Tracking Time Means Better Billing for Popular VA Business

This week’s interview on time management and how vital it is to a successful business is with Laurie Cantus, the CEO and Founder of Go2Girls. Go2Girls is an Internet-based Virtual Assistant company. Laurie and her talented team of VA’s support small businesses by implementing e-commerce solutions, like blogging, website development, and social networking support; creating and implementing Internet marketing strategies; and almost anything else a business owner can think of. Laurie shares below why she started her company and why OfficeTime / time tracking is so important to her success story.

Tell us about Go2Girls, Laurie, and about the services you provide:

Go2Girls is a VA team. We work for business owners who are ready to grow their business, who want to eliminate the frustration of having to do it all, and who want to focus on the parts of their business that they enjoy – and that make them money. I’ve learned from my years of supporting great CEOs that no one who accomplishes anything great does it alone. There’s just way too much to do that has nothing to do with the “great thing” you’re doing. Quite simply, I started my VA business because I wanted to help small business owners get more done. We are fully staffed to take on projects of any size, and constantly growing in order to support the thriving businesses of our clients.

How important is time management in the day-to-day running of your business AND your life?

Time managed is so important, in fact, it’s the most important thing in the day-to-day running of Go2Girls. I have three children under four years old, and managing my professional time and my business means that I get more time with my family. So it’s vital that I manage my time – and track my time – to keep my focus. As a business owner, I’m a huge fan of OfficeTime. When I started my VA company, I created a giant excel sheet where I managed all of my clients and projects. And it worked for about five minutes. When it was time to create invoices it was all cut and paste craziness. Not only did it take up a lot of time to do the invoicing, but I was constantly having to double check my formulas to make sure everything was calculating correctly. You know, when you are an entrepreneur, every dollar counts, and when are billing for your time, every minute counts!

Talk to me specifically about OfficeTime. What’s been your biggest takeaway of using it?

As my business grew and I got MORE clients, I discovered OfficeTime and signed up for the free trial. I loved it. Having all the data there at the click of a button makes it so easy to quickly run a report, send the hours, and send out invoices. The biggest takeaway is definitely that invoicing is so fast and easy. And I don’t have to worry about missing anything on my excel spreadsheet (which used to happen all the time). In fact, in the last couple of months, I bought a license for every member of the Go2Girls team so we’re all on the same system. They put their reports into dropbox, and at any time I can go in and see exactly how much time my team has spent on a project or on a client. It’s SO easy – it’s amazing.

So what new and awesome thing have you been able to create at Go2Girls, since you’ve freed up so much time with the OfficeTime time tracking tool?

I’m really excited about this actually! We’re launching a new division of Go2Girls where we teach what business owners really need to know. The first course we’re teaching is on teleseminars. A lot of people seem to be teaching theory and ideas, etc., etc. But nobody seems to be teaching the nuts and bolts of actually creating a teleseminar. The how to. That’s what we’ll be doing. Empowering business owners. This is important because, as an entrepreneur, if you’re not holding teleseminars, you are missing out on a huge untapped source of income, as well as an opportunity to nurture client relationships. Unlike live speaking events, you can do all this from home … while wearing pajamas – no showering necessary. I mean, come on. What is there to not like about this?

Nothing. We like it all!  For Laurie Cantus and Go2Girls, OfficeTime = Time Saved.  And Time Saved = an entirely new arena for her business. To learn more about Laurie’s teleseminar course, go to http://www.backstageteleseminarsecrets.com.

Tune in next week for another great blog on how time management = success and building small business solutions in big ways.

Time. The real commodity.
OfficeTime.net