LinkedIn has grown to an enormous professional networking site with over 150million members now. It was only a few short years ago that I began to take it seriously and there were just over 14million in those days. There was a time when receiving an invitation to connect at LinkedIn, that LinkedIn would have a warning message at the bottom of the email invitation about whether you should connect with people you don't know. People used to be penalised if they got 5 or more IDKs (I don't knows) … [Read more...]
Archives for May 2012
Beware of job scams
I had someone fill out my job request form the other day and I asked for more information before sending it out. It’s not unusual for clients to be vague when filling out the form so I usually do ask for more info when that’s the case. Glad I did as what she is outlining below is (I believe) a variation on the ‘receive the funds on my behalf, keep some for yourself and send the rest to me’ scam. I believe this is money laundering and she may be targeting VAs in Australia so please spread the … [Read more...]
How do I get clients as a Virtual Assistant?
A question I see over and over again at various VA forums. Here is my answer: Networking is very important when running a business, any business. Businesses only succeed if they have clients. It's why you see advertisements in magazines, newspapers and on TV and why you hear them on the radio. It's why there are lots and lots of different types of business networks that meet regularly, be it weekly, fortnightly, monthly or ad-hoc. It's why there are associations for every industry out there. … [Read more...]
Are you a mum who wants to work at home?
Last weekend it was Mother's Day in many countries around the world. I was privileged to be asked to give the message for that day at my church, based on my own personal experiences of the Proverbs 31 Woman, whom I believe to be a work at home mum in biblical days. I had written a book in 2006, bringing the Proverbs 31 woman into the 21st century and wove my life around the verses in the book 'Worth More Than Rubies'. During the previous week I'd visited two Mainly Music groups of mothers with … [Read more...]
Moonlighting as a Virtual Assistant
I became aware of discussion about an article regarding Moonlighting as a VA. I haven't seen the original article but did see the comments and hope that the writers will see my post as I'm unable to leave a comment on the site where I saw them. I've been running a Virtual Assistant practice for over 18 years now. It wasn't called that when I started, we were known as home-based secretaries in those days. The challenges in those days may have been more difficult as we didn't have the Internet … [Read more...]
Speaking of working at home…
A couple of days ago I shared how much I love working at home and that I don't miss the traffic out there at all. However, there are days (very occasional) when working at home can prove to be a challenge. Today was one of them. We got a letter a week ago to say the power would be off between 8.30am and 3.30pm for one day and we needed to ensure that all electrical appliances were switched off and unplugged, especially computers. What was I going to do? I started to put out feelers to see … [Read more...]
So glad I work at home
You know, in the busy-ness of our lives, even in running our own businesses, it's sometimes easy to lose sight of our blessings. In this case, just being able to work at home. I had to be up at 5am today. That's not much earlier than a normal morning for me. I'm often awake at 5.30 as I take my husband to the train station some mornings but other mornings I get to sleep in till 7am because he is working at home too :-) Today I was taking the son of a Canadian friend to the airport. He'd been … [Read more...]
A non-negotiable thought…
Hi everyone, we're back from the Australian VA Conference and I think this would have to be the best one yet. They've all been good but they get better and better! Below you can see a photo of the group at the end of the first day - we were definitely having a good time. I plan to share with you some of the lessons learnt at AVAC 2012 and the first one I have to share with you is one that was re-iterated by several speakers during the two-day event. Attending professional development events … [Read more...]
New Virtual Assistant Forum
Over the past month I've been setting up a new board forum for Virtual Assistants. While it has been primarily built with ACS members in mind, there is a portion of the forum that is open to any and all VAs. It is the VA Directory Forum and you are invited to come and check it out. While the membership and number of posts are low there currently, I expect it will grow quite quickly once the word is out. We have an active forum at yahoogroups (with over 1400 members) but there are some who … [Read more...]