I’m going to bare a bit of truth about myself here so please don’t judge me! When I started my business, I had a dedicated office in the third bedroom of my home. That worked because at the time, my only daughter was a year old and was relatively easy to keep an eye on. Then, when I was expecting my second child last summer, I quickly realized that set up was just not going to work. There was no way I could work in that room with an infant and a two year old to watch constantly. So, I moved my office into our family’s main living area. It allows me to work whether the girls are watching cartoons, playing or sleeping. However, this summer I’m hiring a ‘Mother’s Helper’ and am going to move my office back to where it originally was so that I’ll be able to close the door on everyone for a few hours a day, and close the door on Mann Made Time when it’s family time.

My business has grown significantly since those early days in a separate area of the house and I know I could do a better job at organizing my office than I have been. I can organize anyone else, but when it comes to organizing myself, well, it’s kind of the same as the mechanic who always drives a jalopy. You’re too busy making a living doing what you’re good at to actually do the same for yourself.

I have found a few things that work for working from a home office with youngsters and I hope some of my readers will contribute their tips as well. Here are mine:

• I keep an office spike on my desk to stab receipts with, so they’re all there at the end of the month for me to organize.
• I have an old fashioned Hilroy scribbler for each client. I put all of their contact details, usernames and passwords and other frequently needed information on the inside cover. Anytime I speak with a client on the phone, I grab their notebook and keep all notes there in one place for them so I can retrieve details quickly.
• There is a Rubbermaid file tote thingy that I keep these scribblers and project details in that I can bring with me if I need to work from the kitchen, or when I had a dedicated office I could haul it with me when I needed to be mobile.
• I always keep some old cell phones, cameras, calculators and daytimers in a desk drawer to occupy the little ones since they always to play with things that they shouldn’t have.
• The beloved laptop. I am using the same notebook computer I did when I started my business two years ago. For Mann Made Time’s second birthday, which coincides with my “last-year-before-turning-30″ birthday next month, I’m purchasing a new machine. I think I’ll go with a desktop this time since my notebook will still allow me to work from anywhere in the house, which is key when you work from home with children.
• Make your space off limits! I often discover that my tape has gone missing, or my fancy stapler has disappeared. Where do pens go? Post-it notes get sucked into a black hole and it seems as soon as I buy them they are gone forever. I don’t think it’s the little ones either, I think it’s the other grown up I share my home with. When Mann Made Time moves its headquarters over the next couple of weeks, there will be some new rules in place. When the door is closed, nobody goes in, whether I’m there or not! I think I’ll be getting myself a sign to attach to the door with my office hours.

Anyone else have some tips? I’d love to hear them!

3 Comments »

I’ve been doing a lot of research and reading about how to write for the search engines. I believe this skill will provide a great benefit to the clients I write for.

Through my reading, I found a great tip that I’d never considered before and it’s so easy and useful, I thought I’d post it here.

When you’re writing with your key phrase in mind, you know, the one that people will type into Google to find you, it’s hard sometimes to have enough occurences  of that phrase in your copy without it sounding awkward.  One way to get around this is to break up the phrase with punctuation marks.

For example, if your key phrase is “Prince Edward Island real estate” you can only use that phrase so many times without it looking obvious that it was written for the search engines. One way to make your piece more readable is to break that phrase up with a period or a comma since the spiders ignore those.

You could say, “There are many great reasons to relocate to Prince Edward Island. Real estate prices are among the lowest in the country…”

Ya see? Your phrase is still in tact but it reads smoothly.

Enjoy!

2 Comments »

Back in June 2006 when I officially started my business, I didn’t know half of what I thought I knew. Does that make sense? I had spent months researching the virtual assistance industry, and studying the way other VAs were marketing themselves.  I thought I knew all of the benefits that came with hiring a VA, but my first client quickly taught me that I didn’t.

One of the main reasons the real estate agent who became my first client wanted to contract my services was something I had never considered before, and I’ve forgotten about until we’re here in the middle of tax season!

While we were having our initial consultation, he told me that he really needed some legitimate business expenses, and my services would certainly provide that to him, while helping him to keep on top of things at the same time.

Have you had your taxes prepared yet? Did you have enough business expenses? We’re already practically at the end of April, so you might be looking for something to spend your money on to help you out for next year’s taxes. The services of a virtual assistant are not only a legitimate business expense, but by outsourcing your administrative duties – you know, the ones you hate doing so they rarely get done – you’ll free up time to do things that will help boost your income.

5 Comments »

I’ve cooled off a little bit, but I must tell you, I was quite annoyed this morning when I checked my email. I woke up in a good mood because both of my daughters slept through the night, which means I got my first full night of rest in three years. That’s no exaggeration, either. But it’s beside the point.

Let me set the story up a little bit.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a lead through my website’s contact form. I called the person back and we had a great discussion. When I asked him if he’d be speaking with some other VAs he told me he didn’t have the time and wanted to get started. So, I emailed him a copy of my agreement with the understanding that he would forward more project details and we would get underway.

I didn’t receive a reply, I followed up a couple times and he finally said that he found another VA that charges substantially less than I do, and she wowed him by taking the initiative and actually doing some of the work with no prompting from him, nor an agreement or payment for it. Needless to say, he was impressed.

So, this morning when I checked my email I was surprised to see a fax of my agreement, tweaked around to serve as a basis for this person’s relationship with his new VA. I was confused, thought that he accidentally faxed it to me instead of this other person, but as I looked at the very familiar agreement, my freakin’ fax number was left on there as the number to send the agreement back to. Kind of funny, right?

Well, what I didn’t find too funny was the price that this other VA was working for. It was less than half of my hourly rate, and I charge what I believe to be industry standard. There is no way a person can run a business for that type of money, not in North America. I don’t care that another VA got the project. I’m too busy to worry about that stuff. What does bother me, though, is that people charge such ridiculously low rates to land jobs. I think it does a great disservice to other newbies to the industry trying to make it by charging the rates that they need to charge to make a living.

I believe there’s a big difference between doing this as a job and running a VA practice as a business. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me, and I’m okay with it personally. I have clients that appreciate the fact that when you pay peanuts you get monkeys, so I’m doing just fine. I just hate that there isn’t a governing body or something to set a rock bottom rate for VAs to charge. I don’t know, is that a good idea or a bad idea? If everyone had to charge a minimum price it would at least put everyone on level playing ground. Am I just grumpy?

6 Comments »

I am so sorry for being ‘away’ from my blog for such a long time. Things have been quite busy around the Mann Made Time offices, and I have been wanting to write some great posts – really – but I was coming up with nothing. I mean…I have ideas all the time. My Gemini/entrepreneur brain is going all the time. But I believe if you don’t have anything very interesting to ’say’ in your blog – or if you can’t say it well – then you shouldn’t say something just for the sake of saying it.

I know I should carefully craft my blog posts in advance, I know that, but that’s not my style. I am a very passionate person. When I feel passionately about something, everyone that knows me knows about it. If I write a post today about the benefits of sticky notes with the intention of posting it in a week from now, well, that just doesn’t feel right to me. In a week from now I might want to blog about desk drawer organizers and blogging about post it notes might feel – I don’t know – dishonest or something. It’s a mental thing, I know nobody cares if I switch the topics, but it’s just too structured for this…my little outlet for creativity…my blog.

Now it’s not like I haven’t had interesting things happen over the last couple of weeks to be blogging about. It just seemed as though a great idea would pop in my head on a day that I was so busy working and writing other people’s blog posts that I couldn’t get to my own.

I’ve had lots of topics come to mind:

• Should I blog about the insanity of the new toner cartridges I have to order costing $600 while the whole printer with three colors and black toner would cost me $220?
• Perhaps I should blog about what a great printer that was since I’ve had it for two years and this is the first time the color cartridges have run dry.
• Maybe I could write about the difference between marketing and advertising. Nah…that one will take too much thought.
• There are a few real estate tools I could blog about, but I’d have to piece it together.
• The book “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer was an amazing read, but it’s not a business book. Could I extrapolate a business lesson from that book? Stop it Jaime – you read that for pleasure.

Now, keeping in mind that I have two children under the age of three, and I have not slept through the night since June 2005 (no exaggeration) maybe I was experiencing some negativity from the sleep deprivation. I mean, I have the ability to turn any of those topics into interesting blog posts, right?  Probably, but I just haven’t had the time. All of my best hours have been spent on client work (and of course, aforementioned children).

I felt that any post I would make would simply not be good. I’ve posted less than stellar posts in the past, just for the sake of posting something. That, my friends, is a mistake. No post is better than a boring post.

So, I think you should thank me now for not cluttering your RSS feeder with uninspiring posts over the last two weeks.

I have come to learn that it’s true in blogging as it is in life. If you don’t have anything nice to say, really, don’t say anything at all.

3 Comments »