There are lots of great benefits to being a Virtual Assistant. I can set my own hours. I can work in my pajamas. I can take my laptop outside and work in the sunshine. I can do the work I want to do, if someone is willing to pay me to do it. I don't have to depend on arbitrary strangers deciding how much I should get paid. And every day is different. There are more benefits, but that'd be tedious for everyone to read.

Yesterday, I got to experience the very best part of being a Virtual Assistant. I had, not 1, but 2 clients, both new to my services have the weight of the world lift off their shoulders. They went from being totally overwhelmed by all they need to do to meet their deadlines to being able to concentrate on the things only they can do to deliver their products/services to their customers. Their relief was evident and I am sincerely glad I am able to help them meet their goals and hopefully grow their businesses in a profitable way.

My job as a Virtual Assistant is to help the business owners focus on their core strengths and core business, while I take care of the distractions, because that is what a lot of the work of runnung a business is to a business owner, a distraction.

There are core things every business owner should know, like the financial situation of the company, but that doesn't mean they have to do all of the work involved to produce an income statement. Nor do they have to personally go into Constant Contact to set up an email, or enter every business card they receive into their ACT! database. I can do those things (and more) for them, because I can't produce a beautiful wedding bouquet, or teach teams to be more effective salepeople, or install a solar water heater, or be a biometric technology expert. To be honest, they can't or don't want to have to do all of the things I do, so it all works well. They get their tailor-fit solutions for their administrative needs, and I get to see them become less stressed out about everything that needs to be done.

I love my business!

I have set up a free resource page. This page will contain links to documents, spreadsheets, templates, and other materials that may help others with a similar need to mine.

The first resource on the page is a credit card payoff worksheet to help you know how much you need to send the credit card company when you are ready to zero out your balance. It is simple enough to use, but there is an example sheet if you need help knowing what to enter and a spreadsheet ready to calculate for you when you fill in the numbers.

Feel free to use the spreadsheet or link to it from your blog or website. Please don't pirate my work; at least attribute it to me, my company and/or my website.

There will be more resources to come in the future.

I was at a Chamber of Commerce mixer this morning and my thoughts drifted to my previous business experiences and how a virtual assistant would have been possible and beneficial if we'd had the technical abilities and forethought at that time.

I spent many years learning my craft at Terminix (yes, the bug people). where I once worked in an office supporting a regional manager and a regional technical manager. Both men traveled, which left me many, many hours alone in the office in a week. I had a few reports to do (at least 1 each day), mail to sort, distribute, deal with, and send out, faxes to read, an occasional memo to type, and calls to make and take. So, I had at least an hour each day of productive work, and up to 12 hours a week of actual productive work. I held back as much work as I could for days when the boss was in the office. I was bored - a lot. This mostly happened in pre-internet years when an actual body was necessary in the office.

I moved into a traveling job with Terminix where I trained, supported, and audited branch office staffs and procedures. The regional office I worked from was larger, but that meant that there were more people out of the office on any given day. I spent a lot of time on the phone to the office assistants, but I only saw them (or my office) intermittently, sometimes not for weeks at a time.

Fast forward to now. There was nothing in those offices that couldn't have been done remotely (except for some minimal filing). We started emailing the reports the regional office compiled as soon as Terminix caught up with technology. Email, for all intents and purposes has made the fax machine obsolete. (Although I have a fax number, the faxes come into and go out from my email.) The mail can be delivered anywhere and can be sent out from wherever. Telecom has come a long way and Telesphere has some great solutions for remote offices (and other offices also).

Besides saving money on office space, Terminix could have saved a lot of money on employment costs (salary, benefits, taxes) by using the assistants' time much more productively. Terminix did change before I left and closed regional offices, disbursing the staff to a small office space in a local branch. Reports started being compiled electronically. Email became de rigeur. Resources have been distributed more wisely.

Businesses often think (like Terminix did) that they have to have an office and an administrative employee. It is model we saw when we were young and starting out. That isn't necessarily true anymore. By using virtual assistants, outsourcing the office support functions becomes a viable business solution which conserves resources for core priorities and profitable activities while still having the professional support and representation businesses need. When deciding on an office model, consider using a virtual assistant instead of a full-time assistant with too little to do.

I started this blog almost a year ago and had technical problems with the page and went over to a blogger.com blog. (It's free, so what the heck.) I'm ready to start again after a year of being told how important blogs are to a business. I actually own 4 blogs besides this one. Three are personal and I just like to keep themes separate, so you don't stumble on a political rant when you want to know about virtual assistant stuff. I'm pretty sure there are few people who really care that I am a SweetTart freak. There's nothing like gnawing on tart pressed sugar to make me happy - except good chocolate. So, I sort my blogs by theme and write on none of them regularly.

In this year of attempted blogging, I have found out something about myself. I really don't like to write if I have to try to be interesting. Some people have a felicity with words. I am not one of them. I can, however write a great memo, step-by-step instructions, and boil down geek-speak to user instructions. So, after someone trying to sell me blogging services made a great case for using a blog, I am going to try this again. I won't be spending somewhere around $3,000 to have someone else setup and maintain a blog for me, which means I need to write the content myself. There are always trade-offs in business.

So, this blog is back. Sorry if the content isn't always compelling, brilliant and witty. (Ironically enough, I'm all three in person - or so I like to think, whether you agree or not.)

Welcome back Virtual Assistant Services Blog!

I really didn’t try to start a “green” business. It was never my intention. Quite frankly, I am a man-made global warming skeptic. (I don’t really want to debate it, so I’m not going to.) But trying to work in the virtual world makes me accidently green. Here’s how:

1.       I don’t commute 5 days a week. When I was commuting, I was travelling 20 miles to get to work. Thankfully, I didn’t have to deal with rush hour often, but it was still a long drive. I still drive for business, after all, I need to network and find clients and some clients want on-site support, which I will happily provide if they truly need it.

2.       I make dual use of my home. It’s home; it’s office. Whatever it is at the moment, it is a dual use space, but please don’t tell those sticklers in the HOA. It might be against the rules. Thankfully, I’m on the board and long ago (when I was still employed – for someone else) we decided that as long as businesses didn’t add to the burden of the neighborhood by adding excessive traffic, home businesses were acceptable.

3.       Oh yeah, I also use a lot of CFLs in my home, if you want to count those. The main reason is because I’m cheap, so CFLs are a better value overall for lifecycle and electric savings.

4.       I use almost no paper anymore. Because a lot of work is passed electronically, I don’t print the reams of paper I did when I worked in offices. Some of the change comes from using QuickBooks, which reduced paper use over a specialty accounting software, which printed every transaction, usually twice, sometimes three times. So now QB payroll produces 7 or 8 pages, where the old program produced at least 30 pages of reports, all vital for good record-keeping.

I feel bad sometimes, like when I attend my Chamber of Commerce “Green” events. Those people or at least some of them are true believers. I just fell into it because of my business model. I’m sure there are others in my situation, but few of us will admit it – at least at the green-themed meetings. I’m accidently green. None of this means that I won’t use my greenness to my benefit. I just may need to avoid the whole global-warming, the-sky-is-falling discussions so that I don’t out myself as a skeptic.

Maybe I can plant a tree to assuage my guilt. I hear planting a tree is an acceptable alternative to truly buying into the movement or something like that. Have you ever just accidently joined a movement you don’t really believe in – for the marketing possibilities or any other reason?

I’ll tell the truth…paperwork isn’t really a fascinating topic. Creating forms is fun. Collating results is fun, especially if I can create some charts to display the results. Filling out forms isn’t that much fun. It is something I’m very good at, however. No one can be a successful administrator for over 14 years without becoming good at filling out all types of forms.

If I had to fill out forms all day every day, I’d be crazy. Thankfully, office administration involves so much more than forms. If you look at your administrators, they usually answer phones, prepare reports, type memos, prepare presentation materials, research issues, file, organize, and are often the face of the organization to the customer. Most importantly, they have to keep the boss happy and make him/her look as good as possible. (How they do that is a topic for another blog post.) A good office assistant is the ultimate example of a great multi-tasker, performing any 2 or 3 tasks at the same time.  

Now that I am also a business owner, I fantasize about the good ol’ days where I only had to juggle 2 or 3 things at a time. In addition to administrative work, I’ve added sales, marketing, networking, service, business management, and relationship management to everything else. It is an interesting transition to go from support staff to head honcho. So far, I’m not sure I know what a good balance is that will allow me to also have a life away from my computer. I have to find people to hire me to provide administrative services, but I also have to actually do the work – with superior quality and a quick turn-around. And my most important function is still making people look good – both myself and my client.

There are a lot of small business owners and managers in the same position as I am. That is why I decided to start my business. I realized that there are a lot of people who start a business and then they get so bogged down with all of the administrative stuff that they can’t spend the time they need to bring in customers, service customers, and see their families. It’s all about balance, and I want to help small business owners find balance and give them professional administrative support. I hope that my clients will eventually outgrow my services and need to hire an administrative employee (and use me for special projects), but before then, they may be able to invest in production employees before they incur all of the expenses associated with hiring an administrative person.

I am the middle-ground between doing it all yourself and hiring an employee. Go to the “Contact Us” page to find out how to contact me about helping your business. I’ll be glad to help you determine how I can help you grow your business, not your workload.

Leanne

Welcome to the Administrative Services Forum. This is open to any posters, but if you aren't nice, or if you spam, or if you are inappropriate, you and your posts will be deleted.

This forum was created to discuss administrative issues, tips, etc. We welcome all points of view, but let's try to stay on topic. There are lots of blogs and forums to discuss politics, religion, the weather, Hollywood and other issues, so please try to keep that content to a minimum here and focus on administrive issues and content here.

Have a good time.

 Leanne