Such a friendly industry!
I’ll be honest. When I started my virtual assistance business, Mann Made Time, I was worried about the hundreds of other VAs I would be in competition with. If you’re a ‘newbie’ virtual assistant, you might also feel these pangs of worry about all of the other freelance administrative professionals that are more established than you are. You might be worried about your competition. I think it’s only natural for a business owner to worry about their competitors. But…the VA industry is different than any other I know of. I don’t see my fellow VAs as competitors anymore. Not really.
Because our industry is relatively new, we must all work together to educate the world about what we do - the services we provide. If you are a new VA, you might find it strange how other VAs are so willing to help you out when you need advice. At all of our networking forums, you have VAs offering marketing advice. In how many other industries can you find business owners in direct competition with each other offering marketing tips? We mention each other in blogs, leading our potential clients right to other VAs sites. We help each other with press releases and other marketing pieces.
Why? I believe it’s because successful VAs know that there are more than enough clients to go around. Most of us are working hard to promote our industry, and the more great VAs in the world spreading the word about what they do, the more people will learn about us.
I live in Canada’s smallest province, and when I started my business, I was the only VA here. Now I know of three others. When I first heard that there was another local VA, I didn’t think about how that could hurt my business. I thought about how it could, in fact, help my business. One more soul to educate PEI and the world about virtual assistance.
Revolutionary VAs don’t see other VAs as a threat, they try to learn from them and think of ways we can all work together to bring virtual assistance mainstream.
Goals for 2008
It seems cliché to write a blog post about making changes in the New Year right now– but frankly, it is on everyone’s minds so here we go….
2007 was a great year for me. My business grew in leaps and bounds and I am so happy about where Mann Made Time is today. But, I’m not happy with my level of stress and the time I’ve been taking away from my family to work.
2008 is going to be different. I’m almost at the end of my first week of vacation for the holidays and I haven’t done a stitch of client work. I kind of miss it, but I am really enjoying this time with my kids and my husband.
Next week is when the real work will start. One full week to focus on my business. I should have done this eons ago, but better late than never. I’m going to share some of my goals here, and I hope they will serve as inspiration for my fellow VAs:
· Set up a collaboration site for my clients to post their projects to. This will hopefully eliminate the massive amounts of emails I receive, and there will be one central place for my team to work from.
· Hire a bookkeeper. My books are in an awful state, and I will be outsourcing this task monthly so I don’t get this behind ever again.
· Complete my policy and procedure manual.
· Prepare handbooks for my associate VAs, so my team members will all be on the same page with regards to how I want my business to operate.
· Overhaul my filing system to increase efficiency.
· Put a better backup system in place for my computer. The technique I’m using now has served its purpose, but it’s time to step it up.
· Improve my newsletters and create autoresponders for my info products.
· Become a better affiliate sales person to increase my passive income.
I’m not sure if I will be able to complete all of these items next week, but at least I have these goals written down. I’ll take a good stab at it next week, but I’m going to try to relax a bit too.
2008 will be a revolutionary year for Mann Made Time – you can hold me to it!
Happy New Year everyone.
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