Traditional planning/goal setting time may well be the beginning of January, but I actually think the beginning of December is a great time to set a day aside to start planning the upcoming year AND to review the past year to see if you’ve met your goals.

The review part of the process is especially important if, like many of us, it is your business year end on December 31. Have a look at your finances and expenses for the year. It may be a good time to make some last minute purchases (need a new computer?!) so that you can use the expenses against this year’s taxes. Also, you can evaluate if you have been paying enough tax, so that you can make appropriate deductions come January, instead of waiting until after you actually file your 2009 taxes in the spring.

December can typically be a very busy month, but it can also be slow in some aspects for your business. Many people are so busy with personal commitments that they aren’t producing as much volume of work, or they are taking downtime during the holidays so not as much marketing or networking is getting done. This means you may find yourself with a day here and there in December where you can sit down and start doing your planning for the upcoming year.

If you want to be able to hit the ground running come January 1st (okay – maybe January 2nd since you are probably sleeping in on January 1st!) have a look at this year end checklist or check out these suggestions. Think about what was the most successful business tool you implemented this past year (was it a process, a marketing technique, some type of hardware or software?) Think about what held you back in growing your business this past year. Look for some new networking opportunities for the new year. So many opportunities are out there waiting for us if we just plan for them and then grab them when we see them!

I’m going to set a deadline for myself of mid-December for my planning day – what about you? Got any ideas to share?

I’ve been thinking about becoming part of a Mastermind group or mentor/mentee relationship for some time now, and last night (when I should have been sleeping!) I read a great post from the Build a Solo Practice Blog over at Solo Practice University about why solo practitioners need a mastermind group. Whether you are a lawyer, a virtual assistant or any other kind of business owner, there are good options available for you. For example, if you are a virtual assistant there is a colleague I really respect, Alyssa Gregory, who has just started an intriguing looking program at VAHub, called the VAHub Club. Definitely worth looking into, especially if you are a new or aspiring VA!

I’ve personally looked at a variety of options for a mastermind group, ideally with other virtual legal assistants. There are some paid options, but my personal preference is for a small group with no fee, where everyone in the group would be treated as equals, although some members are likely to be more experienced than others.  I think a better group dynamic will be achieved without paying a fee. But I could be wrong and some people may not take it seriously without paying. Any thoughts from my wonderful readers on this topic?

I am definitely going to include this in my development plan – to help grow Halo Secretarial into my vision of what a virtual legal assistant business can be, a mastermind group surely can only help! Now, to figure out exactly how to get started…

Working from home as a virtual legal assistant is not all work – no play! In fact, one of the best things about working for myself from home is the ability to have flexibility in my day. Today I have had quite a varied day already and it’s not even 2pm yet! I’ve done some client work, reviewed next week’s schedule on my calendar, bought buspasses for my kindergarten/grade two kiddos and had the pleasure of a phone conversation with Vicki Voisin of The Paralegal Mentor.

Next up in my day is a very rare evening out with my best friend and then a weekend of about half work and half fun.

If you want a little bit of relaxation this Friday afternoon, here are a couple of fun links for you:

Want to see a fun little graph of how the Internet sees You? Try this link (my graph is below, and semi-accurate, lol)

Some truly hilarious quotes over at The “Blog” of Unnecessary Quotes  (hat tip to @RandallMoeller)

And a couple of my favorite little jokes from a recent forwarded email. I never even READ forwarded joke emails normally, but this had me laughing hysterically (ok some of the funnier ones turn out not to be blog post appropriate, sorry, but still these are good!):

Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the “people you
may know” feature on facebook people that I do know, but i deliberately
choose not to be friends with?

I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it’s on
shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my itunes.

It really pisses me off when I want to read a story on
CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text.

Have a great weekend!!

I was reading over at The Lawyerist this morning about the Ten Great Rules of Client Service, which reminded me that I want to order something to maybe give as a client gift and to use for promotional purposes in general. I’m planning on ordering some travel mugs with my logo on them, but I can’t decide! I’m probably ordering from this website, they are a Canadian site (easier for delivery to me) and have decent prices.
So far these are my top two choices, I’d love some input on your fave!

I like something with color, rather than a plain silver mug, as I think it may be slightly more attention grabbing!

The war over Microsoft Word that is. I was fascinated to see that Canadian firm i4i Inc. has won a permanent injunction against Microsoft in relation to a patent infringement issue dealing with custom xml translations.

I4i sued Microsoft in March, 2007, claiming the Redmond, Wash., company had infringed on a patent awarded in 1998 for manipulating complex data in electronic documents. The jury verdict had initially recommended damages in the amount of $200-million.

I’ll certainly be watching to see what happens, as it’s been indicated that Microsoft will appeal the verdict. Of course they will, right? Big money even for such a big company. For a little more on the topic have a look over at Jeff Krause’s Practice Management blog.

And on the topic of Word, can someone please tell the version on my laptop to stop causing Vista to freeze? Thanks!

I received an exciting tweet from @SteveMatthews this week, sharing an article from the current issue of ABA’s Law Practice Magazine (the innovation issue), in which he mentioned Halo Secretarial as an example of the innovative possibilities of virtual legal assistants for law practices. What an honour!!

There were several fascinating articles in the issue actually. Innovation is an interesting topic in law, as so often innovation simply means catching up to the mainstream! I highly recommend you check out some of the articles, you can see the index here to see what topics were covered.

What can I say? It was too exciting to be on tv, even if just for a short interview!  Here’s the link to CTV Edmonton’s Twitter story from Monday, March 2nd, featuring yours truly.

Interestingly (to me, probably not to anyone else!) the story was about using Twitter and discussed the angle of how I’ve networked on Twitter to the advantage of my virtual legal assistant business. Interesting because they actually found me only because of my personal twitter account, not my business one! Now I’m sure that’s not a reason to have two accounts (as per some interesting discussions on Twitter recently), but I stand by my choice to keep my personal tweets fairly separate from my business ones!

Addison of ProWAHM recently contacted me and asked if she could do a feature post about Halo Secretarial Services on her blog. The post is up today and I invite you to check it out!

It’s nice to be noticed on a blog about being a work at home mom. I love working from home as a virtual legal assistant, but I probably never would have pursued the entrepreneurial path if it wasn’t for my wonderful children. They have inspired me to take on the challenges and rewards of being self-employed and I am so glad they did. I’ve truly never been happier in my career than I am now, and I have really enjoyed many of my past jobs, so that’s saying a lot!

If you are reading my blog and you really want to pursue your dream of self-employment I encourage you to put a plan into place and take steps to make it happen. If you really want it you won’t regret making the move!

I’ve never tried to embed a video on my blog before (I need to do this more often!!) but I was so inspired when I saw this video called The Lost Generation over on Susan Cartier Liebel’s great blog Build A Solo Practice, LLC.  Thank goodness she posted the link on Twitter – I haven’t gotten to my reader in a few days so I don’t know when I would have seen this! You really have to watch this video – the WHOLE thing!! It’s under two minutes and well worth your time!

So what generation are you all from anyway? Does it affect your behaviour, your morals, your desires? Personally I’m at the tail end of Gen X, born in 1975.  I don’t really know how this has affected my life specifically – I tend to think simply of how my family, my upbringing and specific cultural factors have influenced my life and work ethic. I know I’m much like other women of my age – I want a family and a career, I want an equal partnership with my husband and I happily embrace new technology as quickly as I can. Ok, that one seems common here in my blogging and Twittering world but I’m ahead of the curve technologically speaking in my immediate circle of family and friends. Half of them don’t even know what a blog is – shocking as that is to me!!!

I know that all these factors, combined with things like the cost of childcare here in Canada have lead to me choosing the entrepreneurial path. Owning a virtual assistant company and offering my legal assistance services on basically a “freelance” basis allows me to achieve (most days) that elusive balance so many women of my era are seeking. So according to this definition of Generation X, I guess am pretty typical of my generation!

I think many of us are overwhelmed some days, some weeks even, by the demands on our time and wonder if what we’re doing is working. I read this beautiful post by Kelly Phillips Erb (aka Taxgirl) today about Martin Luther King and achieving justice. Now, having worked with lawyers for so many years I have a ton of respect for the work that they do and know that access to justice is so important, even if sometimes things aren’t so black and white as we would wish.

But Kelly’s post was also inspiring to me on another whole level. She talked about questioning her role and how sad it can be when everything is about getting paid. I’ve been feeling like it can be such a struggle to establish my virtual assistant business – to find clients who I can partner with and offer my best and have them appreciate it. I forget to take time to simply appreciate the place I have already made it to. The place where I get to take an afternoon off and play in the snow with my boys, the place where I do LOVE my current clients and a place where there is so much potential! So I’m not getting rich, and maybe I never will, but I am having a great time, meeting amazing people and spending way more time with my children than I ever did working as an in-house paralegal. It is so worth it to keep on working and learning and growing.