There is lots written about the benefits of being a Virtual Assistant and particularly of working at home. You read articles, see photos of healthy looking people running on the beach, playing ball with their kids, driving a flashy car, or sitting under a tree with their laptop.

The reality is very different – not unenjoyable, otherwise I wouldn’t still be in a home office over 12 years down the track. But, I don’t get the time to run on the beach, my kids grew up with mum at home, usually in the office, I don’t drive a flashy car and I don’t usually sit under a tree with my laptop – nice thought though!

I love what I do with a passion, and I love that technology has allowed me to combine home and family life with having a very worthwhile career, and one that has been very rewarding. But the reality is that I spend a lot of time in my office – not outdoors. It takes a certain type of person to commit to doing this. You need to be comfortable with your own company and not having lots of people around you. You need to be comfortable with the quiet of the household (I always have a radio on but love that I’m totally alone). You need to be comfortable with your ability to troubleshoot when the computer and printer don’t want to talk to one another and you have to get that job finished before the post office closes. But there is something else… you need to watch your shadow – because it grows!

I’m sure my shadow used to be a lot thinner than it is, in fact I know it was 10 years ago. But it gradually grew wider and one day I looked in the mirror and found that I had too. It’s that constant sitting down in front of the computer, just a few more minutes, just one more email, just one more job. A lack of going out for a walk – even though it’s nice outside. A quick trip to the fridge or cupboard to grab something that just needs a wrapper pulled off it as I don’t want to spend the time preparing something.

When I first began my business I had good intentions. I even walked down to the train station sometimes to meet my husband and walk back with him. But somewhere along the line it just got easier to hop in the car to meet him – think it may have been when he injured his achilles tendon a few years ago and we just never got back to doing the other. He works in the city in the office and although he moves from meeting room to meeting room, and building to building, he also has discovered how his shadow has grown. So, together, we are now encouraging one another with exercise, watching what each other eats and generally ‘buddy’ one another into a healthier lifestyle. But there is more that can be done and I’ve told you previously about a group that has been developed for that reason. So, if you struggle to look after yourself and need some encouragement, why not check out DiVAs, join in the virtual walks and swims and plan to get healthy again! KMT

exercise, fatter, healthier, lifestyle, shadow, work at home, technology, virtual assistants

When first starting out, one of the things a new VA needs to know is how much to charge for the services they will provide? And it’s not always easy trying to work this out. Will they charge too much, will they charge not enough? What are others charging?

And so, it’s not uncommon to see this question being asked via VA forums. But it’s not an easy one to answer either, because there are some things to consider, for example:

1. What typing speed do they have, if the bulk of their work will involve typing?
2. How much experience in their service provision have they had?
3. How efficient are they at carrying out their job?
4. What is the cost of living like in their geographic location?

And there will be other considerations too, but let’s start with these. In planning to adopt the rates that someone else has established, it means you could be under- or over-charging, depending on your own capabilities, and your geographic location. There are areas considered to be ‘low class’ and would therefore not attract high rates for services provided and then there are the ‘high class’ areas that would command much higher rates due to the cost of living.  Not to mention all the places in between – which is probably where most of us are. Someone who works slowly would take much longer to complete a job than another who is much faster. It would be unfair to charge the client the same rate – the client would be penalised by paying a larger sum for a slower job.

And so how do VAs choose rates that are right for them? You could look around at similar services to your’s in localities close by to get a general idea – some of these you may find online, or you may need to ring up and ask for a copy of their rates. Not all will willingly give it – especially if they know you are competition. But there are formulas that can be used to help establish the rates and these can be found in books about the industry or perhaps a sheet that can be purchased.

I work with a formula that was adopted from an engineering consultant’s magazine many years ago and it basically begins with the going corporate annual income for your level of expertise in your area, and dividing the number of your work hours into that. There is a lot more that needs to be considered, for example, how many working hours are there (total year minus public holidays, leave break, etc) and then you need to consider sick leave, superannuation and so on – the formula works through these items in detail.

So, as you can see, there is some thought that needs to be put in, to ensure that you are charging rates that are right for you, based on your experience, skill and location. Not only that, you need to be sure you are covering your expenses: computer, software, printing costs, internet connection, insurances, taxation – all of these are tax deductible expenses. KMT

rates, taxes, VA rates, rates formula, skill, experience

I recently became a board member for a new group for Virtual Assistants. This group was developed for a very different reason to the existing forums. It is recognised that there is a downside to working at home – and that is the lack of exercise and increased tendency to just snack through the day. If you have been a Virtual Assistant for more than 6 months you’ll know what I’m talking about.

I love being at home and wouldn’t swap it for anything but I have to admit that I have definitely put weight on and the lack of exercise has been because I’m reluctant to go out – I love it in my home and my office very much. Just over a year ago I joined Weight Watchers and my husband and I invested in a treadmill and exercise bike at Christmas time – both of these things have assisted in my losing 2/3 of the weight I’d put on in a 10 year period. But it is important to have ‘buddies’ to check in with regularly to help you keep on track with your weight loss, healthy eating, exercise and generally healthy lifestyle. So, enter DiVAs.

Virtual DiVAs was formed to help female professionals and entrepreneurs who work online to adopt a healthier, more balanced lifestyle. It is their mission to help each other achieve great success in life without sacrificing the things that really count: health, happiness and family.

Virtual DiVAs is hosting its first “Open House” event, a free Skypecast/”Girl’s Night Out” on Wednesday, June 28th at 7:00PM EST. The Virtual DiVAs and Gillian Hood-Gabrielson, an Intuitive Eating Coach and President of Healthier Outcomes, have collaborated to stage this special event to impact the lives and health of virtual women professionals. Gillian specializes in helping women entrepreneurs overcome emotional eating in order to achieve their natural weight.

The Open House event, our Group H.U.G., features Gillian’s teleclass, “5 Steps to Break Out of Diet Prison”. Connect with other women professionals and learn how to gain better control of your health during this exciting, complimentary event. Why not register at: http://www.virtualdivas.org/EventRegistration.html? You are also welcome to refer additional guests to this event, while space is available.

You are invited to attend this event. Register for your seat here, then attend the
Virtual DiVAs Skypecast on Wednesday, June 28th beginning at 7PM EST (NY time). We hope to meet you all there. KMT

healthy lifestyle, diet, healthy eating, exercise, success, happiness, weight watchers

As probably happens to many VAs (or for that matter, any business operator) whose websites are easily located, I get requests asking me if I would promote something, refer someone, or give work to someone. This morning’s request was of the middle agenda and here is what was sent to me:

My name is Joe (withheld) I am with a company called (withheld).
We would like to do some business with your Consulting firm.
Let me explain the help we need.

1. Your company and my company are always looking for new business clients.
2. We need help with business referral assistance.
2. Help us with business referrals and we will pay you a Monthly Fee of $195.00.
5. All we ask is that you write us a ONE-TIME Reference Letter, so we can use this letter to solicit new business It’s that simple.

If you’re interested please let me know and I’ll send you the remaining details.
I eagerly look forward to your reply.

With Kind Regards,
Joe

It didn’t take me long to decide to decline his request and this was my answer:

Sorry Joe, but we can’t do this. A number of reasons:

1. We get lots of requests from lots of people – I would spend more time doing this than actually getting work done.
2. You’re sending from an aol address – why aren’t you using your company address?
3. When we do referrals we only do them for people we already have established a working relationship with and therefore, have some experience and knowledge of. How can we possibly refer someone we don’t know anything about? It means putting our reputation on the line.

Hope you understand.

Whilst I could have researched the company name he gave me I’m not sure I want to spend the time doing that. His signature block told me nothing but his name and that his role is ‘vice president’. No website, no contact details other than the aol email address in the message and that was all. It will be interesting to see if he responds.

What his email was telling me was that he didn’t want to reveal who he really is, hence the aol address, or his business is not yet up and running and he’s not yet invested in his own domain. He wants to build his business quickly, without putting in the foundations required, and is looking for others who have already developed an online presence so he can use their reputation for building his business. Or perhaps he’s looking for something else that I may not want to know anything about.

In a day and age of being able to get things done quickly people seem to have forgotten the need to learn things properly, for putting in the groundwork and establishing oneself, especially in business. No-one develops a good reputation overnight, it has to be built over time, step-by-step. Knowing good people in business helps – in spending time with them you can learn from them and emulate them (mentoring is one such way for this to happen) but it still means putting in the hard work and laying the foundations yourself. When people see the evidence of that they are more likely to accept a request for help – from someone they already have some knowledge of or can get that information fairly quickly.

One of the best ways to do that is to find business networks in your industry or target client base industry (perhaps both!) and spend time getting to know people, attending meetings (either physically or virtually), assisting where needed and generally getting people to notice you exist. KMT

building networks, reputation, mentoring, mentor, referral, foundations, knowledge

I’m still tweaking it, but now have Virtual Assistant – THE Blog housed on my own server, using WordPress. I’ve been learning this program for just over a couple of months now and have been able to successfully import this blog from its previous home. Please do update your bookmarks to http://www.vadirectory.net/blog/ for new posts or, if you haven’t already done so, subscribe to my blog at the left of screen and new posts will be automatically emailed to you. KMT

blog theme, blog template, wordpress, virtual assistant, blog subscribe

Interesting title – why would I use it? Well, because I noticed recently that people were Googling this phrase. Additional to that I had an email from a gentleman who was contacting VA businesses trying to get business from them – he wanted to operate as a VA and just couldn’t understand why other VAs wouldn’t give him work. He isn’t the first who has sent me similar emails. His response to me, in our email discussion, was that he was convinced the ‘VA business’ didn’t work.

So, why would some believe it doesn’t work? There are a number of reasons and this could end up being a long post, but I’ll try to keep it to a minimum.

Firstly, if starting out as a VA you need to realise that approaching other VAs to give you work is NOT the way to go around it. I know and understand the rationalisation of the idea – they would charge a cheaper rate and the VA passing on the work still gets their normal rate, but the reality is that whoever deals direct with the client is putting their name and their business on the line – they have to be responsible for the end result, and therefore would have to spend time checking over the work before passing it on to the client – this could end up being considerable time for very little return (the balance between what is paid out to the subcontracting VA and what is paid by the client), especially if time was spent fixing the job up. If it were passed back to the other VA for fixing up (at no extra charge) then there is a timing issue and whether the client’s deadline is being met.

Secondly, when VAs do choose to subcontract work out because they are either too busy, or don’t have all the necessary resources or skills at hand, they are not going to outsource to someone they have no knowledge or experience of (enter the VA forums – more on that in a minute).

New VAs need to be dealing with clients direct but I do understand that there is a nervousness about this – it’s breaking new ground. The reality is though, if you are in business for yourself, you do need to take responsibility for marketing your business and learning how to attract clients for yourself – real clients, not just someone subcontracting to you.

So, this is where the Virtual Assistant networking forums come into play. Whilst some have membership subscriptions and offer member benefits in the way of web pages, job leads and referrals, discounts on service providers from other businesses (insurances, training, etc), the discussion forums are, in most cases, available to non-financial members as well as financial members. You are welcome to join more than one to get a feel for the different cultures of the groups and the different things that are discussed at the forums.

The most valuable thing you are going to learn at a forum is how to operate your business, how to attract clients, how to market your business, how to work with clients, how to handle problems when they arise, how to do all sorts of things. What amazes me though is that some (new) VAs join chat forums and then start selling their services to the discussion forum – that is the WRONG thing to do and totally inappropriate. Everyone else is there to learn, just as you are.

The RIGHT thing to do is to join the forums, read through their archives (past messages), see what the most popular topics are, learn from the mistakes of others and apply things that you learn. After settling into the group, introduce yourself and then ask questions, if you’ve seen they haven’t been asked before (or you’ve done a search and can’t find it). Over time other members will get to know who you are, and if you use a signature block, will even check out your website (if you have one) and/or email you privately, especially if they’re seeking help and think you can help them. But, I repeat again, it is NOT appropriate for you start emailing them all and ask them for work. That is the quickest way to put everyone off you and they will not be interested in passing work on at all.

Many VAs will tell you they don’t have sufficient work to pass on – this may also be the case. If they themselves are new to the industry and just getting started, or perhaps they choose only to work a few hours a week and have sufficient work for what they wanted, then they won’t have anything to pass on to you. But again, I emphasise, it is important to spend time building relationships, let people get to know you, and spend time learning about the industry and how to run your business. Before you know it you will have your first client and you’ll be asking chat forum members for advice on how to handle different aspects of your client/business relationship.

I’m open to discussion on this if you want to post a comment – I’m sure many will come back to read the comments and responses. KMT