VIP

Business Expansion!!!

Great news!  I have a business partner.  Actually, Staci and I have been working together for months but we've been so busy there hasn't been time to even tell you about it. 

To celebrate a new partner, we have decided to change the name of the business (after all, Virtual Cynthia really doesn't work for two people) so we had that discussion this morning and we've decided to become Virtual Internet Professionals.  We'll be the VIPs working with our VIP clients. 

As time goes by you'll learn more about Staci and the fabulous knowledge she has to share (I'm actually going to encourage her to have her own blog) but for now, just know that she can run rings around me in the tech world and she's pretty amazing in the administrative world as well.

Look for more posts to follow--I attended a conference a couple of weeks ago and as I assimilate the info, I'll be sharing it with you!  I learned some fabulous things and I know you'll want to take advantage of how they can help your business soar to the top.

Until next time....

How Much is Too Much?

There's actually a very good reason I haven't been posting to my blog of late.  You're probably not going to like the answer any better than I do but here it is nonetheless--I've gotten too much business too quickly.  Yep, too much.  Now, lest people think I'm not adding any clients to my practice, I am, but I've decided I need to wait a month between new clients in the future.  I fear the most recent additions to my little virtual family may be feeling that they might not have made the wisest choice in VA. 

Why?  Because I got an email from a client telling me something that I read and was certain I'd remember.  The following day I got another email from her referencing that very thing and I responded by telling her I didn't know what she was talking about.  I've confused one client's request with another while on the phone with the "wrong" one.  I've been tardy on an assignment because I failed to record it in my calendar. 

So, my point?  I think it's important to examine how quickly we want to expand our businesses.  I added three clients in 10 days just a month ago.  It's just within the last day or two that I've begun to feel that I have any grasp of what I'm doing.  When I realized the longest I had worked for any of these three new clients was 5 weeks, I was amazed at how much I'm actually accomplishing.  Oh, and since then I've also added one more client. 

I really needed to add several new clients rather quickly in order to be able to maintain the style of living to which I have become accustomed (that includes eating and having access to my ISP) but in the future, I will definitely think hard before adding more than one client in a month. 

Until next time...

VA or Employee?

I was writing an article to submit to article submission sites and thought you might like the bottom line information that came from it.

I put together a spreadsheet so I could figure out whether or not a VA really is more economical than hiring someone to sit in your office all day.  Actually, one of the things I didn't even cover was how impossible it is to have someone sit in your office if you work from the trunk of your car or from a very small home office.  At any rate, I was just focusing on the economics of an employee.

I was shocked by how much more economical it is to utilize a VA.  I even figured it out three different ways:  Low, medium, and high budget.  Here are the shocking figures for the actual cost of having a full-time employee you only pay $15 per hour vs a VA for 60 hours a month (much more time than most VAs spend on most client's work). 

The employee actually costs $5,027 a month and the VA only costs $3,145 a month.  I don't know about you, but I can think of several things I could do with almost $2,000 a month.

Even at the budget level, assuming you could find an employee who is willing to work part-time for $12 per hour, as opposed to working with a highly-skilled VA for 40 hours a month, you still save $200 a month--not a huge sum but that's money that can be spent for marketing.

Please let me know if you want a copy of the spreadsheets.  I'd be happy to send them to you.  Just send me an e-mail and I'll get Excel file off to you.

Until next time...

Rethinking VIP

When I started this blog I wanted to provide Virtual Independent Professionals with a resource to help them with things a Virtual Assistant could provide. 

That is still my mission but I find I also want to be more personal about what I post.  I'm more than a Virtual Assistant and I want to share that part of my life with you as well.   I will still have posts directed at the business of doing business from your home but I will also intersperse those posts with more personal reflections. 

I will always keep my posts separated within categories that will be apparent (if they're not, let me know and I'll rename them).   

Welcome to the new adventure.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I will.

Until next time...

Welcome!

What an exciting adventure this is!

I wanted to build this blog for several reasons.  This is a place where I can share the information I gather on being a Virtual Independent Professional (VIP) and you can share your comments and resources as well so we can develop a community of resources to help one another. 

This is also a great opportunity for me to share how Virtual Assistants (VAs) can be an exciting opportunity for VIPs to stretch their businesses further than they could on their own.

It's also a great incentive for me to find new resources to share with you.  I know we each have our own style of working but I find that I do much better when I have some kind of accountability motivation.  In other words, if I wait to go find new resources just because I want to find them, it's going to take a lot longer than if I'm doing it because I want to find something to share on my blog.  This is a motivator for me.

I fell in love with blogs as soon as I discovered them.  This is a way to share information so much faster than anything we've had before.  Oh, sure, the big guys could share information almost instantly but  little businesses have depended on newsletters, e-zines, web sites, and word of mouth to get the information out there.  Now we have blogs and information sharing is happening faster than fast.

Since I'm coming to the blog revolution a bit late in the game I have a little catching up to do but I'm a fast study and I'm looking forward to the journey. 

Most of what I plan to post is resource oriented but I'll drop in with a little personal chatter from time to time.  You'll find those in the Coffee Break category once I post something like that.  I would encourage anyone who has a favorite resource to share it.  I will check it out and definitely track back to you if it fits with the site. 

My philosophy is very non-competitive so you'll find resources that tend to be more collaborative than competitive.  I believe there are enough resources and enough work for everyone so I won't be talking about how to get customers away from your competition.  I will be talking about how we can each be the very best VIP we can be--how we can give the best we possibly can to each of our clients--how we can be the best at whatever we do.  In this, we can make the world just a little better, one person at a time. 

Come join me in the journey, the adventure, of growing and becoming more valuable to our clients, our families, our communities, and ourselves.

Until next time...