by Tina Forsyth on November 22, 2011
Date: December 5th, 2011 at 1:00 pm PST / 4:00 pm EST
Many entrepreneurs don’t understand why it is important to get a strong legal foundation in place for their business – and so they default to not bothering with it at all (which can of course come back to bite them down the road)
As an Online Business Manager it’s important that we know enough to support our clients in taking these steps, that we know ourselves when, where and why a business needs legal advice.
In this session you’ll learn what to look and listen for in supporting your clients businesses.
- When do you need an agreement?
- What are the unique legal issues that online businesses face
- What is intellectual property?
- How does strategy affect agreements?
Our guest experts for this Member-Only call are David M. Goldsmith and Michael T. Greene.
David M. Goldsmith is a senior partner of The Goldsmith Group, LLC. David utilizes his coaching skills to empower clients to connect vision to action. He coaches individuals who head up projects and companies to become powerful, effective leaders that continuously guide innovation and growth. David supports the firm’s clients to stay focused on strategy and moving constantly towards new models of professional and personal success. Mr. Goldsmith was the former chief operating officer of CoachInc.com and past President of CoachU. He is passionate about helping people and has consulted and coached hundreds of businesses since 1991. Prior to that he operated a number of successful businesses in the fields of customer care and broadcast services.
Michael T. Greene is also a senior partner of The Goldsmith Group, LLC. Michael guides clients of the firm through strategic choices and intellectual property matters. He combines his background in law and business to support individuals and organizations exploit emerging opportunities or navigate through difficult decision points. Michael has extensive experience in managing and guiding legal counsel in the development and implementation of intellectual property strategy. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Mr. Greene has an extensive background with both litigation and transactional commercial law, with an emphasis on finance and real estate. He has practiced law in Southern California, specializing in business and commercial transactions, finance, and taxation strategies.
To learn more about David Goldsmith and Michael Greene visit: http://www.thegoldsmithgroup.com/
IAOBM Members: You can access the recording for this call in the Member Area. If you are not an IAOBM member yet, find out more about IAOBM Membership Benefits by clicking here: http://www.obmconnect.com/membership-benefits
by Tina Forsyth on November 16, 2011
(an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Becoming an OBM)
Look for any ongoing errors or delays in the business and ask yourself – how can this be automated
One of my clients ran a 6-month coaching program and asked each member of the program to read and agree to a set of standards to complete their registration. She would send a PDF form for her coaching clients to print, read, sign and fax back. Then, a VA would gather the faxes, enter the client contact information into a spreadsheet and send the client a Welcome package. This was a lot of work for the VA to coordinate, and also created a gap between when a person would send in their fax and when they would receive their Welcome packet (sometimes a day or so, depending on how busy the VA was).
To simplify the process, we set up an online agreement form. Now, when someone registers for the program they are taken to a webpage with an online agreement form that they can immediately read and “sign” (by submitting their name). Once they submit their name, they gain immediate access to the online Welcome packet. What was a 7-step and labour-intensive process that took two days or more, is now a simple, three-step process that takes minutes and is easier for everyone involved.
by Tina Forsyth on November 9, 2011
(an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Becoming an OBM)
I find that the tedious tasks are usually the ones that are easiest to automate. Article submission is a good example. Many clients want to do some form of article marketing, and will quite often delegate this task to a VA on their team. Depending on how many sites they are submitting to, submitting one article can take a VA up to five hours or more! Plus, most VAs really don’t enjoy this task, and it will quite often fall to the bottom of their list and in some cases not get done at all.
There are some great article submissions systems available now that will automate this process for you. You just enter your article once and these systems blast out that article to a bunch of sites. This frees your VA to focus on other business-building activities for you. (Or you may want to question doing article submission at all – does it bring a good ROI?)
It is especially important to see what kinds of tedious tasks your client is doing themselves. Again, we want to always be trying to take things off our clients’ plates so they can focus on the more important business-building activities that only THEY can do.
I once worked with a client who was manually entering names into her newsletter database from an online free quiz that she offers. Eek! First of all, she shouldn’t be the one entering those names into the newsletter database; her VA should be doing that for her. And more importantly, this could easily be an automated process. So we setup the online form to send this information directly to the newsletter database as soon as someone takes the quiz – no fuss, no muss!
by Tina Forsyth on November 2, 2011
There is a distinction that I want to make that may be a big shift for some of you.
Your client (the person who hired you) is not really your client – the BUSINESS is your real client.
What the heck does this mean? As an OBM you are there to manage the *business* and keep an eye on the bottom line. And sometimes your client may get in the way of this (believe it or not.)
For example, let’s say your client wakes up one day and decides that they want to launch a new program next month. There is already a good plan in place for what is being launched over the next 3 months, and you wonder if this is the best idea? You fear that if your client changes things now it might complicate things, and could potentially back-fire by trying to squeeze it all in vs. sticking to the original plan. Plus you aren’t really sure what the payoff is here – how does this new program fit into the overall growth plan for the business?
If you just say “OK, let’s do the new thing” regardless of your concerns, that’s not taking a stand for the business… that’s just looking to please your client. Taking a stand for the business means you are willing to bring up these concerns, and that you are looking at what is best for the business overall (vs. going with what is sometimes bright-shiny-object syndrome from our clients.)
You can say something as simple as “As your OBM I’m always looking at what is best for the business overall, and so I just have to ask…. [insert questions here]”
Will your clients always agree with you? Probably not, they could decide to go ahead with the new idea anyhow and that’s a-ok – but the thing is that you are coming from the right place and are willing to step up and ask some key questions to make sure this is what is best for the business now.
Now THAT’S what being a great OBM is all about.
by Tina Forsyth on October 26, 2011
At this point you should have a full understanding of WHAT needs to be done.. this does not mean you are the one solely doing it! Just simply means that you have tasked out in the Virtual Office everything that needs to be done and can see the big picture of the day in and day out on goings of the business.
So here’s whats next:
- Layout all projects, marketing promotional plans (timeline, delegation) – your goal here is to ensure that everything the client wants to accomplish has a plan. A timeline/project plan will allow you to verify that you and your client are on the same page with all that they envision as well as give you a guide for getting projects accomplished on time and in budget
- Get metrics set up – you need to have measurable data to prove the growth of the business and the success of each campaign or launch your client has.
- COMPLETE ALL DATING PROJECTS (everything that is dangling on on the team either from stuff you are working on or stuff that was there before you came on… GET IT DONE!) Why is this important? Your client hired you as an OBM because they need to get things done that they themselves or team have not been able to manage getting accomplished. You need to have made a huge impact on their business by the end of this 90 day period (or they may wonder if it’s worth having an OBM on board?)
- Create a job description for every one on the team and what they are doing…
- Generate a team budget based on past invoices and job descriptions (this is where you let client know if they need to add or release team members)
And of course, at the end of 90 days talk about incentive compensation 
by Tina Forsyth on October 14, 2011
Are you clear on what you should be spending your time on in your business?
And more importantly, what you *shouldn’t* be doing anymore?
At our Mentorship Retreat back in May, I had everyone do a really simple exercise – create a Yes List.
To do so is simple:
- Grab a big sheet of paper – preferably something you can hang on the wall in your office – and a Sharpie.
- Write down all the things that only you can do in your business (and that you enjoy!). This could include things like: marketing activites, following up with a potential client, writing an ezine article, planning out a project, calling someone as a JV, spending some time brainstorming new ideas, etc.
[Keep in mind that you want to focus on those things that are the fastest path to money]
- Do only those things!
Once you have your Yes List then throughout the day you simply ask yourself:
“Is this something on my Yes List?”
If yes, do it… and if not, you need to pass it on to someone else.
The gals who did this exercise back in May have reported that it literally changed their business. In a span of a few short months, they went from “doing everything and on the edge of burnout” to “doing the stuff that matters, that they love and pays well.”
Imagine your life if you only did the stuff on your Yes List?
I’d love to hear what’s on your list, please share, k?
by Tina Forsyth on October 13, 2011
Date: Tuesday, November 22nd at 11:30 am pacific / 2:30 pm eastern
So what does it look like to build an OBM business?
In my experience training/mentoring virtual support professionals for over 5 years now I’ve come to see a very distinct “journey” in the building of an OBM business. There are three distinct phases that OBMs will go through in creating a business that serves both them and their clients.
Join us on this call where we will discuss:
- What the 3 phases of growth are
- What to expect in each phase
- The distinct challenges of each phase
- How to move yourself with grace and ease through each step of the journey
Tina Forsyth is a leading authority on building virtual teams to help businesses thrive. As the author of Becoming an Online Bus
iness Manager and founder of the International Association of Online Business Managers she specializes in maximizing business growth potential through online growth strategies. Having built and managed various six-figure businesses since 2002, Tina knows firsthand how to implement a strong business foundation and the team to support it. Through her Online Business Manager Training & Certification she is teaching this process to other virtual support professionals who want to play a bigger game and become OBMs for their clients.
IAOBM Members: You can access the recording for this call in the Member Area. If you are not an IAOBM member yet, find out more about IAOBM Membership Benefits by clicking here: http://www.obmconnect.com/membership-benefits
by Tina Forsyth on October 12, 2011
The first 30 days of working with a new client can be one of the most stressful in the new client relationship. We often think as OBM’s that we have to know everything… know all about the client, the systems, their way of doing things.. but the truth is there are key elements we need to focus on and the rest we need to leave till the next 30 days (60-90 point).
Here are the key areas to focus on in the first 30 days:
- Find out the current fires: this client has reached out to you because they are in ‘crisis’, so find out the immediate fires that are burning and FIX THEM! Take them completely off the clients plate. This is so important… if you do not relieve the impact of the current crisis your new client may not deem you ready to ‘manage’ their business. I can not stress enough that this is a make you or break you with a new client relationship.
- Learn the business: Client Intake and system analysis (basically you just want to see everything that is going on and were it lives) A great way to start learning the business is to have the client and team BCC you on ALL emails going in and out of business. I know this may seem a little overwhelming but after just a few days you figure out what is top priority and what’s not.. but it will give you an overview of the business communication cycle.
- Get an assessment of the team: A big part of working with new clients is seeing who does what and when. You want to make certain the people on the team are doing what they love and that they understand the expectation of clients vision for the business. ie: customer service emails returned in 4 hours (or 24 hrs depending on client expectation), turnaround on projects are 48 hours, etc.
by Tina Forsyth on October 5, 2011
Many of our client’s have what I call “diamonds in the rough” laying around in their business. These are programs/products that they have offered in the past and that now lie dormant – so much value just sitting there being “unused!” Now that’s an opportunity waiting to happen.
Applying your marketing mindset here is simple – take a look at everything your client has ever offered. Where is it now? Is it still “available for sale”? And if not, could it be?
For example, a past teleclass series could be make into a self-study program and packaged up for digital sale or as a tangible product. What about past classes that your client has done – calls for membership or even free calls. With one of my past clients we reviewed all the monthly classes she did for her membership and created a “Best of” product.
What you are doing here is finding/reviving revenue streams – and I don’t know of a client who wouldn’t be thrilled with that! 
by Tina Forsyth on September 28, 2011
How are those OBM 2.0 shoes fitting? Have you had a chance to try our first two tips yet?
This week’s tip is another quick/simple one for you – what is happening on your client’s thank you pages? A thank you page is the one that comes up right after someone has taken action – be it signing up for a freebie, registering for a class or making a purchase. Thank you pages are REALLY hot real estate, given that people are engaged and excited in that moment.
And yet many folks do what I consider to be a big no-no… they just have a system generated “thank you, look for an email in your inbox” page. Yipes!
Being such hot real estate you want to make the most of ALL thank-you pages – and yes, I said all. Even if it’s just a free class… people are there, engaged and ready. Make the most of it! Some ideas include asking them to share (via tweet, like or other social media buttons), sending them to the blog, giving them an unexpected bonus, offering them a discount on a future purchase, making an appropriate upsell or even doing a “thank you page” swap with a JV partner.
So check your client’s active thank you pages, and make note of suggestions for improvement. And don’t forget to add a thank-you page template to the SOP guide so that you and the team are set for future projects.
