Virtual Assistant – THE Blog About Our Industry

About the Virtual Assistant industry for VAs and for clients

Monthly Archives: October 2006

Dual Business Names – What To Do?

I had a member of my team email me a few days ago. She was concerned because a name she had registered, seemed to have someone else operating under the same name in another state. She wanted to know what to do? Further they both appear to have purchased the same domain name (?).

My response to her was this:

Hi, always frustrating when this happens regarding business names, however, there is no reason why you can’t continue to use it.

Legally speaking (in Australia) you can register a business name in your own state that is the same name as a business in another state, but with the internet these days that can cause confusion, especially if you’re running an internet based business. I am concerned though, that you think you’ve purchased the same domain that someone else reportedly has. That can’t happen so there must be a mistake there – either she has a .com or perhaps you have? Or a different ending? There is just no way in the world you both can have purchased the same domain – unless the registrar is running some kind of shonkey. So that needs sorting out.

If she hasn’t been operating long you could probably get away applying for a Trademark (assuming no-one else has already) and therefore claim full legal ownership of the name. My name is trademarked, and my logo, and my byline. You have to police your own trademarks (I use Google Alert to help me) but generally people won’t touch a name if they know it’s trademarked. You can send them a letter based on information from the Tradesmarks Office (I’ve had to a couple of times) and then follow up with a letter from a solicitor if they do not stop using your business name. But this is of course, only once you’ve got it trademarked.

I further advised the team member to contact her Domain Registrar and confirm she has definitely bought that domain – perhaps the other lady has made a mistake in the article that was published online, or perhaps she hadn’t bought it yet, but planned to – in which case she’ll get a shock when she finds it’s not available. KMT

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Does Being a VA Mean 100% Virtual?

I was holding an online classroom session last night and two of the students voiced the same thought as they came to a sudden realisation. We’d been talking about advertising and marketing and I told them how important networking is. Networking locally.

It was like a light suddenly went on for both of them. They had thought that by being a virtual assistant they had to get all of their work virtually and online. I told them that if they tried to do that, they were missing a potential client base – their neighbour, the people across the road, down the street, around the corner, at the local library and so on.

They told me that made such a difference to them and they started to excitedly talk about the different community groups they belonged to and the experience they had in various areas that could be used by the groups or the people they knew. They also started to think about which business networking groups were within reasonable reach that they could begin attending in order to meet possible new clients.

I love seeing the light go on in people I’m mentoring, coaching or training. I know that something of what I’ve been sharing has gotten through.

Servicing local clients doesn’t mean we’re no longer virtual assistants. Most of my clients are local and around 95% of my work is virtual – I occasionally attend meetings in person, or go onsite to assist with something, but everything else is done by phone, fax, mail, email and web upload/download. I go days and weeks without even seeing a client face-to-face and then another week when I might see several because of various meetings. And constant networking is most important. You never know when a client might pass on to something else, or worst case, pass away as I’ve had happen. You must keep filling the pipeline and any clients you can’t personally service can always be referred to other VAs you’ve gotten to know.

I’m a VA but not all my work is 100% virtual and that’s ok – we’re not meant to be islands and human interaction is good for the soul! KMT

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Maintaining Systems Saves You Time and Money

If you use your computer to make a living, how much do you do to look after it? By that I mean not only backing up your data (absolutely crucial) but also making sure your computer and its software is running well. You should be clearing out old files and the .tmp files on a regular basis, defrag, check for multiple copies of files (it can and does happen easily if saved in the wrong folder for example) and so on.

Today though, I want to focus on your email program and in particular, Outlook. I have two clients who just do not understand the value of using folders for their email, emptying the trash can, deleting from the Sent folder and so on. After awhile Outlook can grow to be an immensely large file – just today on one of the chat forums a VA spoke about her mother’s Outlook file that had over 2,000 emails in it and of the problems she was having. My client, whose system I had to go rescue today, had over 4,000 in the Sent folder, 2,000+ in the Deleted folder, over 6,000 in her Inbox and then there were some folders with emails too. The Rules Wizard had stopped working, the program itself was slow to open and close – let alone trying to empty a folder – it would just give up and crash.

If you do experience problems with Outlook crashing, or not wanting to open, then rename the outlook.pst file to something like outlook1.pst and then re-open Outlook – when it can’t find the original file it will create a new one and you’ll be able to open it again. You can then elect to import from the old file to the new one contacts and emails – don’t import everything otherwise you’ll have the same problem again.

Things that can be done to prevent this again:

1. Create folders so that the emails are categorised either after reading, or when received if you use the Rules Wizard.
2. Set the archive function to archive messages at least monthly – it will create an archive.pst file and all old emails will be stored there.
3. Delete any unwanted emails and get in the habit of emptying the Sent Folder so only the last month or so is there – if you need to keep any of them, shift them to the folders that have been created.
4. Run Detect & Repair if need be.
5. Compress the file size after this is all done.
If you put these things in motion before trying to import (especially if everything was just in the Inbox) then the filters should kick in and start to shift emails into respective folders or you can activate them afterwards to sort through everything.

I’ve been able to resolve client problems by this method. Mind you, if they did the simple maintenance explained to them, they would actually save some time, money and angst – but it keeps me gainfully employed! :-) KMT

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Speaking in Acronyms

Have you noticed how we all speak a different language these days? I don’t mean cultural or regional languages but rather a language that relates to what we do on a daily basis?

I mean, even VA or Virtual Assistant, is something that’s common to those in the industry or those who use VAs, but what about those who don’t yet know what that means? And then there’s computer geek, smilies, emoticons, SMS language and so on.

I sent my husband an SMS today letting him know that I won’t be able to cook dinner for him as I’ve been really busy and have to go out shortly so asked if he could do with a WW meal instead? My girlfriends and I know what that means, but hubby, being an IT consultant and engineer immediately thought that had something to do with the world, or wide, or web…. :-) and rang me immediately to find out what it was. WW stands for Weight Watchers and I have a number of frozen meals in the fridge in case we need them – they’re always tasty and healthy, not full of fat, and more filling than regular TV dinners. I had to laugh as it didn’t occur to me he didn’t know what that meant although he’s had a few of these meals at work from time to time.

Which leads me to my point – when communicating with prospective clients, and even those you’ve known for a while, it’s always important to spell out in full what you mean and don’t leave it to chance they understand the language you’re using – unless you BOTH use it all the time. Makes for less problems and misunderstandings! KMT

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Setting Up Merchant Facilities

There will come a time when a client wants to pay by credit card, but you haven’t got a merchant account set up. What do you do?

The fastest thing to set up is a Paypal account which is used widely in many countries these days, and very safely – despite the occasional rumours that do the rounds. Why would eBay equate themselves with Paypal if they didn’t trust their payment system?

Takes about 3 days to open the account but they don’t charge to it, but will enter a couple of things to your credit card account and ask you to verify what they are on your statement so you can prove you own that card – their way of making sure you are who you say you are.

After that, add your cheque (check) or bank account details and the client can email you a payment via Paypal – you get instant notification and can log in and withdraw to your account. Takes 2-3 days for it to go through. They do the currency conversions for you and their merchant fees are the same as Bendigo Bank in Australia so not expensive. Very easy way to make sure you can handle payments.

They also have options for set up regular subscription payments, donations, payments links and images and heaps of other things – it’s worthwhile checking it out! KMT

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Addendum:  I saw Des Walsh’s post and appreciated his link.  He mentioned Stratapay on his post and I agree – that is another good option for those who live and work in Australia.  Originally designed for strata title holders, the system was enhanced to welcome uni students and then later on tradees and then the wider small business community in Australia.  Definitely worth looking at – particularly if you don’t have a credit card of your own to set up a Paypal account.