When you are in business and self-employed, you no longer have the luxury of an employer organising professional development and footing the bill. Consequently, many self-employed business owner/operators tend to forgo this very important part of their business ownership. Making sure you keep up with technology and business trends is very important to keep ahead of what is needed for your clients and for your own business. Attending a conference is just one of the ways of getting a lot of … [Read more...]
Celebrating 20 years in business March 2014
It's almost here and I can barely believe it. Where have all those years gone? I do remember the excitement and the nervousness of branching out on my own and leaving the stability and safety of a government job back in 1993. Family and work events had been leading me to this point... where I would decide to be home full-time and develop a business so I could be home for my own children. As it turned out, it was also for my husband. There have been accidents and illnesses where he's needed me … [Read more...]
Become a Virtual Assistant for 2014
It's that time of year again when people take stock of what's transpired for the past almost twelve months and reflect on what could have been versus on what has been. Has it been a good year for you? Did you set goals and achieve them? Did you set goals and not achieve them? Perhaps the job you currently have has you disillusioned and you're looking for something else? Perhaps you've come to realise that the job you have isn't as secure as you once thought. I know those feelings although the … [Read more...]
Yahoo has taken over my Firefox search
If you have searched and found this post, then it may well be that you're looking for the answer to this annoying problem. My favourite search engine is Google. That's the one I want to use. But for some reason, some software programs have included yahoo search in their installation files. That's all well and good but what if I don't want to switch to yahoo? I use Mozilla Firefox as my web browser of choice. I like how it works and to me is more robust than others I've tried. So imagine my … [Read more...]
Christmas cards for your clients
Do you send out cards for your clients? Or even to your clients. Things get busy this time of year and Christmas card sending can be quite a time hungry exercise. Over the past 3 or 4 years I've been using Send Out Cards, which definitely saves me time and I don't have to leave my office in order to organise beautifully printed cards of my choice and design and posted to my database. How does it work? Simple. Open up an account, go to the card catalogue, or Create a Card, and then set the … [Read more...]
Why VAs don’t work fulltime for their clients
With the industry expanding quickly, many coming on board as VAs, and new clients now looking for a VA or VAs to support them, I thought it might be a good time to explain why VAs don't work full time for one client. There are several reasons and here are some of them: If a VA works entirely for one client that client could become viewed as an employer, depending on the tax system of the country involved. For example, here in Australia, if there is one main source of income the Australian … [Read more...]
Business profile or page?
That is the question! However, if you are a business who has set up a profile at Facebook, rather than a page, you are in danger of having it shut down! How do you know the difference? The quickest way to tell is whether people have to click on 'add friend' to be connected to you, or whether they can just click on 'like' to follow your page. If the latter, then you're ok, but if the former, you're not. What happens if you've built up a large friend base and suddenly Facebook shuts your profile … [Read more...]
Are you coming to AVAC in 2014?
In case you haven't yet caught up with the news, the 5th annual Australian Virtual Assistants Conference (AVAC) is being held in March 2014 at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre (BCEC). We have our speakers in place now and you can view them on the site. A really great lineup with some really great names there. The subcommittee based in Qld are doing a great job helping Anita and I put this together, our 5th annual event. Each year the event has gotten better and better and we're … [Read more...]
New milestone pending!
As my regular readers will know, I've been in this industry for quite some time. In fact, my 20th anniversary in business will be in March 2014. Not that far away. It was in April 1996 that I began the network, initially for home-based secretaries, and then we changed our titles to Virtual Assistants as that term became popular around the world. Seems such a long time ago now. What is the new milestone pending? The 1400th VA to join the "A Clayton's Secretary" network. We're only a few off … [Read more...]
