That is what has happened to me, more than once! That is when I realized, that this virtual assistant, needed a virtual assistant! Yep even VA’s need VA’s. One of the best decisions I made was to start outsourcing and get a bookkeeper, oh yeah, that was fun! The next team member I brought on was someone to help with newsletters, both for my clients and for me. Oh yeah, that was even more fun!

Consider it this way, outsourcing to a virtual assistant is really all about exercising that boundaries muscle. You are leveraging your boundaries. You betcha, you can leverage a boundary.

How to leverage a boundary:

1) Outsource what you are not good at: Put a boundary on what you do not know how to do or have time to learn and get your focus back on your strengths. By biz coach, Justin over at LukasCoaching.com and I talk about this quite a bit. Your day to day activities should be 80% in your strengths, the other 10% working on the weak areas.

2) Outsource what is not revenue generating for you: If it is not one of your strengths or it does not generate revenue for you, it is actually costing you time and money. Neither one is good and together a bad combo to deal with.

3) Outsource what has been on the back burner for too long: If you are like most entrepreneurs your project list and wish list is a mile long and you can’t seem to get to it. Even though you know it would help your business and move it forward. Getting it off the back burner and front and center for your VA is leveraging a boundary and putting plans into action.

Learning to leverage your boundaries is another area that will take some practice. Outsourcing is not easy at first, it is hard to relinquish control – good ole’ entrepreneuritis (I have to do it all myself syndrome).

But guess what… relinquishing control and outsourcing, empowers your team to get the job done, leverages your boundaries and moves your business forward while still are taking time off, not bad!

Through the training and working with the carts of many different people I firmly believe that how you set it up and organize in the beginning makes a huge difference later down the road as you grow and add more products and auto responders.

For Products I highly recommend making use of product categories and assign each item to a specific category. Once you have  a list of 100′s of items which means pages and pages to scroll through, being able to narrow your search by category is a great big time saver.

As you set up your categories you will need to decide if you want to sort by product type (CD, Audio, PDF etc) or by topic (List Building, Marketing, Blogging) or even by event and year (Main Even 2009, Main Event 2010). The categories you create are just as important as how you use them.

We will be soon launching a new package to help those new to the world of shopping carts. This will be a set up package to make sure that you are set up right from the get go. Be on the lookout for more information, coming soon.

My training and certification is through Practice Pay Solutions, a private label name of 1ShoppingCart.com. Through my classes and daily experience, some of the most basic tools are the tools one mus absolutely take advantage of.
List Building Tools:

• Double Optin Confirmation – protect yourself and comply with the Can Spam Act.
• List Management – manage the names and email addresses of all who sign up for your newsletter, teleclass etc.
• Send newsletters or broadcast emails – Quickly and easily send out your newsletter or special announcement to a select group of people or to everyone, you choice.

A shopping cart is a tool that can help you reclaim your time and simplify your day. If you would like help setting up or maintaining your cart, just let me know.

Here are some simple, quick and easy tasks and jobs you could outsource and potentially free up hours in your day:

• Check email
• Research competitors, product ideas
• Answer customer service email
• Setting up and/or updating a shopping cart (also an automation tool that we will talk more about later)
• Update your schedule on an online calendar
• Uploading and styling blog posts
• Accounting
• Setting up your next webcast

These are just a handful out of ideas out of many that are probably sitting on your to-do-list right now or weighing on your mind that you know need to get done along with the 100 other things on your list. Lots of little jobs add up and take all the time out of your day and leaving you feeling like nothing was accomplished.

Here is a quick tip:

Make a journal of your day and track how much time you spent on each task such:

• Email
• Blog posts
• Updating your cart updates
• Customer service email
• Making appointments
• Internet research

At the end of the day, take a few moments and look over your list. Spend a few moments to think about each item and ask yourself if you Love It, Hate It or find it is a Time Waster and most importantly

..what took up the most time for very little $$ return for the time spent.

You have just made your first list of items you could outsource, a list of things you could easily have someone else take care of for you.

Click here to download a journal worksheet that will help you track your day and see how you really do spend your time. The numbers at the end, might surprise you.

Remember, this is the year to simplify, get back to basics, find time to enjoy your life and revitalize your business.