Virtual Assistant Celebrates Five Years & Shares Lessons Learned
Permalink 3 CommentsInman Real Estate News - Real estate’s a game of ‘instant gratification’
I was thrilled to see this article. As many of you know, I am attending the Roanoke Valley Real Estate Expo. The person putting the Expo together is a client of mine, and I’ve been working on putting together targeted marketing materials for Realtors explaining WHY they need a VA. Look at some of these statistics…
Moreover, only 2 percent of open-house leads receive follow-up phone calls.
When agents do respond to e-mail inquiries, 70 percent of the agents take two days to respond and 58 percent do not respond at all.
If I can get these Realtors to understand that they are these statistics and that they NEED a VA to help them make money, then I’m golden!
The Real Estate Industry is big in my area and I have many contacts that I used to work with who are now selling homes. It’s a market I’d like to dabble in a bit, but I just need to get my foot in the door…
Until next time…
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Virtually Speaking
By: Heather Jacobson
Original Article in The Red Hot Report, March 23, 2005
So, now you know all about the Virtual Assistant Industry…what next? Well, what do you need to get started? You probably have all the basics, the computer equipment, the skills, etc. But what about the little details?
A Business Plan
Do you really need one? You do…but that doesn’t mean it has to be a full-fledged business plan! I know that I should do a formal one, but where’s the time? For now, I have a note book that I carry with me everywhere that I jot notes down in, goals, things that I would like to accomplish. It’s a personal preference, but you will find that the more you write down, the more you will see your practice unfold. It helps work out all the little details in the beginning, so that when you stumble across them down the road, they just need to be fleshed out.
You can find more information on business plans here.
A Business Name
How are you going to operate? Choosing a name is difficult, and I know many people to take months to figure out the name they want to do business under. It’s important. You want something catchy, something that no one else has, something that people will remember. There’s a lot to go into picking a name. I struggled for months with picking a business name. I decided that I was going to market locally at first and then expand nationally, so I wanted something that people could relate to in my area. Hence the name, Valley Virtual Assistants, as I live in the Roanoke Valley.
Get together with friends and other VAs that you’ve met online and brainstorm on a name. Do you want to keep your name local? Do you want to include your services in your name? Don’t stress over the details, but do realize that once you pick a name, you’re “stuck” with it. You’re not really, but changing a name and re-branding is tons of work, and you want to focus more on billable work than re-branding yourself. After all, isn’t that our pitch to clients?
Licensing
Check with your city or county office about obtaining a business license. The Small Business Administration offers a list by state of where to go to obtain your license. You can operate under your own name, or a d.b.a. (doing business as). If you plan on getting a business checking account (which I recommend), you will need to have the d.b.a licence as well.
In my county, the cost for the business license is a $50 yearly fee, and then an additional $15, one time fee, for the d.b.a. Please save your receipts for this as it is considered a business expense. Once you get the d.b.a. you can get your Federal ID number and open a business checking account. You don’t have to have a separate business checking account, but I have found it to be extremely helpful when working on my books. I can take my “paycheck” from there when and if it’s available.
Once you have that license, you’re in business…legally!
Accounting
Now that you have your first business expense, you’re going to need to set up an accounting system. It doesn’t have to be a grand plan at the moment, but the more organized you are in the beginning, the easier it’s going to be down the road. Set up a filing system for your receipts. I have one file folder on my desk that I have that I put all my receipts in and then at the end of the month, I go through and enter them in to my ledger and then file them in an expanding folder for the month.
You probably don’t need a program like Quickbooks right now. I covet having it, but it’s not an expense I need to incur right now. So what I use is an Excel Spreadsheet that keeps track of everything and then spits out and income statement for me every month. You can download a copy of that spreadsheet from my website. (Look for more “goodies” in the upcoming weeks on my site.)
The best advice I can give you for your accounting is keep on top of it! Waiting until the end of the year will prove to be a nightmare for you or your accountant.
Web Presence
Because your title includes the word “virtual” you should probably have a website, although it’s not necessary. I tend to think that everyone is like me in that if they can’t find it online, then it doesn’t exist. Thank goodness this isn’t the case, because I’m working on websites for clients that don’t currently have one. But see a website as another marketing tool.
Websites don’t have to be costly. Domain registrations are under $10 a year and can be registered through Internet Based Family, GoDaddy.com, Yahoo! Small Business, among others. (There are the cheapest that I’ve found while looking for my domain, and personally, I went with Yahoo!)
Building an actual website doesn’t have to be costly either. If you are proficient with Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver, you can build it yourself. If you’re just not that great with those programs, or don’t have them, there are many website builders out there that are included with the hosting. The best site builder that I’ve come across is Internet Based Family. It’s very user friendly and provides more templates, pages, and options than you can shake a stick at. Once you register for the site, you can then transfer it over to your own domain. I currently host my site there, and Mommy’s Place is hosted there as well. My site took me an afternoon to build and I was pleased with the results.
Now, I’ve talked about hosting, but I didn’t really explain it. There are other options if you’re building your site with a program and then uploading it. Yahoo! Small Business offers hosting, along with others. It’s going to be a matter of shopping around and seeing what you need. You won’t need that much bandwidth, so the lesser hosting packages probably would suit your needs. You can read more about various web hosting places at here.
Homework
I’ve left you with enough to chew on for now, and that should keep you busy for awhile. Work on the above and you’ll find that the questions will start coming. When you have one, pop into the forums and we’ll be more than happy to help you, or at least tell you how we handled the situation. And if you’re still hungry for more information, you can check out my blog for more information and helpful tips on starting your own VA practice.
Until next time…see you on the boards!
Telework and Homeshoring Embracing More Home-Based Professionals, Reports Staffcentrix
As an Army brat, we moved alot. We would come home to find Elton John on the record player, and we knew…we were moving…AGAIN.
It’s easy for kids to pick up and move, in the sense that you know there’s going to be another school to go to. But for the spouses? Mom would worry more about finding another job in a new state (and as an RN, that meant getting a license for another state.)
Staffcentrix offers help for Military Spouse Virtual Assistants, and I think it’s a wonderful idea! Not only owning your own business from home, but keeping that business even when the military up and moves you…AGAIN!
Those that run Staffcentrix have a new book coming out in July called The 2 Second Commute and this is what Amazon has to say about the book…
Virtual Assistants work from home, providing everything from administrative support to high-end consulting via email, phone and fax. Predicted to be a $130 billion industry by 2008, they don’t commute, they set their own hours, and they get to spend time with their kids. Wouldn’t you like to be a VA, too? The 2 Second Commute will help you decide whether the VA path is a good fit for you. In The 2 Second Commute, you’ll learn how to * Launch your VA business on a shoestring. * Market the skills you already have. * Overcome shyness to get the work you want. * Use the business to strengthen your family. * And much more! Christine Durst and Michael Haaren appear often in such media as Business Week, Fortune, and The Wall Street Journal, and publish frequently on virtual career issues.
Here’s what Staffcentrix has to say about their book…
The 2 Second Commute: Join the Exploding Ranks of Freelance Virtual Assistants is the first mainstream book on Virtual Assistance, and is coming from Career Press in July. In it, we’ll tell you all you need to know to launch and grow a successful VA business, and how it can help you build a stronger
family life, now and in the years to come.
I’ve pre-ordered the book and can’t wait for it to be released. It’s a great addition to my VA library and for $10.19 you can’t beat it!!
Until next time…
Many companies have a mentoring program in place. It’s a voluntary program that matches you with someone else with similar job duties, functions, etc. It’s not easy to match a mentor-mentee pair. (I know this because I am the mentor coordinator for my current company.) But the satisfaction of seeing a match work is more than I could describe. It’s also amazing when you’ve been matched with an amazing mentor!
For example, when I started with this company I was matched with an executive assistant at another one of our branches. I was skeptical, I really was. But what I found was a relationship with a person who knew EXACTLY what I was going through. She could empathize with me and lead me in the right direction when I needed to be led. What a concept!
Our pairing and the benefits of it were recognized and we were awarded with the 2005 Mentor-Mentee Award for the company. Many people in the company knew that I leaned on my mentor and that she was there for me when I needed her and had helped me grow.
I’m no expert on mentoring, I only know the impact that it’s had on my career, and I recommend that everyone have a mentor. In the VA world, I don’t have a mentor that I went to and said, “hey, will you be my mentor?” but I have found several VAs that I spend countless hours online with, helping me form a better business, submitting better proposals, and in general, helping to make me a better VA.
Entrepreneur.com has a wonderful list of articles about mentoring and I encourage you to take a look at them. Decide if mentoring is right for you. To be honest, I had the attitude that I didn’t need help from anyone else, but I was wrong.
If you have a mentoring success story (either as the mentor or the mentee), please let me know. Up until a year ago, I had never thought of mentoring as the way to go, but it seems that it is!
Until next time…
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