American Express Concierge and Restaurants One of the best experiences I've had with American Express Concierge service was early in 2011 when spending a few days in Kansas City for my wife's birthday. On a whim, we decided to visit the Country Club Plaza and noticed a restaurant called Fugo de Chao. It is a place where they bring skewers of meat around through the dining area and cut off pieces at your table. My wife had been to one of their restaurants as a teenager in Brazil and had very fond memories. Unfortunately we were told that there was a 2 to 3 hour wait for "walk-ins". The staff suggested that we get our name on the list and check back in two hours to get a pager. We … [Read more...] about American Express Concierge
remote assistant
Ultimate Virtual Assistant Guide
I have been experimenting with using virtual assistants. I've worked with two, one in the US for about two weeks and one in India for two months. It has been an excellent learning experience and I wanted to share it with everyone in the form of this guide. My goal is to give readers a good idea of how a remote assistant can help them, along with an idea of the benefits and drawbacks. This guide should give you a pretty good idea of what you need to get started working with a virtual assistant and should help you avoid some of the errors I made in the process. I am also going to look at the idea of having a local assistant and how that compares to working with their virtual counterpart. … [Read more...] about Ultimate Virtual Assistant Guide
Links On Remote Assistants
I asked my remote executive assistant to put together a list of a few posts that discuss working with a remote/virtual assistant. Below are the results: The Personal Outsourcing Olympics: Bangalore Butler or American Assistant? - Tim Ferriss Very appealing but informative article on the latest trend of entrepreneurs - Outsourcing. Having had a positive experience on all the jobs assigned to a virtual assistant, the author invites others to give their comments through this article. For a novice at outsourcing, he has chalked names of reputed companies in this field. How to get your virtual assistant to schedule your doctor’s appointments - Ramit Sethi Should you have problems … [Read more...] about Links On Remote Assistants
International Holidays
When working with someone from another country it is easy to forget that they will probably have a different holiday schedule than what you are used to. If you hire a remote executive assistant, make sure you get a list of their holidays. It helps with your planning and is a great way to better understand their culture. … [Read more...] about International Holidays
Lifesourcing
Steve Rubel tries outsourcing some tasks as an experiment. … [Read more...] about Lifesourcing
American Express Concierge 3
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 the … [Read more...] about American Express Concierge 3
American Express Concierge 2
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...] about American Express Concierge 2
Remote Executive Assistant – Some Lessons
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...] about Remote Executive Assistant – Some Lessons
Remote Executive Assistant – First Try
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...] about Remote Executive Assistant – First Try