The Entrepreneur Magazine EBiz Radio Show

Chris Malta and Robin Cowie are the Writers and Hosts of the show.

Chris Malta is the Founder and CEO of Worldwide Brands, the Internet's leading Product Sourcing Experts. He is the Product Sourcing Editor for The eBay Radio Show, author of several EBooks, and co-Author of "What To Sell on eBay and Where To Get It", published by McGraw-Hill. Chris has a 30 year background in wholesale, retail and Entrepreneurial business.

Robin Cowie is a Partner in Worldwide Brands. He is a highly talented Business Development and Marketing Specialist, and a well known Television & Movie Producer. He is known in the movie industry as one of the producers of "The Blair Witch Project"; just one of his many successful Entrepreneurial endeavors.

The Internet's recognized leader in EBiz Product Sourcing, Worldwide Brands connects Online Sellers with highly qualified wholesale suppliers.

Worldwide Brands is the ONLY publisher of Wholesale Product Sourcing information that is Certified by eBay. We are the Product Sourcing Editors for The eBay Radio Show, and are Speakers at the eBay National Convention every year.

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Show Date: 1/16/2006

Segment 2 - Virtual Staffing for your Small Business Part II

Chris: Thanks for joining us today. This segment of the Entrepreneur Magazine E-Biz Show is brought to you by UnwiredBuyer.com. Never miss another auction. Sign up at UnwiredBuyer.com. Today we’re talking with Gayle Buske, president and CEO of TeamDoubleClick.com about using virtual assistants for your small business.

Chris: Gayle, before the break, you know, it’s funny, we were talking about working remotely with people in other cities and things like that and what I do here when we do the radio show here in Orlando is, I have a screen where I can see the studio board in San Diego, California where wsRadio produces this show. And just as we were talking about that my internet connection went down.

Gayle: (Laughter).

Chris: (Laughter) So I couldn’t see the board so I didn’t know how much time we had before break and I’m going, okay, well Gayle, should we talk a little bit more or should we you know…(laughter).

Gayle: That is one drawback. When the internet goes down you’re down for a while.

Chris: Right.

Gayle: But with more and more businesses anyway relying on the internet, even for things interoffice. I find even here, my husband and I are in the same building and we email back and forth a lot too, but it is kind of devastating when the internet goes down for a while.

Chris: Right. Thankfully it’s popped right back up for me and you know, today with broadband and everything else, it’s much more reliable than it ever has been so…

Gayle: Oh absolutely.

Chris: Not a huge concern.

Gayle: There’s so much technology now that really facilitates working virtually too that wasn’t there ten or fifteen years ago so it really does make working virtually a lot easier, both from the client’s standpoint and the assistant’s standpoint.

Chris: I know, we use conference call centers, all kinds of things like that, all kinds of web communication tools in our business, and it really is not hard. And once you get used to it you don’t know how you lived without it.

Gayle: And most of them anymore are so user friendly. Most of the time I skip over the tutorials and just kind of go play around with them because they are just very easy to use anymore.

Chris: Right. I think that lot of people now that are designing these things, and I know because here at Worldwide Brands we design software as well. You have to make the software easy for someone who just wants to jump in…

Gayle: Mm-Hmm.

Chris: …but then the more advanced features are all there and contained, when people finally sit down and read the manual…

Gayle: Right.

Chris: …which for me might be a year from now (laughter).

Gayle: Exactly.

Chris: Everyone’s doing it that way. So is it difficult, then, to train a virtual assistant from a remote location? I mean, you can’t sit down with them and actually show them the work, right?

Gayle: You know, it’s really not. And again it kind of goes back to technology. We try to tell our clients you don’t have to sit down for an hour or two or three hours at a time to do training. You can bite it off a little bit at a time. You know, if you’ve got 10 minutes in the car on your way to a meeting, call your virtual assistant and go over this one little task. And same thing when you’re done with the meeting or whenever you have time. I guess the biggest thing to remember is that it can be flexible. And if there is something that you need to actually show there are so many online meeting programs, GoTo Meeting, there are several of them that you can actually have someone view your screen while you move around on it and click the buttons and kind of do a narrative along with that. So that’s another good way to do training as well.

Chris: And you find a lot of people that you work with using those tools all the time, right?

Gayle: We do. It’s a big one. And then, of course, just sending documents through email. Maybe you need to send a PDF file to your assistant through email and then hop on the phone and go over the contents of that documents.

Chris: Sure and with programs like Microsoft Word, if you have a website you can work with your ISP a little bit and put shared documents on your server where both people can access them at the same time.

Gayle: Mm-Hmm.

Chris: I can imagine, you know, our Worldwide Brands programmer, director of technology, he actually works from his offices in Texas, and we’re in Orlando, so we’re very familiar with this concept. I guess what I’m trying to say to people is it’s really not that hard to get used to and once you get used to it you really don’t know how you did without it.

Gayle: I think probably the toughest thing for people that are just picking up a virtual assistant is remembering that virtual assistant is there. Unlike if you walked into your bricks-and-mortar office that person is sitting there smiling at you when you walk in the door in the morning and it reminds you that you need to find work for him or her. So it’s hard to remember that person is there and we try to teach our virtual assistants how to kindly remind our clients that they’re there, they’re willing to work, you know, give me something to do so I can help you grow your business or alleviate some of the pressure that you have.

Chris: Makes a lot of sense. And I can tell this time that it is time for a short break everyone. So please remember to check out our Resource Center at ebizshow.com for podcasts of our show as well as all kinds of free information. We’ll be back with Gayle Buske of teamdoubleclick.com when the Entrepreneur Magazine E-Biz show continues.

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