Some BIG News To Share
Yep, your eyes are not deceiving you… that’s Baby Bull sucking its thumb!
Stephanie and I are thrilled to announce that we are expecting at the beginning of November.
Needless to say, life has gotten a little bit crazy real quick in the Bull household… but crazy in the most amazing way possible. It’s truly unique to feel thrilled with a dash of being terrified thrown in when one is expecting their first child.
In case you noticed, the amount of blogging that we’ve been doing on our site has been down a bit… some of that is due to being crazed with getting ready for Baby Bull and summer trips, some due to spending more time working with our members inside our training program and some due to re-thinking what exactly we want the blog portion of our site to be.
Rest assured though that we are going to keep blogging and putting out free content in addition to the paid executive and admin training program that we offer so don’t be strangers.
So that’s the big news… the Bull clam is growing by 1 and Sadie is going to be a big sister… we know she’ll be a great one!
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Permalink
What a top-level Assistant does…
The Wall Street Journal has a great article up today, titled “She Bosses the CEO”, about what it’s like to be an executive assistant to a top-level executive.
Their by-line states: “An Assistant knows her boss like few others. Why their partnership is imperiled.”
From our perspective we don’t believe that an assistant’s role or position is “imperiled” however we do recognize, as the article details, that the role is evolving due to technology. Because of this evolution, assistants are asked to take on more bosses and perform in a team environment versus a 1-on-1 position however at the C-Level, a 1-on-1 boss/assistant partnership is still the norm.
Also, the assistant position—even if it’s not labeled “assistant”—is still the bottom rung on the career path for 20-something recent college grads and we’d wager a pretty penny that such is NOT changing in the near OR distant future.
The ProAssisting Training Program is specifically geared toward this new, technologically advanced environment by providing tactics and strategies for using the computer, phone system, cell phone, instant messaging and other new technologies to streamline the job of being an assistant so you can be the right hand any boss is looking for and the person they are looking to promote when the time comes.
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PermalinkDisney Assistant BUSTED!
From the assistant position, you’re privy to a lot of confidential information. Information that if you’re not careful with, could get you into a load of trouble.
Case in point: Disney assistant arrested for conspiring with her boyfriend to use her knowledge of Disney’s upcoming quarterly results to make a little extra coin.
Just a little insider trading… no one gets hurt, right?
Wrong.
Both her and her boyfriend are going to be arraigned shortly. Needless to say, they probably were a little freaked out when the FBI paid them a visit.
We’re going to expand on this topic in a future blog post that will detail all of the classified and confidential information you come across as an assistant but in the mean time, we wanted to point you to the above article as an example that even the little people can get bagged when they try to use such information for personal gain.
Now, if your boss is the one who wants you to look the other way when they are the ones who aren’t fully on the up-and-up, take our advice and have some “See ya!” money saved so you can blow the whistle and be the hero.
Flickr Creative Commons image by Crawford.l
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PermalinkThe Assistant’s Toolkit - ProAssisting’s free assistant training program
ProAssisting is proud to announce the launch of our free assistant training series:
The Assistant’s Toolkit
This 10-part weekly email series delivers some of the best tips, techniques, templates and strategies that are part of our paid assistant training program.
These weekly lessons can be used immediately to increase your productivity and streamline your office procedures.
Wanna impress your boss with your newfound skills? Go ahead and follow the instructions below to sign up today!
To sign up and get your first free lesson now, follow these simple steps:
1. Put your name and email in the form below and hit the ‘submit’ button.
2. Confirm your subscription by clicking the confirmation link sent to your inbox—we hate spam just as much as you do and this assures each of us that you DO want to join the Toolkit—.
3. Put all of the lessons you learn to good use and shine as an assistant.
What are you waiting for? Join today:
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Permalink8 Reasons Why You Should Work for a Tough Boss
When we say work for a tough boss, we’re not necessarily saying someone like the Kevin Spacey character in “Swimming with Sharks” or the Meryl Streep character in “The Devil Wears Prada”—although if you can tough it out with someone like that, go for it—no, what we’re talking about are just normal, run-of-the-mill, tough people to work for, with and please.
This may sound counter-intuitive to you but working for a tough & demanding boss does a number of things that will HELP YOU when starting out on your career path.
1. Working for a tough boss teaches you to be at the top of your own game. If you’re not, don’t worry, they’ll surely let you know. By consistently working at a high level for a demanding boss, you’ll be stretching and able to perform at that level for longer and longer periods of time. Instead of being yelled at for a mistake every two days, it will turn into every two months or even less.
2. Inside the company, everyone who knows this “tough” boss knows that they are hard to work for… so if you CAN work for them and keep them happy, your stock within the company rises and opens up other opportunities for you down the road.
3. This demanding boss also gives you an “out” when asking for assistance in terms of performing your job. You get to blame the rush or circumstances of your requests to the IT department, the mail room or operations on your boss, thus getting what you (and by extension he or she) needs in the quickest time possible.
4. A tough boss also has a reputation within their industry outside of the company and that too can help you when interviewing at a competitor. Either the competitor knows that you “know the drill” given your current or previous tough boss OR they might want to poach you from your boss as “payback”... it does happen.
5. When a tough boss gives you positive feedback on a job well done, it’s like gold and you’ll feel like a million bucks.
6. You will develop a thick skin and be able to take criticism better than people who haven’t worked for a tough or demanding boss. The maturity and poise that you gain through these traits will shine through when compared to your peers.
7. The tough and demanding bosses are usually the ones who are extremely smart and know their business inside and out. If they didn’t, the company would have gotten rid of them a while ago because they are tough and demanding without the performance to back it up. Once you become trusted, these bosses can turn into mentors who will teach you what they know which then opens up career options for you down the road.
8. Lastly, if you can thrive when working for a tough and demanding boss, when it does come time to either move on or be promoted, usually that tough boss turns out to be your biggest supporter.
On the flip side, don’t be fooled by just a regular nasty person with no talent trying to disguise themselves as a tough, demanding and smart boss… these are the folks that you want to stay away from. You’ll be able to spot a boss like this if they change the rules constantly, don’t give honest feedback/advice and aren’t respected by their peers from inside or outside the company and industry. Advice: proceed with caution.
Lastly, in Hollywood, all bets are off.
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PermalinkProAssisting’s Better Business Bureau Accreditation
We are very pleased to announce our Better Business Bureau accreditation! You can click the BBB logo to your right or here for a link to our full profile.
Being invited into this membership is a big deal for us because, as a new company, we want to assure all of our current and future members that we value our reputation and will do what we say we will whether that involves our training, our support or giving you a refund if our training wasn’t what you were looking for.
We also pride ourselves on answering our emails, returning our phone calls and giving daily support via our member forum. And by being a BBB member, should we ever fall short on any of these responsibilities, there is a trusted third-party organization with which to air those complaints.
One of the requirements of being invited into the BBB was by creating and displaying a Privacy Notice about our training/service on our website. You can click here to be taken to our new privacy notice or you can find a link to it on every page of our site in the footer of our pages. Check it out!
ASSISTANT TIP: We even use the BBB consumer database of businesses when checking out an employee of a business trying to get time with ours bosses who we’ve never heard of before. If they are a member of the BBB and have a stellar profile, it gives us one more bit of information to pass onto our boss so they can decide whether to schedule time with that particular company.
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PermalinkRaise your hand if you like automated phone message systems…
I don’t know about you but whether I’m making calls for my boss or myself, I try as much as possible to bypass those pesky recorded messages that prompt you to input all sorts of information before it lets you speak with an actual living and breathing human being.
I know that they ask for this information—account numbers, PINS, last 4 digits of your social security number—so that the representative has your account or profile pulled up when they take your call but based on my experience 98% of the time, I have to repeat that information to them anyway… just ridiculous.
Anyway, here is a treat for you—one which we just added to our membership resource center but you can get here for free—to help avoid those recorded messages asking for information before passing you off to a real human being: GetHuman.com!
GetHuman.com is a website that lists thousands of companies along with their various customer service numbers WITH instructions on how to avoid those automated messages and get to a real human! Very easy to search and the instructions are easy to follow… and you can also rate your experience using that number or add your own with instructions if you have any that aren’t listed.
Just another use of technology to bypass a level of technology that drives me batty. Enjoy!
Flickr Creative Commons image by jcardinal18
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PermalinkThe plan for a successful project
As an assistant, you’re going to be tasked with completing both large and small projects. Whether tackling this year’s holiday cards, planning a multi-leg trip for 3 executives or just ordering lunch for the board meeting, each project can be thought of using the below “outline” to achieve maximum success.
Granted, you’re not going to have to follow this plan by writing out each action or idea for each step every time—especially for the lunch ordering—, however just thinking of both large and small projects from within the below frame work, you’ll greatly improve your chances for success while not missing any important step or overlooking a specific detail.
Take a look:
Outline for a successful project
1. Define success - it’s important to know what you and your boss view as a success for each project you’re assigned.
2. Brainstorm - you need to think of anything and everything needed to reach your definition of success. Don’t worry about being neat or making sure everything is in order, you just need to make sure that your brain is opened up for everything needed for success.
3. Organize actions and steps based on priority and time line - For larger projects, create a work-flow document that lists these actions/steps in order along with level of priority. This is especially helpful when working with a number of different people on the project.
4. Do the work and delegate specific tasks to the proper people/departments - as an assistant you’ll need to do a majority of the heavy lifting when it comes to completing your projects however don’t lose sight of the fact that at most companies, you have other departments and resources at your disposal to help for specific tasks.
5. Frequently check completed work against your time line & priority work flow document - these “check-ins” need to be used to make sure you’re on track to complete the project on time.
6. Once complete, reflect on the outcome of the project - What worked? What didn’t? What could have been done differently for future projects? These questions are very useful for streamlining processes and making sure your next project goes even smoother than the one before.
Next time you have a project, either large or small, think about these steps to ensure complete success. If you have any ideas for steps we might have missed or tactics that you use that help you with your projects, let us know in the comments.
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PermalinkEmail Triage: What it is and how it can help you
To be honest, I don’t know exactly where I first read the term “email triage” before—and if it was you who coined the term, please let me know in the comments and I’ll edit this post—but when I read that term, I realized that I was performing email triage for a very long time without actually having a name or term for the process.
It’s an extremely useful technique for dealing with the vast amounts of both work and personal email that comes in on a daily basis but before I go into detail about what email triage is and how it can help you too, let’s first start by defining the term “triage”:
tri-age
Function: noun
1 a: the sorting of and allocation of treatment to patients and especially battle and disaster victims according to a system of priorities designed to maximize the number of survivors b: the sorting of patients (as in an emergency room) according to the urgency of their need for care
2: the assigning of priority order to projects on the basis of where funds and other resources can be best used, are most needed, or are most likely to achieve success
When I read that above definition in terms of “email triage”, here is what it says to me: “the sorting of an allocation of treatment to emails… according to a system of priorities designed to maximize success in the shortest time period”.
Now I’ll detail how I use email triage with the hope that you see a use for this technique in your dealings with both work and personal emails to “maximize email success in the shortest time period”.
On Sunday evenings, I log onto my work email from home to take a peak at my inbox and perform my initial round of email triage so I don’t feel caught off guard come Monday morning bright and early when I boot up my computer at work. In this round of triage, I go through and delete any emails that I’ve signed up to have delivered to me daily like The New York Times since I usually keep up with the news over the weekend.
Then I quickly scan through for any emails from my boss as action items for the upcoming week. It’s not that I’m going to actually do anything with these emails, just make myself aware of them for the week ahead. Then, I go through the number of Microsoft Outlook invites that are sprinkled throughout and delete the ones that I can and leave the ones that need to be accepted on Monday morning in my inbox.
Lastly, I familiarize myself with which emails deserve priority. When I log out, I am familiar with what’s happening and have my inbox in tip top shape to tackle the following Monday morning. Two of the best benefits of dealing with my work email in this fashion is that I’m not stressed out come Monday morning and I’m on top of any questions my boss has first thing in the morning.
Email triage has also crept into my personal email habits which allows me to label emails and keep them as either read or un-read so I know what I need to get to and what can be left for when there is a break in the day… again, reducing my stress—even personal email can be stressful—and keeping me on my game with email communication.
What about you?... how do you handle the massive amounts of email you get on a daily basis?
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PermalinkFrom Executive Assistant to CEO
The New York Times has a great article about Ursula Burns, the new CEO for Xerox. She has held many different positions throughout her 30 years working for the company but what is particularly interesting to us here at ProAssisting is how Ursula was mentored in the executive assistant position by her two different bosses.
During downtime, they would talk with Ursula about her communication style and how she could round off some of her edges so she performed her job better. Here is a key section of the article:
He offered her a job as his executive assistant. It was January 1990, she was 31, and the offer felt like a dead-end. “Why would I ever want to do that?” she answered, assuming that the title meant secretary. The job was much more, of course. She would travel with Mr. Hicks, sit in on important meetings, help get things done.
She accepted, and, Mr. Hicks remembers, they talked a lot about leadership. Mr. Hicks, a vice president overseeing marketing and customer operations, explained the need to manage people in different ways, not to intimidate them, and to make them feel comfortable by listening carefully.
And then this too:
Later, the phone rang. Mr. Allaire [Xerox’s President] wanted to see her in his office. She figured that it was not good news. But Mr. Allaire wanted to poach her from Mr. Hicks, so she could be his executive assistant.
They, too, would talk about leadership during down time. He didn’t want to discourage her candor, but, like Mr. Hicks, he offered tips about how to be more effective—“like giving people credit for ideas that they didn’t have, but you sold to them, to give them ownership,” Mr. Allaire recalls advising her.
These working relationships are a perfect example of how much more the position of executive assistant can be and what that can lead to in the future. Finding the right boss who took the time—when there was time—to mentor her was key to Ms. Burns’ future success. You too can make the transition from executive or administrative assistant onto the career path of your choosing and when you think you can’t, just remember Ursula Burns and how she did it.
Photo credit: Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times
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PermalinkEntertainment Biz 101
As a way to “spread the word” about ProAssisting toward a target market that would benefit greatly from our training, I recently conducted a call with students and alumni from the University of Wisconsin where I gave a presentation to them about the business of entertainment.
Titled “Entertainment Biz 101”, the presentation is based on what I’ve learned while working in the entertainment and advertising industries here in New York City over the last 14 years. The truth of the matter is though that a lot of the tactics and strategies that I talk about on the call are the same ones that you should apply in any industry you’re interested in making your mark in.
We plan to hold more of these calls with other universities in the future and after a few more tweaks to this presentation, we’ll be presenting this information in ebook format as well as the recorded calls.
If you’re interested in hearing the call and how you can either use the information to break into the entertainment business or conquer your own chosen industry, I’ve linked to it below. Let us know in the comments what you think of it and if you have any questions, ask away and I’ll do my best to help answer them for you. Enjoy:
Here’s the link:
Click here to listen to or download the .mp3 interview
To listen now, just click the link.
To download the .mp3 to save and listen to later on your computer, iPod or other mp3 player:
For Mac users, hold “Ctrl” and click the link then select “save linked file to…” to save it to your desktop.
For PC users, “right click” the link and “save link as…”.
Flickr Creative Commons image by Echo_29
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PermalinkCould technology make Assistants obsolete?
Just downloaded a new app for my iPhone that the maker calls, “The Personal Assistant in your Phone.” I read that line twice and thought to myself, “Could technology make my job obsolete?” After thinking about it for a bit though, I realize that all of these technological advances (apps, cell phones, computers, google, etc.) aren’t going to supplant the assistant position, it’s just going to make our jobs easier to perform by being able to multi-task more effectively. My boss would never use the below app on their phone… that’s what they have ME for. BUT I am glad that I can now use this app to accomplish any such task demonstrated in the video below in a quick and seamless way while out of the office or home and on the go. Have an iPhone?... check it out, it’s free.
Siri - The Personal Assistant in your Phone from Tom Gruber on Vimeo.
Siri is a virtual personal assistant on your phone. You ask Siri in your own voice, and it helps you get things done when you’re on the go. This video shows a demo of Siri helping plan a romantic evening, get tickets to a great movie, discover cool things to do on the weekend, and getting back home.
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PermalinkOff Topic (kinda): An assistant in the making
The below video is from The Bonnie Hunt show and is a segment about a little girl helping her father out in a touch situation… she’s so calm, cool and collected, I know she’d make a great assistant! Very touching and a must watch:
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PermalinkSweet - SarcMark: A punctuation mark for sarcasm!
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read an email, IM, Facebook post or comment online and not known if the person writing the remark was serious or not. Most of the time I don’t even know them personally, just via email with no handle on their personalities so it’s hard to tell.
As discussed in our training, there is no place for sarcasm in business communications but now, with SarcMark, a punctuation mark specifically for sarcasm, that might be changing.
Say you’re in sales and you’re trying to build a rapport with a potential client by being funny—great idea if you’re in person but via email or text, a bit risky—then this new punctuation mark could help. However, if it doesn’t catch on and reach critical mass, no one will know what it is anyway.
We’re gonna keep an eye on this one but given that it costs $1.99 to download (why not free?), call us skeptical… don’t get us wrong though, the idea is genius and we’re pulling for it to succeed. And you can be sure we’ll update our training if is does catch on.
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PermalinkSo you wanna be a Virtual Assistant (VA)?
Beyond the e-learning modules, downloadable templates/checklists and resources that we provide to our enrollees, the other main component of our training is the member forum where they put us through our paces and ask us anything that comes up in either their job search or while working as assistants.
One common line of questioning surrounds that of being a Virtual Assistant or VA. What do they do? How do they get started? What do they charge?... and any number of other questions. Not being virtual assistants ourselves, we felt it best to seek out a top VA—in this case a VA coach and trainer—and get their take on how they made the transition to becoming a VA and what working as a VA is all about.
Thankfully Sydni Craig-Hart, founder of EAtoVA.com—a VA coaching service—, was more than willing to get on the phone with us and answer our questions. Now that our members have had a chance to listen to this interview, we’re pleased to offer it to you, our blog readers, to get a better understanding of what being a virtual assistant is all about. Enjoy!
Click here to listen to or download the .mp3 interview
To listen now, just click the link.
To download the .mp3 to save and listen to later on your computer, iPod or other mp3 player:
For Mac users, hold “Ctrl” and click the link then select “save linked file to…” to save it to your desktop.
For PC users, “right click” the link and “save link as…”.
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