Being a one ‘person’ band is very exciting when you first begin your work from home business journey. It doesn’t matter what you do, Coach, Mentor, Public Speaker, Virtual Assistant. Things will go south if you continue working as a one ‘person’ band. It won’t take long before you’re sitting there on your own, thinking about what could have been.

For the first 12 months of my business, I was so intent on doing absolutely everything myself, I almost ran myself into the ground. I was in the office before dawn and out after dusk. Then I would sit with my laptop or iPad and continue working on things like design, social media, newsletters and making changes to my website. Not for one minute did I think there was anything wrong with this. I loved my business and the work I was able to do for my clients. Working 15 hours a day, was not an issue, at the time.

The hammer dropped when one day, my body decided it just wouldn’t move. Any motion to propel myself forward was excruciating. I put it down to getting older, arthritis perhaps. Not for one minute did I think that my 15 hour a day workload as a solopreneur, was actually affecting my health. But it was in a huge way.

The alarm bells rang, loud and clear. I was hearing them alright. I needed to change things and quickly. If I was in pain constantly and tired constantly, how could my business grow, how could I do the work my clients needed doing? I took a long look at my clients and what they did. They were very successful in their chosen areas, they worked very hard, had a wonderful support network that enabled them to have the best of both worlds.

So what did they have that I didn’t have? They had me, their admin consultant, their VA, their JMJ, their solver of issues, and not to mention, mind reader. Once I analysed how the ‘successful’ people did it, I couldn’t believe how silly I had been. It was easy.

I started working with my own VA. Anita, made things so much easier for me. She took care of my newsletters, my website updates and maintenance, all the things that I was spending time in the evenings and weekends doing. Anita could do for me during business hours. All it needed was for me to schedule time into my day to strategically plan what I needed to happen and then upload the tasks to Asana.

So if you’re wondering exactly how Anita takes care of things for me when it comes to blogs, here’s my step-by-step.

  1. I write my blog in a shared notebook in Evernote
  2. I upload the image to be used (add copyright to the image if needed)
  3. I send Anita a message when it’s ready via Evernote

Anita then:

  1. Copies my blog post into a post on my website
  2. Proofs for readability (I’ve already done this, but a second pair of eyes is a good thing)
  3. Links are added and checked
  4. Tags are added
  5. Featured image is added
  6. Meta info is added
  7. The blog is categorised
  8. Scheduled using CoSchedule, social media is scheduled via CoSchedule (using our time strategy)
  9. Newsletter is drafted using Mailchimp
  10. Links are checked

I then review the newsletter, recommend any changes. Anita makes the changes and then schedules it to go out. I’ve gone from spending a couple of hours fluffing around, to 20 mins max of my time for this one task. It has to make good business sense to get help for your business.

What is it that you need help with? How can the JMJ – EA for a Day VA network help stop your business from going south?