kelly

Hello hello!

This is just a quick one, I am so excited to share that the past few weeks since I properly launched List Whisperer have been a huge success!

I know, I’m basically just patting myself on the back – just stay with me a moment! I have a new found respect for entrepreneurs and this post is for you – those of you out there who are sitting on an idea, unsure where to start, maybe unsure if you have what it takes to actually achieve it. Are you after a new freedom for yourself or do you have a product you desperately want to bring to market? There is a huge amount to learn that is the truth, but with a little entrepreneur or business to business guidance you can do it! Help comes in all shapes and sizes if you open up and reach out.

I have had the pleasure of working with two new, wonderful clients in the past couple of weeks – I have had a crash course in building WordPress websites using the new block editor – inserting forms, sliders, plugins, posts, layering images and text – I am learning more by the day. I have also had a refresher in the fundamentals of Mailchimp and developing marketing e-mails – I am really looking forward to seeing the results of the campaign. I am absolutely loving refreshing and building on the skills I have developed over years of sales, customer service and events work – its really rewarding to know how quickly I am picking up new things and becoming a useful tool for my clients.

The secret to my success in meeting new clients up until this point you might be wondering? Relationships – I have joined several business to business facebook support groups – mostly run by professional coaches or business consultants. I get involved in the conversations, I offer ideas and support to others when they have an issue with something. I also tell anyone and everyone what I am doing – including my boiler salesman who came out to quote for the new fitting – he knows someone who is about to launch their business and needs help building his website and handling admin – all great potential.

I have always prided myself on building genuine rapport, being me, open, friendly and helpful. As a virtual assistant, I want to be transparent to my clients, supportive and useful, I try and demonstrate this from the very first time we speak so that they can trust it is worth giving my services a try and from there – I get the opportunity to prove my skills through my actual work.

Relationships and trust building in business when you are offering a service is hugely important. Trust your gut, if you are a decent person with a decent idea – reach out, try – who knows where you will be in just a few weeks time.

Kelly x

There is nothing as daunting sometimes as a great idea, a miracle of an idea, one that looks so huge and so ambitious that you pause for just a second too long and poof there goes your confidence. You are way too busy, how do you even start?

I have worked on some incredible projects – from bringing a magazine that wasn’t earning enough revenue back to its feet in 6 months – to a leadership festival for 250 young people, built from scratch – to arranging the seating plans for hundreds of people at a major award ceremony for some of the country’s biggest retailers and suppliers. A feat that still to this day makes me feel palpitations but equally makes me smile every time I hear ‘Move like Jagger’.

What they all have in common is planning – calm, considered, risk assessing, positive planning – that thing you probably don’t have the head space for right now – what with your social media, blogging, e-mails, phone ringing off the hook – I won’t go on! When you are on your own it can feel overwhelming but with a little help you will achieve that miracle of an idea.

I will use the festival as an example here, as it was by far my most independent feat and probably the project I am proudest of, but my goodness it was overwhelming at first.

I was working for a charity, The Knowledge to Action Foundation, having supported them as a volunteer with their annual project – The Youth Leadership Summit – the year before.

It was a wonderful thing, the teenagers who attended were given a master class from some of the world’s most inspiring individuals in leadership, friendship and success.  

We sat around a table and I was asked to consider what this summit might look like as a festival – outdoors, massive marquees – hundreds of kids. We would need to raise every penny to pay for it and build the entire infrastructure; water, food, accommodation, toilet roll. Just think for a second how many ‘things’ you need for hundreds of people for a week! Not to mention the fact that we only had around 4-5 schools currently aware of the project and 50-60 kids attending annually – this was a huge jump!

This was the first time in my career that I was understaffed and I realised the genuine value of dedicated key supporters – people who have insights you don’t, someone who has risk assessed a festival before, interns to help with the thousands of calls and e-mails we had to do, kind parents of the children willing to volunteer at the event or help fund parts of it! Otherwise it was just the two of us, me and my Director – Jeanie. Check out Jeanie’s testimonial.

We found our venue, we hired an amazing man who basically was my go to ‘argh how do I do this?’ person. He was pretty nifty on a quad bike fishing young people out of the forest too – another story for another day!

My main roles in his project were: recruit the kids, create the infrastructure, negotiate with suppliers and raise the money. I had 6 months. Daunting? YES.

I won’t lie, I could have done with a HUGE team of paid, skilled, individuals, but I did it and this is how.

Excel

Now if you aren’t a fan, I appreciate you might be groaning right now but we aren’t talking the budget/numbers bit here – although of course it was useful for that. We are talking project management.

Basically you begin with a super simple structure.

In the first column you indicate the priority – the numbering system allows you to clearly see what you can do or what needs to be done before something else can be done. As you add an item to the ‘Task’ column, you need to decide there and then if you have a deadline, do you need anything to be able to start doing it and set the priorities for all associated tasks. If you need something to allow that task to occur, then you need to add that as a task and prioritise it. This is a logical, simple, brain dump.

Where I have indicated that I need a meeting with the Director to confirm the venue decision, I need to schedule this in advance, so that should be added as a task with a higher priority than deciding the venue. I don’t have to ‘think’ about this anymore, I just need to do it when the priority shifts to a 1.

Basically every tiny step on your way to completing a task needs to be added to this spreadsheet – tedious maybe, but this way you can shut off and have that glass of wine with your feet up knowing you are completely on top of your project. Go through, hide whats been done and decide what tasks can now be a 1 or are coming up to deadline and move them to the top. Ta-da – you have today’s to do list. THEN IGNORE THE REST.

You will be so much more productive when you aren’t hopping in and out of a hundred different jobs trying to remember what needs to be done, getting side-tracked by things that aren’t a priority yet.

Most importantly, if you are currently faced with a project or number of projects that feel completely overwhelming, the best thing you can do is seek help – whether from an expert or another pair of hands to plow through the work!

Find out what the list whisperer could do for you and your next project and let’s pump up this year’s ambition!

How is your ‘To Do’ list looking?

Overwhelming?

Never have any free time, heaven forbid – a holiday!?

Bored of your day to day tasks?

Feel like you just aren’t moving forward as a business?

Hi, I’m Kelly and after a career in Event Management, I was recently given the opportunity to aid a friend in her business start-up. Over the past 8 months I have helped schedule social media, research and write SEO optimised content for her website, carried out elements of market research and analysis, generated over 1500 new leads, sold in upwards of 30 new clients in the first month and carried out some elements of customer service – among many other tasks.

I worked entirely flexibly – no contract, no guaranteed hours – just whatever she needed, whenever she needed it. Desperate for new leads by 1^st Jan? I worked right through Christmas. Need well researched blog content by tomorrow morning, finished it at 1am. I relished the challenges they sent my way and really enjoyed seeing them light up when they had been so stressed about getting it finished on time.

I really enjoyed changing my hat from day to day from researcher to social media to sales person and I realised that this is what I want to do for you – the person sitting there thinking that they will never get out from the depths of their ‘To Do’ list.

You CAN get back to the big thinking, the planning and development, or get away for that holiday – turning your phone off whilst your diary and e-mails are managed for you, meaning you won’t come back to that dreaded 2000 unanswered queries and missed business.

So I am sure you are thinking, there are many companies out there who offer these kinds of services. Yes there are, but you won’t get me – ok – more seriously – you will be asked to sign lengthy contracts, commit to hours or monthly retainers – some with exorbitant hourly rates – will they be flexible? Will they work outside of the normal office hours? Will they do whatever it takes to ease your stress and make your life easier as a personal service or will they do the bare minimum to earn their billing hours?

If you would love to be able to delegate to a fantastic multi-skilled personal assistant or administrator but can’t afford to or don’t want all the bother of contracts and HR work on your plate, then I am your lady – either myself or one of my lovely hand selected team of Virtual Assistants will be the perfect fit for you.

Don’t delay, get in touch today and lets start to get your days back on track!

Speak soon!

Kelly Rigg

Founder of List Whisperer