Organizing yourself and your time.

I thought I would share with you, what I did this weekend. I went to a meeting with other Virtual Assistants in my area and listened to a sales seminar by a wonderful guy, Jerry Kennedy. His website, if you are interested, is www.jerrykennedy.com .

Everything he talked about keeps swirling around in my head; I have my to do list posted in my Outlook file, I have finished 3 of the 5 things on there, yeah! I feel a tad more organized and Im sure the longer I operate this way, the easier and more organized I will get. I have found, being a VA, the most challenging part is keeping track of follow up for each client. I get started with one, move to another and forget what I needed to do for the first one until I go back and check my notes. Most of what he talked about, was common sense, but if you dont allow yourself to think in this fashion, it might not come as easily as you want. I have, in the past, had a tendency to get overwhelmed by the tasks I have to do. To walk around in circles in my office wondering what to do first. No more!! Here are 5 things you can do today, to help organize and sell yourself.

1) Ask yourself, "Why am I in business?" Really? Yes, really... the REAL reason you are in business for yourself and not working in a cubicle. The money? Sure. The freedom? ok. How about other reasons? Think about it.

2) Stay focused. OY, this is the worst for me because I tend to be a sponge in that I absorb everything that is going on around me. This must stop now. I really have to make a concious effort to stay focused on the tasks at hand. Now that I have clients, being organized and focused is critical if I want to keep this business going and get more clients. Jerry said that staying away from the new for 7 days would be a great experiment just to see if I was more upbeat, focused. So I am going to try that. No more bad news for 7 days starting today, I will report my progress.
Im going to listen to music, taped TV shows, play with my fishtank on facebook, read a book, update by blog or website. Anything to stay away from news, to see if that negative information really does keep me from being focused.

3) Get passionate! Visualize what you want to do, visualize that you are already doing it. Get engaged in it, drown in it. Get passionate about what you do or it wont matter how hard you try.

4) CHOOSE OPTIMISM. This is my favorite and I am going to say this to myself every morning "I will be optimistic today". It really is a choice.

5) Keep moving!! I love this one "The law of inertia says a body in motion stays in motion, a body at rest, stays at rest".... 'nuf said!

Break your day down into manageable bites. If you have to break a task down into tasks then do it, whatever works for you.

I told myself this morning that I was going to make 25 cold calls this week to see if I can find those people out there who really are in need of my services. I have 5 phone numbers in front of me and still have not made any calls. Cold calling is the worst for me but I am going to suck it up because for every X amount of NO's there is a YES waiting out there and I am determined to find those YES'S.

When I learn something new...

I learn that I still have alot to learn. It is a never ending cycle of learning curves coming at us every day. I guess that is what makes life worth living. I am certainly not afraid to admit that I dont know how to do something and am always willing to ask if someone can teach me.

This week my learning will revolve around SEO, Search Engine Optimization. I know the paid tricks but want to know more about the organic tricks and tips. I have learned about links and posting on forums, google maps, etc. I know, the more places you put the name of your website, the more visible it will be during a search. For instance, I can google 'Virtual Assistant, Fair Oaks, Ca' and the first thing that pops up is google maps, which has a link to my site (I am the only one in this town for now). My actual site is no where to be found! At least not on the first few pages, after that I stopped looking. If I google "Virtual assistant, Sacramento, Ca' an actual company called "Sacramento Virtual Assistant' comes up first.. good for them!

I am learning about meta tags, although I dont think they do a whole lot of good these days since there are literally billions of websites, all using meta tags and I know it takes weeks, even months for those to be caught by the search engine spiders.

I have 2 books, one is called "SEO for Dummies", who can go wrong? The other is a giant maze of information and I dont have it right here, so I cant recall the name. I will NEVER read it :).

If you have any tricks, please feel free to post them here. I truly want to learn.