- Determine what kind of business you want to start, look at your skills and see what you enjoy doing, make a list of jobs you have done in your career, say you did e.g. Typing, Transcription, PowerPoint Presentation etc and that is what you enjoy doing, so start your business by offering the services you enjoy doing the most and expand your business from there as you get to learn and know other jobs.
- Learn about the industry for your business, do Internet research around the world. There are many VA sites worldwide that you can visit to see what the industry is about. Search for ‘Virtual Assistants’ via Google etc.
- Check out the market for your business, study your competition, speak to other experienced VAs, ask how they started up, etc. And if an established VA will assist you as your mentor, grab her and don’t let her go,
- Educate yourself on running a business. Learn what a Business Owner is and what Business Owners do, you have your company books, invoicing, customer liaison, quotations, networking, marketing, debt collecting etc. There is more to running a business than just taking in typing jobs. A Virtual Assistant runs a business/company.
- Join Associations, Chamber of Commerce, small to medium business networking groups, women’s business groups etc for networking purposes, locally.
- Name your business, have a business name that reflects what you are doing and who you are. Design a company logo and a company slogan. This to me was one of the most exciting tasks to do when I started my company, ive been through quite a few logo's since starting and I am now happy with my current logo as it reflects what I am doing.
- Perform a trademark search on the name you choose for your business to make sure no one else is using that name.
- Register a domain name for your website; first check that the name you have chosen is not used by someone else. My domain name is www.amftyping.co.za, the domain being ‘amftyping’.
- Design/Acquire a website/blogging (Example: site http://alison-fourie.blogspot.com/), this is a great marketing tool, you can list your website on search engines and add your website and company details to search engine listings, classified sections, and in directories via the internet worldwide. Your website and blog are your internet advertising tools; they portray you on-line, make sure your content is good and draws clients to you. If it’s not working within 3 months relook at your content and change it.
- Determine business structure (sole proprietor, partnership, or corporation).
- Evaluate your personal budget, know what your budget limits are, and work within these limits.
- Write a business plan, list your objectives and values, create your mission statement, update as your business grows. Set up the way you are going to run your business (Procedures/structures), document it, edit, as you need to, but put it in writing.
- Register your business with the Deeds Office in (for South African VAs only, VAs from other countries must check their own country regulations) Have a choice of company names; check out your company names via the internet, because if you find someone with the same business name you will have to change your name as they were here first.
- Organise your office and office space.
- Order signage, I have a sign attached to my gate with business name and details. Place signage/magnets on your car, as you drive around, you are advertising your company.
- Obtain business tools (computer, printer, fax machine, office supplies, and fixtures, ADSL line, Broadband/wireless connection). (Make sure you have the bandwidth to cater for your job, if you are doing transcription/typing you will receive large files, you need to be able to download and upload these files so you bandwidth must be adequate.
- Order/Create business stationery (business cards, letterhead, brochures, forms etc). You can create your own office stationery via your computer, it saves money.
- Set a launch date.
- Plan a grand opening event; create press releases, flyers, and notices. Send announcements to everyone you know that you are opening your business. Let people know about this, advertise strongly that you are opening your business, let other VAs know, report it on forums, Facebook, networking sites/social media. But get your opening information out there.
- Evaluate your marketing/networking strategy/plan often and do the same with your business strategy/plan as your business changes then make note of the changes and new procedures in your business strategy/plan. Your business plan should be a working ongoing document.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Starting up your own VA Business
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Company Procedures
What I find works for my company is having company procedures in place for the way I work. I fully believe that every company needs procedures.
I have a set way I do my invoicing, I have procedures that I use when I chat to new clients and potential clients, I have procedures in the way I work every day. I feel I have to be organised as if not then the wheels will drop off and I dont know what I am doing. So I run my business with good procedures in place.
Part 1
As I have had many of my clients a long time, they just send me an email, sms, skype or call and let me know they are sending work, or sometimes they just send. When I receive the work I then check out what it is, work out how long it will take me, what is involved and I then document all this on a spreadsheet. I then get back to the client and let them know how long the job will take and let them know whether I will or will not make the deadline. Sometimes jobs are too big and that deadline cannot be reached therefore I will go back to the client and let them know I can't meet their deadline, but this is the deadline that is reachable, is this ok and they always come back and say that is fine, or ask me to get as close to it as I can. It's always worth it to negotiate with your client and let them know that a deadline is unreachable. I always check what work I have at that moment and how I can work everything in so that all the work gets done, this is part of keeping records so I always know what I am doing and when. Sometimes it can get too hectic to do this, but I will do it when I get a gap.
I cannot work without my procedures in place as I just have too much work. I will follow this post and let you know my procedures and share with you some of the forms I use as I go.
I have a set way I do my invoicing, I have procedures that I use when I chat to new clients and potential clients, I have procedures in the way I work every day. I feel I have to be organised as if not then the wheels will drop off and I dont know what I am doing. So I run my business with good procedures in place.
Part 1
As I have had many of my clients a long time, they just send me an email, sms, skype or call and let me know they are sending work, or sometimes they just send. When I receive the work I then check out what it is, work out how long it will take me, what is involved and I then document all this on a spreadsheet. I then get back to the client and let them know how long the job will take and let them know whether I will or will not make the deadline. Sometimes jobs are too big and that deadline cannot be reached therefore I will go back to the client and let them know I can't meet their deadline, but this is the deadline that is reachable, is this ok and they always come back and say that is fine, or ask me to get as close to it as I can. It's always worth it to negotiate with your client and let them know that a deadline is unreachable. I always check what work I have at that moment and how I can work everything in so that all the work gets done, this is part of keeping records so I always know what I am doing and when. Sometimes it can get too hectic to do this, but I will do it when I get a gap.
I cannot work without my procedures in place as I just have too much work. I will follow this post and let you know my procedures and share with you some of the forms I use as I go.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Naming your Business and finding a company logo
Another great task is finding or creating a logo to suit your company name, I choose a typewriter as it matches my company and user name and my main company function is typing so the typewriter is very apt. You can play around with your initials, find a good graphic and play around with it making it unique to your business. It took me a few different logo's before I came up with this one, I played around with my initials for a while coming up with different combinations. You dont need fancy graphic software to do a logo, you can do many things just playing around in powerpoint or word. Make sure you feel comfortable with the name and logo you choose.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
6th Annual Online International Convention
6th ANNUAL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL
VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS CONVENTION (OIVAC)
“MOVING YOUR BUSINESS FROM 1ST GEAR TO HYPER-DRIVE”
May 19-21, 2011
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The 6th Annual Online International Virtual Assistants Convention (OIVAC) is just 2 months away! The Convention runs a continuous 16 hours, daily, and because it’s all ONLINE, you can access everything directly from your home computer! No travel or hotel costs to worry about.
If you’re interested in learning, mentoring and networking with stellar virtual assistants, speakers and small business experts, register for OIVAC from March 31st to April 2nd, during the April “Don’t be Fooled” Days registration special. And this is no prank!
Just a few of the benefits of attending:
• Access to 35 business and virtual assistant industry experts over three Convention days
• 40 different topics (with downloadable recordings) to help grow your business; including marketing, business development, technology and social media; plus networking, training, and mentoring.
• Entrance to 4 Ask the Expert VAs panels where you’ll hear first-hand how Expert VAs manage and grow their businesses, and get answers to YOUR questions about YOUR business
• The chance to win prizes at the International Virtual Assistants Day (IVAD) Celebration
• Access to Building Profitable Product Launch Systems for Your Clients! training
• A VA Goodie Bag - a stash of amazing resources
• And much more!
Don’t miss out – this AMAZING Special is only available from March 31st until April 2nd!
Special Convention Pricing
$159.00 – Full Convention – March 30th – April 2nd ONLY
After April 2nd, registration is:
$89.00 – 3 Seminar Package
$159.00 – 5 Seminar Package
$399.00 - Full Convention (with optional 2 installment payment plan, if registered by April 15)
$499.00 – Full Convention (After April 15)
Sign up now! Take advantage of the special offer NOW and plan to “Move Your Business from 1st Gear to Hyper-drive” on May 19-21, 2011.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Reaching deadlines knowing how long a task takes
You must know if you can reach deadlines or not. You need to know how long each task you do will take, for example: how long will a 1 hour file of transcription take to transcribe, how long will it take you to type up 100/200/500 pages. When a client contacts you, you have to be able to let them know if you can or cannot reach the deadline they set.
You must give yourself time to proof your work, time to check the layout and formatting, make sure the grammar is good, the punctuation done, sentence construction etc. Also you need to make sure you give yourself time to take breaks/lunch and for interruptions. You need to know with interruptions, can you still reach the deadline.
When you feel a deadline is not reachable, negotiate, you will be doing the work, you know how long it will take, give yourself plenty of time to do the work and be negotiable on a deadline that you can reach. It is up to you as a business owner to tell you client ‘this deadline is unreal’ explain what is involved within the job, a lot of clients have no idea how long a particular job will take. They will give you very unreasonable deadlines. Only you know what you are capable of and you know your limits. This is often a problem in Transcription, the clients do not know how long it actually takes to transcribe and often the deadlines are tight but its up to you, as you are doing the job to negotiate this with the client, not the client to set this deadline for you, simply explain what is involved,
Do not take on jobs you have no idea how to do, a client will quickly find out you cannot do this job and they will not have confidence and trust in you again. Only take on the work that you have experience in doing, especially so when you are just starting out. If you take on a job that is new to you, let the client know it’s new to you, but that you are very willing to learn and try. New jobs will take you longer to do, remember this with deadlines.
You must give yourself time to proof your work, time to check the layout and formatting, make sure the grammar is good, the punctuation done, sentence construction etc. Also you need to make sure you give yourself time to take breaks/lunch and for interruptions. You need to know with interruptions, can you still reach the deadline.
When you feel a deadline is not reachable, negotiate, you will be doing the work, you know how long it will take, give yourself plenty of time to do the work and be negotiable on a deadline that you can reach. It is up to you as a business owner to tell you client ‘this deadline is unreal’ explain what is involved within the job, a lot of clients have no idea how long a particular job will take. They will give you very unreasonable deadlines. Only you know what you are capable of and you know your limits. This is often a problem in Transcription, the clients do not know how long it actually takes to transcribe and often the deadlines are tight but its up to you, as you are doing the job to negotiate this with the client, not the client to set this deadline for you, simply explain what is involved,
Do not take on jobs you have no idea how to do, a client will quickly find out you cannot do this job and they will not have confidence and trust in you again. Only take on the work that you have experience in doing, especially so when you are just starting out. If you take on a job that is new to you, let the client know it’s new to you, but that you are very willing to learn and try. New jobs will take you longer to do, remember this with deadlines.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
How to Series - Work Schedule
Another article in my 'How to Series'.
I keep a work schedule of every item of work that I get in. I list the date/time, name, description of work, urgent/non urgent, who does the work, (myself or contractor) proofing (I sometimes send work out to a proofreader), time/date complete and comments, time worked, price of job. I keep all this information in an excel spreadsheet and have it set up monthly.
I work for a lot of clients on a weekly basis, so keeping good records of the work helps me to stay organised and know what is going on, it assists with time management, priorising the work and keeping track when I send work out to a contractor. It also gives me the stats at the end of the month to see how many jobs I do on a monthly basis and how much I make on each job that I do. These stats are important to have as you are running a business.
As a client send me in work, i then enter that work on my spreadsheet, giving as much details as is involved, then when the work is complete I finish the entry on the spreadsheet.
I hate doing admin at month end but this is such a help when it comes to doing my invoicing which I do at month end as my clients pay monthly.
If you have any comments on this procedure please share with me, I would love to hear what you do and how you run your VA business.
I keep a work schedule of every item of work that I get in. I list the date/time, name, description of work, urgent/non urgent, who does the work, (myself or contractor) proofing (I sometimes send work out to a proofreader), time/date complete and comments, time worked, price of job. I keep all this information in an excel spreadsheet and have it set up monthly.
I work for a lot of clients on a weekly basis, so keeping good records of the work helps me to stay organised and know what is going on, it assists with time management, priorising the work and keeping track when I send work out to a contractor. It also gives me the stats at the end of the month to see how many jobs I do on a monthly basis and how much I make on each job that I do. These stats are important to have as you are running a business.
As a client send me in work, i then enter that work on my spreadsheet, giving as much details as is involved, then when the work is complete I finish the entry on the spreadsheet.
I hate doing admin at month end but this is such a help when it comes to doing my invoicing which I do at month end as my clients pay monthly.
If you have any comments on this procedure please share with me, I would love to hear what you do and how you run your VA business.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
OIVAC Launches Speaker Interview Series
OIVAC Launches Speaker Interview Series
During the next 30 days, Ms. Lyn Prowse-Bishop of Executive Stress Office Support interviews 20 speakers scheduled to appear at the upcoming Online International Virtual Assistants Convention 2011 (OIVAC - http://oivac.com), Thursday, May 19 thru Saturday, May 19,
2011.
During this 6th annual event, virtual assistants will rev up their businesses and shift them from 1st gear to hyper drive, as they learn innovative marketing, networking, and business management strategies to assist with their business growth and development and
topics that will positively impact client relations and services, and their pocketbooks.
This week's interviewees and topics located at the OIVAC YouTube
Channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/theoivac#p/a) include:
* Kathie Thomas - The Importance of Networking.
* Annemarie Cross - Five Powerful Steps to Follow When the Product You are Promoting is You
* Ivana Taylor - How to Get Your Ideal Customer to Choose You
* Dawn Jensen - Social Media Toolkit: Managing Your Clients and Your Business
* Christine Giri - Unleash the Power of Focus
* Cindy Greenway - The Essential Secret Ingredient Clients Want From Their Virtual Assistants
Visit our convention channel today to view these informative videos, and register as a subscriber. Stop by the convention website for complete speaker profiles and seminar details (
http://oivac.com/.
Take advantage of our early bird specials and register for the convention today!
To your success,
Sharon Williams
OIVAC Steering Committee
Alliance for Virtual Businesses
During the next 30 days, Ms. Lyn Prowse-Bishop of Executive Stress Office Support interviews 20 speakers scheduled to appear at the upcoming Online International Virtual Assistants Convention 2011 (OIVAC - http://oivac.com), Thursday, May 19 thru Saturday, May 19,
2011.
During this 6th annual event, virtual assistants will rev up their businesses and shift them from 1st gear to hyper drive, as they learn innovative marketing, networking, and business management strategies to assist with their business growth and development and
topics that will positively impact client relations and services, and their pocketbooks.
This week's interviewees and topics located at the OIVAC YouTube
Channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/theoivac#p/a) include:
* Kathie Thomas - The Importance of Networking.
* Annemarie Cross - Five Powerful Steps to Follow When the Product You are Promoting is You
* Ivana Taylor - How to Get Your Ideal Customer to Choose You
* Dawn Jensen - Social Media Toolkit: Managing Your Clients and Your Business
* Christine Giri - Unleash the Power of Focus
* Cindy Greenway - The Essential Secret Ingredient Clients Want From Their Virtual Assistants
Visit our convention channel today to view these informative videos, and register as a subscriber. Stop by the convention website for complete speaker profiles and seminar details (
http://oivac.com/.
Take advantage of our early bird specials and register for the convention today!
To your success,
Sharon Williams
OIVAC Steering Committee
Alliance for Virtual Businesses
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Answer to comment
Awesome post. Do you mind if I ask what your source is for this information?
Hi I would like to answer this question above, all the information you see on the blog is my own, it is my experiences over the 10 years that I have been AMF Typing Services. I have many clients and have many experiences with those clients. I like to share my experiences to assist others especially new Virtual Assistants.My 'How to Series' are what I do, what I go through, to show you how its can be done.
New VAs need to know how things are done, if my experiences help at least one VA every now and again then its worth my letting everyone know.
I welcome all comments on my blog positive or negative, please if you enjoy the blog leave your comment. regards Ali
Hi I would like to answer this question above, all the information you see on the blog is my own, it is my experiences over the 10 years that I have been AMF Typing Services. I have many clients and have many experiences with those clients. I like to share my experiences to assist others especially new Virtual Assistants.My 'How to Series' are what I do, what I go through, to show you how its can be done.
New VAs need to know how things are done, if my experiences help at least one VA every now and again then its worth my letting everyone know.
I welcome all comments on my blog positive or negative, please if you enjoy the blog leave your comment. regards Ali
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
How to Series
Quoting on clients work.
You need to know roughly how many pages can you type of plain copy typing in 1 hour, you need to know roughly how much transcription you can roughly do in 1 hour.
Clients will say to you, I have a 250 page document for typing, how long will it take you and what will you charge, to quote on this you need to give an estimate, so knowing roughly what you can produce in 1 hour of work will assist you in gaging what you can do.
I know I can type anything from 15 pages to 30 pages per day, but it depends on what the content is, whether there is graphics, flow diagrams, graphs, drawings in that content, these will take longer to produce. I know I can do these quickly but not everyone can, each typist is different but you need to know what you can and cannot do. If it will take you a few hours to do a flow diagram that must factor in your quote and whether you can meet the deadline set.
With transcription there are factors involved that will determine how long you take with transcribing, there could be multiple speakers, background noise, language difficulties if its court transcription, a focus group meeting can take twice as long to transcribe as often a lot of people will talk at once. You should roughly be able to say a 1 hour transcription will take plus/minus 4 to 6 hours to transcribe.
Data entry, you need to see what they require, see how many entries you can do in an hour, know what you can do at all times.
Look at the job you have, work out can you do it in the deadline stipulated. Can you produce a quality job, also remember you will have to spell check/grammar, proof your work and check your layout, all these things are part of the job you need to do. If you need assistance with a quote give me a shout. My advice would be for you to ask for a sample of the work that is required before you quote, this will assist you in quoting and always ask as many questions as you can think of about the task.
You need to know roughly how many pages can you type of plain copy typing in 1 hour, you need to know roughly how much transcription you can roughly do in 1 hour.
Clients will say to you, I have a 250 page document for typing, how long will it take you and what will you charge, to quote on this you need to give an estimate, so knowing roughly what you can produce in 1 hour of work will assist you in gaging what you can do.
I know I can type anything from 15 pages to 30 pages per day, but it depends on what the content is, whether there is graphics, flow diagrams, graphs, drawings in that content, these will take longer to produce. I know I can do these quickly but not everyone can, each typist is different but you need to know what you can and cannot do. If it will take you a few hours to do a flow diagram that must factor in your quote and whether you can meet the deadline set.
With transcription there are factors involved that will determine how long you take with transcribing, there could be multiple speakers, background noise, language difficulties if its court transcription, a focus group meeting can take twice as long to transcribe as often a lot of people will talk at once. You should roughly be able to say a 1 hour transcription will take plus/minus 4 to 6 hours to transcribe.
Data entry, you need to see what they require, see how many entries you can do in an hour, know what you can do at all times.
Look at the job you have, work out can you do it in the deadline stipulated. Can you produce a quality job, also remember you will have to spell check/grammar, proof your work and check your layout, all these things are part of the job you need to do. If you need assistance with a quote give me a shout. My advice would be for you to ask for a sample of the work that is required before you quote, this will assist you in quoting and always ask as many questions as you can think of about the task.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Africa VAs
Tavasa - Transcriptionists and Virtual Assistants of South Africa
Website: http://www.tavasa.co.za
Tavasa blog: http://tavasa.blogspot.com/
Entrepreneur Buddy ~ http://www.entrepreneurbuddy.net
African Virtual Assistants Network(Afrivan) ~ http://www.afrivan.org/
Business Without Boundaries ~ http://www.businesswithoutboundaries.net
Be Virtual Wise - http://www.be-virtual-assistant-wise.com/
Website: http://www.tavasa.co.za
Tavasa blog: http://tavasa.blogspot.com/
Entrepreneur Buddy ~ http://www.entrepreneurbuddy.net
African Virtual Assistants Network(Afrivan) ~ http://www.afrivan.org/
Business Without Boundaries ~ http://www.businesswithoutboundaries.net
Be Virtual Wise - http://www.be-virtual-assistant-wise.com/
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