Personal Assistant/Virtual Assistant Service for Business Coach


Hi, this is Bernd Schiffer, Agile coach with Bold Mover. I could use some help here.

 

I need some help!

What am I Looking For?

I’m looking for a personal assistant (PA). An Alfred J. Pennyworth to my Bruce Wayne. A mix of Pepper Potts and Jarvis to my Tony Stark. A Kato to my Britt Reid.

I want my PA to be an all-rounder, taking on most of my current private and business tasks so that I can focus on more valuable activities to me, such as my family, my personal growth, my clients, and, in general, my business. For example, these tasks include making travel arrangements, scheduling meetings, creating invoices, create business activity statements, doing research, etc.

My personal and business tasks are on a single list; I don’t distinguish between them. For me, tasks such as making travel arrangements for family holidays or making travel arrangements for a business trip take about the same amount of time i.e. has about the same value in terms of time saved when done by my PA.

In addition to these tasks, I want him/her to take on new tasks that I am currently not able to do, e.g., creating and maintaining a newsletter, staying in contact with my clients more, etc. Those tasks are often time-sensitive, i.e. asking a client about a testimonial has to be done soon after the job. Otherwise, the opportunity is gone.

 

Is this you helping me with my tasks?

These tasks do not include physical tasks, such as shopping for office supplies or pick up dry-cleaning. But there are virtual task equivalents, such as organizing the shopping via ordering online from OfficeWorks or Coles, incl. organizing and scheduling the shipping.

Who Are You And What Skills Should You Bring?

My PA should be warm and welcoming, open to meet new people and to consider new ideas, and, in general, have a positive attitude towards life. He/she is going to work with me and with customers, and for both, I need my PA to be fun around.

It would be nice if my PA had certain skills (listed below). But, more importantly, my PA should be able to acquire skills through practicing and learning. This is especially important since you have to deal with tasks that are not even on my radar yet but will certainly come up as we grow as a business.

 

Are you committed to learning?

To give you an idea, skills that my PA should have or should be willing to learn for tasks that are on the radar right now:

  • excellent writing and copy-editing skills
  • excellent communication skills: through emails, texts, slack or IMs, and especially on the phone
  • fluent in everything internet, especially doing research tasks and updating my websites
  • everything spreadsheets
  • native speaker or near native in English (to compensate for me not being a native English speaker)

Bonus points for these skills:

  • marketing
  • social media

I don’t expect my PA to work with all of the tools I’m using, but if you have no idea what they are at all, you’d have to learn a lot once we get started. Also, I’m not willing to change my whole infrastructure to work with my PA, but we can certainly discuss better tools that would enable us to work together in a better way. These are some of the tools that I’m currently using:

  • Apple (MacOS, iOS, Keynote, Numbers, Pages)
  • Google (Gmail, Calendar, Google Docs, Google Spreadsheet)
  • Trello
  • WordPress
  • FreshBooks
  • Dropbox
  • Buffer
  • Slack
  • VoodooPad
  • MailChimp
  • Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube

More important than getting the job done is to get better at getting the job done over time. We do this through the reflection of our work on a regular basis (say, every week or every two weeks or so).

I want my PA to be proactive. Take action, don’t wait for permission. If you screw up, say so and learn. Seek actively for ways to be of help to me. Figure it out yourself and keep me in the loop. Do what you say and say what you do. Think like a helper. Take everything away for me, except what I do best or want to do myself.

My PA should be comfortable with working in a team. You need to work with my accountant and his assistant, our cleaning lady, one of our five babysitters, and potentially other team members who might join us in the future.

I’d go face-to-face instead of working remotely with my PA. So if you are available for face-to-face time to work together (I’m based in Rowville, Melbourne), then that would be a plus. But even if that’s the case, you need to have strong remote communication skills so that we can catch up remotely, too. Only if I can’t find anyone locally, I’d consider hiring someone who can only work remotely.

I want to communicate with my PA via phone, Skype, text messages, Slack, and email. For first time and complex tasks, I want to have a discussion on the phone or via Skype. For these tasks, I want to have a written confirmation via email afterwards plus regular progress updates. Organization and show of progress of tasks will be done in Trello. Already known and understood tasks will be delegated via all communication channels (mostly directly in Trello, via text, or via Slack).

I need my PA to listen to me, even if there is sometimes much to listen to. Therefore, when you apply for being my PA, reference a superhero of your choice on the first page of your cover letter, and explain your choice briefly. Besides, if you didn’t know - or didn’t learn by now -  who Alfred J. Pennyworth, Pepper Potts, Jarvis, or Kato are, this job might not be for you.

Who Would You Be Working With

I’m a business coach living with my family in Rowville in Melbourne’s southeast. Moving with my wife from Germany more than four years ago, we found Australia to be a great home for us. We have two kids now, a baby boy and a toddler girl.

I have several clients at any given time, to whom I offer training, coaching, and consulting services. I’m an expert for Agile Software Development, and my clients seek my services because of this expertise. My clients are mostly in Melbourne, but sometimes elsewhere in Australia. As to my clients, I’m trying to avoid big corporates and focus on small to medium-sized companies, with whom I try (and succeed) to establish relationships lasting for years.

 

You'd only work with me, but certainly have to meet the whole fam!

I have several profiles online, which might be of interest to you to learn more about me:

What’s In It For You?

You’d be working with me, not for me. I value and honor partnerships and teamwork. Usually, I’d come up with the task, but, thanks to proactive you, I’d encourage you to come up with tasks as well. How you are going to do the tasks is entirely up to you, as long as

  1. you meet the goal,
  2. you are transparent about your work, and
  3. - in case we do a task together - the way you work on that task is coordinated with me.

Also, I value your input and feedback. I’m a good listener.

If you want to, you can learn about Agile from me. You’ll find that I apply a lot of Agile values and principles to my work. If you want to, you can attend my training classes at no costs or come with me to visit clients (this is an offer, not mandatory).

Your work hours are mostly flexible. I want us to catch up once a week to plan work and every fortnight to reflect on our work. We need to find regular fixed spots in our calendars for these events. Other than that, you can do your work whenever you want.

 

Flexible: we'll work it out so that it works for both of us.

What Else?

I want to start with my PA for a guaranteed minimum of 5 hours per week on average. If it works out, this amount of hours per week will go up over time.

I don’t want to employ you, i.e. you need to have your own business set up to be able to invoice me for your PA services. I expect you to have your own Apple notebook/computer; you can invoice me for any software that you need to get my tasks done.

What’s Next?

If you have questions or to apply with your cover letter and CV, please email to info@boldmover.com.

Cheers,

   Bernd