Entrepreneurial

Some Shameless Self Promotion

Posted by Laurie on Mar 4, 2009 in Entrepreneurial, networking, virtual legal assistance | Comments Off

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!

Profiled on ProWAHM

Posted by Laurie on Feb 9, 2009 in Entrepreneurial, virtual legal assistance | Comments Off

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!

Generation Labels

Posted by Laurie on Jan 21, 2009 in Entrepreneurial, Inspiration, work life balance | Comments Off

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!

It IS Worth It

Posted by Laurie on Jan 19, 2009 in Entrepreneurial, Inspiration | Comments Off

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.

More on Choosing a Virtual Assistant

Posted by Laurie on Jan 6, 2009 in Entrepreneurial, virtual assistance | 2 comments

Recently I had a post about choosing a virtual assistant with the help of Twitter. That post mostly focused on the different types of work or niches that a virtual assistant can offer to your business, but today I’d like to talk about another factor to consider in finding the perfect virtual assistant for your business.

TIME

You need to consider how much time you need your virtual assistant to spend helping you, and how exactly your virtual assistant charges for her time. Many virtual assistants prefer to work on a retainer basis – offering packages of 10-40 hours per month generally speaking. This means that if you contract one of these assistants you are paying for a minimum number of hours per month, regardless of how much time you actually use. If you go over your minimum number of hours there is an extra fee. Some virtual assistants will allow unused time to roll over to another month, some do not.

It can be very hard at first to be sure of exactly how much time your virtual assistant will need to dedicate to complete the tasks or work you need completed. You may prefer to work with a virtual assistant who will simply bill hourly on an as needed basis. Or you may prefer to work with an assistant who charges on a per project basis, eliminating the typical hourly billing procedure altogether. A lot will depend of course on the type of work you need completed, your personal style and the policies of the virtual assistant you prefer to work with. Each arrangement has advantages and disadvantages.

Another thing to be sure of is whether your chosen virtual assistant will have the time in his/her schedule to perform a greater proportion of work as you become more comfortable with their skills and they become more educated about your business. Some of the best virtual assistants have pretty full schedules already after all, especially if they have been in business a long time. On a similar note, many virtual assistant practices are team-based or use sub-contractors. This is something you should be aware of and comfortable with. If you prefer to always work with one specific person make sure you are very clear about that when contracting a virtual assistant.

Here at Halo Secretarial I offer dedicated virtual assistant service – I have no team or subcontractors working with me. That may change some day in the future, as my client roster is filling up, but I will always let my clients know if I start working with another virtual assistant. And as for hours/billing – I personally am happy to work on pretty much any basis that is most appropriate for the situation and my clients’ needs. See my rates page for more information!

Change

Posted by Laurie on Dec 30, 2008 in Entrepreneurial, Legal Practice, virtual legal assistance | 1 comment

I just read this post by Jordan Furlong over at Law21. I know it doesn’t seem like it at first, but it is a post about hope and about change. And I was honoured that Jordan mentioned Halo Secretarial as being a legal secretarial service that is ready for the changes that are (hopefully) coming in the future to law firms. Being included with the likes of game changers like Solo Practice University, JD Supra, or Virtual Law Office is so rewarding.

Change is exactly what I was after when I started my virtual legal assistance practice. Change for me personally but also with an awareness that if I could do this, so could so many other people! I have many friends who are paralegals, legal assistants and legal secretaries who feel trapped in the world of big law. They hang on to the ideals of pension plans, benefits and employer provided equipment. They love the idea of having flexibility, but traditional law firms think flexibility is letting you start at 9 am instead of 8:30 am!

Being a virtual legal assistant allows me the ability to create my own future – one where my days are about finding solutions for my clients, not just about putting in my time. If my clients are having a slow month, or are taking a vacation, I’m not going to bill them just to protect my own income. I believe in results oriented billing – when I am doing work for you, then I deserve to be paid a good rate, but when I take a break and go for an hour long walk, that’s on my dime! That’s why I didn’t even go with the traditional virtual assistant model of offering mostly hourly billing or retainer only. I don’t worry about minimum hourly requirements. I simply provide whatever level of assistance my clients need – an hour a month, an hour a day, or working on a project by project basis.

I plan to keep evaluating the changing legal world too – I sure hope I always have the vision to keep up with the changes that are sure to come and the wisdom to know that the best way to get ahead is to be an early adopter of whatever new systems and technologies seem to be the most valuable.