Thankful

November is traditionally the month we associate with being Thankful.   For some of us (yes, that’s me) being thankful is easy and natural.   I don’t know if I always was, but I do remember always being happy.   Even if it’s not natural or easy, we can still practice thankfulness.

  1.  Take time every day to look around and find things to be thankful for – sunshine, beautiful colors in the trees, warm house, the sound of children playing, a good book, your health – or good doctors if your health is not good, the love of someone special, the sacrifices of our service men and women and their families – the list is endless!
  2. Find what brings you joy and make time for that.  Again, the possibilities are endless.     For my newly retired husband, it is gardening and cooking (two things I’m thankful for 😊)

Someone I know experienced a sudden and tragic loss recently.  For her it’s feeling the dirt in her fingers.

Sometimes what brings you joy also gives to others.  A friend created beautiful scrapbooks of her family to tell the stories of their lives.   She passed away last year and her family treasures them now more than ever.

My grandmother loved quilting and made quilts for each of her children, one for each of her 20+ grandchildren and one for several of her great-grandchildren.   We all treasure these.

We don’t have to make something like scrapbooks or quilts.    We can make memories with people – giving of our time to bring joy to others.   Hopefully this will also bring us joy.

  •  Evaluate how you spend your time.   Time is something we all feel we need more of.  We never have enough time to get everything done we want or need to. It is also something only we can adjust and change.   Although there are things we have to do and may not being able to adjust, there are many things we do have control over and should evaluate. 

I feel very fortunate that my work brings me joy AND helps others.  The services we offer help business professionals better manage their business and gives them more time to do what they need to or want to. 

Let’s all take a little extra time to be thankful, not only in November, but always!

Thinking About Starting A Virtual Assistant Business?

I started my Virtual Assistant business in January of 2011, having no idea how to start or run a business.  There was so much to learn and there weren’t as many resources then, so gathering information wasn’t as easy.  Now I regularly talk to people who are interested in starting a VA business so I wanted to write down a few things I have learned in my experience.

Things I wish I had known:

  •  It’s going to take time, 2-3 years or more to find your groove.   Give yourself grace and celebrate the little victories.  Now I’m grateful for the slow growth.  It gave me time to learn a lot about myself as a business owner and how I wanted to do things when I grew.
  • Be willing to be flexible and change if things aren’t working.  Small business owners spend a lot of time trying to do it all and second guessing themselves.  Knowing when to make changes can be hard. 
  • Don’t give away your services.  Be confident in your pricing and your expertise.  People who want things cheaper are usually difficult to work with and you’ll regret the decision to lower your prices.  If you need experience, offer a special rate for a testimonial.
  • Set boundaries with your time and stick to them 90% of the time.   Use good judgment with your exceptions.  There are emergencies and urgent deadlines – those are wise ways to use your exception rule.   Early on I had a client who tried to bully me into completing work in an unrealistic time frame.   I let it happen for too long and it was a huge relief when I finally said no and meant it.
  • Know your market and the kind of client you want to work with.   Giving this some thought as you begin helps you market yourself well.

Things I’m glad I did:

  • Lots of research!   It helped with pricing, services, contracts, website.   Learning from other VAs made the process easier.
  • Start and keep all business expenses separate.  Start a business account and use it exclusively.
  • Ask advice from business owners I respected and were successful.   They helped with decisions that seemed overwhelming –  business name, website design, type of business, logo and more.
  • Networking!   It was ultimately how I got clients and grew the business.  Getting to know other business owners and their admin needs helped build trust and find those that were a good fit.
  • Re-evaluate regularly to determine what is working and what’s not.

Bottom line –  it is your business, so do what works for you!

Have an administrative assistant need or want to talk about our services?   Give us a call, we can help!

Denise@Myvapro.com

www.myvapro.com

Beach Trip 2022

We recently spent a week at the beach.  It was relaxing, the weather was beautiful and there was so much to watch.  Our condo was 4 floors up with a great view of the beach… and all the people!  As I watched people day after day, I realized that there is so much from our everyday lives that can also apply to our business. Some people I saw were standing, some walking, some running, others sitting, others laying….. you know how it goes. If you are a small business owner, your business has probably been in each of those states at some point or another!    

It was fascinating to watch the 2-3 guys who worked to set up and take down the chairs and umbrellas every day. They had a process that worked so efficiently. Drilling holes for umbrellas, carrying and setting up umbrellas, then carrying and setting up chairs.  They worked hard, stayed focused and had a plan.    One day one of the guys wasn’t as efficient as the other 2.    Two carried 8 chairs, he carried 4.   They ran back and forth, he walked.   But he still contributed and helped in completing the job. He didn’t seem to try to do what they were doing.   He was fine doing what he could. That was a good reminder that we may be working at different speeds at different times, some of us doing more than others.   But we should keep our focus on our goals and objectives – not someone else’s.

One morning a storm blew in after all the umbrellas and chairs were set up.   The winds wreaked havoc, blowing things around.  Once the storm settled down, those guys got right back out there and adjusted and re-set up everything that had been blown out of place –  even knowing another storm was predicted.   Another great reminder!  When something goes wrong, we can spend too much time in the middle of it instead of stepping back and deciding what we can fix and what we can’t.  We lose valuable time worrying when we really need to be starting the repair process.

My take-aways from my week at the beach

  • We all need some time away to relax, recharge regularly, and enjoy a different view.
  • I need to stay focused on what I am doing and not looking at (i.e., comparing) what others are doing
  • Sometimes rough weather happens, clean it up!  People are depending on you.
  • People come in all shapes, sizes and colors.   At the end of the week very few stood out in my memory – except the guy walking on the beach in his speedo and cowboy hat!   Don’t be that person everyone remembers in a negative way.
  • It’s always great to come home!  Vacations are wonderful, but there really is no place like home.

As we head into the 2nd half of 2022, stay focused, make the changes you need to, or want to and enjoy the journey.  

If administrative work is keeping you from your focus, give us a call (803-324-9844) or email us to set up a Discovery Call.   We can help!

Denise@Myvapro.com

www.myvapro.com

5 FREE Tools That Will Help Alleviate Your Social Media Stress



Social media creating and planning can be daunting and really frustrating especially if you don’t know where to start. There are a TON of platforms and programs out there that can help you create your content, keep you organized and schedule your posts but trying to find which platforms are going to work best for your business can be exhausting. Trust me, I just did a little bit of research on switching e-mail marketing platforms and ugh…talk about overwhelming. I’m going to list five of my favorite platforms and tools below and the best part…all of these are FREE or at least have a free version. Hopefully these tools will help alleviate some of your social media stress!

(more…)

5 Essential Virtual Assistant Traits That Also Helped Me Potty Train My Two-Year-Old Twins

I recently started potty training my two-year-old twin daughters and what an experience that has been! I will spare you most of the details, but it did remind me of several traits I use daily being a Virtual Assistant, that I was also able to use to help us all survive potty training. Here are a few.

Being Observant and Maintaining Accuracy

Being observant and maintaining accuracy are essential skills for a virtual assistant because they help build trust with the client. We listen to our clients, observe what their frustrations and struggles are and then we do our best to find a way to help them. We also do our absolute best to maintain accuracy. Of course, we are human and mistakes happen, but we take pride in helping our clients by being accurate!

These are also necessary traits to have when potty training. In the first few days of training my girls to use their potty, I had to watch them like a hawk. I quickly learned that this was all foreign to them and they had NO clue what to do in the potty world. Keeping a very observant close eye on them helped them succeed which then helped build their trust and encouraged them to keep trying!

Adaptability

Being adaptable is something our clients count on. We partner with our clients to help their business thrive. That means we work with them when unexpected changes happen, when deadlines are moved up, when their business goals change and shift directions, and our favorite, when their business is growing and thriving which  means success and may increase our workload!

This was a trait I naively wasn’t expecting to have to use while potty training. You can call it wishful thinking, but I actually thought that my girls would just “figure this out” and we would have a rough week learning it all but then they would be set! Not the case. Adaptability was something I had to use right away! I quickly learned that my girls  were not going to just “figure this out,” they were both motivated by very different things and I had to change my approach about 50 times.

Resourcefulness

One of the perks of being a Virtual Assistant is that we get to experience, learn, and explore a lot! Our clients all bring different tasks and “problems” that we get to help them with which means we get to learn new things or research solutions all the time. If we don’t know the answer to one of our clients’ questions (because we definitely don’t know EVERYTHING) there is a really good chance we know where to direct them or how to help them find the answer.

As I mentioned above, things did not go as blissfully as I had hoped with our potty training so I had to do some research! I used my resources, asked for ideas, and came up with new plans daily – sometimes hourly in those first few days!

Time Management Skills

This is a trait that I have used in pretty much every area of my life. Prioritizing tasks and managing our time well is one of the main reasons we are able to have as many clients as we do. I personally use programs like Asana and Toggl to help keep myself organized, tasks prioritized and keep track of how long each task takes me. Learning how to manage time well for our clients helps them because we can get more work done for them and we don’t feel overwhelmed which helps us focus more on our responsibilities!

I wasn’t joking when I said I used this trait in every area of my life. In those early potty-training weeks, time management was key. Making sure we were never away from a potty for too long, making sure we accounted for the extra time it would take to go anywhere while we took care of potty issues before we left, you get the point.

Reliability

Would you want to work with someone that you had to constantly remind to do things, double check their work or follow up with regularly to ensure things were being taken care of? I’m going to guess that would be a NO! Being reliable is not only another one of our most important traits, it’s also one we take pride in. We understand that our clients count on us, and we take being a reliable partner for our clients very seriously!

Now, imagine if I was not very reliable while potty training my girls. If I was too busy working or cleaning to be fully available any time the shrieking “I need to go potty!” was heard. Well, we can all assume I would still be greatly supporting the diaper industry.

Alyssa Vellia

Project Manager

www.myvirtualassistantpro.com

803-324-9844

Discovery Calls

Have you been on Discovery Calls that feel like sales calls?    You may feel pressured to decide right away, feel less sure about what you need at the end of the call than you did when you started or didn’t get your questions answered.  This can be very frustrating.  That is not how a Discovery Call should go, and it is not how we at My Virtual Assistant Pro handle them.

I LOVE Discovery Calls.      They are such great opportunities to get to know someone new.   A time to learn, ask questions and decide if working together is a good fit for BOTH of us.  One of my philosophies is that if it’s not a good fit for one of us, it’s not a good fit for either of us.  Sometimes by the end of our call, we determine it’s not time yet.  That is still very valuable information for our prospective clients.

I love hearing the stories of how business professionals started and what got them to where they are.  Each story is unique, which to me means each solution is unique.

Some questions I may ask on a Discovery Call include:

  • What are your frustrations?
  • Where would you like to be one year, three years from now?
  • What are your strengths?  
  • What tasks would you like someone else to do?      What would make your life easier/more productive?
  • What is your budget? How much time do you think you need from an assistant each week to help you?

Some questions you should ask include:    

  • What are your strengths?
  • How does this work?
  • Now that I’ve explained my frustrations, what would you suggest to help me?
  • What happens if I need more work than what we’ve agreed on when we start?

Obviously depending on what the relationship is, there may be a totally different list of questions.  It would be beneficial to spend some time thinking about what you want and need before scheduling this call.  I suggest prospective clients keep a piece of paper beside them for a few days, or even a week, and jot down tasks and projects they would like help with. 

In my Discovery calls, as well as our working relationship, my goal is to find the best solution for your admin needs.   Having a great conversation on a Discovery Call can be illuminating to you as a business professional, helping you to see where your next steps should be.  This should give you a clearer picture of how we can help, what the cost is, and what your responsibilities will be.

Considering hiring some administrative help?  Why not email or call me to schedule a Discovery Call?   We can help!

Working with a virtual assistant can help you start being more productive now. Why wait?

Schedule a Discovery Call at denise@myvaPro.com or call me at 803-324-9844.

Denise

www.MyVAPro.com

New Year’s Resolutions or Annual Goals  Do You?  Should You?

Are you motivated by New Year’s Resolutions?    Have you set your resolutions year after year?  Or, are you, like me, tired of them?  Tired of not accomplishing or meeting them.  I guess there are some people who are successful with them, but I don’t know many who are.

A few years ago, I worked at a chiropractor’s office.  He required us to set quarterly goals.  Although difficult at first, this ended up being such a breakthrough for me.  Now I set goals every year for my business.  Goals to help me grow, learn, expand-both in my business and my personal life.  Goals I can be intentional about.

Are you asking yourself what you want to accomplish (more than Make More Money)?  Do you want to learn something new?  Speak at an event?  Grow your business 20%  Add an employee?  One year one of our goals was to “Work Smarter Not Harder.”  Keeping that front and center gave us opportunities to come up with some new and successful ideas.  I don’t believe we would have done that without the goal set and regular reminders to focus on it.

The definition of resolution is “A firm decision to do or not to do something.  The quality of being determined or resolute.”

The definition of a goal is “The object of a person’s ambition or effort, an aim or desired result.  The destination of a journey.”    

Oh yes!   The definition of goal feels much more genuine to me.  I am all about the journey and destination instead of a list of things I have to do or can’t do.

I usually have one lofty goal and several smaller, easily attainable goals.   Then I write out some quarterly specific things I can do to help reach the goals.   Finally I add it to my calendar each month (or week) to make sure I carve out time for it.    Have I mentioned I live and die by my calendar?  (insert cute smiley face)   In addition to helping me make time for my goals, having them on my calendar helps me REMEMBER my goals. 

Using a special/fun journal or notebook is helpful too.   Easy to recognize, fun to use, and maybe even inspirational.  I have a beautiful leather journal that I have used for several years.  It’s fun to look back on previous years goals and review successes, failures (not a bad word) and those we made progress on.

Accountability is an option if that works well for you.  Beating yourself up is not!  Many baby steps in the right direction is still progress.

This year I created a fun poster that is hanging in my office to keep my 2022 goals handy.   And this year I decided to focus on a word (or 2)… For 2022 my phrase is NO REGRETS.  

Happy New Year!  I hope this year, and every year, is a year of growth and success.

I love chatting with business professionals, learning about why they do what they do and how they got to where they are.    If you would like to have a conversation about what we do and whether hiring a virtual assistant is a possibility for you, give me a call or email me to set up a time to talk.

Denise

Denise@myvapro.com

803-324-9844

The Why and What of My Virtual Assistant Pro

Why Did I Become a Virtual Assistant?

In early 2010 I heard a phrase I had never heard before – Virtual Assistant.  My job at that time was in Western NY, but my boss was in South Carolina and selling the commercial building that I was managing.  It was suggested that I look into the possibility of being a Virtual Assistant if the new owner decided not to keep me on. 

I was successfully managing the job while my boss was living in a different state.  A friend, and a tenant in the building, told me they didn’t miss the owner because I represented him well. The seed was planted and when my husband and I moved later that year I decided to give it a try.

read more…

4 Reasons it is Crucial That Your Business Has a Well-Designed Website

Whether you are just starting your business, have a well-established and successful business or you are somewhere in between trying to expand your business, having a professional and clear website is an essential part of your business that you don’t want to neglect. Here are four reasons why.   

It Proves Your Business Is Real

What’s the first thing you do when you are interested in signing up for a new membership or purchasing a tool or service? Chances are, you Google the product or service you are looking into and browse their website. What would you think if you couldn’t find a website or the website you found looked thrown together and hard to use? You would probably close out of that tab and keep looking until you found a website that looked legitimate and easy to use. You don’t have time to mess around with a website that is hard to navigate, and chances are, if that business doesn’t care enough about their website, how are they going to be to work with? You need a professional, easy to use website so that your ideal clients know you are legit!

First Impression

The average time spent on a website is 15 seconds and an opinion is formed in less than 1 second! That is not much time to make a good first impression. Studies indicate the majority of first impressions on websites are based on their design. People will completely stop engaging and leave your site if they find it unappealing, hard to navigate or it looks unprofessional. I mean think about it, wouldn’t you? I’m sure you can think of a few sites you have come across that just look awful, you chose not to do business with that company.

It Can Generate Leads

Isn’t it crazy that something as simple as putting your information on the internet can land you more business? If people are interested in your product or service, most likely, they will land on your products/services page. Simply having all your products and services laid out on your site in a professional and easy to read design can make potential clients choose your service over someone else’s. I don’t know about you, but I find sites that don’t list all their product/service information and just say “Call for more info!” frustrating. I don’t want to waste my valuable time on a call with a company that isn’t offering what I need. Laying it all out will help generate leads for your IDEAL clients.

Saves Time, Confusion and Frustration

It is irritating trying to find basic information for a company (phone number, address, hours of operation) quickly when you need it but not being able to find it! Having a website that has ALL your company’s basic information clearly listed will save you and your potential clients (and current clients) time, confusion, and frustration. Basic information is also more than just where you are located and how people can reach you. It’s explaining in short informative blurbs who you are, what you do and how you can help your IDEAL client. The average time people spend reading content on a website is about 6 seconds. That means you must have everything you need your ideal client to understand right in front of them so they can easily find it.

So now, take a look at your current website with these points in mind and decide if you might need a website overhaul. If you do (or if you need a website built from scratch) we can help! Here is a link to our Web Design services https://myvirtualassistantpro.com/web-design/ . We would love to chat with you to see how we can help make your website look incredible.

Alyssa (Project Manager and Web Designer at MVAP)

803-324-9844

Mistakes Happen – Then What?

We know we are going to make mistakes.  So why does it bother some so much when we make them?  

What bothers me most is when I make a mistake more than once!  Making mistakes and learning from them is beneficial.   Making mistakes more than once is frustrating – at least to me!

After making a mistake I try to take a few minutes to figure out why – this would be AFTER I criticize myself for the mistake.   Was I in a hurry?   Was there missing information?  Maybe I didn’t completely understand the task.

I also apologize for the mistake, take ownership and try not to give excuses or blame anyone (even if I was not given all the information needed to complete the job well).  If necessary, I also let the client know what I’ve done to keep this from happening again.  I check/update my procedures, create a procedure, flag email, etc.

A big help for not making mistakes is taking a few minutes to look over the project or email before sending or completing.

Stop hurrying!   Even waiting a few hours or a day when it is a large project, then looking it over with fresh eyes before completing.   Hurrying is my biggest issue.  A few months ago I handwrote a note and taped it to my computer monitor.   “Work hard to serve your clients well.”  That reminds me to take some time to review things before finishing.  

How do you handle mistakes?    As solopreneurs, there are so many tasks and things that demand your attention, it’s almost impossible not to hurry through.  And forget finishing everything (or anything) on time, answering all email, returning phone calls… you get the picture.

I enjoy talking with entrepreneurs, hearing their stories and helping find solutions that work best for them.

Give us a call – we can help!

Denise

My Virtual Assistant Pro

803-324-9844

Denise@myvapro.com   

Contact Me

5 + 14 =