Beat the Clock – Get More Margin in Your Life

Ever feel overwhelmed?  Is your schedule out of control?  Too much to do and too many commitments pulling you in different directions? Wonder how you can spend so much time with other people’s dogs and not enough time with your own?  If so, you are not alone.

Juggling the day-to-day activities of your business on top of everything else in your life is hard! The Dog Gurus want to help! This month’s bonus item A Guide to Planning, Delegating, and Self Care was designed to help you identify some items you can get off your plate. Check that out and get started on gaining more margin in your life.  But then what?

The Dog Gurus are huge advocates of outsourcing as much as possible. We have a wide range of outsourcing options and wanted to provide you with some simple resources to get started.

• Fancy Hands  – For just $29 a month you can get back several hours of your time! This is the easiest way to get started in the world of using a virtual assistant. Fancy Hands can do basic administrative tasks that don’t require the need to be in your location. If you have a task that can be done in 20-30 minutes but you don’t want to do it, pass it to Fancy Hands. Have them do things like:
  • Make travel arrangements
  • Research your competition
  • Find personal services
  • Administrative tasks
  • Schedule or confirm appointments
  • Research equipment and supply items you need to purchase
  • Create excel spreadsheets of all the names/emails you collect at community events
  • Research the latest trendy gifts to give your clients or staff
  • Make lunch reservations
  • Update documents

• Upwork – this is for larger projects than you might use for Fancy Hands. If you have a project you need accomplished, get it done by someone with the right skills. Upwork allow you to create the scope of work for the project, post the project online and then receive bids from vendors who want to work for you! You can set a limit to how much you will spend and no money changes hands until you are happy with the work. We’ve used Upwork to do things like
  • Create .pdf and PowerPoint templates for our businesses
  • Edit video – got all that video from the daycare? Pass it to someone who can edit it for your website
  • Transcribe audio presentations
  • Larger research projects that would take longer then 20-30 minutes
• Belay – if you decide you love outsourcing and want a dedicated person as part of your team, you could try Belay. This is a great organization that does all the screening and hiring for you. You work with an account representative who will match you with someone with the skills you need for your business for as little as 5 hours a week. Just imagine the things you could do with 5 hours more a week! If you want to learn more about hiring a Virtual Assistant, check out “The Virtual Assistant Solution” by Michael Hyatt. Take the plunge! You’ll be glad you did.