Defining The Perfect Job

 The Formula:

1. What are you really good at;

2. What do you want to do;

3. Who needs you?

 

The Result:

Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation. 

- Aristotle 

Brian Patrick Cork

Filed under: Articles By Brian Cork, Business, Coaching , Brian Cork, The Perfect Job

Why Administrative Assistants Work

My perspective is that of someone that has grown seven companies and helped hundreds of decision-makers build their core management teams.

From a small business perspective, the founder is typically the lead (and first) sales person.  This is particularly the case in service companies.  The first major financial milestone is typically $250,000.

 

NOTE: Its hard to draw the line between revenues and income. If you are a small business leader and smiling as you read this, you understand you are not alone.

 

It’s at this inflection point many decision-makers realize they are working “in their business as opposed to on their business”.  Time management is a learned skill.  An ability to delegate tasks becomes an element of Laws of Natural selection.  So, at this point, small company decision-makers join their big corporate brothers, and realize they need an Administrative Assistant.

My assistant, Belinda (everyone from Congressmen to globe trotting executives knows  my Belinda), has been with me for 15 years.  She started with me while I was a stock broker and moved up the ranks with me through my Venture Capital and Investment Banking years.  She literally helped us build our recruiting practices and remains on the front lines for both my family and all my business ventures to this day.

The process of making the decision to hire an administrative assistant often goes something like this…

A Founder (I will use a male as my example because I happen to be one myself) is working around the clock building a services business.  This involves building the first website, designing business cards and other collateral material, defining services, fine tuning the go-to-market plan and strategy, redefining services (seriously), driving new business, setting up sales calls, handling quotes, managing fulfillment, customer service, billing, collections, etc. In the midst of all this, our founder is working with vendors and partners while also trying to be a husband (“Happy wife Happy Life”) and father.

So, one day he goes to his wife and says – “I need help and want to hire an assistant”.  The wife, who just got used to having some extra cash in the home checking account again, says “we can’t afford that”, or, “why don’t you let me do some of that?”.

In any event, it happens every time…  As soon as you hire a professional that knows how to manage administrative tasks (this probably means automating the obvious ones like quoting, billing and collections), with an emphasis on time management through appointment setting and calendar orienteering, the Founder/ Decision-Maker/ Sales Leader suddenly has a lot more time to focus on sales and account management.  Assuming the service is actually meaningful and desired – business will grow by an average of 70% a year up to about $3 million (this is a real statistic – “it’s just what it is” as my Nana used to say), and marketing and other sales people get hired.

So…  I see this every day… No matter how industrious and hard working small business leaders are, they need help to be efficient (or, more efficient).  Paying a professional gate keeper/ administrative assistant is not taking a risk.  It means you have faith in your business model and you want to focus working on it (remember not in it) instead of getting bogged down in administrative chores that often result in poor customer service, no growth, and work burn-out.

Brian Patrick Cork

Cultural Architect

www.bchcroi.com

 

Filed under: Articles By Brian Cork, Business, Coaching , Administrative Assistants, Brian Cork, Small Business

Truth: Microsoft Breaks Web Pages

For the most part, major non-Microsoft browsers and outside developers who built Web pages worked with agreed-upon technical standards, while Microsoft  added proprietary code to those standards.

The result: Web pages that looked good in Internet Explorer but broke on other browsers, or vice versa.

Brian Patrick Cork

Filed under: Articles By Brian Cork, Business , Brian Cork, Microsoft