If your business is sucking your happiness dry, it’s time to make some changes to alleviate your stress. One way to free up some of your time is to hire a virtual assistant to take over some of the daily or weekly administrative tasks needed to run your business. Hiring a VA can certainly be stressful, especially if you’re a first timer who has never been through the hiring process before. However, set up an interview process complete with interview questions and decide what skills you need … [Read more...]
Connect Her Podcast with VA Directory
During August, I had the pleasure of being interviewed on the Connect Her Podcast with Lee Cummins, where I spoke about the VA industry, how I got into it and all about VA Directory. Grab a cuppa and get comfy on your favourite chair and have a giggle with us (I'm so not an expert podcaster and forget the questions LOL). Watch it here Listen to it here. Let me know what you think and please feel free to share this around to your socials too. The more people who know about VA Directory, … [Read more...]
Are Virtual Assistants Good or Bad for Business?
I recently answered this question at Quora and thought I'd bring the discussion here on my own site. My answer was in response to the inference that they could be damaging to someone's business. And there seems to me, that some think you just engage a VA when you want something done - they don't realise that this can be a long-term arrangement. I'd like you to consider that a Virtual Assistant can be long-term use, not just short-term. Why engage lots of different VAs when you can keep one … [Read more...]
Can you afford NOT to have a VA?
It's interesting seeing posts on social media from time to time, asking for an 'affordable VA'. The operative word being 'affordable'. And this can mean many things, depending on where you live, what currency you work with, and what you're currently earning yourself and so on. It's really quite relative, isn't it? What people really need to think about is how much time they'd like to free up so they can continue to build their business. If you're spending 2-10 hours a month on admin, … [Read more...]
Can’t find the right VA?
Perhaps it's not the VAs that are the problem... recently I became aware of a 'serial' client seeking yet another VA to support them in their business. I sighed. It meant they had yet lost another VA for support to their business. This has been an ongoing issue for this client for some time. I know a number of the VAs who have put their hand up to help this person and while it's true, that sometimes the client and the VA aren't a good fit, I do believe that when they've gone through a … [Read more...]
Do you need a VA or an employee?
Important to understand the difference. I saw a post recently, on a business Facebook group, where a member posted a request for what she needed and outlined that the role would be 20-30 hours a week and needing to be available during particular hours EST plus that it would be a competitive 'wage'. Immediately, I didn't see this as a VA role at all, although that's what had been indicated. I queried the role and they later amended it to being a 'sub contractor' role that wouldn't stop the … [Read more...]
MailChimp account hacked
This happened to a client of mine late last year and it was a challenging thing to get sorted and MailChimp people were wonderful, helping us through this. What happened? Someone accessed her account, uploaded over a million addresses and started to send out phishing email saying that payment was due on an invoice and the recipient's credit card was going to be charged. People began emailing and ringing my client anxious that she was going to charge their accounts for a large sum. Some were … [Read more...]
What platform should you build your website?
One of the things I do as a VA is manage websites for clients and I've built many too. I started to do this out of necessity for myself back in 1996 when it was hard to find a web designer and I've learnt along the way. Having transitioned from MS Publisher (yes, seriously!), to MS FrontPage to Dreamweaver and eventually WordPress (2006) there is still much to learn. I doubt I'll ever know it all but I know enough to get websites up and running in reasonably short time and teach my clients how … [Read more...]
5 Good Reasons Why Your Business Needs a VA
At some stage business owners start to weigh up what kind of support they need in their businesses. Should they be hiring an assistant or should they look at getting virtual support? I'd like to share with you 5 reasons why Virtual Assistants should be the answer to that question. During the course of operating a business there comes a time when the business owner must consider whether it's more efficient for them to engage support in order for their business to move forward. Whether … [Read more...]
