Name: Ahmed Khalifa
Company: AK
Location: Edinburgh, UK
Website: https://iamahmedkhalifa.com/
What does your business do?
I help small businesses manage and maintain their WordPress site whilst growing their online visibility, attracting higher quality leads and encouraging conversions on their sites.
What is the most important thing to keep track of in business and why?
I will have to split this in two ways.
The first is the performance of my clients’ websites. Due to the ever-changing nature of the industry, keeping on top of how your clients are performing is critical. You never known when there are internal or external factors which have resulted in your clients’ site suddenly underperforming.
The other is to keep on top of how my clients are feeling by regularly communicating with them. How are they feeling with your service? Is there anything you can do further? As well as your own employees, your customers are one of the most important parts of your business. So make them feel like that.
What are the most common difficulties you face daily?
Finding enough time to do everything I want to do, from being attentive and working with my clients, to working on my brand and my site.
It’s very easy to focus solely on your client and unknowingly neglect your own site. But I am gradually understanding that it is important to work on your business instead of in your business too.
Describe your company’s culture in three words.
Solo
Virtual
Growing
How would you describe your PA
From a professional perspective, my PA is attentive, communicative and has great attention to details. From a personal point of view, she is also very bubbly, cheerful and easy to talk to.
The combination of above makes it easier for me to feel confident when delegating tasks to her and also to communicate with her about any aspects of my business.
I especially like when my PA provides further suggestions, which you can then decide whether it’s worth pursuing or not. It’s the thoughts that matters.
What are your top tips for delegating?
Be aware that you will still need to work side-by-side with your PA, particularly in the beginning. It’s not as simple as passing on the tasks and that’s it.
Just like with your own employees, you will need to almost train them to make sure that they match your expectation, particularly if it’s a niche task. For example, I use specific image-editing tools and also audio editing. I can’t simply pass it on to my PA and say “get on with it”. I work alongside my PA to make sure that they understand my requirement, how to achieve it, practice it and then present me with the results.
Not only it will make easier for you to get along with your PA, but it will also result higher quality work for you.
Why are you using Outsourcery?
There are plenty of VA companies out there based around the world. For me, it helps to have someone who speaks English as their first language. This makes it easier to make sure that nothing is lost in translation and there’s no need to re-clarify anything.
The fact that PA’s are based in South Africa also means that the time difference is very minimal but still means that they are slightly “ahead” of you. So you will often find that when you wake up, you can find certain tasks completed and there is still plenty of time during the day to communicate further on that task.
What would you say to someone who is unsure about hiring a virtual personal assistant?
If you are struggling for time, think about “buying back time”.
What kind of tasks in your business are taking up a lot of your time that you can easily delegate to someone else? This could be anything from doing research for you to answering your emails.
You will then find that you have extra time on your hand which you can use for better use, like providing better quality service for your customers or focus on growing your business.
