About 6 years ago, I founded a digital marketing company called Blue 16 Media and also manage a community of blogs called CBNation.co (CEO Blog Nation) and I have leaned heavily on virtual assistants to help us grow as a company. Building a six-figure business with no additional employees, I have learned a lot about how I could be in multiple places at the same time. Many people ask me, “how are you able to do so much?” My answer is that I simply have a great team and I leverage technology extremely well with loads of “CEO Hacks.” I do have really good self-awareness and have an idea of where my blind spots and weaknesses are and generally take care of myself and have a good “motor.” I also know where there’s room for growth.
However, it has been virtual assistants that have been an absolute game-changer for me. Just like any leader, my focus is to put every person of the team in the best place to be successful.
On any given week we have the following:
- Clients e-mailing
- 20-30 meetings, including weekly team meetings (presently 5), prospect and client meetings
- A daily podcast
- Guest on podcast episodes
- A more experimental podcast
- 1-3 daily blog posts on CBNation.co
- E-mail updates
- Basecamp messages
- Client support tickets
- Client social media and blog scheduling
- And so much more…
I personally make it to the gym 3-5 times a day and walk or go to the park with my dog at least twice a day and make some time for watching at least Pardon the Interruption to get my sports fix.
We have built everything from the ground up, exactly how I want it to flow. Not using one “system” that does it all (because I don’t think any of them do everything well) but by leveraging the best of the best systems that I use regularly. Even though, I’m a techie, my goal was to create systems so that I would simply have to follow a plan and it would help everything run smoothly. As long as I follow the plan, (and everyone else on the team does too) we achieve success.
I consider virtual assistants to help grow both brands to be those that are kind of swiss army knives and able to do a little of a lot. As a digital marketing company, our core offering is website design and SEO services and because we provide expertise, we don’t have our virtual assistants work on projects integral to clients UNLESS we provide direction. But one of the reasons you won’t see website updates on my list is because we have developers and tasks that require expertise like website design or development, we leave to our experts. However, we are still a virtual team.
Here are some of the ways that I work with my virtual assistants:
- Calendar Management
- Podcast & Video Editing
- Website Support & Updates
- Data Mining
- Cold Calls
- Client Outreach
- Content Creation like Blog & Social Media Scheduling
- Vacation Research
- Collaborating with Team Members
- Replying to E-mails
- Prospecting
- Internet Research
- Document Creation
- Scheduling Newsletters
- Data Entry
- Voicemail Checking and Monitoring
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