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Virtual Assistant – A Vital Role in your Entrepreneurial Journey @TimeFliesVA

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Virtual Assistant - A Vital Role in your Entrepreneurial Journey

by Marianne D’Alessandro | Featured Contributor

Well, you’re on your journey as an entrepreneur – whether you’re new or established, you just can’t do it alone.  The biggest question I’m asked over and over again is what does a virtual assistant do?  For me, it’s a pretty difficult question to answer. When you think of the corporate world, what does an executive assistant, a clerk, a personal assistant do?  There’s so many tasks to list.

I like to focus on the word assistant.  As an entrepreneur, you can’t do everything yourself.  Well, I guess you can but you’ll certainly work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and who wants to do that!  So that’s where an assistant comes in handy.  A VA works with you, supports you, handles tasks that ease your workload.  They are a helper, a partner, a cheerleader.

How do you define what tasks to give away?  My first question is always: what frustrates you?  What do you do on a regular basis that you wish someone else could do for you?  In most cases, someone can!  So why frustrate yourself with tasks that you don’t like doing or don’t have time to do, when you can have someone else do it.

One thing I’ve learned as an entrepreneur is I don’t  know everything and I don’t want to do everything in my business.  I want to focus on what I love … what brings me business … what supports my clients.  I’m pretty sure you want the exact same for your business.  There’s no point weighing yourself down when there’s plenty of help out there.

Enjoy your journey!

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Marianne D’AlessandroMarianne D’Alessandro knows how busy an executive can be. Marianne has been an Executive Assistant for 30+ years. She has supported many, many, many senior level execs. She has her own virtual assistant business. Her goal is to save time for her clients by looking after their admin tasks. She truly loves her admin role and seeing her clients succeed and grow their business.

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Keep Calm and Wrap It All Up @TimeFliesVA

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Keep Calm and Wrap It All Up

by Marianne D’Alessandro | Featured Contributor

This being the final blog in the 6-part Keep Calm presentation skills series, I thought we should wrap it all up.  We talked about calming the nerves, getting to the point, dealing with nervousness, making it about YOU, and think SEO.

Think of your presentation as a gift – a gift you are giving your audience.  And when you give a gift, there are many elements in that gift.

1.     You thought about it and selected something just for them.

2.     You packaged it nicely.

3.     You handed it to them with excitement.

4.     And you enjoyed seeing their smiling face as they opened it.

 

This is what you want to do with your audience.

·       Prepare a presentation for your audience.  Customize to the needs or the request.

·       Use an organized format to present it.

·       Get them excited and keep them interested by using personal stories.

·       And when it’s all said and done, they’ll be inspired and you’ll feel awesome.

 

Everyone can give a great presentation. It takes a bit of effort and sometimes a bit of courage.  Give the gift of your experiences, your stories, and you’ll always be successful.

If you haven’t had a chance to read the previous blogs, you can find them here.

This Keep Calm series was for you and I hope you enjoyed it.  I’d love your feedback.

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Marianne D’AlessandroMarianne D’Alessandro knows how busy an executive can be. Marianne has been an Executive Assistant for 30+ years. She has supported many, many, many senior level execs and is now working toward her own virtual assistant business. Her goal is to save time for her clients by looking after their admin tasks. When it comes to public speaking, she conquered her fear more than 20 years ago by taking, and now instructing, the Christopher Leadership Courses of Canada. The highlight for her was traveling to China to train instructors to teach the course there! Marianne loves seeing people take the challenge and conquer the fear by “taming those butterflies!”

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Keep Calm & Think SEO @TimeFliesVA

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keep-calmand-think-seoby Marianne D’Alessandro | Featured Contributor

If you want your online content to gain traction, you need to know about SEO – search engine optimization.   One of the main areas of SEO is key words.  Without those key words, you’ll make it difficult for your audience to find you online.

Why not utilize the SEO approach with your presentations?  In my blog post Keep Calm and Get to the POINT, I talked about staying focused and getting your message to your audience immediately.

Key words are imperative!  Make your key words your SEO:  significant, exciting, and objective!

Select appropriate words to make that point. An SEO for presentations should include:

  • Significant – use words that have significance, along with stories and examples that are significant to your point.
  • Exciting – bring life to your presentation with words and adjectives that create emotion and excitement.
  • Objective – know your intent, be factual and tangible.

Everyone in the audience wants to take away a message so focus on optimizing your key words so that they are remembered by every person in the audience.  Don’t make the audience search for the message … just like you don’t want them to search for your website!  Utilize those key words to give your key messages and your audience will be your followers!

Keep Calm and use the SEO approach!

 

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Marianne D’AlessandroMarianne D’Alessandro knows how busy an executive can be. Marianne has been an Executive Assistant for 30+ years. She has supported many, many, many senior level execs and is now working toward her own virtual assistant business. Her goal is to save time for her clients by looking after their admin tasks. When it comes to public speaking, she conquered her fear more than 20 years ago by taking, and now instructing, the Christopher Leadership Courses of Canada. The highlight for her was traveling to China to train instructors to teach the course there! Marianne loves seeing people take the challenge and conquer the fear by “taming those butterflies!”

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Keep Calm and Make It About YOU @TimeFliesVA

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youby Marianne D’Alessandro | Featured Contributor

I’m sure a few of you may remember the early days of PowerPoint – when we created our presentations and then printed them on transparencies.  Now those that don’t remember are asking, why did you print them?  Well, we did not always have access to data projectors and in case something did not work, we could use an overhead projector to display our visual aids.

If you’re totally confused now, don’t worry.  This blog is about back up plans and not about old technology.  You see, visual aids are just that – aids!  I see far too often people relying on those PowerPoint slides – actually reading from them.  Ugh!

So what happens when technology fails you – your laptop isn’t compatible with the data projector, you forgot a cable, there’s no extension cord, there’s no wifi … It’s bound to happen, something will go wrong at least once!  Will you be prepared? Or will you be flustered? And, please don’t apologize because the technology isn’t working making your audience feel that your presentation is going to be substandard!

In those “old” days, we had our back up transparencies.  Did they really save the day?  Sure, they provided a visual tool but YOU are the key part of your presentation.

What’s the advice I’m passing on:  Create your presentation based on “no” visual aids.  Yep, that’s right – no visual aids.  Even in today’s world of fabulous videos and images, plan to use none of them.  Plan and practice as if there are no aids to rely on!

Once you are focused on your message, create the visuals that will complement your message. Don’t over-complicate things.

When you’re presenting and all the pieces line up … your presentation will be awesome!  And if you face some challenges, you’ll still be awesome because you focused on your message.

 

YOU are the presenter …

YOU have the knowledge and stories to share …

The audience is there to learn from YOU …

The visual aids support YOU!

 

So Keep Calm and Make It About YOU

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Marianne D’AlessandroMarianne D’Alessandro knows how busy an executive can be. Marianne has been an Executive Assistant for 30+ years. She has supported many, many, many senior level execs and is now working toward her own virtual assistant business. Her goal is to save time for her clients by looking after their admin tasks. When it comes to public speaking, she conquered her fear more than 20 years ago by taking, and now instructing, the Christopher Leadership Courses of Canada. The highlight for her was traveling to China to train instructors to teach the course there! Marianne loves seeing people take the challenge and conquer the fear by “taming those butterflies!”

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Keep Calm and Enjoy the Ride @TimeFliesVA

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Keep Calm and Enjoy the Ride

by Marianne D’Alessandro | Featured Contributor

Fear is known to all of us in some way. It’s most likely that each of us has a fear or two in our back pocket. I know I have many! We’ve often been told that if we address and face our fears, we can overcome them. So why not face the fear of public speaking. Hmmm, standing in front of a few people and giving a presentation doesn’t seem so bad versus some of my other fears. But I know to some, the fear is genuine and frightening.

My husband loves fishing and he loves going out in his boat to where the fish are. Well, I don’t know how to swim and although I love the water and boat, as soon as it gets a bit bumpy, I’m terrified. If another boat flies by and we get the wake, I am clinging to my seat and shaking. Seems unrealistic and quite dramatic to my husband who has been driving a boat since he was a child, but I just can’t help it.

There are always ways to help address and work through the fear.

On the boat, I know that by sitting upright in the seat keeping my weight on the balls of my feet will help me bounce with the boat. I know that my taking a few deep breaths and enjoying the scenery will help me relax. I know that my life jacket is extremely important. And I know that my husband is conscientious, alert, and a very safe boater. So all of these help me relax and enjoy the ride.

When public speaking, there are many techniques to help address the fear.

  • I can’t stress the importance of practice (as discussed in my first blog).
  • Find some techniques for deep breathing exercises. One is box breathing – inhale for 3, hold for 3, exhale for 3, and hold for 3.
  • Visualize – take the time to visualize yourself in front of the room giving your presentation.
  • Have fun – if you get too serious and tense, you’ll be even more nervous. If you’ve taken the time to practice, you’ll be comfortable with the material and you can have fun!
  • Remember that you’re human and not always perfect. If you make a mistake and say something incorrectly, just move on. Get back on track with your material and forget about. Chances are, others will forget about it, too!

When something makes us uncomfortable or afraid, we need to find our comfort zone to overcome, or at least address, the fear.   Find some techniques that work for you and Keep Calm and Enjoy the Ride!

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Marianne D’AlessandroMarianne D’Alessandro knows how busy an executive can be. Marianne has been an Executive Assistant for 30+ years. She has supported many, many, many senior level execs and is now working toward her own virtual assistant business. Her goal is to save time for her clients by looking after their admin tasks. When it comes to public speaking, she conquered her fear more than 20 years ago by taking, and now instructing, the Christopher Leadership Courses of Canada. The highlight for her was traveling to China to train instructors to teach the course there! Marianne loves seeing people take the challenge and conquer the fear by “taming those butterflies!”

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