Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Do u have a base in Auckland, New Zealand?

Cheers!
Sharon.

Hadn’t seen this post before till today’s post on seeking a Virtual Assistant.

I manage a team of VAs (and home based secretaries) here in Australia and the team have been in operation since April 1996 - I started my business alone in March 1994. The internet changed things and work grew quickly and the need for a team. Today we have VAs in 14 countries and my network was the first one established in the southern hemisphere.

I work as a VA with many different types of clients. My favorite is my medical transcription client. In my opinion, the more skills a VA can offer, the better chance of landing clients. For example, train in medical transcription, coding, billing, legal transcription, paralegal, and all the computer software programs you can think of: MS Word, WordPerfect, Excel, dbase programs. Know a little about Internet marketing, advertising, copy writing, and make sure that your English grammar is up to par. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to have some management courses under your belt. Being a jack of all trades is a good thing when it comes to being a VA.

HA HA HA, I live in a third world country and came up with the idea of a Virtual secretary to handle my business seed, it worked great and I loved it, it was cheaper and very very effective, however everybody told me that was the most stupid thing they have ever heard of, even my employees, when they found out the secretary to whom they were talking to wasnt actually located at my office, they started to disrespect her, I fired them first. Knowing this, I couldn’t allow my customers to notice that when they were calling to my office, the secretary on the phone wasn’t actually there but at her home. My business is finally growing at a steady (and huge) pace so I just recently moved to an actual office with a real in site secretary to attend my now welcome without excuses customers (my previous office was located in the back part of my grand ma’s warehouse in an abandoned room). I just needed a physical adress in a very well known for its businessess street.

Now that I have a real secretary on site, I ask her to do a lot of things related to the presentation of the office itself. However I will recommend a virtual secretary for any new or growing business 300%, my previous secretary actually raise my business as she took care of my customers while I was busy working on my 7 am - 9 pm original job. From which I very proudly quit 3 months ago. I just feel bad for knowing that I’m in a third world country in which thinking outside the box, means you are very very stupid, and you must hide any “revolutionary ideas”. Another example, I used plastic clear or frozen custom made business cards which are very common in Europe and the USA, but here everybody thought that it was a ridiculous idea and that it gave a very stupid children look to those who used them (thought confirmed when I had to order my Business Card Abroad since my local business cards printers companies told me they knew those styles but they never brought them here as their samples were never took into consideration by their potential customers. This VA have been around since 1994, but here in 2008 I though it was something revolutionary and everybody thought it was stupid. It worked great for me but I had to hide the fact to prevent humilliation from everybody, I manage to hook her up to another company from a friend whom I convinced to give it a try. that was the least I could do. See you. ps (dont imagine me as a sweaty ugly third world country typicall guy, I’m actually good looking, model friends, nice car, parties and everything ja ja ja,)