Virtual Assistants add more life to your life by "Enabling you to buy back time!"

Creating your own business, being your own boss, taking your career to where you want to go is exciting and promising. It is a great profession and was a great trip. As of December 31, 2015, I'm now RETIRED and loving it. I am free to use my admin skills - or not - when I choose, for The Turlock Pregnancy Center, the Carnegie Arts Center, and the local garden club.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Firefighter - A Bit of VA Whimsy

Firefighter (FF) or Virtual Assistant (VA)     Over the years of my administrative career, I often described my position as a firefighter (I was always putting out brush fires.) So I researched to see if that may be a legitimate parallel.


FF: Protection of life and property 

VA: Assisting clients in keeping their business alive and growing


FF: Emergency care for sick and  injured
  •  More calls for medical emergencies than any other

VA: Resolving operations issues
  • Like I did for a client who set up a professional organization meeting for a Thursday. Late Wednesday afternoon, the company where he had reserved a special type of microphone (e.g., not many vendors carry them) called to say that one of theirs had been damaged and none was available. I researched and found one in the same city and arranged for my client to pick it up at 3 pm on the next afternoon, Thursday.
FF: Fire prevention activities
  •  Inspections
  •  Educating school children
  •  Presentations & educating community organizations
VA: Special incident activities
  • Product and Service research for clients
  • Purchasing
  • Interfacing with professional organizations and government entities on behalf of my clients

FF: Maintenance of fire apparatus 
  • Cleaning, repairing, replacing

VA: Day-to-day office activities

  • Correspondence, - authoring, preparing, & transmitting both hard copy and electronic
  • Database creation, maintenance & updating Invoicing and expense report preparation
  • Proposal & Contract preparation
FF:  Drilling (practice) in new techniques & practices

VA: Constantly be aware of and ready to use and teach new
  • Office techniques
  • Software
  • Hardware


Additional Firefighter Qualities
Good student
Continuing education
Team work/players
PR/public contact skills


Additional Virtual Assistant qualities
Good student
Continuing education
Team work/players
PR/public contact skills

So while Virtual Assistants are not universally recognized heroes like firefighters, we are heroes to our clients. Our professional goal is their business’s growth and success.
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