The holiday season is quickly approaching and now is the time to prepare. There are events to plan, gifts to buy and wrap,  travel arrangements to be made and much, much more. How will you help others?

The holiday season is the number one time for personal assistants and concierges. Some people may not realize how they can benefit from a personal assistant and may not understand how affordable your help can be. Your first step for the upcoming holiday season is to tell potential customers how you can help them. Give them ideas.

To start, you may want to advertise through flyers or postcards and make sure you list some of the things that you can do for your clients. It will generally take 2-3 weeks for someone to actually respond to your advertising campaigns. Now is the time to begin those efforts.

Second, prepare you elevator speech and always have cards ready. Don’t be shy about telling people about your business. It wasn’t long ago that we were at a busy store standing in line behind a mother and her 3 small children. She had her hands full. We took a minute to make some small talk and suggest that we could possibly make her day a bit better by spending time playing with her children and enjoying her free time. She loved the idea, especially when she found out how affordable it was. We now run errands for her once a week.

When you get the chance to speak with a possible customer, you need to suggest to them how they can use your time. Many won’t know where to begin. Here are suggestions for the upcoming holiday season:

• Provide shopping services for the holidays. This would include gift shopping.
• Gift Wrapping. This is the #1 service we provide during the holidays. Our customers like a personal touch, more than you can receive at the busy malls.
• Event planning and preparation. Many people just hate to plan a meal, pick up the groceries and get ready for an event. While I don’t recommend being the event planner and doing the cleaning, you can easily take care of errands and picking up groceries to help your client.
• Holiday Decoration. Decorating for the holidays used to be a fun family event. Families are so busy these days that they just want things “done”. Helping with the decorations can save your client lots of time. This is also a great job that you can use your own assistants for.
• After the holiday cleanups. This would include packing up decorations, returning gifts and addressing thank you cards.

We’ve found that many of the clients we work for during the holidays continue to use us through out the year. Some have even become weekly regulars all because of the service we have provided for them over the holidays.

How can you provide delivery service without charge your clients more? 

Gas prices are increasing each day and it is estimated that the price of gas will rise to $5.00 a gallon by the end of the summer. Much of a personal assistant’s business involves driving, delivering and picking up. So how can you still provide a cost effective service without passing too much of the cost on to your customers?

Schedule your week

One of the easiest changes you can make to your business without increasing your prices is to schedule your week. If you have repeat customers that have a schedule, try to make stops for all of your customers within the same area. For instance, make 1 stop to the dry cleaning store for all customers at once instead of multiple. If your grocery shopping, think about packing coolers in your car and shopping for all customers at once.(Be sure to carefully organize this process). Just this 1 change can significantly affect the amount you spend on gas.

Limit your days to “Zones”

If you have multiple clients in different parts of town limit your travel days to zones. For instance, if the far west end of town is 35 miles away, that is easily 70 miles round trip. Don’t make the journey more than one or two times a week. Instead, decide that Tuesday and Thursday is your “west end day” and handle anything in that area for those clients local to that zone AND any errands that need to be run for clients living in other “zones” to that area.

Outsource and get help

The summer time means that college students are available as well. You may look into hiring some college help that lives in further away areas or as I mentioned, “zones”. You will still need to pay them mileage and for their time, but you will also save money on not having to drive to that area your self.

These are just a few ideas that we have experimented with and have worked for us. You may want to try them yourself and see how well it works. Of course, this will require very good organization skills and time management, but that’s a trait that every personal assistant must have to be successful anyway.

Tips for a Personal Assistant – Ideas for Summer

Summer is quickly approaching and the kids are almost out of school.(At least here). While most people are getting geared up for some relaxing weekends, a Personal Assistant should be preparing for one of the busiest times of the year.  When the kids are home, working parents have less time to get things done, that’s the perfect time for a Personal Assistant to step in and help.

Here are 6 ideas for boosting your business during Summer

• Vacation Planning – Help your client plan the perfect weekend get away, with or without the kids.
• Vacation Errands – Right before the vacation, busy families have a million things to get done. Make sure nothing slips through the cracks by taking care of their errands or helping out.
• House Sitting – When the clients are away… watch their house.
• Errands, Errands, Errands – With the price of gas going up, families are going to be looking for alternative to driving all around town. You can make the best of it by knocking out several clients errands at once. Make sure you adjust your prices for the price of gas increase.
• Party Planning – What’s summer without a Bar-b-que? Put together the event for your client.
• Pack up for winter – If your clients are like me, I store my winter clothes and get out the summer clothes about this time, but I hate doing it. Helping your client store their Winter clothes and getting ready for summer is a something they would be greatful for.

Enjoy your Summer and stay busy!

Improve your quality of life and reduce stress

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Ultimate Time Management provides examples, to do lists, action plans, checklists and simple approaches to help you manage your time. If you think you have a handle on time management, then think again. This book makes it so simple that even a student to benefit from it.

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A good personal assistant should be ready for anything. After all, your clients can spring anything on you at any time. Most personal assistants that serve many clients have a formal contract that outlines the specific services that you will be providing for your client. More importantly, your contract should outline services you will not be providing for them as well.

We’ve seen first hand that clients will often try to push that “line” just a little and if they succeed, will continue to push it. In most cases, we’ve seen this with childcare and babysitting. The client will often ask for just a few minutes while they take of something or as a favor. The requests then come in more frequently. Some personal assistant’s are fine with this sort of relationship and others are not.

So how do you tell your client you are not a babysitter and that your skills and services are in other areas? The first step is to plan your discussion. It is important to maintain the relationship with your client. As a personal assistant, you should also be prepared with a solution to the problem. Research nanny services, daycare or other reputible child care services that you can recommend. 

When the time comes to have the conversation with your client you need to be firm and honest. Explain that your services do not include childcare or the other services they are asking you to perform. Provide the information that you have researched and make your recommendations. If your contract specifically excludes those services now is the time to reiterate that.

Most clients will understand your concerns and thank you for being candid and honest. A few will not. Remember, the advantage of working for yourself is that you can choose your clients. If you and a client do not see eye to eye, it may be time to terminate your contract.

Good luck!