The 2-Second Commute

Join the Exploding Ranks of Freelance Virtual Assistants

Christine Durst, Michael Haaren

• Publisher: Career Press
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781601639103
• Topic: Desarrollo personal
• Subtopic: Carreras

Virtual Assistants work from home, providing everything from administrative support to high-end consulting via email, phone, and fax. Predicted to be a $130 billion industry by 2008, they don't commute, they set their own hours, and they get to spend time with their kids. Wouldn't you like to be a VA, too? Christine Durst founded the Virtual Assistant industry in 1995 from a basement office in rural Connecticut. Michael Haaren, an ex-Wall Street attorney (who grew up in a log cabin), was one of her clients. Together they launched Staffcentrix, a leading VA training company, and the International Virtual Assistants Association, built the first Portable Career/Virtual Assistant Training Program for the Armed Forces, presented at the United Nations, and transformed the Virtual Assistant movement into a global phenomenon. Drawing on years of experience training and mentoring Virtual Assistants around the world, Chris and Mike take the mystery out of home-based virtual careers, and help you avoid the common pitfalls, too.

In The 2-Second Commute, you'll learn how to:

• Market the skills you already have
• Overcome shyness to get the work you want
• Launch your VA business on a shoestring
• Use the business to strengthen your family
• And much more!

The 2-Second Commute's self-assessment exercises will help you decide whether the VA path is a good fit for you, or if you need to acquire new skills before setting out. Interviews with successful VAs, VA clients, and telework industry experts will help you find good clients and projects ASAP (and avoid bad ones), and leverage your first assignment toward a foundation of consistent cashflow that meets your financial and work-life goals. Along the way, you'll meet people who will support and inspire you to do what you, too, may have often longed to do: bid farewell to the rat race, earn a respectable income, and spend more time with your family.

CHAPTER 1

Why Become a Virtual Assistant?

Virtual Assistants log on at their home-based desks for a variety of reasons. Some have obligations or limitations or preferences that keep them at home (children, elderly parents, lack of transportation, physical mobility issues), others are living in areas where meaningful career opportunities are few (rural areas, developing countries), some do so out of environmental convictions, and still others find that being an “employee” simply doesn’t fit.

2-Second Spotlight

“What I Love About Being a VA”

Name:	Mary Hern
Business:	Kinetic Integration, Inc.
URL:	Mary has been so busy with clients that she hasn’t needed a Website.
Personal:	Mary is the mother of two and an Air Force spouse living in Norfolk, Virginia.

Several years ago when my husband and I decided to start a family, we agreed that I would stop working and stay at home to raise the children. When my daughter turned 1, however, I began to feel like something was missing. Having worked since I was 15, I had grown used to the social interplay of a workplace, the motivation to succeed and even the need for problem-solving skills under pressure. Being at home without the demand for many of those skills, I knew something had to give.

I decided to take a more professional approach to my household. I organized closets and drawers, moved the furniture until the carpet wore thin, and developed to-do lists that brought tears to my husband’s eyes. Still, I needed more. My husband asked me to put the house on a budget and find ways to cut costs. Clipping coupons and watching for sales became an obsession. I had become a “Stepford wife” and lost parts of myself that I truly missed.

Being a VA has given me the best of both worlds. I’m still at home raising my children and having a wonderful time—I still love waking up in the morning to decisions like, “Where would the tent made of blankets work best? Over the table or the couch?”—but I’m also part of something that feeds my need to interact with adults and contribute to professional society. I’m able to enjoy the details and simple triumphs of my day because when my children are tucked in bed at night, I can slip into my comfy pajamas and become the corporate woman I always dreamed of being.

As a VA, I manage projects, make decisions, and solve problems with the click of a mouse. Yet if my children need me, I’m there. If my family wants to go do something, we go. Our lives don’t revolve around my work schedule, but the results of my work are tangible. I’m happier, more fulfilled and I have something to bring to the table along with a home-cooked meal. This is living.

Whatever the reason, once the decision is made, a successful VA enjoys some great perks: control over her life, doing only the work she loves, working only with the clients she chooses, flexibility in the work schedule for family, friends, and personal interests, and no commute! (In gridlocked places such as northern Virginia, where co-author Mike lives and where the commutes can reach four or more hours a day, this can be a decisive consideration.) But in our opinion, of all the reasons we’ve heard, the most powerful for becoming a VA is for the individual’s personal and professional freedom and growth.

Freedom: The Personal Side

Why is it that when we see people with a true entrepreneurial spirit, an authentic sense of independence, there often seems to be a glow about them that no amount of fatigue or stress can overcome? The aura of some core joy seems to come shining through, no matter how heavy the responsibility that sits on their shoulders. (And some people, such as entrepreneurs with severe disabilities, are overcoming more challenges than most of us will ever know. Yet that core happiness still emerges, still prevails!)

Strange as it might sound, could it be that the air of enthusiasm and eagerness we see in them has been liberated by the day-to-day circumstances of their lives, their own “nine-to-five” routine?

In that single phrase is the key, we think, to the puzzle, because entrepreneurs have no routine. For an entrepreneur, the “routine” that other people submit to, and endure, and re-enact day after day—and grow so bored with and often literally sick of—is play, creativity, and, even better, self-indulgence.

Because getting up in the morning to do something you like is self-indulgent. It can be likened to eating your favorite dessert, or playing your favorite sport, or embracing those you love. After all, this is your company, your business—a part of yourself—and running it and shepherding it and parenting it into the future is a tonic, a stimulant, and a provocation to do better and exceed your limits—every day.

This is the deeply personal side of entrepreneurial freedom, the kind that liberates the spirit, too, and beckons the whole self to be free. (Though beyond the scope of this book, we believe there is most certainly a spiritual aspect to entrepreneurship, and that “good work done well” can definitely help unfetter the spirit. Just ask any artist or craftsperson. To do work that has no spiritual component, in our view, is ultimately empty and can quite soon end up “emptying” the person doing the work!)

Freedom: The Professional Side

Most of us have “worked for someone else” at some point in our lives, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with having a job, if that’s what you really want or need and if you understand what you’re giving up in exchange. Jobs can be a blessing for people who like guidance and structure, for people who prefer a fixed routine or working in group environments, and for people who like supervision. (Employment, of course, used to be a source of security, too—the comforting “pensions” of yesteryear—but that has become a rather quaint concept, these days.)

For the entrepreneurially minded, however, “employment” can be a curse, a brake, an intensely frustrating and horizon-limiting experience. (Co-author Chris, for example, used to work as a business manager in a small office. Often, when she suggested new procedures to make the business run more effectively, she’d be met with, “It’s working fine. We’ve been doing it this way for years!” Change is a fearful experience for those who are “employees” at heart, and the entrepreneur may often find herself stymied as she struggles to improve the organization. Nor will it help if the suggestions are being made by a woman, if the company is dominated by “old-school” men.)

The self-employed, however—the independent-minded, the “chart-my-own-course” and “don’t-fence-me-in” types—are free to be as creative and innovative as they like, free to set their own schedules and workloads, and free to say “no” when they feel like it or to say “yes” and not ask anyone’s “permission” when they want to take a break, a “mental health day,” or a much-needed vacation.

2-Second Spotlight

“VAs Paint Masterpieces, Too”

Name:	Evelyne Matti
Business:	e-Matti Virtual Business Support Services
URL:	www.e-matti.com.au
Personal:	Based in Sydney, Australia, Evelyne is married to a hotelier and is the proud mother of two.

My husband and my kids complain that I spend too much time on the computer—but I love what I do! I continually look for ways to improve my skills; that’s the fun part. Some people paint as a hobby. I create beautiful masterpieces too, and it happens to be part of my work! Who else can combine hobby and work and make money at it?

VAs can enjoy and flourish in this freedom, too, choosing the clients they prefer (and firing the bad ones) and deciding where and when to work, as well as how much they want to make while doing so. (A VA’s income, where demand is a constant, is determined directly by the quantity and quality of his or her work and the efforts she puts into marketing.)

Moreover, a VA who has a good skill set and makes a solid marketing effort can often earn more in her home office than she can as an employee. (Indeed, one of the VAs we trained recently billed $10,000 in one month.) In fact, according to The Wall Street Journal, self-employed people who provide services are usually paid at least 20 percent to 40 percent more per hour than employees who perform the same work.

As a self-employed person (in the United States) you’ll also be eligible for many tax benefits that employees can’t get. For example, instead of having federal and state taxes withheld from their paychecks, self-employed people normally pay estimated taxes directly to the IRS four times a year. This lets you hold on to your hard-earned money longer without having to turn it over to the taxman. Even more important, you may also be able to claim many business-related tax deductions that are available to people with home-based offices. (Be sure to check with your accountant or tax advisor to get the maximum benefits from your individual circumstances and the tax laws that apply in your location.)

Because of these tax benefits, the self-employed often pay less tax than employees who earn similar incomes.

Growth: The Personal Side

It isn’t enough to be free. Freedom without growth is as wasted as a fertile garden with no plants. Having your own business and working from home—the “free” side of the equation—set the stage for your personal growth. Facing and overcoming the day-to-day challenges of running a company, however small your initial business might be, fosters tremendous personal growth in the VA. Little by little, as the independent decisions and the learning and the progress of the business accumulate, the entrepreneur begins to see herself in a totally different light—a brighter, warmer, and much more positive perspective. (And her family and friends do, too!)

For those who enjoy working with entrepreneurs, as we do, witnessing this personal growth can be one of the most gratifying parts of the “job.” At the risk of sounding corny, it’s a bit like seeing a butterfly coming out of its chrysalis or a young deer bounding across a meadow in the spring. In our experience there is no substitute for the sheer excitement of seeing a new entrepreneur take wing.

We mentor and train VAs from around the world and given them many of the tools and the encouragement they need to start finding their footing. But we do nothing “for” them, nothing that would substitute for their own initiative and determination and courage. (Indeed, we feel that this would be a disservice to them and would delay the day when they act “alone,” and by doing so, truly grow.)

This is why it gives us such intense satisfaction to see a VA “take flight” and to receive an e-mail from someone we have never met—and perhaps never will—proclaiming in capital letters the joy she felt on discovering that she could do what she had hoped she could, achieve what she had dreamt of achieving, and telling us proudly how her self-esteem mounted as she overcame the challenges she had faced along the way.

Much has been spoken of “empowerment” over the years, be it the empowerment of minorities or women, of people with disabilities, or of other groups. And this is as it should be: Without power, we have no control over our lives, no self-determination. But one of the most empowering experiences open to anyone is to take the tiller of her own company and run it as she sees fit, to rely principally on herself for the outcome of her efforts, and to set her course, navigate...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 - Why Become a Virtual Assistant?
• CHAPTER 2 - Exploring Virtual Assistance
• CHAPTER 3 - Reality Checks and Self-Assessments
• CHAPTER 4 - Developing a “Service Menu” That You Can Live and Grow With
• CHAPTER 5 - Estimating Costs and Setting Fees
• CHAPTER 6 - Setting Up Your Business and Your Office
• CHAPTER 7 - Building a Healthy Foundation for Your Business
• CHAPTER 8 - Let the Marketing Begin!
• CHAPTER 9 - Pulling It All Together and Keeping It There
• CHAPTER 10 - The VA Toolbox: Resources and Information
• About the Authors