I really feel for the new Virtual Assistant as many are struggling to develop an identity, and with that, a name for their businesses so that they can be seen as inviduals and not copycats. But sometimes I think they have got it a bit confused or in the wrong order. A business name does not have to be established at the beginning of your business - it can be done later. As far as I know, in most regions, you can legally operate under your own name - which is individual for the most part, and … [Read more...]
Shifting Your Mindset
On so many of the forums I see new VAs wanting to get their businesses up and running as quickly as possible. And on these same forums I see promotions for this course, or that event, or lists to sign up with and so on. When we are in the corporate world we are so used to being told what we need to do, which courses we should attend, the events that would benefit the business the most and we're just automatically put on mailing lists for staff. But what about when we work for ourselves? How … [Read more...]
Benefit of Belonging to a Virtual Assistant Network
Some of the VA Networks have Requests for Proposal or Job Leads sent in by clients or other VAs. On a recent forum discussion a new VA was asking about getting jobs that paid higher than $10 an hour. She knew that it was possible but all the jobs she looked at was paying $10 or less an hour and she wanted to know what she was doing wrong. I gave the following advice: You're looking in the wrong places. You don't want to be searching job listings at all. What you want to be doing is listing … [Read more...]
Developing a Tag Line for Your Business
Recently at a VA forum we were discussing developing taglines for your business. There is a fantastic book called 'Seven Second Marketing' written by Ivan Misner who is the founder of BNI. It's about how to use memory hooks or how to make you instantly stand out in a crowd. My own 'memory hook' really works best in my own country and for those of you who haven't read my blog posts from 2006, perhaps this is a good time to explain something. My business name is "A Clayton's Secretary" and the … [Read more...]
VA Network News
At the beginning of January I announced a new community service for the VA industry. I am thrilled to say that service is now in operation and it is called VANetwork News. The plan is that a weekly newsletter will go out to those interested in the VA industry. At this stage the newsletter will be monthly till it gains momentum, but already we have hints and tips for our next issue and the first one went out Monday this week. So we might even get an issue out in two weeks! We want you, the VA … [Read more...]
Ready To Share Your Expertise?
IF YOU ARE A MEMBER OF A VA FORUM and not seen the following promoted, please share it with your members: Are you ready to share your expertise with your fellow VAs located around the globe? Then don't miss this opportunity to present at the upcoming Online International Virtual Assistants Convention, scheduled Thursday, May 15 through Saturday, May 17, 2008. Applications are being accepted through January 31, 2008 by completing the form located at: ttp://www.oivac.com/form-speaker.htm. If … [Read more...]
A 4-Hour Work Week Experiment
I came across an article a few weeks ago at SBInformer about someone who had read Tim Ferriss' book and he thought he'd try it out and get a VA of his own. Trouble with this is the majority of people who read this book don't do the research - they just read the book and go to the sources quoted without really understanding our industry or even realising that if they Googled 'Virtual Assistants' they would come across our industry associations and learn what a true VA is. They would also get a … [Read more...]
Professional Virtual Assistants?
I had an interesting email conversation with a colleague recently about the promotion of admin support (virtual assistants) via Elance. I wanted to know why he wasn't promoting the use of Virtual Assistants instead through other sources? This is also a follow on from my post "What Do You Think Of When You Hear...?" His response to me was rather interesting - it is always good to see things from the other side of the fence at times to help keep us on track. Comments he made were that he'd had … [Read more...]
What do you think of when you hear….?
Virtual Assistant or VA? What does that term conjour up for you? I ask this because my team and I were discussing the recent posts by a couple of business operators who had been promoting the use of admin and secretarial support through sites such as elance. Both these particular people know our industry and also know several VAs personally but they still promote getting a VA through elance via their websites and blogs. So it makes me wonder what it is they think of when they hear the term … [Read more...]
