Halloween is Almost Upon Us

Firstly, to all my American clients I would like to wish you all a Happy Halloween for Sunday, and not forgetting All Saint's Day on Monday, which should go hand in hand.
As we all know Halloween is celebrated by children who get to dress up deliberately to scare  themselves and their friends and go trick or treating for sweets and other goodies to eat and for most children this is where Halloween ends.
While once upon a time the idea of trick or treating alone may have been a good idea, in today's modern world, unfortunately we need to provide some protection to our children.
Some sensible tips when choosing you're child's costume are as follows:

• Make sure that the mask is not going to restrict the child's breathing.
• Make sure that the costume is not so long or tight that they can't move quickly and safely if the really need to.
• Ensure that they can see clearly, as due to the excitement of trick or treating they may forget to look when crossing the road.
• Remember to make sure that they are visible to traffic, especially if you happen to live in the Northern Hemispheree where it's starting to get dark earlier.
• And if you ask me, the most important one, make sure that a responsible adult is either in tow or nearby to keep an eye on the children and ensure their safety, even if it is just from cars and barking dogs.

If you happen to be driving on Halloween please also play your part and keep a look out for children who have lost their road sense for the night.
All that being said there are plenty of people who don't celebrate Halloween and they should be allowed to have their views respected. If you know of someone in your area that doesn't celebrate Halloween encourage your children to leave them out of their trick or treating route and everyone can be happy.

New Member of UKAVA

Conors Admin Services is proud to announce that it is now a member of the United Kingdom Association of Virtual Assistants.

Please check back as we will be updating the site regularly with new details.




An accredited member of the UK Association of Virtual Assistants.
The one-stop information resource for virtual assistants and their clients.
http://www.ukava.co.uk

New Risk in Elective Surgery

For those of you considering having elective surgery this is something that really needs to be considered before you take the plunge.

It has been reported that Brits who have gone to India and Pakistan to have elective cosmetic surgery are returning home with a gene that can turn a common or garden bug into a superbug. The resistant gene has been identified by the medical profession as NDM-1. The gene has the ability to alter bacteria and make them resistant to nearly all antibiotics. It is most common in the E.coli bacteria, or on other DNA structures that area easily copied and passed onto other types of bacteria.

While the numbers of people currently identified with the gene remains very small the real threat of this bacteria altering gene is likely to spread worldwide with people all over the world looking for cheaper and quicker options to have elective surgery.

To read more about this superbug go to http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/197509.php

If you take us seriously, we'll take you seriously.

Michele Johanson (http://goodhopetranscription.weebly.com) runs a transcription business from home,and, when not pounding the keyboard for her daily bread, writes articles on the more domestic arts, cooking and gardening in particular. Thank you to Michele for the following informative article.


One of the drawbacks of working from home is the difficulty of getting serious clients who are willing to pay what you are worth.

I enjoy working from home as a transcriptionist and I have good and loyal clients who make it possible but how does one deal with the demands of people like this?

This was posted on Get a Freelancer today:

“I need only serious transcribers who can finish up the project by today. There is totally 3 hours of audio. You can be a team or person. But you must follow the below points strictly and there wont be any excuses:-

You must finish the project with in 5-6 hours It should be with 100% accuracy

Pay will be $7 or $8 per audio hour depending on quality (If you are not accepting for this bid, then please dont apply). The completed file should be proofread, spellchecked, formatted, grammar checked etc.

There will be a continuous flow of work if you finish this successfully. Note that turnaround time is very important. Once you place your bid be online. I will hire within 2-3 hours and you should have me the files back within 5-6 hours.”

Downloading 3 hours of audio could take several hours alone. A professional transcriptionist allows approximately four hours to complete one hour’s worth of audio, and that’s just the typing. Spell-checking and proofreading is a given and is included in the rate but could somebody please tell me how to check the grammar on audio? Surely the whole point of transcription is to produce a verbatim report? I do tweak here and there, particularly if I’m transcribing a foreigner, but limit it to replacing words like ‘choosen’ with ‘chosen’. If a client specifically asks me to fix the English I have more leeway, but even then I make an effort to stick to the original.

The above-quoted job provider is particularly arrogant and unrealistic but unfortunately there are many people that think that because we run our businesses from home we are not doing a “real job” and want to pay accordingly, or not at all. The following quote was taken from clientsfromhell.wordpress.com: “ … and by the way, I can’t afford to pay you for this job, but you will be paid in karma — which is so much better and more permanent anyway.” Better for whom? Can you eat karma?

We do real jobs and provide real quality. We pay our own overheads and work long hours and stick to our deadlines.

Sadly, there will be takers for this position but they are unlikely to have English as their first language and the job provider will get what she is paying her two dollars (or less) an hour for. I would love to see what she ends up with.

michelejohanson@yahoo.com
http://goodhopetranscription.weebly.com/

The Importance of Client Contact

It still amazes me that people avoid contact with their clients about seemly simply things. Yesterday I got a new client because his previous transcriptionist had gone on leave and not bothered to inform him that she would be unavailable to do work for him. How did he find out? His office manager found out when she rang the transcriptionist on Thursday evening to find out where the work was. Hence him ringing me at 7:30 in the morning.


While I am not going to get into who should look for the replacement to cover work while you're on leave as I believe that's a personal choice issue, I do however believe that you should advise your clients either way if you are going to be unable to do their work for a period of time.

While a week may not seem long to you in the life and work of a doctor that can be a long time. Whatever the reason you are unable to do the work common courtesy should prevail. If you were an employee you would ask for leave from your boss, but as a self-employed profressional you should advise your clients that you will be unavailable to do their work and the dates you will be unavailable. If you are arranging the cover then also let your client have at least minimal contact details for the person providing cover for you in case they need to get hold of them urgently.

To my new client's previous transcriptionist, I hope you had a great break and good luck with finding new work to replace what you've lost.

The Importance of Client Consultation

Today I have an article from a successful UK based Virtual Assistant
When I first started out as a virtual assistant, more years ago than I care to remember, there weren’t many other VA’s around and therefore not much competition. Nowadays, a sizeable proportion of the clients I take on have worked with at least one other VA in the past. When I ask what differences they notice between how we work and what they have experienced in the past, it is often commented on that what they like more than anything is that we work as a partnership with our clients, being proactive in their businesses and looking for opportunities for them and suggesting ideas, as opposed to those VAs that just sit and wait for work to be delegated to them.

So how do we achieve that distinction? Part of it is the mindset. When you make the leap from being an employee to a sole trader or business owner you will quickly realise that if you sit around and wait for work to be delegated, you won’t get very much of it. At that point you learn to make yourself an active member of your clients ‘team’ very quickly or you will soon start to flounder.

To give a great impression straight away it’s important to ask the right questions at the first meeting with your potential client, before they sign up. You need to ascertain where you can be most useful to them. What are their weak points? What work they have to do that they continually put off either because there is no time or because they don’t enjoy it? Find out what their plans are for their business. What do they want to achieve?

Once the client has come onboard you need to maintain the momentum with scheduled meetings as an ongoing process both with regular and ad-hoc clients. By having detailed monthly catch up meetings, either in person or by telephone, you can identify what is coming up in their calendar and how you can help them by sharing some of that workload.

For some really great documents to help you with initial client consultations and ongoing client reviews, take a look at our New Client Template Pack and Client Management Template Pack.

For more detailed information about how to conduct a client consultation, download our Podcast on Client Consutation here.

Copyright 2008 by Justine Curtis


About the author

Justine Curtis is the director of her own successful virtual assistant business My Virtual Assistant which is now recruiting a team of virtual assistant licensees and founder of The UK Association of Virtual Assistants (UKAVA) which offers free resources and information to its subscribers – sign up at http://www.ukava.co.uk. Justine is the author of Setting Yourself Up As A Virtual Assistant and is proud to be able to pass on the benefits of her vast experience of the VA role to aspiring and progressive virtual PAs as a co-founder of the VA Success Group.

Bank Phishing Schemes

Having just received two more of these phishing emails I feel compelled to blog about them.


In the interests of those who might not know the term phishing, it's the label given to those emails that you receive purporting to be from someone they aren't. For instance in this case my bank, claiming that my account was being accessed by a third party and that ownership was in doubt. They usually include a link or form that you need to fill in and send back. The problem is that they're really not from who they claim to be.

Usually the easiest and best way to tell if the emails are real is to look at the spelling. In genuine communications I've received from my bank via email the spelling and grammar has always been pretty perfect.

The phishing emails have spelling and grammar that would leave most First Graders pulling their hair out at how bad it is.

If you have any doubts about whether an email is authentic or not please contact the sender and ask before you click on any links.

Having had a bank card cloaned a couple of years ago I can tell you the trouble and inconvenience of having to try and resolve the matter is truly astounding. Certainly it could have been made easier by my bank if they'd given me all the information that I needed right at the start rather than in small bite size pieces.

I truly hope that none of you are or become a victim of the phishing exercises.

Otherwise I hope you all have a super weekend.