light you up, or if that’s giving you back your much needed free time, it’s essential to your health and the success of your business.

Working for yourself is often a labour of love, one that takes time and dedication – but it doesn’t have to mean you need to do everything yourself. If you want your business to grow faster and not be limited by how hard or long you can work, it’s sensible to hire a VA.

How a VA can help your business depends on how much you’re willing to let go. If you’re finally ready to call in some help and let go of those tasks you’re no longer able to manage yourself – get in touch. Let’s talk, and see how we can free up your time and get your business growing faster and more efficiently!

How do I outsource my business office support?

When you set up your business you were not only doing something you were skilled in and enjoyed, but also the business administration. As your business has grown the amount of administrative work has increased too. This probably means you are not spending as much time marketing your business as you would like, and you may be feeling stressed and overwhelmed. You could change this by outsourcing your routine administration.

Consider how much time you spend on routine office work each week, and consider what you could do with that extra time. Imagine how that time could be spent working on your business and achieving your goals.

If you are considering outsourcing your admin to a Virtual Assistant here is what you need to do.

List all the administrative tasks that you do.

For each task, ask yourself three questions:

            • Do I need to do this?
            • Do I have the time?
            • Do I like doing this?

If you answer ‘No’ to them, then you need to outsource them.

To give you some ideas, here are some examples of the tasks you could outsource:

            • Diary Management.
            • Arranging client meetings and producing the documentation.
            • Research suppliers.
            • Audio Transcription – could be of meetings, webinars, podcasts, clients notes, eBooks.
            • Setting up social media accounts (eg Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
            • Creating social media posts (using your content)
            • Scheduling social Media posts.
            • Travel research.
            • Creating Powerpoint Presentations.
            • Creating Blog posts (using your content)
            • Creating reports and various documents.

Once you have decided what you can outsource, you could seek the assistance of a Virtual Assistant to undertake these either on an ad hoc hourly basis, or for a regular number of hours per month. This would be discussed in a Discovery Call with a potential Virtual Assistant to establish what kind of support you need.

Thank you for reading.

Anne

 

Anne Clarkson of Strawberry Office provides flexible administrative support services to small businesses.  If you are interested in outsourcing your administrative work contact me by email at  anne@strawberryoffice.com to arrange a free Discovery Call.