Develop a unique style – tips for the (internet) entrepreneur.

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Be Unique

When it comes to your business standing out, you don’t get points in the current marketplace for repeating tired, old ideas or for lacking originality. Yes, we support the old adage, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, to some extent but still, you need to develop a unique and personalized style in every aspect of your business. This includes everything you do from the ground up.

 As a small business owner, you must realize that you are unique because there is only one you in this world and you carry that unique quality with you wherever you need it to go. Your personal style should shine through loud and clear in every way. This must be reflected from the design on your business cards to your website, all the way to how you conduct business to how your business is structured. As an entrepreneur, you need to play up your unique features and experiences that are relevant to your business. I stress relevant because you may be able to stand on one hand for 10 minutes, which might be considered unique, but this is hardly likely to be relevant to your business, unless of course your business involves acrobatics. You will need to put some thought into what makes you unique and play it up. Avoid looking at the entrepreneur on the floor above you  or down the street who is seemingly doing well and try to replicate him or her. Clients are sharp and are well able to spot a copycat or someone who is not being authentic. They will see right through you and will never end up becoming regular clients. You already have your own personal style in your private life so take the positive elements and transfer it into your professional life. Be yourself and let that shine through to others. Even in your communicating, oral or written, communicate in your own unique style to everyone you deal and soon others will learn about you (NOTE: this MUSTbe coupled with a great service, no mediocrity). If you are planning to make a livelihood off your entrepreneurial abilities and gifting, you must be prepared to wow people by not being afraid to be the real you. Here at Caribbean Virtual Office we oftentimes find ourselves in the need to bring in outside support apart from our original team. We are careful to avoid those who are afraid to be themselves, but try to be what they think we want them to be. Yes, we value professionalism, but no one needs to stifle the real them to be a professional. We’ve found that the persons who are afraid to keep it real are generally not a good fit in the long run, because they try to be someone other than who they really are.

 By being honest and professional with your customers, they can then decide for themselves if you are a good fit for them and if your business is where they want to spend their money….or not. Just don’t defraud yourself and your clients by not being you. You are unique as your business, just let it shine through!

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Project Management Tools Used in Virtual Outsourcing

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free project management tool
A project management tool is one of the most usable applications in a virtual outsourcing arrangement. It is used to keep track of project timelines, deliverables, milestones, and even budgets. Some companies prefer to use homegrown project management tools. Others use free and paid versions that can be found online. We’re rounding up some of the popular project management tool around:

  • Mavenlink —  This project management tool is designed to streamline your workflow and increase your productivity. From the project workspace, you can easily manage communications, documents, schedules, budgets and payments related to a project.  It also has tracking features that allows the project manager to track the progress of tasks, deliverable and milestones. The free version of this tool allows one project admin to activate three projects with an unlimited number of participants. However, the storage is limited to 500MB.

free project management tool

  • GQueues — If you like using Google Apps  Like Docs, Calendar and Tasks, then this is the project management tool for you. This tool is designed to work seamlessly with these Google Apps and you can even log in using your Google username and password. If you are using Google Chrome as a browser, there is an extension to make things easier for you. The free version of the tool, GQueues Lite, allows you to create tasks and sub-tasks, tag those, and publish documents. If you want the ability to collaborate, set up reminders, integrate the app with Google Calendar, and get the Google Chrome extension, then you have to pay $25 per year.

  • gTrax —  This time tracking software is made pretty with light project and resource management features. At the moment, it is integrated with Google Calendar. Expect integration with Gmail, Google Docs, and Contacts in the upcoming months. You don’t need to shell out a cent to use this tool because it is completely FREE.

  • Glasscubes – This tool differentiates itself from the competition with its free conference call feature. Since it gives users a free intranet, it allows organizations to share and manage files and contacts. Administrators can also manage teams and clients efficiently. The free for life plan allows for 2 users, 2 workspaces, 50 contacts, 1 GB storage, and 10MB upload file size.

These are just some of the tools that can be used by companies and their virtual service providers. With these tools in place, the distance between clients and their third party service providers becomes negligible. It would not matter whether you are outsourcing to the Caribbean or to the Far East.

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How to Convince Your Client to Join Social Media

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social media marketing

Many executives and business owners are wary about getting involved with social media marketing. Their apprehensions are quite understandable. After all, social media marketing is a fairly new marketing method and there isn’t a standard way of measuring its effectiveness. Given these, how can you convince your reluctant client to join the social media bandwagon? Here are some points that you can raise:

  • Social media is not new. Many businesses are leveraging the social part of the World Wide Web since the 1990s. These are the business that long ago recognized ways of interacting, not just communicating, with Internet users. Methods such as simple on-site polls, surveys, and message boards were among the earliest ways by which businesses got social.
  • Social media investment is measurable. The problem with social media marketing, as some executives put it, is that its effectiveness is un-measurable. To some degree, it’s true. There’s no standard formula for measuring the return of your social media investment. However, there are tools that you can use to find out whether your social media efforts are paying off. For example, you can use Google Analytics to see whether social media is directing traffic to your web site or landing pages as you expected.
  • The wait-and-see approach does not work. There are executives who would like to see tangible results of their competitors’ social media marketing efforts before they do it. The problem with this kind of viewpoint is that it assumes that you and your competitor have the same business. Though you may be the same industry, your business operations and the corporate values you advance are different. Thus, your social media marketing efforts will be designed differently. It follows then that then that its success and effectiveness will be measured differently.
  • Social media marketing is CHEAP. When your client starts talking about ROI, stop him. Remind your client that social media marketing is very cheap to maintain. The only cost that they will incur is the cost of hiring the person to manage it – which is you.

If after explaining all these points and your client is not yet convinced, then try a different approach. This time, demonstrate the risks of ignoring social media. Maybe this will finally get your client to join the social media bandwagon and let you start drafting a social media marketing plan for his business.

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The Social Business: Social Media Marketing

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Ten years ago, no one would have described their business as social. Now, business of all sizes can be seen on social networks. Whether it’s a major sports brand like Nike or a work-at-home mom’s online business, these businesses are reaching out to their market by making their presence felt online through social media.

outsourcing social media management

Why are all these businesses going social? The simple answer is this is where the market is. But more than that, there are a few more compelling reasons to join social media.

  1. It fits right in with any marketing policy. Social media marketing is not meant to replace traditional means of marketing but to compliment it. Any marketing effort would benefit from having social media support. Alternatively, a marketing effort can directed primarily on the social media crowd and be supported using traditional marketing methods.
  2. It’s virtually cost-free. Signing up for social media is FREE. All you need is a valid email account and you can sign up to as many social networks, video sharing sites, blogging platforms, and social bookmarking sites that you want. The only cost of social media marketing is the time spent managing all those social media accounts, which involves customizing profiles, updating content, and interacting with friends, followers, and fans.
  3. It can be used to identify your target market. The beauty of social media is that its users are given means to select the content they want. For businesses, this means that the people liking your fan page in Facebook, following you in Twitter, reading your blogs and socially bookmarking your sites are the people that you ought to target in your marketing efforts.
  4. It’s a fast way of communication. The very nature of social media allows content to propagate like wildfire. Sharing breaking news and important announcements to your network is tantamount to broadcasting your message on national television. Take for example the case of a store having a sale. Announce it on Twitter and you can bet that your followers will be re-Tweeting it.
  5. It’s not going away. Social media is here to stay whether you’re in it or not. Even if one social media falls or drops in popularity, another one will rise in its place. So why not just join it? It doesn’t cost your business anything and the possibilities for your business are limitless.

If you are unsure as to how to proceed with your social media marketing efforts, we can help you with that as well as your other Internet marketing efforts. Just contact us here at Caribbean Virtual office so we can get you on the social media bandwagon right away.

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4 Steps to Decluttering Your Inbox

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Admit it. Even after you’ve religiously performed the four D’s of email management, there are moments that your inbox still looks cluttered. If you it seems that way, then there is only one reason for that – your inbox is still cluttered.  Fortunately for you, decluttering your inbox can be easily done. Just follow these tips that we’ll outline for you.

  • Create folders. This is the oldest trick in organizing your inbox. Think of your inbox as a filing cabinet filled with folders. There’s a folder set aside for each client, each project, or even each email sender. You can also create folders for each department or function like marketing, human resource, or finance.  Once those folders are in place, move the emails you have opened and read to the appropriate folder.
  • Manage your subscriptions. If you like reading blogs and online news, there is a high probability that you have subscribed by email to the RSS feed of your favorite blog or news site. Look at your subscriptions. Are you actually reading them? You will find that you have lost interest in at least one of the blogs or sites you’ve subscribed so do your inbox a favor and unsubscribe from them. If you’re getting daily updates from some of your subscriptions, consider changing the frequency of the updates from daily to weekly.
  • Add emails to task. Some email applications like Gmail allows you to add an email to task.  Do this for emails that require an action on your part, which you’ve decided to defer for later. Once you have added the email to task then you can virtually file that folder to the appropriate email. When you’re ready to do work on your tasks, just open the task window and read the related email.
  • Filter your messages. If your inbox looks like a postal office every morning, opt to have new emails directly delivered to appropriate folders. You can do this by filtering. For example, add filters to your email that directly sends all subscriptions to their appointed folders. That way your inbox won’t be cluttered with new subscriptions. You can also use filters to direct unwanted emails from your inbox directly to your trash.

Remember, decluttering your inbox is not a one-time thing. You should declutter your inbox at least every month. So as not to forget this task, make sure that you add this to your task gadget or to your calendar.

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The Four Ds of Managing Your Inbox

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virtual outsourcingHave you ever logged in to your email and found at least 50 new messages waiting for your attention? If you’re a small business owner, then you probably have. These emails are probably from employees, suppliers, customers, family and friends with a few spammers thrown in.

Opening and reading each email can be time consuming and you just don’t have the time to do that. So, we are letting you in on the secrets of managing your inbox effectively: the four D’s of email management.

  1. Delete it – Don’t you just feel overwhelmed with too many unread emails? Start your day by deleting all those unwanted emails in your inbox. You will know that an email is a spam by checking the subject. Look out for emails about Viagra, penis enlargement, birth control pills, and anything that seems like it’s about sex. Not only are these e-mails spam, but they often contain computer viruses that invade your computer once you open them. Also delete emails that congratulate you for winning some sort of online lottery or contest unless you want to take the first step to becoming a victim of fraud.
  2. Do it — Check emails from employees and suppliers first and see what needs attention the most. There might be a report that you need to see, an order that you have to confirm, or an invoice that needs to be paid. These are emails that you can look at in a glance and approve within a minute or two. The general rule is, if doing the task involved in the email takes you less than two minutes, you should do it.
  3. Delegate it — One of the perks of being the boss is that you can delegate tasks that you don’t want to do or have no time to do to your staff. For example, if your inbox is flooded with emails from customers asking assistance, forward them to one of your staff and ask them to deal with it. If you don’t have any employees, then consider retaining the services of a virtual outsourcing company that can handle customer service for you.
  4. Defer it – Some tasks take longer time to do. For example, reports and order vouchers take longer time to accomplish so you have to defer to do them later in the day when you are not busy. Also, emails from family may be set aside later in the day when you are more relaxed.

Try these four D’s of managing your inbox and notice the difference in your productivity. If you have many email accounts that need managing, let us help you to manage them. Contact us and let’s begin managing those inboxes.

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Business Startups: Keeping Financial Records

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One of the burdens of being in business is that you have to keep accurate records of every transaction that you go into in the name of the company. Whether it’s buying office supplies, paying the wages of your employees, receiving payment from customers, or providing credit to a client, you have to keep track of everything for accounting and auditing purposes. In the business world, this called “keeping the books”

Obviously, a bookkeeping system is needed when you start the business. As a small business owner, there are three ways that you can go about it. The fist option, and probably the best for those with accounting knowledge, is to keep and balance the books yourself. The main advantage of this option is that you can make financial decisions immediately, as needed, because you have a good idea of how your business is doing from a financial standpoint. Equally important is that you’re not going to steal from your own business, which is a probability if you hire someone to do it.

The next option is to hire someone who has a working knowledge of bookkeeping to do the balancing of the books for you. Since you are on a budget, your hire should also be able to do other things for the business other than keep financial records. For this matter, hire a secretary or a store supervisor with basic bookkeeping skills to help you with the books.

Your third option is to virtually outsource your bookkeeping needs to companies or individuals that offer virtual bookkeeping services. This is similar to hiring an employee with a bookkeeping background. The only difference is you eliminate the risk of being defrauded by your employee because your virtual bookkeeper does not have access to the rest of your business.

Virtual bookkeeping

Should you opt to hire a virtual bookkeeper, you have to decide between a freelance bookkeeper or a virtual outsourcing company that offers bookkeeping services. In both cases, you will definitely pay your virtual bookkeeper by the hour. The advantage of hiring a virtual outsourcing company is that somebody will take over your business should the virtual bookkeeper assigned to you be unable to work due to sickness, emergencies, or other reasons. Business continuity is not affected because the company will see to it that everything is taken care of.

Business bookkeeping is one of the many services offered by Caribbean Virtual Office. To find out more about this service, do not hesitate to contact us. We will make sure that you never have to worry about keeping your books in order and up to date. Your books are in good hands with Caribbean Virtual Office.

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Five Most Important Questions to Ask Your Virtual Service Provider

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When virtually outsourcing your business processes, it is imperative that you find a capable, reliable and trustworthy service provider otherwise you would be just wasting your time and money in hiring one virtual service provider and another. A thorough interview of the virtual service provider will go along way towards ensuring that you have the service provider that you need.

Here are the most important questions that you should ask your potential virtual service provider:

1. How long have your been providing services online?

Whether you are looking for a virtual assistant or a programmer, you need to ask this question to gauge how seasoned your potential hire maybe. Admittedly, there are many newcomers who are as good, if not better, than experienced service providers when it comes to delivering work. However, if you are a first time employer, it would do well to work with a season virtual service provider than a new one.

2. What are your core skills and rate them?

A virtual service provider must be confident in his or her own abilities and know how to highlight it. You want a virtual service provider who can assure you of task or project delivery on time and within standards. In addition, you do not want someone who’s skills are entry level if you’re hiring someone to fulfill a highly technical project or task.

3. What do you consider as strengths and weaknesses?

This serves as a follow up question to the one just stated above. You want a virtual assistant who’s aware of what he or she can or cannot do. However, this question has more to do with the virtual service provider’s soft skills rather than hard skills. Is he a good communicator? Can she work with a team or would she rather finish a task alone? Such questions will help you gauge whether you can work well with a virtual service provider or not.

4. How many clients you support currently?

As an employer, your main concern is whether your virtual service provider will have the time to attend to your task or project. Most freelancers have more than one client at a time. You want someone who can focus on your tasks for a few hours a day without the need to attend to other tasks at the same time.

5. What are your fees?

Money is a serious issue when dealing with virtual service providers. Even if you have previously stated your preference, you need to clarify that your potential hire will work for a certain amount for a certain number of hours or per project. This should be clear to both parties before any work commences.

These are the five most important questions that you need to ask your potential virtual service provider.  Listen closely as your potential hire answers these questions and do take notes so that you won’t forget anything said during this brief interview.

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How to Start Up a Business: A Checklist

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Cubicle

When starting up a business from the ground up, you’ve got to have a plan. A plan increases the likelihood that your business will succeed. This article will give you the basic steps that you need to follow when starting a new business in the U.S.

  1. Apply for an Employer Identification Number (EIN). Applying for an EIN is easy, assuming that you need to apply for one. There are currently four ways to do this.
    1. Online. You can apply online and get your EIN after a few minutes. Here is a link to the start page for page for that, which you can also access from the web site of the Internal Revenue Service.
    2. Toll-Free Telephone Service – Call (800) 829-4933 and answer the questions that an assistor will ask you. He will be the one to give your EIN. You can call between 7:00AM and 10:00PM during weekdays.
    3. Fax – Fill up Form SS-4 and fax it to your state’s IRS office. You can find your state’s IRS office contact numbers on the IRS web site.
    4. Mail – Print and fill out Form SS-4. Mail it to your state’s IRS office, the address of which you can find in the IRS web site.
  1. Choose a business structure for your business. Your choice of business structure will determine your personal liability in the business. Here are the most common forms of business structure.
    1. Sole Proprietorship
    2. Partnership
    3. Corporation
    4. S Corporation
    5. Limited Liability Company
  1. Select a tax year. The tax year determines the accounting period of your financial records. There are two kinds of tax year to choose from:
    1. Calendar year — This follows the lunar calendar. It begins in January 1st and ends in December 31st.
    2. Fiscal year – This consists of 12 consecutive months. Its last day should end at the last day of any month except December.
  1. Determine your staffing requirements. Are you going to hire permanent and temporary staff for your business? If you are, then you need to have them fill out Form I-9 and Form W-4. Also, do consider hiring people virtually instead of going through the hassle of recruiting and hiring employees.

Pay your business taxes. Even before your business starts operating, you need to pay business taxes. The most common business taxes are:

  1. Income Tax
  2. Self employment Tax
  3. Employment Taxes
  4. Excise Taxes

Getting Help

Many budding entrepreneurs try to do everything of the steps mentioned above. However, you can make things easier for you by hiring a company to assist you with the processing of the various requirements and make the necessary suggestions to ease the challenges of starting up a business. Caribbean Virtual Office offers support services for business start-ups. Contact us to see how we can help make this journey easier for you!

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Business StartUps: Selecting a Business Structure

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One of the things that you need to fulfil before you operate your business is select a business structure. The business structure determines your level of liability in the business as well as the tax return that you are going to file. There are five kinds of business structures legally recognized in the U.S.
  • Sole Proprietorship — A single person owns this business solely by himself or herself and thus carries full liability of the business. This means that if the business goes down south, the sole proprietor’s personal assets will be used to pay off the business debts. The owner of the business has the monopoly on making decisions that affect the business.
  • Partnership – Two or more persons own a partnership and each one contributes to the his or her money, labor, skill, and property to the business. Their contributions determine their share in the profits of the business. Depending on how the company is structured, the partners will have personal or no personal liabilities in the business. Partnerships file an annual return of income.
  • Corporations – Owners of a corporation are called shareholders and each contributes money, property, or both to the business. Their share of the profit is determined by their contribution. A corporation may be public or private. Shareholders have limited liability, meaning that their personal finances won’t be used to pay off the debts of the business should it go bankrupt. As expected, the tax requirements of a corporation are much more complicated than the previous business structures mentioned above.
  • S Corporation – This is a type of corporation that must be based in the U.S. and has no more than 100 shareholders. Unlike a corporation, each shareholder reports their income, deductions, and credit from the corporation through their personal finances. These would reflect in their personal income tax.
  • Limited Liability Company (LLC) — This is a fairly new type of business structure. Instead of shareholders, members of an LLC are called members and they can be individuals, corporations, or foreign entities. An LLC can have only one member or hundreds for there is no restriction on the number of members.

When deciding which business structure you would use for your business, you need to find out the requirements for each and prepare those. You might opt to hire someone or a company to help you with that. Caribbean Virtual Office offers support services to those starting up a business as well as administrative services to those who already have one.

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