About Us at the ACS team

		My expertise as a virtual assistant is on display at Flying Solo, an online resource brimming with small business advice. Read my articles here.
		Hear Kathie's recent radio interview on Radio LightFM here September 2007. A new entry will be placed here for February 2009.
		See Kathie's recent HBB TV interview here. 13/09/2007 HBB TV Inteview
		Iinterview with Virtual Assistant Forums here.

Our Mission
To be the household name for secretarial and admin support for home-based businesses.
To make secretarial and office support within easy reach of all small and home-based businesses throughout the world.

If you wish to join our team, click here.

• 2008 Nominee Australian of the Year Awards 2008
• 2007 Highly Commended Women in Business Award, MCEI
• 2007 Faithwriters Seal for Outstanding Read - for my book "Worth More Than Rubies"
• 2007 Listed in the Top 100 Australian Bloggers for Virtual Assistant - THE Blog
• 2006 Nominee for the Thomas Leonard International Virtual Assistant of Distinction Award
• 2004 Highly Commended Australian Achievers Award for Office Services and Supplies
• 2003 Highly Commended Australian Achievers Award for Office Services and Supplies
• 2002 MBN Highly Commended Established Business,
• 2002 MBN Virtual Business of the Year
• 2002 MBN Ambassador of the Year (Vic/TAS/SA)
• 2001 AIOP Award of Excellence, Highly Recommended
• 2000 Highly Commended Australian Achiever Award for Office, Secretarial & Desktop Publishing Services.
• 1999 Australian Achiever Award - Melbourne Secretarial & Word Processing Services, Winner.
• Kathie M. Thomas was awarded 'Member of the Year', Victoria in 1993 by the Institute of Professional Secretaries (IPSA) and was runner-up for the National Title.
• 'A Clayton's Secretary' was registered on National Secretaries Day in 1994.

How "A Clayton's Secretary" began (*explanation for meaning of name at bottom of this section)

Before the Virtual Assistant industry began.........

'A Clayton's Secretary' came out of a brochure I was preparing to tell businesses about my new service. I hadn't settled on a name and as I prepared the brochure I finished it with "..let me be the secretary you have when you haven't got a secretary". Immediately came to mind 'A Clayton's Secretary'* and the name has been with me since. I had worked in the secretarial field for twenty-three years in widely different areas from the banking field to the Department of Defence, from a furniture store to a research organisation. My various positions required access to financial details and highly confidential material and at all times I believe I have carried out my duties with integrity, loyalty, confidentiality, competence and trust. Latter positions were as Personal Assistant to Directors and also to Project Officers. I was also very fortunate to have worked with the team administering the Australian Best Practice Demonstration Program and during that time developed a keen interest in developing and promoting Best Practice in Administration and related matters.

I am a Member of a number of organisations including the Australian Institute of Office Professionals (AIOP), and was selected as Member of the Year, Victorian Division in 1993. I also achieved runner-up for the National Award the same year. I believe my keen interest and involvement in Best Practice in Administration helped me achieve the award. It is also my intention that this should always be reflected in my work. We are also affiliated with Home Secretarial Services (HSS) in Los Angeles as well as registered with a number of VA networks globally.

'A Clayton's Secretary' was first created as a home-based secretarial support service in 1994 and a couple of years was spent in building up the client base, thereby making it a full-time business. Never liking to say 'no' to a client, there were times when Kathie was overflowing with work and sought out others who were home-based, with suitable computers, who could take on overflow work. Some of these people required training as they didn't have all the skills required to carry out some of the work and Kathie invested her time in coaching and mentoring these people so that work could be carried out as efficiently and confidently as possible. This was the start of her network and as the Virtual Assistant industry developed 'A Clayton's Secretary' changed its focus from entirely secretarial to administrative and other services, to encompass the virtual needs of all clients.

Today our membership is in sixteen countries. We can handle transcription several languages. See our other pages for details.

* Claytons was the drink you had when you weren't having a drink in the 1980's in Australia and ever since then a 'claytons' was something you had when you didn't have whatever was the normal, in this case when you don't have a secretary of your own! We become your secretary. Of course, many of our team provide services other than secretarial, but the principal remains the same.

History of the Virtual Assistant Industry, or should I say 'History of the VA Networks'?.

No-one knows the exact date of the birth of the industry. We do know that Thomas Leonard, founder of CoachU and the ICF, called his remote assistant, his Virtual Assistant and Stacey Brice is therefore credited with being the first called a Virtual Assistant. However, there were people all over the world operating home based businesses and providing support on a similar basis, either local or remotely, to clients in different areas. For example, Robyn Green in Melbourne, Australia had a network of homebased secretaries in the 1980s and Kathie purchased a book Robyn wrote for ideas for her own business.

You may have already noted that many claim to be the first network, or the original 'VA'. The UK/European magazine Executary International noted this very same thing in an article about the Industry in the Spring 2000 issue. It is probably very difficult to ascertain when things really did start but you can be sure that there were several operating home-based secretarial services around the world in the 1980's, although very few networked, with the first online operators in the mid 1990's, along with the first online networks. With the change in technology and shifts in what can be achieved on a computer, home-based secretaries updated their skills and service provision to that of Virtual Assistants.

The introduction of the Internet to this service industry meant changes to the way we operated and also in the services provided. It also mean that clients could be much further afield and easily serviced via email and web, as well as fax, phone, mail and courier as had been done previously. It meant that often things could be delivered more quickly and more efficiently.

Kathie M. Thomas pioneered the Virtual Assistant industry in Australia and established the first VA network in the southern hemisphere. She started operating a home-based secretarial business in March 1994 and first went online in January 1996. In April 1996 she started a network of operators as her workload grew, bringing on board other women who also wanted to work from home as she was doing. When the group became aware of the new title 'Virtual Assistant' being used in the US they soon adopted that, alongside the title 'Homebased Secretary' and gradually phased out the latter title in the late 1990s.

There are a couple of US based sites that list their version of the VA history, but unfortunately it leaves out what happened in Australia and some other countries. Here is what took place in Australia in Kathie's words:

24 March 1994 - A Clayton's Secretary registered on National Secretaries Day.
Late 1995 - I learnt about the internet - at that stage my business was too busy for one person and I was trying to find help but was not very successful. There weren't many locally who had computers at home at that time so the Internet offered hope.
January 1996 I joined the internet and 'met' Linda Anderson of Home Secretary. Linda had aleady built a network of home based secretaries in LA since the 1980s and went online not long before I found her website. To my knowledge she had the very first online network of this type. It was through her guidance that I developed plans for setting up my own network in Australia.
Between Jan and Mar 1996 I received a number of emails from women who found my website and who want to do what I'm doing - I spoke to my accountant for advice outlining what I'd learnt from Linda - I wanted to know if I could do the same.
April 1996 launch of network on website and I accept my first members - Linda Anderson from the US and a couple of ladies in Australia.
Later in 1996 I set up our first chat forum for contact convenience amongst the team. I was already a member of a forum for mothers in Australia so thought this was a good way to operate. First learnt about the name of 'Virtual Assistant' when I joined a forum overseas. The group had ongoing discussions about the use of this term and gradually adopted it but continued with the use of 'homebased secretary' for quite some time as well.
1996 - 1998 more members joined. asecretary.com.au was registered. By last half of 1998 members were in several states of Australia, plus the UK, USA, India.
1998 - began producing a regular monthly newsletter (ACS News) promoting the network to my clients and other readers. This was posted out and wasn't emailed to a list until 2000.
Mid 1998 - ACS Logo used on newsletter for first time.
July 1998 - I was accepted as a regular contributor and began writing regularly for the Home Based Income and Small Business magazine and wrote for every issue for many years about our industry. Knowledge of our network was spreading throughout Australia and beyond.
1999 - nominated for Australia Achievers Award for services in Melbourne to clients and won - first award for the business. Have since won several more awards, as have many members of our team.
2000 - ACS News went online to a subscription list.
2001 - Trademarked A Clayton's Secretary, logo and byline later trademarked.
March 2001 - Accredited Secretary Online is launched (in keeping with the business name) - same time as VACertification.com. Fred Gandee and I spoke on the phone only a short time later - neither of us knew the other was working on these programs but both shared the same thoughts about the professional development of our industry. We kept in touch on a regular basis and I was added to the board of certifiers for VACertification.com.
2005 - Began a blog with Blogger and later transferred it to my own domain using Wordpress. This blog is today one of the highest ranking VA blogs at Technorati and is listed in the Top 100 Australian blogs list.
2006 - Launched VATrainer.com to formalise what I'd been doing for years in an ad-hoc manner.