If you live on PEI, you will see that the feature article by Mary MacKay in the Guardian today is about the virtual assistance industry. It’s impossible to miss the huge picture of myself and my daughter, Casey.

When I started my business in June of 2006, I sent a press release to the local paper. It was picked up, but it was not printed in it’s entirety, and it was just a tiny little piece in the paper - nobody would have noticed it. I also received press in the Eastern Graphic later that year, but it didn’t attract any new business, and it focused more on me than what I do for my clients.

Forging ahead, trying to educate as many Islanders as possible about the VA industry, since there are so many small businesses here, I kept writing the Guardian.

Back in late September, I sent an email to one of the reporters to pitch a story about virtual assistance. He put me in touch with Mary and finally…the article is in today’s paper.

I hope that many business people will realize that there is another option if they don’t have the means to hire a full time employee.

I’m very pleased with the article. If you are interested in reading it, the electronic version is here.

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Last night I had a most enjoyable consultation call with what is now my newest client.

This team of agents was referred to me by a current client, Larry Hann, and I really appreciate the referral.

I received my first email from them a couple of months ago, and I diligently followed up with them. They were very interested in my services, but needed time to get organized enough to decide how they would best use their Mann Made Time.

I did not wait for them to get back to me. I emailed them every couple of weeks to see how they were doing. My last email to them was sent yesterday, and it resulted in them contacting me to have a phone discussion last night.

Want to see the fancy message I sent them? If you aren’t following up because you think you will be nagging people, think again:

“Hi (name)

Just checking in to see if you’re ready for that phone call! Hope all is well.

Jaime”

Would they have contacted me yesterday had I not sent them a follow up email?I’ll never know, unless I ask them, but I highly doubt it.

I wrote a book for VAs on the subject of following up, called ‘The Art of Follow Up‘. In that ebook, (which retails for only $24.95 ) I tell my readers that rule #1 of follow up is to never wait for the potential client to contact you first. Busy people are simply too busy. You must keep your name in front of them so when they are ready, you make it that much easier for them to contact you.

There are many reasons for not following up with leads, but none of them are excuse enough not to do it. You’re literally halting your own business’s growth if you fail to make contact again (and again) with these people.

If you have any questions that I can answer, feel free to post comments. I love talking about follow up!

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I wonder…

When Oprah was a little girl, did she have any inkling of what the future held for her? Did she have any idea when she started her career that she would become a household name?
When Phil McGraw started his practice, did he think he would encounter Oprah and become a household name himself?

What about Martha? Did Martha think that she would build an empire around her domesticity?

Donald Trump. A real estate investor with his own reality show where he has thousands of people rallying to be employed by him. When he was a little boy, did he see gold covered walls and the best of everything in his future?

These people are celebrities of our time…granted it doesn’t take much to become a celebrity these days…but these four individuals are not going to be forgotten anytime soon.

What sets them apart? How did they get where they are? Is it just pure hard work? Is it luck? Is it brilliant marketing strategies and business sense? Probably a combination of these things. One thing is for absolute certain. They are hard working (maybe not so much anymore!), passionate about what they do, and they definitely have drive.

I was watching Dr. Phil today which is something I never do because with a toddler in the house, if it’s not animated it’s not being watched by anyone! Anyway, he was on the TV and I started thinking about this.  Is it so crazy to think that if a real estate investor, a journalist, a homemaker and a psychologist can reach such heights of fame the same might happen for a virtual assistant?

Now I’m not saying that I want a TV show or a ‘Tower’ or anything, but I am allowed to dream that someday, when a person hears the name “Mann Made Time”, they will recognize it as a virtual assistance firm. Or, if someone starts a discussion about virtual assistance, the person they’re speaking with will say, “Oh yes, that’s what Mann Made Time does.”

Heck, at the very least, it would be nice if one day I could tell people that I’m a VA and they wouldn’t just nod and smile!

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How do you measure success?

That’s a question all business owners should be asking themselves.

Is it the awards you win? The money you make? The people you help?

Sure it can be all of those things, but sometimes it’s the smaller things that make you feel like a true success. Sometimes it’s as simple as making someone proud.

My brother is taking a college course and he was asked to interview a successful entrepreneur. He chose me. It might be because he knew it would be easy to ask me, but I believe he feels I am a success.

I was extremely touched that he chose to ask me. I answered his interview questions. I’ve done a couple of similar interviews in the past, but for some reason, having this request come from one of my little brothers (he’s not so little, I guess, he’s 21) meant a lot to me.

Sometimes when I’m knee deep in client work, changing diapers and trying not to burn dinner, I don’t feel like that much of a success.

I won the Janet Jordan Achievement Award last year which was a HUGE honor, and that gave me my first real feeling of ’success’. I’ve had a couple other moments like that in the past year, but being asked to answer some simple interview questions by my brother gives me almost the same feeling I had on the day I found out I won.

Thanks BJ.

How do you measure success?

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