Keeping Data Safe

- If you’re using LastPass with your clients, immediately change your most important
passwords. Then, change a new password manager. Like ‘DashLane’ or ‘One
password’ (You can set up a two factor system) or ‘bitwarden’ (You can use it for free
and across a lot of platforms).
- How to export your existing data from LastPass into a new password manager - Once
you have a new and you've signed up for a new password manager, you want to
export your LastPass passwords, you are going to then import them into your new
system and then you're going to delete LastPass.

Google Calendar Management

- If you’re creating an event, make sure to align each title with the appropriate events
for example, “Call: Client <name> 3rd Party [subject]. Then, make sure the date and
time are correct. The time zone is important (google defaults wherever you’re in).

Emailing others to find a time

Moving Clients to Bcc (Blind carbon copy)
Jack will think we’re talking to him directly but out client can see this message.

Calendar tools, Color Coding, and Blocks

- Deep work (no meetings should be scheduled at this time)
- Lunch break (For lunch)
- Open Office hours (For anyone to approach the boss; Can be weekly)
- Travel
- Add different timezones on the left side of the google calendar (Very useful)
- If you are arranging a call with lots of people go to “doodle.com” (It can arrange a
one offs call)
 -

Section 5: Core skill: Inbox Management

Begin by setting up expectations for yourself and your client.

Do they read all their incoming emails or do they have five thousand unread messages?
Do they use labels or folders?
Do they have a lot of subscription emails or junk mail?
Then, discuss this with your client using the checklist as well.

If a client says I want to make you a delegate

 - Go to settings -> accounts and import -> grant access to your account -> add another
account -> enter your email address
Step 1: Eliminate
Q1. Can I eliminate emails after a certain date ?

Step 2: Archive
Start archiving messages that they’ve responded to or some that are important but its
clogging up the inbox.

Step 3: Create Folders

Do this after you have gained a sense of what goes into your client’s email.
Go to Mail (left side of gmail) -> Create new label

At this point, you can go to another call with your client and ask if they’re okay with the
system that you have created.

Step 4: labels & systems

This is different from creating folders. FYI – no reply needed receipts and/or travel
Select appropriate emails -> Create Label such as “To-Do” or “Urgent”
Then, you can go to Settings -> General -> Stars -> All Stars
Red Star -> Is Urgent
Yellow Star -> Is FYI
Blue Star -> Is Personal News

Email Alternatives
Investing on another program like ‘Superhuman’ or ‘Sandbox’

How to bulk delete emails in Gmail

Go Select ‘Select all conversations that match this search’ -> Hit ‘Delete’ -> Trash -> Select all
conversations -> Delete.
Understanding Inbox Zero

Habit 1: Reschedule your emails.

Gmail (specifically) has a free, nifty scheduling tool built right into our
inboxes.

That clock symbol is a "snooze' button and allows us to "snooze" or hide

emails until a later time and/or date. When might you use this tool?

Let's say your client sends you emails about a task that needs to happen
far in the future. Perhaps they're flying to Fiji 4 months from now and
would like you to start thinking through travel details. Go ahead and
acknowledge the email so they at least know that it's on your radar, and
then "snooze" that sucker for a few weeks.

That way, the travel task won’t be sitting in your inbox, distracting you (or
weighing on your mind). A few weeks from now, when you've set the
email to come back to the top of your inbox, you'll be ready to tackle the
task then.

Habit 2: Turn off alerts.

Turn off your email notifications. Don’t put an email app on your desktop
or phone – that’s productivity poison.

When I first started as a VA, I had multiple inboxes open 24/7. I had all
sorts of pings and dings and zaps to alert me anytime I had a new email.
Do you know what that gave me? A great deal of anxiety.

Only after I turned my alerts off did I finally fall into a better email
management system for myself. I now check my inboxes about 4 times a
day.

 Morning check: to respond to any tasks that hit my inbox

overnight and delete personal junk.
 Mid-day check: to respond to clients and let them know that I've
received their latest task requests.
 Mid-afternoon check: to respond to clients and let them know
that I've received their latest task requests.
 End-of-day check: to let clients know that I'll pick tasks back up
during business hours tomorrow.
The only way to truly reach inbox zero - the real inbox zero - is to
disconnect your brain from constantly wanting to check emails. If your
clients ever send something that's urgent, they'll more than likely send
you a text or call you with the details.

Later in the course, we'll talk about client response time in a little more
detail. For now, maintaining good inbox habits can make a world of
difference in your own productivity and mental health.

How to Create Email Signatures

Since we're talking about inboxes, let's briefly touch base on how to
add multiple email signatures to your own emails.

Gmail:

1. Open your inbox and hit the "compose" button to start a new email.
You'll see a pen icon towards the bottom of the window.

2. When you click on that pen icon, you'll see an option to "manage
signatures."
3. When you click this option, Gmail will automatically open
your Settings in a new window. Scroll all the way down until you find the
"Signatures" section. Here, you'll have the option to create multiple
signatures. As you can see here, I have two signatures: one for my clients,
and one for my non-client related emails.

4. Continue to scroll down and click Save in order to save your changes.

Outlook:

1. Open a new email message.

2. On the Message menu, select Signature > Signatures.

Depending on the size of your Outlook window and whether you're

composing a new email message or a reply or forward,
the Message menu and the Signature button might be in two
different locations.
3. Under Select signature to edit, choose New, and in the New
Signature dialog box, type a name for the signature.

4. Under Edit signature, compose your signature. You can change

fonts, font colors, and sizes, as well as text alignment. If you want to
create a more robust signature with bullets, tables, or borders, use
Word to format your text, then copy and paste the signature into
the Edit signature box.
 5. Choose OK to save your new signature and return to your message.
Outlook doesn't add your new signature to the message you opened
in Step 1, even if you chose to apply the signature to all new
messages. You'll have to add the signature manually to this one
message. All future messages will have the signature added
automatically. To add the signature manually,
select Signature from the Message menu and then pick the
signature you just created.

4 Steps to Creating an Expense System

Step 1 – Create a schedule

i.e. when to check in with your clients receipts, when to submit the reports into the
company, and then immediately pop those dates into your calendar and set alerts to remind
yourself

Step 2 – Create shared folders

So I recommend creating a system with your client, though, because it is very easy to miss a
receipt if they send a receipt to you via text and another by uploading it to a share drive and
then they send you a third receipt by email.
Go to central system is ‘Google Drive’ or ‘DropBox’
For example: Create ‘Expenses’ folder -> then inside create ‘expense reports’ and ‘receipts’ -
>. Go back to My drive and ‘Share with people and groups’
Dropbox -> Create new folder -> ‘Expenses’ and write your client’s email and choose ‘Can
edit’

Step 3 – Get approval from your client before submitting the expenses to the accounting
department

Step 4 – Get to know the platform

Each company has their own system like ‘expensify’ or ‘concur’ or ‘zoho expense’
Now here's typically how all platforms work.
Your client's company will set a due date in which all employees of that company need to
turn and all
of their work related receipts.
This date is typically set towards the end of each month.
If your client has spent any money on anything, work related could be business lunches,
travel work
supplies, maybe even mobile phone bills.
They'll need to send you the receipts for proof.
When you get those receipts, your task is to enter all of those details into the expense
platform.
Usually you will include the name of the merchant.
That's where they spent the money date of the transaction, the amount of the transaction
and category.
So you'll tag or label each expense as a category.
This helps accounting departments do their work in the back end.
So if there's one key takeaway here, it's that you as a VA creating a really solid system for
receiving
those receipts.
I'm talking setting up folders so that it's easy to send receive those receipts, so that it's easy
for your client to know where to send them, so that you guys are on the same page about
when you need
all the receipts by.
And then finally, you getting approval of these are the receipts I'm submitting.
This is the number that you're getting back from, from your employer.

Section 7 Core skill: Social Media Maintenance

Social media maintenance is very popular nowadays, and it is slightly different from social
media management,
management is a high paying career.
It is creating the posts that you will share on your client's behalf.
It is branding.
It is managing replies and messages across platform.
It is funneling traffic to buy certain products.
It is a lot and most social media managers charge a minimum of three thousand dollars per
month for low touch creation.
So right off the bat, when you were discussing social media with clients, I want you to set
clear distinguishing lines between management and maintenance.

Now, if a client does say to you, I would like you, my illustrious virtual assistant, to create
the content, meaning the person who's going to actually write the blurb that goes on Twitter
or write the blurb that goes up on Facebook or LinkedIn, I want you to either push back a
little bit because that falls into management territory or if that's something that you're
comfortable with, you have training in that.
I want you to come back with a very high rate to charge them.

Assuming the client is making the content for social media post.
Royalty Free Photos: I want to show you really quick, if your client needs you to find royalty
free photos, these are photos or even videos that you can use for free.
No need to give any credit, no need to buy any of these images.
Pexels is one of my favorite websites. Or, Unsplash or PixaBay.

Ask the client about the type of post is it organic content (natural and not promoted
content) or Paid or Evergreen content (a downloadable resource that you never change, for
example: creating a mail chimp link).

The status in excel social media tracking ‘On Hold’ means you have created a particular
content for your client but your client wants you to not post that particular campaign now.

Tracking with Airtable (Suggested)

It is free to sign up.
I will say in full transparency that you and your client both need to have an er table account
if you want to use er table together.
If your client has no interest in learning or signing up for a new platform, don't even bother
with this.

Creating Graphics Online (+Best Tools)

Photoshop – Use GIMP
Podcast editing – Use Audacity (free editor)
Kambah
Background image remover – Use Remove Image Background

Posting & Scheduling Posts

Tools – Buffer (you can actually preschedule up to 10 posts a month across three different
channels.) & Hootsuite
You can schedule right from the social media platform if you and your client does not want
to use neither tools.

New Social Media Scheduler Option

- Tool – Later
- Easy to use and you can post 30 of them per month for free.
- First, connect to your account. Then, upload your media (You can’t upload any pdfs
only jpeg or png).
If, by the way, you want to delete any of the platforms that you've
connected to, you're going to
go down here to settings on the left hand side, look for social sets and
access groups, hit the details
and then scroll down to find your list.
How to measure Metrics

Engagement rate of 3% is considered as a success

Some clients may want to boost their engagement or interactions so they pay ads like
Twitter ads or so on.

How do I actually find the numbers of impressions of engagements?

- Every single scheduler has analytics or you could go to any social media platform and
go to their analytics

Section 8 Core Skill: Research

How to create comparative research (+ template)
Comparing the best options

How to create informational research (+template)

Research for your client who wants to know more about a certain topic
The trick for you and I is finding it, sifting through what is true and false, sifting through what
is relevant and then finding the most up to date information that's available.
So that's where you and I come in.

TL;DR – Too Long Didn’t Read; Think of this as a tagline/abstract

Google tip-
I note here the history of Apple computers by including this in quote marks, your results will
only come up if that exact phrase is also somewhere in the post.

How to create data research (+template)

VA tip: offer to do more

Section 9: Core Skill: Lead Generation

How to find any email
Easiest tactics and most overlooked
Step 1 – Check their website
Step 2 - If you know the person's name and you know where they work.
You can often even just Google first name, last name company and did it do and emails.
Step 3 – Use Hunter.io if you can’t find their email via google search Or use ‘Email
Permutator’ (Comes up with every single permutation from the first and last name)
Then, paste everything unto ‘New Message’ in Gmail. Look through each one and once you
find their profile pic, that should be their email.

Generating leads
Lead generation is essentially one your clients need help finding qualified leads that may
lead to future business.
Anyway, he left a big data company to start his own consulting business, and he said to me
one day, I really want to target people in Greece who could use data tracking.
So he and I immediately hopped on a call.
And that should always be your first step when working with clients, ask them who their
target is.
Where is their target market located?
Is it worldwide?
Is it a particular country or region or continent, or are they drilling down to get specific state,
city, province, et cetera?
You can ask them a series of demographic and even psychographic details.
More details the better.

The next step – Do some broad research like ‘greece + data tracking’ in google

Select any one of the related companies and add that to the lead generation excel sheet.
Try your best to find an actual point of contact.
LinkedIn is always a good source to find people.

So I wanted to do just one example with you guys, because as you can
see, it is quite tedious.
If you are given a lead generation project and somebody asks you for a
timeline.

Buffer time is when you give yourself a little extra time because projects, especially lead
generation,
inevitably take longer to complete than you think they will.
My general rule of thumb is estimate whatever you think it's going to take you and then
multiply that by the number one point five.
So if you say to a client, I think I can get you 10 qualified leads in two hours, multiply that by
one point five and say to them, I think I can get you 10 qualified leads in the three hours.

Saving Leads to CRMs (Customer Relationship Manager)

Ex: Salesforce, Hubspot or Pipedrive
The spreadsheet that you've downloaded can also be turned into a simple CRM. By adding
columns like "Contacted by email," "Meeting set," or even "Sale made," you can help your
client keep track of which leads they've connected with, and which leads have turned into
business opportunities.
Section 10: Core Skill – Travel Management
A quick note about accounts before we dive into travel management. When booking flights,
cars, hotels, vacation rentals, etc., it's always best to book those items from your client's
accounts.

Never book items using your own personal accounts. Otherwise, those flights, hotels, Airbnb
rentals, and the like will be tied to your name if you do. Why is that important?

Let's pretend that your client doesn't have their own Airbnb account. Because you're a
helpful VA, you think "no problem," and book them a house using your own credentials.

Your client then checks into the home, has a little too much fun, and breaks something. Who
is liable for the damage? Unfortunately, because your account is tied to the rental, you are!
If your client doesn't have their own account, ask them if you can create one for them. Now,
let's move on to the video lessons!

Travel Introduction (+Checklist & Templates)

Travel Cheat Sheet downloaded

Booking flights + Best tools

Make sure you complete the details in the ‘Travel Onboarding Spreadsheet’ before booking
the tickets.

2 Tools to book flights – Ex: Kayak (They have price indicator –What they do is their
algorithm looks through historical data for years and years and years to give
you the best indication of whether prices are likely to increase, decrease or stay the same.)
Another one is Skyscanner – You could compare the plane and/or hotel prices from
anywhere. If you need the cheapest flight, it’ll simply give you a lot of options.

Booking Rental cars + Best tools

Option 1 – BJ’s car rental (One of the few that allows for free cancellation)

All car agencies have their own memberships (most of them are free). If your client does not
have a membership, you can sign them up for all of their services or their favourite car rental
service. Or, Sign a reward program because they’re completely free, for example in
hertz.com (skip the counter & go straight to your car).

What if you can’t find a rental car?

Fortunately for us, we have some creative options to find other cars. If
your client isn't interested in securing a driver there are a few share-
economy sites we can check out.
First, let's start with chauffeur options: Best for simple point a to point b
travel (like an airport to a hotel).
 Blacklane: Global chauffeur service with great customer service
and fleet. Easy to book drivers just hours prior to pick-up.
  Uber / Lyft: More casual, on-demand service. Poor customer
service, but best for short trips.
If your client needs their own rental car, you can try:
 Turo: American peer-to-peer car-sharing company. Anyone can list
their personal vehicle as a rental option.
 Getaround: Instant peer-to-peer car-sharing company, very similar
to Turo.
 Silvercar: Audi rentals that are reserved via mobile phone. The cars
are delivered to your client.

Still can't find a car? Time to get creative! Fleets like Enterprise and
Budget have their own separate truck rental companies. Can you reserve
a "moving" pickup truck?

You'd be surprised what clients will take if they're truly in need. I recently
rented a U-haul pickup for a client who desperately needed a car in
Montana!

One of the most rewarding, if not challenging things about being a VA, if
the need to get creative during certain tasks!

"But Erin, there's really NO option."

I hear you! We are no wizards, we can't control the rental car industry. If
you've given it your all, tell your client that there are no options, but be
sure to back up your claim. Give them a bulleted list of the agencies or
sharing apps you searched. Worst case scenario, your client will decide to
forge ahead with their travel, or they'll find new travel dates.

Booking Hotels, Vacation Rentals + Best Tools

Option 1 – Tripadvisor (Helps research esp. we can find out whether places are all booked on
that day or not + many filters. Also, she did not recommend to book through Tripadvisor but
it is a great research based tool – You can see photos submitted by customers and users)

Checklist (before booking the hotel)

 Read the ‘Hotel Cancellation Policy’

Option 2 – Airbnb and Vrbo (Vacation Home/s) – You can set specific filters to make a better
staycation for your clients.

Airbnb - Take a look at Verified places (Airbnb Plus and Airbnb Luxe) – they’re recognised as
Airbnb’s superstar hosts. Also, you can ‘Instant book’ so they give you this ‘reserve’ button
which means you don’t have to reach out to the hosts to book. Read the details and photos
and importantly read the reviews.

Emailing Clients + Scripts

Just as it is
Inputting Travel Details Into Calendars
If a client booked for a layover flight/s,
 Include lounges (only found for international flights) – Website @loungebuddy (helps
to find your client’s lounge)

Tips to make travel less stressful

 Itinerary is useful
 Creating a calendar
 Create a ‘Check our clients in’ time in google calendar
 24 hours prior to the flight departure, I will set a note just for myself, just for myself,
that includes the confirmation number. That way tomorrow, on Friday or whenever
24 hours before my client departs, I will receive a notification that is a note to myself
to check my clients.
 Simply Check our Client In before the airflight. Then, send that boarding pass to your
client via mobile or email. (Saves some time & If you or your client don’t check in
ahead of time, airlines sometimes bump that person from the flight)
Section 11: Core Skill: Online Purchases
Making Purchases (+ Authorization Form)
Just as it is.

Section 12: Core Skill: Event Planning

 You can hide the rows in the vent planning spreadsheet
 After the event/s, we can ask for feedbacks like what did you like?, How did the event
go?, What can be improved?...etc.
 We could ask Did you pay the chef?, did you pay the MC/speaker?, Are the fees
done?, Are there any outstanding fees?...etc.

Section 13: Working Through Unfamiliar Tasks

Handling Unfamiliar Tasks
 You have the opportunity to get learning (If it is your first time doing an unfamiliar
task, be open and transparent to your client/s).
 Ask yourself – Are you comfortable with this? You can absolutely say no but also be
sure to offer a few freelancers or maybe options who can fill with their needs. Or,
learn on the clock (get paid to learn). Or if the answer is yes and you're not
comfortable asking to be paid to learn, or maybe you ask and they say no. Be sure to
do it on your own time and factor that into your learning something.
 Ask yourself – Will this help my business or VA career and charge more in the future?

Some helpful resources to learn (nearly) anything online include, but are
not limited to:

 YouTube (free)

 Udemy (mix of free and paid courses)

 Twitter Flight School - advertising on Twitter:

https://www.twitterflightschool.com/student/catalog

 Hubspot Academy - inbound marketing, CRM, sales:

https://academy.hubspot.com/

 LinkedIn Learning (first month free):

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/me

Section 14: Back-Office Skills Training

 These skills are non-billable tasks (don't necessarily track or charge clients for the
work that we're about to touch.)
 But these are some of the things that you will end up spending your
time on as a freelancer.
 They include managing payments and sending invoices, ensuring
that your bookkeeping is up to date and
 that all your taxes are in order and paid managing client pipelines.
  This could be onboarding people pitching people notes about
coming back to people.
 Later, social media, marketing efforts for yourself, researching in
demand skills.

1. Client Response Time (How quickly should you respond to clients – generally, 2
hours) – Do try to respond to their emails in a timely manner. At least answer them,
if you are personally busy.
2. Working with timers (Not everybody needs to use a timer) – Monthly rate = $ per
hour x number of hours worked. Timers are great for hourly use. How to
prepare/send invoices - Invoicing regularly definitely shows that you value your own
time, but that you also value and value your clients time and money. So I find that if
you were inconsistent with your billing, it sets this precedent that you don't care
about your business because after all, you are a business or that you're not
concerned with your clients paying you on time. You can get paid through many
things like via email, wire transfer, credit card (take down their number and charge
them regularly), Stripe, Paypal or direct deposit. The point here is I just want you to
be aware that there's no one size fits all solution for running your business. You get
to decide as a virtual assistant how you want to be paid, how often you want to be
paid.
3. What to do when client won’t pay – Suggest setting up direct deposits (because the
client doesn’t need to remember and its automatic payment) or send an email ‘work
will cease until payment is made’.

End of Week Reports

How often should you be checking in with your clients?
At a minimum, a weekly check-in (either by phone or email) is a good idea. Consistently
checking in with clients to cover what's working, what could be improved, or what tasks
might be coming down the pipeline, is a great way to ensure that you and your clients are
aligned.
You can also consider creating an "end-of-week report" for your clients. You choose the day
(these are typically sent on Friday afternoon) and send a recurring email that includes:
 The tasks you completed over the course of the week.
 The tasks that are still pending (i.e. things you're still working on).
 The number of hours your client used during the week (if you're billing by the hour).
 How many hours of service they have remaining (again, only if you're billing by the
hour).
Be sure to download the accompanying "end-of-week report" script to help you get started.
Bonus points for saving this script as a template in Gmail.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Time Tracking

Time tracking seems pretty straightforward, but once you actually start, a lot of additional
questions pop-up, like "Should I track calls with clients," or "Is this task even billable?"
Let's start by splitting tasks into two groups: billable and non-billable.
Billable hours are the hours of work you can bill directly to a specific client. Billable hours
may include:
 Working on a client’s tasks and/or projects
  Communicating with them (via phone call, video chat, writing end of the week recap
emails, etc.)
 Writing and preparing invoices for specific clients
Non-billable hours, on the other hand, are often spent on activities that
benefit your business, not just one specific client. These may include things like:
 Working on your own marketing or social media
 Professional development or continuing education (like this course)
 Ensuring your own finances are in order (confirming that there are no outstanding
invoices, for example)

A common question I get at this point is, "Erin, should I also track non-billable time?" The
answer is...it depends. I personally don't track my own non-billable time, but the writers
of Clicktime disagree with me. They argue that tracking non-billable time can help you:
 Identify less profitable clients
 Improve your own back office productivity
 Organize your priorities more effectively
The choice to track time spent on your own business is your call, but the greatest takeaway
here is that anytime you work on anything related to a client, you should be tracking that
time.

Before moving onto the next lecture, be sure to check out this quick read, "29 Time Tracking
Best Practices." Finally, time-tracking is a skill in and of itself. If you're currently feeling
unsure of what to track vs. what not to track, give yourself a grace period to get used to the
time-tracking process. The question of what to track (or not to track) will get easier as time
goes by