Ever wished for a different day

I did this the other day. Sitting working during the first week of the school holidays while my daughters were having breakfast I heard a dripping sound. On further investigation I discovered that my geyser had sprung a leak. Needless to say, the recycled paper and cardboard insulation, which seemed like a good idea at the time, was sodden and before I knew what was happening I had a big hole in the ceiling.

This brings me back to a post a couple of weeks back about employees paying attention and being the company that they work for. After numerous phone calls, my landlady having a go at the insurance company for lack of response from the builders I finally have a bedroom ceiling back and the walls painted. I'm still waiting on the carpet people to come and replace the carpet however.

Why am I writing about this you may ask?

Well in true fashion instead of getting upset about this bump in the road, I decided to look on the positive side instead. If the geyser had decided to burst a week earlier I would have been doing the school run and the water would have had another hour to run before being shut off. My neighbour was just leaving for work when I went out to shut off the water and very kindly did it for me. My husband came home from work to take the girls off to various activities and left me able to clean up as much of the mess as possible without being asked a million times by my 3-year-old why there was a hole in my ceiling.

So three weeks of mess and chaos with the school holidays and my bedroom is finally a bedroom again, albeit without a new carpet at the moment but I'm hoping that that will be sorted with the Insurance shortly.

Everything or Somethings

Something that is often asked by people investigating the options of being a Virtual Assistant is whether or not they should offer everything or choose a niche and stick to it.

There are advantages and disadvantages for both sides and the final decision is really down to you.

What I would suggest those is that you start with a small list of jobs that you really enjoy doing and don't include anything that you find tedious or bothersome. If there is something that you want to learn and are willing to take a hit on the earnings to use it as a learning experience (only with the consent of your client of course) then that can also work.

What I can tell you though is that a long list of services is no guarantee to getting work, in fact sometimes it can actually be detrimental. If you're looking for an accountant or bookkeeper would you really want someone who listed amongst the services they offered, typing, research, diary management etc.? While in some cases the answer may be yes, its also just as likely to be no.

Whatever services you decide to offer remember to factor into your time a couple of times a year the time to review what services you offer, what you don't want/like doing any more as well as new services that you have been asked about. The life of a VA should never be boring!

Diary Maintenance

One of the hardest things about running a business is maintaining the diary to ensure that everything happens as and when it should.

Remember that this doesn't just include appointments for work, but also deadlines, quotes and invoices, payments as well as the necessary evils of ensuring your paperwork is up to date and any necessary forms and payments submitted to the relevant people on time.

In this modern day and age it is actually very easy for a virtual assistant to be able to assist you with this. The diary can be created online in Google Calander and then you and your assistant, and anyone else who may need it, can have access to it. You can also link various calenders together so that a workforce can see what is happening as well as add meetings, appointments and reminders or each other.

If you're a small business struggling with meeting all your targets and deadlines you might want to consider hiring a virtual assistant who can help you. Add to diary maintenance call answering and your office truly has become mobile.