It’s been 3 years and just how much I had to learn! Running a small virtual assistant business is nothing like being employed in the City. When you are employed you:

1. Typically work for 1-5 people, same people, day after day (unless someone changes job or is made redundant).
2. Deal with the same workload:email, diary, paperwork, meetings, projects, travel, a few conferences thrown in here and there, a few purchasing orders to do… OK it does vary a little based on the department you work in, but the core of PA tasks will be the same wherever you are.
3. Start and finish at a set time, have (at least in theory) a lunch break, water cooler moments.
4. Endure the daily commute in any weather, hot or cold.
5. Rely on other corporate departments to sort things out for you: your computer, insurance, pension, payroll, accounts, HR, legal issues, contracts with new clients, etc.
6. Have a holiday when you can forget about your job (as long as there is someone covering for you), have weekends and evenings to yourself.
7. May occasionally work over-time or start earlier than usual.
8. Have to get permission for any time off, be it 1h or 1 week, work it later, take it unpaid and stay within your holiday allowance.
9. Get a regular salary every month, including sick pay and holiday pay.
10. Get paid for every single minute you are at work: whether you are checking your Facebook profile, researching the next holiday or actually doing work!

When you are self-employed it doesn’t work like that. Why am I still here, you may ask?

• I love being in charge of my own life, deciding who I’m working with, what I’m doing and when.
• I don’t like commuting to work every day, but I do like getting into London a few times a month for business meetings and events.
• I am constantly learning new skills, new applications, new tools.
• I get to meet a lot of business owners, just like me, who are very determined to succeed and therefore are very inspiring.
• I love what I do and I love seeing my clients happy with the results!

It took a while to learn to balance work and family, business time and clients’ time. But I think we are getting there now. It took some determination, perseverance and a couple of important business decisions to get where we are now:

• Joining a VA Network in Australia which has proven the single best source of online referrals for us (thanks, Kathie!).
• Getting a 1-2-1 VA coaching with VA Coaching and Training Company which helped me to organise my thoughts about marketing, niching, client attraction and why I am here. Since the course has been completed things have spiralled out and it has become self-perpetuating with new referrals and enquiries (thanks, Carmen!).
• Joining the Athena Network, a very successful networking organisation in the UK for women in business. We’ve already got a lot of business through it, and it’s not even a year since we  became a member (thanks, Marilena!).
• Learning about Twitter and other online marketing tools, which not only brought us new clients but also helped launch new services (thanks, Mark Shaw and Mashable!).

So if you are someone thinking of becoming a virtual assistant in 2011, then think about the above 10 features of being employed – will you be happy without all of those? What’s driving you to become self-employed? What “big dream” will you be able to hang on to, when times get tough and cashflow takes a dip? Finally, check out VACT or other similar training on offer for VAs and don’t assume that because you are a great PA/Administrator/EA/Secretary you will automatically be equally good at being a virtual assistant!

Good luck, and maybe I’ll see you at one of the VA conferences in the UK!

Style in written communication means attention to proper spelling and punctuation, proper sentence construction and full spellings instead of abbreviations suitable only for SMS messages. Style includes being creative in what you write and how you write. It also means making your communication look visually attractive. Finally, considering appropriate tone and structuring your message logically forms part of the business writing style.

Benefits of good writing style:

• Relevant, precise communication appropriate to the reader’s level.
• Logically structured.
• Easy to see what action is required and when.
• More approachable because our language is less formal and more friendly (unless you are writing a legal letter!).
• Saves your and your readers’ time and increases business efficiency.
• Enhances understanding and increases your professional image.
• Creates better rapport with customers and business partners.

Effective writing gives a professional impression of you and your company. It is perhaps the most demanding work we do on a daily basis. If you learn to pay attention to all the various aspects of style in your writing, you will increase the value of what you write, achieve better results, and gain a distinct advantage in today’s online world.

In order to create the right learning environment to enable your employees to benefit from Continuous Professional Development (CPD) you could follow the following steps:

1. Define a clear structure of what development solutions there are available and who they are suitable for.
2. Use development solutions that include a variety of techniques.
3. Agree the investment in development in terms of time and money.
4. Create visible ‘role models’, providing insight into the role of senior positions.
5. Help your staff develop both their strengths and their weaknesses.
6. Establish objectives around CPD and review.
7. Measure and evaluate continuously.
8. Remember the little things like ‘Thank you’ and ‘Well done’.

If you want to create an environment where continuous learning and development is an integral process, you will have to invest time and energy. In the long term the benefits can outweigh the costs. Spot and nurture talent as talented individuals can be an organisation’s biggest asset.

After researching the issue for some time in order to make the business life of our clients more efficient – here’s some practical advice to lessen the impact:

• Talk privately with each of the individuals to plan an agenda that steers clear of hot topics;
• At the beginning establish rules agreed with everyone;
• Use large displays to record what is said in the meeting;
• Remain positive at all times, allow all contributions to be made.

People’s energy varies through the day. However energy levels may also be low due to the style of the meeting. Using the same approach over and over again will stifle a meeting e.g. endless presentations:

• Minimise presentations, set (and adhere to) time limits;
• Use wall charts to share information with blank spaces for people to complete information during the meeting;
• Change the format – sessions, group discussions, small group discussions, pairs, individual thinking time;
• Give people the opportunity to talk;
• Use energisers.

Managing information can be as much of a challenge as managing people. If we didn’t need to share or jointly create data and ideas there would be no need for getting people together at all. Getting this right can make a huge difference to the success of a meeting.

If you capture the information in real time during the meeting, it will make your meetings a lot more productive. Why?

• People can see that they have been heard. This encourages participation;
• All the information is visible together;
• Agreements are much more likely to stick to;
• Gives people an opportunity to speak up if there are still issues to resolve;
• Focuses the attention of a group and gives a focal point for discussion.

Think in advance of your follow up documentation. Having the right outputs produced after a meeting can do a lot to support the ongoing follow-up of actions afterwards. Assign someone to prepare minutes, record action points and track the completion.

So, to conclude – our Top tips for information management:

• Plan how you will manage the information before, during and after a meeting;
• Think about different ways you could handle the information;
• Minimise the use of PowerPoint;
• Maximise the use of wall charts;
• Use the group to help with recording the meeting.

Before anything else, ask yourself:  ‘why do we need a meeting?’ Once you’re clear about the actual reason for holding the meeting you have a great foundation on which to build up. Also don’t forget that meetings can be held online using webinars.

Feeling frustrated when you have to work with messy or disorganised colleagues – who can hold you back in you work – is understandable. However, it may be that you messy pal isn’t aware of your true feelings.

Monster recommends the following tips when dealing with irritating people in your workplace:

• In an open-plan office it can be hard to escape office noise. Bring in headphones: listening to music or a self-development CD can be an effective way of reducing the background noise.
• Meetings are a necessary part of business life. However spending too much time in meetings can be detrimental to your performance and your business success – assess whether the meeting is always necessary, if you can use a teleconferencing facility or desktop sharing to achieve the same results.
• Use easy-to-understand language every time you speak or write, others in your business and those you deal with will follow suit shortly.
• Focus on employees’ strengths to achieve top performance. It will benefit the business as it will encourage higher productivity, more job satisfaction and commitment. Your colleagues will be motivated by tasks that interest them.
• Communicate with your colleagues and staff, provide honest feedback about their performance as well as relationships with other members of the team.

If you feel that your office is drowning in paper, files and assorted items – it’s time to use a professional de-clutterer. Many virtual assistants offer this service: they will come to your office for 1 or 2 full days and during this time convert it from a messy piles of papers, files and loose stationery to an organised, clear-desk environment which will enhance the productivity and motivation of your staff. Contact us now for a recommendation of a professional de-clutterer in your area.

To organise a webinar,  you need to send out an invitation with a link, which attendees simply click on to be directed to the webinar hosting site. One the screen you will see the list of all attendees, control buttons (like mute and unmute), chat window and the main window where you can share your desktop and any applications you are running (e.g. PowerPoint with slides).

You can require people to register in advance in order to get the participation link. The collected information can be added to your mailing list for future followup with prospects. Offering regular webinars as part of your website monetising strategy can attract more traffic and generate new sales leads.

You can also charge a fee to attend a webinar. Payment can be collected via Paypal or using a shopping cart (see our previous article about this). Audio and video can be recorded during the event, which will enable you to sell it later to any other customers who missed the the event itself. As there is no limit for how long you can be selling the recording – the only limit will be the relevance of the material discussed.

In the business context, recordings can be useful as a record of the meeting – to help your PA or VA collate a list of action points, questions raised, changes to be made to the materials reviewed.

How to host a webinar:

56% find themselves regularly working extra hours for no extra cash. Only 25% are paid for extra work. Only 12% reported that overtime was the exception and 7% said that they were encouraged by managers to leave on time.

Pressures from the recession and the fear to lose the job when the unemployment rate is so high caused many people to work extra hours in the fear of being “replaced”. However, if you don’t have time for extra work – explain why you can’t do it or at least can’t do it within the proposed timescale. Be confident, sincere and calm about it. If you start sounding apologetic your colleagues could assume that with persistence or by ignoring your objections they get you to agree.

At the busiest periods in your business why not use a virtual assistant to help with the additional workload! You don’t need to “hire and fire” a VA all the time, compared with a temporary employee, spending time on training and hand over. A virtual assistant can be a great asset for any business which you can bring on board as and when required, for as many hours per day or per week as you see fit. A VA can help with general administrative duties and well as to cover the skills gap in the business – like updating the website, creating promotional materials, online marketing or book-keeping. If one of your executive assistants if on holiday or off sick, you don’t need to worry about sufficiency of cover provided by other PAs. Using a VA can provide all the support your executives need on a day to day basis.

Contact us now on 020 8144 4594 to find out more and for a free consultation.

NICE has released guidelines highlighting how employers and employees can work in partnership to improve mental wellbeing within the workplace. Professor Mike Kelly, public health excellence centre director, said simple changes would improve the management of mental health in the workplace, including the prevention and early identification of problems. “By following these recommendations an average organisation of 1000 employees can expect to save an estimated £250,000 a year,” he said.

Tips on handling stressful situations:

1. Don’t take it personally: It’s unrealistic to try to figure out what the other person is feeling, thinking or going through at the time, so more productive would be to focus on yourself and your own work.

2. Breathe: Take a few deep breaths, right down to your stomach, stretch your body and feel energised immediately.

3. Manage your priorities: Determine what has to be done now and what can really wait for a few days. Write down a comprehensive To-Do list, schedule time in your diary and stick to it. Don’t be afraid to say No to colleagues when you are already overloaded with work. And if in doubt – check deadlines with your manager before assuming the worst.

4. Respond gracefully: It’s about how you choose to respond to a conflict at work. Don’t become the doormat or a victim of bullying or harassment, but sometimes walking away speaks for itself. Don’t spill your negativity behind people’s backs, spread rumours or treat others unfairly.

5. Relax and take a break: Take a holiday or even go for a walk at your lunchtime break. Have a 5-min tea break. Go to the shop and buy an apple (chocolates will make you feel good first but you will end up with an energy slump as sugar level dip quickly afterwards). Do some yoga or meditation and follow the first 4 steps.