What goes around comes around

Referrals for Virtual Assistants

In the last two weeks I have helped one of my clients find another VA to undertake regular work - a direct referral from me with no payment in any direction. I have stopped worrying about this as I know that a good part of my business comes from other Virtual Assistants who refer me to their clients for enquiries they cannot handle - and this has just happened again. I am negotiating a large piece of on-going work with a company referred to me by another VA. I may not get the work, but then that is never a guarantee.

Your competitors are your greatest source for work after your existing clients. It is easier to sell on than find a new client - about 8 times easier. When you have other VAs who respect the work you do you have a whole new group of 'jobfinders' and you respond by doing the same for them. It is based on trust and in my case it is not subcontracting but completely handing over the work.

Subcontracting in France has no benefit to me as I cannot deduct the subcontractors cost from my turnover for tax purposes. In other countries it can put your turnover into the range of VAT and other local taxes which makes you more expensive. It also involves you in extra work which is often hard to charge back to the client unless you increase your rates - again making you less cost effective. All this involves trust - but then trust gets you more referrals...

Working on the new website

Hopefully the new website for aspiring and new Virtual Assistants will go up today. It is very much in the Beta state and the complimentary resource pages are not complete but I need to get it up as you can 'fiddle' with things and in the end it is better to get them up and see what others think, so I will post here again when the site is up.

Long weekend?

If you are lucky enough to get a May-day public holiday I hope you have a good extended weekend and the sun shines. It has warmed up here finally but I saw my first hornet today so I KNOW the warmer weather is on its way and I just want to stay inside with the shutters closed, me paranoid - YES...

Di Chapman

Bend it like Beckham

Before you start your Virtual Assistant business you need to have a good idea of what you want to achieve and to do that you have to set your goals. Have you written down just one?

If not - PLEASE - think hard about the most awful thing you can think of and then think of the opposite.

So if the most awful is being homeless, the most wonderful is being mortgage free and having a huge house.

Sometimes this method makes setting goals easier. If you still have no idea where to start, please read the previous blog entry and download the free e-book from the link supplied.

It is much easier to get going on your business plan if you know what you want. You need to aim high, the lower you set your sights the less you will achieve. I really got going when I started to enter Business competitions. I did not think for one moment a sole Virtual Assistant would win, but I would never know if I did not set my sights on the prize and enter - and win I did and more than once.

Short and sweet as this is the weekend, I hope you all have a good one, Di Chapman

It is all down to the planning

Well two days out of the office - but all in a good cause. My husband was 60 today and we had lunch out. Yesterday we picked up friends from the local airport which is near a large industrial area so also managed to get a lot of things we cannot get locally.

Now what has all this to do with being a Virtual Assistant - well planning.

I have planned cover for my business - organised and all the clients know.

Jobs that come in to be done when I am back at work get printed off with a to-do sheet, per client, stapled to the front and each new item gets written on it and the mail filed. That is just my way of planning.

My husband planned the last two days as he plans everything, in writing, as a list and ticks it off as he does it. He leaves early so make sure he arrives on time and as he is project managing our build keeps records of everything.

Goal setting and planning are so important - you MUST get into the habit of doing both. If you would like a free copy of Setting Goals 2006, please go to http://www.iceni-it.co.uk/free_downloads/SettingGoals2006.pdf

This is typical of the free resources we give away with our newsletter on a regular basis, so if you would like to go to http://www.iceni-it.co.uk and register for our newsletter, the next download will be a free months 'fun' and quizzes game to help you develop your business mind-set whilst enjoying yourself.

Di Chapman - who has her goals written on a white board where she can see them all day while she sits at her desk - yes I practice what I preach.

Become a Virtual Assistant

I get posts on an almost daily basis asking how to become a Virtual Assistant or VA. Having been in the business since 2000 it obviously cannot be condensed into one e-mail and there are so many types of VA - ie people who are self employed and work via the Internet that it is a huge subject. The aim of this blog is to give new and those thinking of becoming a VA what life is really like.

I have to own up and say that my office is in a partly converted barn high in the French hills so I am not even the average Virtual Assistant but then that is good because to succeed in this business you need to be far more than average - the average only normally last a year.

If you have any comments on this blog or anything you would like to see covered, please mail me at chapman.di@gmail.com and I will try to cover and answer your questions.

Di Chapman