Pointing to the Best Solutions

While I handle my clients' administrative challenges most effectively, the point is to provide the best administrative services at the best value. Some tasks are better handled by professionals specialized in their particular fields. Fortunately, I have a wide variety of skills available in my business network from which to draw. Let me share an example.

One of my clients who lives about 90 miles away is currently in the process of looking for a property to own from which to run her business. She asked me to inquire about and research properties in her locality and set up appointments for her to view some of them. While research and communication are a couple of my top skills, I am not educated in the buying and selling of commercial real estate. After I recommended that she needed her own real estate agent who knows the particulars of her local market and is skilled in research and negotiation, she agreed and directed me to find her such an agent.

So, I contacted a real estate professional in my locality who is very familiar with real estate organizations and agents in Northern California. He has trusted associates in her area and quickly located and contacted an experienced and well-reputed agent to work with my client. After connecting the two, he made a followup call to my client to ascertain whether she was confident in the agent he had connected her to.

Through my network contacts, I provided my client with a professional who is working with her in obtaining her goal of owning business property. Could I have earned lots of billable hours pursuing this task on my own? Yes, but it would not have been the most efficient and best value for the client. The business gain for me is that I have, as promised, handled this task by providing her the most appropriate service available.

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.

Wishing you a prosperous New Year 2011

As I reflect on the year 2010, I am grateful for the many blessings in my business and in my life.

May 2011 be a prosperous and happy year for all -- clients, peers, friends, family, and those I've yet to encounter. 

Call-Em-All.com

I've recently found and used  a great user-friendly, inexpensive web based tool. It is "Call-em-all.com." What happened the last time you had to quickly contact 50 people with an important message and e-mail was not practical? Your first reaction may be "I've never had to do that."

How about these situations:

• It's 7:30 am Saturday morning and a water main has just broken, flooded the soccer field and it is up to you to notify players and parents that the game has been cancelled.
• You are an apartment complex manager and need to notify renters that electric power will be out tomorrow morning - and half of your tenants do not have Internet access.
• Your kids' elementary school has to notify parents of a campus emergency.
• Your tax preparation business needs to notify clients that now is the time to make appointments.
• Your support group meets twice a month and has much better attendance when members are notified the evening before the next get-together.

Call-em-all's service provides both audio and text phone messages. The user inputs names and numbers one time into their own database on the site, then chooses the names and/or groups to be called. The stored numbers can be accessed as long as you have the service.

Last spring I was tasked with calling members for our support group. Working in my own business I did not have the two hours usually required to make these calls. At about $0.09 per call minute per person, I was able to "call" the whole list in about ten minutes. If a live person does not answer, the system is programmed to leave messages on voice mail.

So, I'd suggest you keep this option in mind for communications challenges.

Endings and Beginnings

Concurrent with the holiday season, December is a time of endings and beginnings for a small business owner. As the holiday activities consume the time of clients, thus decreasing the hours of VA services requested, more time is available to devote to my own business.

On frigid December days, I sip hot tea or chocolate while weeding out hard documents and electronic ones that are at or past keeping as determined by my records retention policies. When I initially began my VA practice I set up a schedule for document retention. This has enabled me to keep file cabinet space and hard drive space freer for what I need now and in the future. It also keeps me out of trouble with the taxing authorities that might want to look further into history than legally necessary.

With fewer interruptions, December is an ideal time to prepare end-of-the-year reports for clients as well as catching up my own bookkeeping in preparation for the appointment with my tax guy in late January. I've also found December to be a good month to review and revise marketing materials such as my blog, brochures, business cards, and stationery. Now, I even have time to strategize on the direction I will take my business next year.

So many thanks for December and the seasonal business slowdown.

On The Road - a Truly Virtual Trip

Working virtually continues to receive lots of press. As a virtual assistant working from home, I enjoy the benefits of choosing my place and schedule. Until this past month, however, I hadn't yet worked any further away that the local coffee shop that is only ten minutes from home.

Let me back up a bit in time. About four months ago, my husband shared that he would like to travel more while we are both still in relatively good health and strength. As I love the work I do and plan on continuing for several years, I pointed out that I still have a business to work in. Dennis asked could I do it really virtually if I had a good laptop computer. Well, yes I could do that.

So, great organizer that I am I began to research laptops, their capabilities, brands, and costs. Fortunately, a fellow BNI'er who is an IT consultant had begun promoting a new product/service. His company, Advanced Health Technologies (AHT), will provide quality computers to a company including 24/7 technical support - hardware, software, and network - for a very reasonable monthly fee on a 3-year contract. This was just what I needed.

I now have a quality 17-inch Lenovo Think Pad, but if it ever becomes a lemon, AHT will replace it at no additional charge. As for the 24/7 support, I have called the technicians twice and had my problem solved almost immediately - once I just needed to hard reboot the computer and once the technician went into my computer via LogMeIn.

Early this past October 18 we set out on an auto trip to Wichita KS, Neodesha KS, San Angelo TX, and Tucson AZ, being gone a total of about 17 days. We checked only into hotels/motels that offered free in-room WiFi internet connections. As the routine worked out, we would start out at about 7 am and travel six to eight hours, check into our hotel about 3:30 pm, and I would immediately connect to the internet. A couple of hours later, I'd have finished most of the work I needed to do for clients, then we would go for a light supper. When necessary, I'd handle something upon our return.

Two days, I made phone calls before breakfast our time to handle an items that needed in-person contact. Not having a printer with me, I was blessed that Staples stores could print files from my computer, and fax and copy items easily and at very reasonable prices. I did purchase  a 2-GB flash drive to expedite future processes.

My clients barely realized that I wasn't in my usual "office." Their needs were handled just as efficiently and quickly as usual while we got to enjoy our vacation tremendously.

Now, I'm pondering "where to next?"

Success at the Village

Covenant Village of Turlock that is - venue for the 5th annual West Side Women in Action's annual Networking Conference and Vendor showcase. This is to followup on my posting of August 18.

This year we were able to award 5 scholarships and had the pleasure of all recipients being able to attend the conference with us. Not only did each woman receive her scholarship, the scholarship package includes free books and admission for the Alliance Small Business Development Center NxLeveL business training program. This is a 12-week program that provides a practical, hands-on approach to developing a business action plan designed to lead to business success. to the  Go to the website http://wwww.wswia.org for a full wrap up of the convention and bios of the winners.

The event was also a networking success as we renewed friendships with other business women from previous years and initiated relationships with others we had not previously met. There I've found several resources for information and services that I have readily available for my VA business. The growing social network venues, e.g., FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. are increasingly playing significant roles in business networking; however, may we never lose the appreciation for in-person networking. As the classic Girl Scout song goes, "Make new friends {social networking}* but keep the old {in-person networking}. One is silver and the other gold."

*my clarifications