However, and there is always a ‘however”, it is critical to create time in your daily schedule to care for your body. I quickly learned that sitting at my desk for 10-12 hours a day working on virtual assistance tasks, building websites, or just generally running my businesses quickly took a toll on my weight, my energy levels and in some notable instances, even my ability to put together a cogent sentence.

In order to run your VA practice successfully you quite simply MUST take the time to move your body, energize your system and take the time to get, and remain fit and healthy.

Now I am not saying that this schedule works for everybody, but it very definitely works for me. In fact on days that I don’t make it to the gym, it is very apparent to me by early afternoon that this was not a good idea. In fact, it was a really bad decision on my part.

I also have a small rebounder, or mini-trampoline in my office that is in my opinion, a MUST-HAVE piece of equipment. In fact it is right up there with my scanner. When words begin to blur on the screen or I am having trouble concentrating it is a simple matter to walk over the the rebounder, bounce on it gently for three or four minutes, grab a bottle of water and get back to work. It is amazing what that does for my energy levels. Just for fun I counted how many times I got on the rebounder during a particularly time-crunched day and found that I had bounced 8 times during the day (24-30 minutes total though out the day). I had a great day, powered through all of the work and had a fabulous evening with my husband.

One thing that I am getting ready to do in early June is a detox program with The Fitness Jeanie. I downloaded her free CD the other day and found it to be the perfect accompaniment to my rebounder bounces.

Summer in the Deep South is difficult even with the air conditioning running 24/7. The humidity can sap energy quicker than anything that I have ever encountered and I am really looking forward to this detox program to arm myself with a healthy system before summer really slams into us.

Your job should always be to get and keep customers and clients. The more time-sapping tasks that you can delegate to your virtual assistant or virtual assistant team, the more time you have to concentrate on building and growing your business as only you can do.

This is a list of things that you should consider handing off to your VA. This is not by any means an exhaustive list, but it should get you started on building your process list which gives you a very clear idea  of where your “time-seepage” is.

• Email
• Phone calls
• Mail
• Customer Service inquiries
• Processing manual orders by phone, fax, email
• Processing refunds
• Scheduling business and personal appointments and interviews
• Scheduling coaching or consultation calls
• Business and personal travel arrangements
• Confirming appointments, calls, interviews, travel arrangements
• Mapping driving directions to locations of meetings or conferences
• Contacting new prospects (telephone, mail, email)
• Entering business card / contact information into Outlook, ACT, etc.
• Signing you up and scheduling you for teleseminars, teleclasses and workshops
• Produce your workshop or event
• Ship products and handouts to locations where you are exhibiting or speaking
• Invoicing clients / customers
• Receiving and paying bills
• Reconciling bank statements
• Tracking expenses and track records
• Working with your accountant or tax preparer
• Assisting with paperwork to incorporate or LLC your business
• Business and personal shopping: Business software and hardware, gifts, Christmas cards, etc.
• Ordering of office supplies - postage, shipping materials
• Comparison shopping for health plans, credit card deals, business loans, joint venture partnerships, etc.
• Creating information products - CD’s, reports, manuals, etc.
• Design simple marketing materials
• Design business cards
• Design forms for internal use, or for use with clients / customers
• Format e-books and create PDF files
• Design PowerPoint presentations
• Website and Blog creation and maintenance
• Squeeze pages
• Track website statistics
• Shopping cart creation and maintenance
• Manage affiliate programs
• Setup e-mail autoresponders
• Article Submission
• Ezine management
• Newsletters
• Product Launch
• Handling registrations for teleseminars, teleclasses, workshops
• Promoting teleseminars, teleclasses, workshops
• Creating teleseminars, teleclasses, workshops for your business- Reserve bridge lines, send confirmation email to attendees, load email reminders into autoresponder, upload recorded call to website, send MP3 link to list, etc.
• Social networking - Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
• Press releases

As you can see, the number of tasks that you can delegate to a professional virtual assistance are limited only by your imagination.  You can’t build a million dollar online business by doing $20 an hour jobs! Delegate, delegate, delegate! In other words, do what you love best and outsource the rest.

Your Virtual Assistant is uniquely situated in the virtual assistance world.  We can do it all. Our forte is working closely with online entrepreneurs who know exactly what their business should look like and can perfectly envision it, but who quite simply do not have enough hours in the day to do all that needs to be done. Not only can they hand over a huge amount of projects and tasks to us, but once the burden of learning how to build squeeze pages, write html code, launch products, create blogs, etc., is lifted from their shoulders, they are instantly able to get back in touch with the creativity that brought them to the internet and become more joyful and excited about their online business.

We quite literally become your “partner in success”. As you grow and learn, so do we.

Please give us a call  at 888-719-6710 to schedule your free 30 minute telephone consultation to see how we can help your business become a million dollar baby.

We are here to help!

What is a Virtual Assistant?

As a thriving Virtual Assistance firm this is a question that we heard a great deal in the early days, but now potential clients have a very clear idea of just what a virtual assistant is and how they want their virtual assistant to partner with them. 

Our clients are not looking for simple administrative support any longer.  Rather they want, need, and expect their virtual assistant to become a strategic partner, almost a manager if you will, who will work energetically and proactively to help them build and grow their brick and mortar as well as online business(s).  Our clients recognize that we are not only home office based contractors, but entrepreneurs in our own right who bring a rich knowledge base to bear on client projects.  We live and work on the internet!

Virtual assistants provide much of the same services as an onsite employee, but without the added tax and insurance burdens that the employer must bear.  VA’s work from fully equipped home based offices which are often better equipped than the average professional office.  At a minimum, your virtual assistant will have the following basic office equipment and software:

Powerful computer with high speed connection (DSL, cable)

Backup server

Fax Machine

Scanner

Copier

Shredder

CD / DVD burner

Professional telephone system with unlimited long distance

Professional voice mail (We use GotVM)

Postage meter

Office supplies (printer and copier paper, mailing supplies, etc.)

Software

Microsoft Office Suite (Excel, PowerPoint,  Access,  Word, Outlook)

HTML editor: Dreamweaver, Microsoft FrontPage, Microsoft Expression Web

Adobe Acrobat

Instant Messenger (AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Skype, etc.)

Anti-virus software

Bookkeeping software

Client management software

Your Virtual Assistant is a consummate professional who looks at your projects and tasks with an eye to automating processes, building long-term relationships and growing with your business.  We are here to assist you by taking care of the tasks and projects that grow daily more burdensome and prevent you from doing what you love best.  Our clients are excited to learn that they can turn over the minutia of their daily business and turn their minds to the creative thought processes that brought them into business to begin with.

Please call us toll free at 888-719-6710 to schedule a free 30 minute telephone consultation.  At the end of the call, you will walk away relieved, energized, and excited about all of the possibilities that will open up to you after you hire professional help.

Ok, so you have a website, a cell phone and a wonderful plan to make your presence felt on the internet. What you probably don’t have, is a voice mail system that makes you sound like a Fortune 500 company.

In the highly competitive field of Web Development and Virtual Assistance, having a voice mail system in place has been essential for our marketing efforts.  We chose GotVM (Got Voice Mail) because it successfully handles every aspect of our toll free and messaging needs at a very affordable monthly cost.  Even if you are a start-up company with little to no cash flow you can afford this voice mail system at under $10 a month. You can even get local service and they offer a 30 day money back guarantee.

Potential clients can now call one of my toll free numbers and be routed to the proper person within our companies. Since we work virtually, our clients and staff are all located in different time zones and we can now make sure that no calls are missed. GotVM has been an excellent resource for our companies as has allowed us to link our cross-nation staff  via our toll free numbers.

GotVM is a VERY affordable service (starting at $9.95 month) and we recommend it to all of our clients who are in need of a reliable and affordable virtual voice mail service. Even if you only have a cell phone,  your calls will be answered and routed properly which makes your company sound much larger than it really is.

I just found an excellent article about working from your home office written by Carolyn Kepcher, who was Donald Trump’s right-hand woman for a number of years, both in his company and on the Celebrity Apprentice television series until she left to start her own company. She started her new company by working virtually. We can all certainly relate to that!

Your Money columnist Carolyn Kepcher, author of the best-selling business book, “Carolyn 101,” is the former “Apprentice” star who thrived working for one of America’s toughest bosses. She’s now CEO of Carolyn & Co. (carolynandco.com), an enterprise created by and for career women.

I am a telecommuting convert.

Before this year, I spent nearly 12 years working for a large corporation where I was trained to believe people who worked from home could never get the job done. I believed that, if I couldn’t see my staff, chances were the work was not getting done. Real work meant time in the office.

My first experience disproving this theory was a revelation. It came on a day a few years ago when I was feeling so ill I couldn’t make it to work. Since I’m not the kind of person who can happily sit back with a box of tissues and cold medicine in front of a television, I grabbed my BlackBerry and laptop and decided to catch up on e-mails. I got more work done in my pajamas that day than I had all week.

I’ve since moved on in my career, creating a startup venture called Carolyn & Co. My business partner and I began by working from our home offices. As the company grew, so did our demands. We needed staff, but didn’t have office space. We found ourselves hiring people willing to work from home.

I’ll admit: The whole scenario made me nervous. Very nervous.

What a lesson I learned. Not only was the work getting done in a timely matter, the results were impressive. We were able to negotiate contracts, make decisions, plan, create, implement - efficiently and seamlessly - without sharing one square foot of office space.

I don’t believe telecommuting is for everyone. Some industries and positions aren’t well-suited for it. And there are those employees who simply lack the discipline and organization to effectively work from home.

But it works well for many, especially people with kids. As important as it is to have face time in the office, it’s more important to have face time at home.

When I work from home, I see my 5- and 7-year-old off on the bus in the morning, then get right to work. I take a lunch break at noon with my 5-year-old when she gets off the bus, and then it’s back to business.

Work is still work, but life is a little easier when you have more flexibility to balance your career with all your other priorities.

For employers, there are adjustments to be made to accommodate telecommuters. But there are enough advantages to make it worth it.

For starters: There’s a whole pool of barely tapped talent out there; people with great skill and experience who simply can’t or won’t work in a traditional job or office setting. Being open to telecommuting naturally enhances the desirability of any employer with jobs to fill.

In return for giving them greater flexibility with their job, employees who telecommute tend to be highly motivated and loyal, gracing bosses with a lower rate of job turnover. Also, many telecommuters want to work part-time, decreasing the cost of their benefits. And telecommuters cut back on office space overhead.

Employees and employers need to think it through, but I’m now a true believer that, when it works, it works for everyone involved.

As both a Web Developer and Virtual Assistant I am always on the lookout for automation tools. There are a couple of free tools that I use daily and want to share them with you.

The first one is a nifty little tool called “ShortKeys” which is intended for use with programs that allow text input such as a word processor, text editor, e-mail program, etc. It replaces a text string of up to 32 characters with a word, sentence, paragraph or several paragraphs, saving you valuable time by not having to manually type the text. Errors in typing can be eliminated. Save time hunting for that brilliant email or chunk of text that you want to duplicate by keeping it handy in ShortKeys. You will wonder how you ever got by without it. Did I mention that is is free? You can download it here: http://www.shortkeys.com/lite.htm.

The second tool that I use a LOT is a virtual yellow sticky note. It literally allows you to write a note on what appears to be a yellow sticky note on your desktop. It will stay there until you delete it. It is another free tool that will save you a lot of time when you need to jot a quick note to yourself or keep a reminder front and center where you can see it. You can read about it here: http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/index.html and download here: http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/download.html.

Enjoy!

Many of us are unintentionally lax with our personal information. Being lax with a client’s information can have devastating consequences for any Virtual Assistant. By being aware of personal and business personal information leaks, you can be proactive in protecting both yourself as well as your clients.

On a personal level, remember the last time you went to the doctor’s office and their new patient form asked for your social security number? Many people will fill in that information simply because it was asked of them. The doctor’s office isn’t paying you a salary or contributing employee taxes from your earnings. This is gratuitous information and they simply do not need it. One of my pet peeve’s about giving out my personal information is having a clerk at Lowe’s ask me for my phone number. They don’t need that information and I consistently refuse to give it to them. Or how about when the cable company asks for your social security number? They can look up your information by your phone number.

Let’s be proactive and guard our personal information.

1. Clean out your wallet. Get out all the identification cards you don’t need to carry like your social security card, birth certificate, passport and other sensitive documents. NEVER carry your social security card with you. I am constantly amazed by people who will not memorize their SS number.
2. Make sure your social security number isn’t on your driver’s license or insurance card.
3. Do not have your home address tags on your keychain. If you lose your keys, a potential thief now knows exactly where you live.
4. Create a secure place for all your credit card numbers, bank accounts, PINS and long-distance calling cards. We recommend a password protected excel spread sheet on your computer.
5. Use complex passwords. Always avoid using passwords with easy to figure out info like your address, phone, birth date or pet’s name.
6. Write “Ask for Photo ID” near the signature line of your credit cards and insist the store ask for that ID when you present them with your card.
7. Protect your computer and financial passwords. Don’t put them on your Palm Pilot or cell phone.
8. Buy a shredder. USE IT. A lot!
9. Get your free annual credit report and check for anything suspicious.
10. Consider how you hold legal title to property, cars, investment accounts and such. Move them into a living trust (with a complex name) or investments into a Family Limited Partnership that you control.

As a Virtual Assistant, I ALWAYS recommend that my clients protect themselves with LifeLock, the most advanced Identify Theft Protection system available. Lifelock is the only advanced Identity Theft Protection system available. We use it for personally and highly recommend it. Lifelock is only $10 per month, or $110 per year per adult. They even protect children and students.

So if you haven’t already, get busy and protect your personal information and your client’s information. Be safe!

Virtual Assistance is a fairly new administrative profession. Professional Virtual Assistants are micro business owners who provide administrative and personal support while working in a long-term relationship with a client or clients.

The Virtual Assistance industry has gained so much traction in the past couple of years that the question these days is not “What is a virtual assistant, but rather, who is your virtual assistant?”

At Your Virtual Assistant, our goal is to create long-term, collaborative relationships with our clients. We quite literally become your strategic partner in success. When we take over the time-seepage tasks that sap your hours and energy you are freed up to be creative and have more time to do what you love.  When you hand over these tasks to your virtual assistant, we proactively support you, offer solutions to challenges, and work with you to help you build and grow your business.

Please call us toll free at 888-719-6710 for a free consultation.

Do what you love and outsource the rest!