On Mondays we've been discussing working with a remote assistant.  We've taken a brief side trail for a few weeks looking at actually trying to use American Express' concierge service.  This week I'm going to show an attempt to use the service to find housing in Mexico.  My wife and I lived in Durango Mexico for a few months and couldn't seem to find any type of furnished housing.  I figured the concierge would be good at locating this type of thing--especially since dealing with lodging in other countries seems to be something American Express advertises they do well. Here is the message I sent:  I am looking at spending some time in Mexico next fall. Specifically I am looking at … [Read more...]

Last Monday we looked at using the American Express concierge service for scheduling a tuneup on my car. This week we will try something else. I have been looking for radiometers to send as a corporate gift to some of my clients. (A radiometer looks light a light bulb but instead of a filament it has metal vanes that spin in the sunlight.) Unfortunately most of the ones I've found for sale were packaged for kids science experiments. The radiometers are fine, but the packaging doesn't look very "corporate". I figured this sounded like a job for super concierge, so I called them with a request. I explained what I was looking for and in particular asked them to find a radiometer with … [Read more...]

Last Monday I wrote about my experience with using a remote executive assistant in the US. It didn't work out so well, but the experiment provided a lot of insight into how to work with a remote assistant. Here are some takeaways from that experience. 1. Make sure you have a good project management system in place. You need a way to track the work assigned and keep track of time spent. If you don't know how much time is being spent on each project it is going to be very difficult to understand what is working well and what isn't. Without a good time tracking system, you may not know something is wrong until you've spent a considerable amount of money. It is possible to keep track of all … [Read more...]

I find that I have a lot more ideas of things I'd like to do than I have time to do them. I get all the important stuff done, but there are many smaller things that I'd like to accomplish that I simply don't have enough time. I looked at a lot of the companies that provide remote executive assistants, but decided I'd rather work with someone directly. I found a paralegal from Texas who was looking for work as a virtual assistant. My thinking was that someone who grew up in the US would be easier to communicate with than someone from a foreign country.   I also wanted to keep the work in the USA if I could instead of sending it out of the country. When I spoke with I called one of her … [Read more...]