I got an interesting request from a charity organisation this week. They asked if they could speak with one of the Board of Directors of our organisation. I smiled as I answered that we didn't have a board but thanks for asking. We then discussed a charity that my team have been supporting for some time and I explained that I didn't want to change from that for now. Even a simple phone call can lift your spirits. I felt like I'd been elevated another notch in my business! … [Read more...]
What do you see?
There's been a recent promotion here in Melbourne on the radio about 'what do you see?' and a description is given of needy children. This is about sponsoring a child. My husband, Graham and I, have been sponsoring children through World Vision since around 1993 or 1994. We currently sponsor 3 girls - it’s always been girls as we have 5 daughters of our own so we feel a real connection for the needs of daughters. One of the girls we have sponsored in the past could have almost passed for a … [Read more...]
Friday Finds
Google Reader has become an excellent tool for me to use and over breakfast each morning I can glance through all the latest posts that have come in the past 24 hours. You can even read forum discussions and then go and participate if there's a topic of interest to you. Or, if like me, you like to find out about the Top 100 Hot New Releases at Amazon.com you can also check their feed daily. That's how I found out my own book had reached #23 for its genre late June - it happened overnight … [Read more...]
Longest job I’ve ever had!
I was chatting online the other day and we were discussing how long we'd stayed in jobs before starting up our own businesses. I'd always been someone who moved on after a couple of years because I either got bored and needed new challenges or the path for advancement was blocked by someone who wouldn't move on. And yet, here I am, in my own business well after 14 years! When I related this to my husband he quipped that I was pretty much unemployable these days too! He also added it helped … [Read more...]
What You Think About…
... you are drawn towards. I had this told to me by a doctor in Psychosomatic medicine many years ago, prior to starting my own business. Peter told me that this can work for both good and bad. It's also known as the RAS, or the reticular activation system. Your mind works like a magnet or radar and you are automatically drawn towards things that are on your mind - and it doesn't have to be foremost, it could be in the back of your mind. Late in 1993 I won Secretary of the Year for my state … [Read more...]
How this Virtual Assistant began blogging
I was asked to investigate blogging for a client early 2005 but I didn't really understand what it was about. So I set up my first blog at Blogger for my VA business to explore it. I had to put in a calendar reminder weekly to force myself to do it and I often had no idea what to write about - I would pick out a word from a jar of cards I had just for a topic. Later that year I decided to set up a family one instead of my annual Christmas newsletter. I put up photos, wrote about my family but … [Read more...]
Friday Finds
Didn't get my normal interview up this week - just waiting on more to come through. But if you're a VA with a client who would like to participate, or perhaps you are a client who uses a VA and would like to participate, please do get in touch with me via the contact form on this blog. Thank you also to everyone who sent me their messages of condolences (over 40 of them) and comments on my family site this week after the loss of our beloved 16 year old cat, Beauie. He's been a faithful and … [Read more...]
At last, things are back to normal…
Don't you just hate it when technology just won't work? As you may be aware I've had my challenges these past few weeks. A cpanel crash meant having to shift all my websites and blogs, and that of my clients to another server. Minor hiccups have meant that we (web guy and me) need to find a fix for UTF-8 on some blogs as the charset isn't showing correctly although other blogs appear to be fine, but hopefully we'll get that sorted soon. Everything else appears to be working fine now. And … [Read more...]
Friday Reflection
This week has been a rather challenging one for me. Many of my clients and contacts will know that one of my servers had challenges 3 weeks ago and this past weekend everything was shifted to another server. Most of the challenges now seem ironed out and to my knowledge, only one or two clients, are still getting sorted - my web guy Andrew, has been a great help during this time. I was out of the office for a couple of days speaking at an EA/PA event in Perth. Consequently it meant that there … [Read more...]
