VA Matchmaker: Virtual Assistant Profile #2

March 31, 2008

(1) What made you decide to become a virtual assistant?

I spent 30 years in corporate America, building a strong background in a leading call center and administrative support teams and grew to enjoy the administrative duties the most. My last three opportunities involved starting up new businesses, which gave me the chance to learn and implement all of the different integral functions needed to build and run a successful business. I found I enjoyed these experiences most of all and decided that the next start up I worked on would be my own!

(2) What are the top three skills you have or that you love to do?

(a) Creating order out of chaos by establishing and documenting daily operations functions, making tasks easy to follow and to train. Then turning those individual functions into an operations manual.

(b) Researching and writing training manuals to make your business more turn-key.

(3) What are three things you don’t like doing?

Although I still love dealing with the public, I do not want to perform customer service or consumer affairs or outbound calling campaigns any longer, not even on a leadership level. I don’t like busy work, doing repetitive tasks. I love working with some databases, but I don’t like working with Access.

(4) Describe your ideal client.

My ideal client has a broad range of interests, is intelligent, a wonderful communicator in both written and spoken word and is technically savvy.

(5) What is your favorite thing about being a VA?

Service has been in my blood during my entire career and being able to be an important part of a business’s growth and success give me great pleasure. I have always wished I could create great art, but I have learned through being a VA that creation takes many forms and I can take pride in those accomplishments as any other artist could.

(6) What is the most important piece of advice you’ve received about running your own business?

Networking, networking, networking.

(7) Who are your business mentors?

Erin Blaskie has been my most important and influential mentor so far, but I receive strong support from the members of the International Virtual Assistant Association and have learned a lot from them as well as the National Association of the Self-Employed.

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