Megan Cootes Virtual Solutions

07/14/2022

I was taking with someone yesterday at a networking event about wellness and self care for entrepreneurs and I shared with her one of my favourite ways to prepare for difficult meetings. Or really any meeting! I thought I would share here because I know it helped me!

I drink a cup of chamomile tea right before the meeting and that helps me feel cantered and focused and creates more efficient meetings!

If you try it out, let me know if it helped your meeting! 🍵

06/22/2022

Starting a small business is expensive! But it doesn’t have to be so expensive. ✨

It’s really easy to get caught up in getting all the software programs to get started or realizing a little later on that you need *another* subscription program.
Microsoft 365 Business Standard actually has a great suite of business products that can save you some money!

Planner, Booking and Forms are good subs for Trello, Calendly and Survey Monkey. They don’t include all the great features that those three programs have but they can be a good start if you need to save a few dollars and have an integrated system that covers the basics.

I love integration of software so this is a great way really use that subscription to the fullest.

06/18/2022

Efficiency helps businesses grow. Often where small businesses struggle is on the time consuming tasks such as tracking financials, customer service and email management. There are a ton of ways to make these things more efficient with free or low cost options!

1. Financials💰
So many people struggle with this one because let’s be honest, it can be boring and complicated. If you are just starting out or starting to build you really want to get this under control as soon as possible.
If you’re a service business there are great options online for invoicing and tracking financials. I personally love Wave but there are others such as PayPal, Square and Stripe. One of the great things about these type of programs is they can track your financials, send professional receipts and accept payments in many different forms. I use Wave to track my invoices, send email reminders for overdue invoices and give me breakdown of my financials.
If you make products there are tons of great website integrations, e-commerce site builders or even Etsy. These can also help track purchases, shipping, taxes, inventory and so much more!

2. 📧 Set up a good email system!
This depends on what your business is doing but if you’re getting 50 emails a day and not sorting them somehow, you’re definitely missing something.
Some simple ways to start if you can’t hire someone to help you with them is to set up email rules. This helps triage emails to certain folders so you can get a better handle on what is coming in. You may also want to invest in a email management software if you have more than one inbox and a team.

3. Customer Service 🤝
This is going to be one of your most important things. How you interact with your customers is everything!
Setting up a good strategy helps. This means sorting how you want to respond to customers, how you deal with issues, returns or disputes (and clearly communicating that at the beginning of your relationship) and how you keep track of client interactions.

I would love to hear about what helped your business grow and if you hired someone to help! 🫶🏼

06/01/2022

Like hire a virtual assistant for your business 😉

In all seriousness though, taking the time to set yourself up can save you a lot of heart ache down the road.

Set up a good accounting system for yourself

Set up a good email system for yourself

Set up a good customer strategy for yourself

Set up a good social media strategy for yourself

Down the road you’ll be glad you did. If you don’t think you can do it all, virtual assistants like myself are here to help!!🙋🏼‍♀️

05/30/2022

I keep hearing the same things that business owners need help with!

1) Email Management

📧 I hear this one most often! Emails management can take up a huge chunk of the day!

2) File Management

📁Files are a big one too! Everyone I’ve talked to is trying to find a good system! I always believe working with what you have and what’s easiest to integrate is the best option.

3) Calendar Management

📆Let’s me honest, life is busy. Having someone else keep track of your calendar and help with booking means you aren’t missing details!

4) Content Creation

📱This one can be hard because there is so many different socials. Even just focusing one and making the content can take up a lot of time. Hiring someone to assist with graphics, DM requests, post engagement, or even just commenting can help give you time back.

5)Website Updates/Management

💻 Make sure your website is up to date! Even small mistakes can really impact customer experience!

6)Invoicing/ Financials

💰I haven’t spoken to a single business owner who actually likes tracking financials. I personally love it because I chose finance as a major in college. It can definitely help to have someone invoice and chase down those invoices, track expenses and payables or even hire a bookkeeper.

If you could hire someone what would be the first thing you would get them to do?

05/09/2022

Small business owners love what they do but often there is at least one task they hate doing or just simply don’t have time.
One of the great things about the way the world is now, is you can hire someone to do those things for you virtually!

A virtual assistant can be helpful with all sorts of tasks for your business. Our expertise means that things that may be tedious and time consuming for you, could be a quick project or daily task for us.

If you’re struggling with managing your inbox, tracking client data, making invoices (or chasing down payment 😬), making social media content, responding to customer service emails, engagement in your social media, or even over all business management, a VA can help!

Added bonus: most virtual assistants are small business owners themselves. Small business supporting small business 💕

Tell me what you would hire a VA for in your life? ⬇️

04/26/2022

I love project management tools! They’re a great way to track large projects but they are also great for your day to day!

I like to track my client tasks on a shared Trello board so we both can see what’s going on and what tasks are finished.

A few great things that your clients can do in a shared board are:

- Add more tasks if needed
- See estimated due dates for tasks
- Tag themselves if they want to see any changes to the card
- Keep track of archived tasks
- Link resources to a task
- Have a shared space for our work

is my personal favourite but you can also look at other such as and as well as many others!

I’d love to hear your favourite way to track your work with someone!
👇🏼

04/19/2022

We are often great about spring cleaning our physical spaces but don’t forget your digital spaces as well!

Inboxes tend to be a mess of conversation threads, marketing emails and calendar reminders. Including your inbox in your spring cleaning can help a lot!

Some ways to tackle a messy inbox are:
✉️ Create subfolders for people you hear from often
✉️Automate emails to your subfolders with email rules
✉️ Unsubscribe from marketing emails you don’t need!
✉️ Create different email views (primary, social, promotions etc.) so you can easily see what’s important
✉️Archive old emails!

There are tons of ways you can make your inbox more efficient depending on what software you are using but these are some quick ideas!

What’s your favourite way to organize your inbox?

04/14/2022

Time management tip: If you own an iPhone, there is a built in app called reminders!

I used to us it as a reminder at the end of the day for things I didn’t want to forget to do the next day but it’s actually great for day to day tasks.
Some great things you can do in this app are:
✅set due dates
✅add location based notifications
✅add hashtags to organize reminders
✅ flag important reminders
✅add attachment to reminders
✅add sub tasks to reminders to create lists!

My current favourite way to use it track my personal reminders and work reminders using the hashtags. I can quickly sort from the Home Screen.

Do you have a favourite app for tracking your to do list? Let me know down below! I’d love to take a look! 😊👇🏼

04/07/2022

Hi Everyone!

Just wanted to do a little introduction to my business! My name is Megan and I am the owner of Megan Cootes Virtual Solutions! I started this business to help small business owners get the admin work off their task list. I have been in the administrative world for more than 10 years and I love organizing and creating efficient systems.
I offer a few different services:
• General admin services
• Project Management
• Event Management
My goal is always to create more efficient workdays and build capacity within your business. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message!
If you have a business, I would love to hear more about it below!

03/08/2022

As someone starting my business in Virtual Assisting, the biggest thing I noticed is more people don't really know what a Virtual Assistant does. Here is a great Forbes article on what Virtual Assisting is and what to look for if you need one:

The pandemic didn't just make offices virtual. It has also made office assistants virtual. Here's what virtual assistants do and how to find one.