Posts made in August, 2008

Are You Thinking About Leaving the Rat Race?

Posted by Laurie on Aug 27, 2008 in Legal Practice, paralegal, virtual legal assistance | Comments Off

The rat race – aka the “real” world – is not all it’s cracked up to be. Commuting, meetings, contributing for yet another group gift – working in an office takes a lot out of us all. If you are thinking about getting out and starting a home-based or virtual business I highly recommend you check out The Rat Race Rebellion or the blog of the same name. The authors of the site/blog are the wonderful individuals who wrote the book The Two-Second Commute, a book I absolutely enjoyed and was critical in helping me decide to start my own virtual legal assistance business from my home.

Having said that, you’ll understand how pleased I was when my google alert this weekend turned up a notice that of a hit on my name from The Rat Race Rebellion Blog – on a post about how virtual paralegals are a great option but need more media attention to get lawyers to realize the value. Guess that interview with the CT Law Tribune was a great idea!!

Passion For Hire

Posted by Laurie on Aug 26, 2008 in blogging, Inspiration, paralegal, virtual assistance | 4 comments

Did that title catch your attention? I sure hope so, because it’s the inspiration for this post, which I’m writing to submit to the Killer Title project over at Problogger. You can check out the contest results on Friday and also check back at my blog on Friday, as I’ll be taking Darren up on his suggestion to post a list of my favorite titles/posts from the competition.

I might have been inspired by the contest, but the content of this post is simply inspired by my passion for my work. I LOVE being a virtual assistant. I love the feeling I get when I know my clients’ businesses are growing. I love showing my clients how easy it is to work with a virtual assistant and I love learning from them about their businesses, their lives and their passions! I also love working in my pj’s!!!

I used to enjoy my job in the “real” world, I was a legal assistant and paralegal for over 10 years. I worked in a couple of different places, made friends and worked hard. I went home at the end of the day and usually didn’t think much more about work after that (until the next morning anyway!) I would never have told you I was passionate about my job then though. I was just putting in my time until the next vacation, the next summer picnic, the next baby and maternity leave.

This past year I started my own virtual assistant business, offering virtual assistance to business owners and lawyers from my home office in Alberta. The work isn’t that different from what I did before. I need more clients to be profitable and I work an awful lot of hours! Still the feeling I get from being my own boss, from interacting with other virtual assistants, bloggers and twitterers (my home office water cooler!) is absolutely amazing. I’m using this newfound passion to develop my business and to help my clients improve their businesses! So if your business needs an injection of passion look me up!

How Do Mobile Offices Work

Posted by Laurie on Aug 25, 2008 in Home Office, virtual assistance | Comments Off

If you want to see a good example of how a business can be really mobile and paperless watch this video from over at 21quinces. I love the tablet pc (like this one I’m guessing) that the realtor in the video uses. I think I might have to put one on my wish list!

Technology seems to improve by leaps and bounds every year – and even a regular laptop nowadays can make it so much easier to work from anywhere you want. I usually run my virtual assistant business right from home, but I know that I can take my computer with me if I’m traveling and still get everything done. My faxes come straight to my computer, most of my clients contact me by email or call my cell phone, and just in case I need something from my desktop computer I have SugarSync set up on all my computers which gives me access to all of my files from pretty much anywhere.

I recommend that all solo or small businesses try to be set up to be as mobile as possible. You may not stray far, but it’s nice to know you can if the opportunity comes up to take a trip or you just feel office-bound somedays and want to head to a local coffee shop to work!

Let’s Go Surfing! Link Surfing for the Weekend

Posted by Laurie on Aug 22, 2008 in Family, Inspiration, virtual legal assistance | 2 comments

I’m going to try and not work too much this weekend, we’re taking the kiddos to a waterpark and I need to finish getting organized for back to school (Sept 2!!) There’s always time for a little linksurfing and twittering though!!
Here are some links to peruse if you get a chance this weekend – and have a wonderful one!

From MasterMaq – where do we want free Wifi in Edmonton

Ooooh – just found this Alberta Blogs blog and I want to join – will be sending them an email!!

Good reminder from Gavin Craig at Minneapolis Business Lit blog

From Erin Blaskie – discussion of the VA Industry

Great post on capped fees from Law 21

Loved this one from Duct Tape Marketing on Social Media

Over at Build a Solo Practice, LLC is a great inspirational post about becoming an entrepreneur

Virtual Law Practice shares that virtual law offices are really catching on across several states now – yay!

Fluent Simplicity shares a great story about the power of Twitter

This video post from Freelance Parent over at Sparkplugging is a MUST watch

Create a Thriving Business has a wonderful post about how you MUST be online in to truly grow your business

Hope you enjoy some of these links and take care!

Continuous Education – Part of My VA Career

Posted by Laurie on Aug 21, 2008 in blogging, virtual assistance | Comments Off

I am a strong believer in continuing education. Maybe it’s because I love to read and I really enjoyed school. Maybe it’s because I believe in improving myself. Or maybe it’s just because I’m so independent I like to do everything myself!

One of the things I’m learning about right now is WordPress. I had help setting up my VA site and blog, which are both WordPress based. I want to have some idea how to manage it myself though, so I learned how to use ftp and setup my own plugins and learned to manage my own editing and make small changes to the design. Now, to further my WP skills, I’m setting up a personal blog. It’s actually easier than I had expected, although I still think it was well worth the money to have someone set up my VA blog, especially when it comes to putting the logo into place and such.

I’m not planning on offering WP help to my clients or anything, but I do want to know enough to be able to update my own site and make suggestions to clients about possible changes to their blogs. WordPress is a great platform for this and I highly recommend it!