For many small business owners and solopreneurs, working with a Virtual Assistant (VA) is becoming more common. Do you have a VA yet? If you do, congratulations on making a great business move! If not, what are you waiting for?
When you run your own business, it can be easy to fall into the trap of ‘doing it all’ yourself. But remember that by outsourcing those tasks that you don’t do well, or that you don’t want to do, you will be freeing up your time to do the things that you are an expert at doing.
Actually there are only 2 things you should be doing in your business : you should be working with clients (the thing you are an expert at!), or you should be doing specific marketing tasks to grow or manage your business (meeting and getting to know prospective clients!). All the rest should be outsourced to appropriate people.
In my networking circles, I am always talking about the merits of finding a VA who is a good fit for you … but up until last month I didn’t follow my own advice! I just hired my own VA last month and am already realizing how much more organized I am … how much more time I actually have to ‘be’ in my business.
It is amazing when you get those little things off your plate that you really shouldn’t be doing anyway, how much more organized you can be and how you can actually save money by spending money – by freeing up your time to do client work, networking or marketing.
So if you haven’t started working with a VA yet, what are you waiting for? I can honestly say I wish I did this a long time ago (and you will too!)
This week I was able to attend the Ottawa Virtual Alliance (OVA) October breakfast meeting. OVA is the association for Virtual Assistants who are located in the Ottawa area. We keep in touch via email, but we get together several times a year for breakfast and a chat, and that’s what I really like about this group.
When you work on your own, it really helps to get together with people who ‘get’ what you do for a living. I am aware that there are many people who don’t understand what I do for work, and it’s always nice to get together with my colleagues to have a bit of a chat about how work is going.
I have mentioned before that I really value the face time that I can get with my colleagues, and OVA is no exception. We enjoy breakfast while using each other as sounding boards for ideas and issues, and sharing industry stories. Barbara Best (Virtual Works)and Raymonde Lemire (Documents Etc.)are the founders of OVA and together they provide support and direction for new and aspiring VAs, as well as great advice and insight for those of us who have been in the business for a while.
We have just set up a Facebook Page for Ottawa Virtual Alliance. Check it out here, and please feel free to contact us if you are a VA in the Ottawa area. Our next breakfast meeting is December 11 and there is always space at the table!
And if you are not in the Ottawa area, seek out your Virtual Assistant association in your area – you will be able to share and network with people who truly understand our industry.
One of the things I love about being a Virtual Assistant is the chance to work with people that I want to work with.
It’s not a job, it’s a business. And I have worked very hard over the years to be able to pick and choose my clientele now. I rarely seek out new clients, though … much of my business comes through referral from my other clients or people that I know.
It can be said that networking is everything when you are running any type of business, but networking doesn’t seal the deal. It gets you to where you need to be, but YOU are the reason that potential clients will want to work with you, or they won’t.
YOU = your personality, your work ethic, your style, your communication skills.
Many of my clients have been with me for many years. I don’t very often have a client ‘quit me’, and I don’t very often quit them. If that happens, it’s usually pretty early in the game. Once we have done any type of work together, we end up growing together, because the fit was right.
Oh, that’s not to say that I haven’t parted ways with clients over the years. That has definitely happened … but I am proud to say that in the last, probably, three years, that I still work with 90% of the clients that have come on board with me. That’s 9 out of 10, which is pretty good.
Take the time when you are having your preliminary meeting with your potential client, to really see how their personality and their style and their needs fit into your ‘work box’. If they don’t fit into your ideal client type, take a pass on them. It probably won’t work out long-term.
It’s like any relationship … you have to ‘fit’ to make it work.
I recently took some time away from my busy schedule of client work to focus on my own professional development.
From June 3 to 7, I was in Niagara Falls, Ontario with a number of other virtual assistants at the Forum on Virtual Assistance, or as we call it, FoVA.
The slogan for FoVA is ‘Meet, Learn and Grow’ and we sure did that (and more!).
It is a gathering where we meet others in same line of work (it can be isolating working from home all the time!), and where we learn (seminars and workshops) and where we grow from our experiences at the conference (whether they are work-related or personal experiences!).
Wesnesday, June 3, I made my way to Niagara Falls and got in quite late. I was lucky enough to locate a gang of VAs – some of whom I had met before, but some of whom I had not. They had finished dinner and were just hanging out relaxing after dinner, and luckily I was able to join them to unwind after a long day of driving. I also met my roommates that I would be staying with for the week (more on them in another post!). There is nothing like meeting people in person who you ‘know’ online. Great fun!
Thursday, June 4, I had the very good fortune to be able to attend a workshop on blogging and social media by an industry great, Kathie Thomas. Kathie came all the way from Australia to speak at FoVA this year, and I was thrilled to meet her and to learn from her.
Thursday night was the official meet n greet for FoVA, and everyone else arrived for dinner and drinks. Somehow after our great dinner at the Marriott, we ended up at the Casino, where we had fun dancing to the band, and we even spotted a celebrity or two (check out Facebook photos for our much-discussed missed photo op!).
Well, it so happened that Friday, June 5 was my birthday, so when the clock struck 12 in the Casino that night, I received quite the celebration (with my friend Pat @cletch who was also born June 5). There aren’t many better places to celebrate your birthday than with a gang of crazy friends in Niagara Falls (but I digress!).
Friday brought more seminars, and I was happy to see my favourite FoVA 2008 speaker again, Mary Lou Ashton, who talked about how to set professional and personal foundations and how to eliminate tolerations. Friday lunch was a Lunch n Learn session about different personality types with Janet Barclay. Friday afternoon we learned all about Wordpress from Frances Palaschuk (one of my awesome roomies). Friday night the whole gang went for dinner with Alex and Julie from Solvate. Very full schedule, so Friday night was a welcome relaxing evening with plenty of laughs!
Saturday afternoon we spent with Pam Ivey who discussed defining your niche, and creating passive streams of revenue within your niche.
In between we had loads of fun, but the sessions were extremely informative by all – (there were many more sessions available - the above list are the seminars I attended).
It’s truly professional development (amid the fun) for virtual assistants anywhere. I would highly recommend attending FoVA to any virtual assistant, whether you are starting out or have been in business for while.
There is nothing like getting together with colleagues and even mentors, to discuss the finer points of our industry. And there is definitely nothing like meeting the people that you are in contact with every day online, up close and in person!
I know for myself that I came home from this year’s conference with a renewed excitement for my business, some great networking opportunities, and some fantastic new friendships. I am looking forward to using all of my newly-acquired knowledge to forge ahead in my business for 2009.
Thanks to Barb Lang for all her hard work this year, pulling FoVA 2009 together. Thanks also to all of those who helped in any small (or large!) way, to make the conference such a memorable event for all of us.
When I started my VA business, I was a hospitality industry specialist. I still offer some hospitality services on my website, and I get many questions about how I arrived at my selection of service offerings.
In my early 20s I went back to college to study catering management. I was fortunate enough to find work in a multi-unit restaurant chain, where there was plenty of opportunity for growth into management.
After opening a few restaurants with the company, I left to run my own consulting business, working with other restaurants and bars. The company became one of my biggest clients, and I continued to work with them for almost 8 years. I analyzed their controllable expenses, prepared their training materials and maintained their point of sales databases, all from the comfort of my own home office. In 2004, we parted ways and I began working with other local restaurants and bars again.
As I was seeking work with new clients via the Internet, I came upon the VA industry. In researching the VA sites and groups, I realized that for the last eight years I had been a VA specializing in documentation and finance.
So I jumped at the chance to market myself as a VA, and I am glad I did! I expanded my target market and have been working with wonderful new clients in many industries.
I obtained my Internet Marketing VA certification through VAclassroom. Now I offer even more services, such as article marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, affiliate marketing, blogging and social media marketing. I also continue to offer hospitality services where my clients require them (it’s in my blood after almost 20 years!).
So there you have it!
My journey continues to present me with opportunities that I would never have dreamed of in 1993 when I went back to school at the age of 24.
So while I will always look back down the road I have travelled with a smile, I really can’t wait to see what’s up ahead!
Last week I went to a Women in Business networking breakfast, hosted by our MPP, Lisa MacLeod.
Although I network online all the time using Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, I have not done too much business networking in person in recent years.
Oh, I have my elevator speech, and I talk to everyone about what I do for a living, but I don’t actively seek clients in my own area. In fact, as a virtual assistant, I have purposely built a clientele that is located away from my hometown.
There are reasons that I have done that, of course. Prior to being an internet marketing virtual assistant, I was focused on the hospitality industry, working mainly with variable costs in restaurants and bars.
I worked from my own home office, and could compile, analyze and report on the data from my own office, I found that the clients I was working with preferred that I was on their site more than I thought I needed to be.
So, for many years I still travelled back and forth from my office to restaurants … and also needed to be available at some crazy times of day, being that the restaurant industry is not open ‘regular office hours’. I worked many holidays and weekends, and although I was very good at what I did, sometimes it just didn’t seem like it was worth it.
When I decided to swap my hospitality clients for online clients, I made a conscious decision to work with people whose offices or businesses I could not possibly drive to. Harsh? Probably. But it wouldn’t have worked for me otherwise.
Now I have established myself over the last three or so years, and am comfortable with setting my own work boundaries … and so I am finally getting out there in my own city!
Needless to say, the breakfast was great, and I enjoyed meeting many women who are running their own businesses like I am.
I learned from going to FoVA last year that getting together with people who understand my line of work is an invaluable source of support for me. That’s what this breakfast did as well, and I am sorry that it took me so long to realize the benefits I could gain by networking locally.
I will definitely look forward to the next networking meeting, wherever it is!
I have been on Twitter for a few months now, and this is about the best description that I have seen to date, of how Twitter works, and why people love it!
As a virtual assistant, I have found Twitter to be an invaluable networking tool for my business. I think you might like it too!
Watch this short video (just over 2 minutes).
If you think you might be interested in seeing what Twitter is all about, go to www.twitter.com to set up your own account.
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