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.

Happy New Year!!!

I meant to get this post up yesterday, but actually, January 1 seems like a great day to set out my plans for this exciting new year. I have a lot of goals and I know what I want and expect out of the coming year. This past year gave me time to ease into this business of being a work at home mom, to develop my virtual legal assistant skills and do plenty of networking and now I am so excited about what the future has in store!

Affirmations

A big part of my plans for this year are about affirmations. I read a great article just a little while ago (in Good Housekeeping!) about affirmations. I loved it! It’s something I believe in but don’t utilize near enough, so one of the things I will start doing this year is to put a copy of my affirmations in places in my home where I will see them daily and then I will have that extra confidence builder I need.

Marketing

This year I am finally going to do some local marketing. Just because my business if virtually based doesn’t mean that the local market doesn’t have a need for my services. I’m following the suggestions of some fellow VA’s and doing a simple postcard mailout for now to some law offices in Alberta. I’ve already started work designing it and it should be done and out by mid-January.

Networking

I definitely want to do some in-person networking in 2009. The biggest part of this plan will be my July trip to the annual BlogHer conference in Chicago. It will be my first blogging conference and I’m really excited to network with other bloggers “IRL” (in real life being the theme of BlogHer ‘09!) It’ll also be a real test in respect of accomplishing my work while on the road, although I do plan to lighten my load to be fair to my clients.

Clients

Speaking of clients – my plans for 2009 include adding at least 3 more “ideal” clients to my roster. By ideal I mean clients who I feel I can work with in a long-term and successful partnership, individuals or businesses whose work interests me and who will utilize my strengths and challenge me with some interesting work.

Blog

I plan to post at least 3 times per week to my blog. I want to provide content that is informative, interesting and timely. I’ve managed to do pretty well this past year, but I know going into my second year of business blogging that there will be times that I’m busy, or feeling uninspired so it’s important to have a goal to stick to.

Service

It might be last on my list of plans/goals for 2009, but this is of course the most critical component to my virtual assisstant practice. I have every intention of providing incredible value to each and every one of my clients; the ones who I work for a couple of hours a month and the ones who need ten hours of assistance each week. It’s so important to me that I make life easier for my clients, help them grow their businesses, and provide a cheerful and professional shoulder for them to lean on so that they aren’t overburdened by their workloads. My business IS about their businesses after all, not just about me!!

So that’s what I have in the works for 2009 – I’d love to hear what you are doing to make 2009 a successful year for your business. Take care!

I’m not a Canadian “law” blogger per se, but I am Canadian, my blog does target the legal field and of course I  read tons of legal blogs (plenty from the fabulous Canadian Law Blogs List!), so I wanted to share a quick post on my 3 favourite Canadian law blogs. I hope they all get recognition from Clawbies!

My absolute favourite has to be Law21 by Jordan Furlong.  Jordan always shares such great information and has wonderful insight into current happenings in the legal field.  And can I say how much I love the look of his blog since his redesign – it’s a great example of how a blog should look in my opinion.

Another Canadian legal blog I really enjoy reading is Human Rights in the Workplace by Donna Seale. Donna has a great conversational tone to her blog and she shares her knowledge about human rights issues in a thoughtful and useful manner.

Another Canadian law blog I discovered some time back that I really enjoy is Rule of Law – Stan shares a lot of helpful information about estate law with just the right amount of personality thrown into the mix!
There are tons of other great Canadian Law Blogs out there to enjoy, but these are my favourites! And now it is time to get on with the weekend (and while I’m a Canadian mom, thankfully my weekend is in a warm soccer complex, not on a chilly ice rink – until next year at least!) I’ll be keeping my eye out for other blog posts about everyone’s choice for the 2008 Clawbies – should give me plenty of weekend reading!

I am in the process of finding some simple, eco-friendly holiday cards to send out to clients and a few business contacts. I was so impressed when a google search turned up a post over at MamaDivas about a wonderful line of stationary from My Good Greetings. Their products are, as they state:

printed on 100% recycled, carbon neutral paper which is Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certified. We use 100% digital short-run presses which significantly reduce paperwaste and emit 90% less Volatile Organic Compounds

If I was buying personal Christmas cards I think I’d definitely go with this style – it’s so pretty isn’t it?

Peace Love Joy holiday card

I don’t have a current family picture that is appropriate though – agh! Plus really I want something for my business to send out, so picture cards aren’t really what I was thinking of, although I may try them next year. Instead I’m going to use one of the invitation templates to create a holiday business card! I’ll post a pic of it when I get them!

Oh and Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow to my American readers! Canadian Thanksgiving was in early October so we are definitely moving into full Christmas planning mode! Remember I have a special holiday offer for those of you who could use some virtual assistant help over the holidays (or anytime, lol!)

Take care!

Just an fyi, as you check in on this blog or my virtual assistant site if you see anything wonky, especially in the color scheme, it’s cause I’m having it adjusted a bit and a new logo designed. Nothing wildly different, just hopefully a little more professional and elegant. I loved the pink personally, but thought a green shade would be more suitable to my target market.

And I have to say, I think it’s great to do a site/blog review every few months to make sure that it is working for you. Nothing has to be forever and a little updating can be just the thing to attract a new client or simply inspire you to post more! I change things up fairly regularly over at my mom blog, but have hesitated to play too much with this one because I do think it’s important not to go all crazy on a business blog! Then I tried to play with the color scheme just a little and realized that while I could figure out the css a bit, I couldn’t redo my own logo too well, so thankfully I’ve hired Brianna of Mad Hatter Web Design to come to my rescue! She originally helped me with the site using an already existing logo, and I knew she was just the person for this job! And the draft of the new logo is so pretty that I feel even better about my choice.

Hope everyone had a great Friday and a wonderful weekend. I’m off to be soccer mom tomorrow for the morning and then cookie baking in the afternoon. Of course I’ll be checking my Twitter regularly throughout – take care!

I love when I read an inspiring blog post like this great one over at Law 21 today. Like Jordan, I’m Canadian so I didn’t vote yesterday (but I did vote in the recent Canadian election!!) I did watch CNN a lot last night though and I really enjoyed Obama’s speech. That man is a powerful and inspiring speaker!

I think I value inspiration so much because sometimes this “change” thing is hard, really hard.  I know for me changing my mindset from employee to business owner has been hard. And trying to establish my virtual legal assistant business in an industry that is not exactly known for being innovative has been daunting, to say the least! But I do believe in myself, and I think Jordan’s right when he talks about how things that seemed impossible 20 years ago will be simply standard 20 years from now. I’m 33 right now and I can’t wait to see what the world will be like 20 years from now, when my children are grown and starting their post-secondary educations and careers. Will they think virtual businesses are just business as usual? Will they telecommute or co-work? How often will they stop by the local coffee shop for coffee and wi-fi?!

The future is uncertain, but bright I think!

This week I’d like to suggest that if you need to save time, and realize that even a few minutes here and there really adds up – try this:

Do things at off-peak hours

Going to the bank at 2pm often is much quicker than going at opening or at lunch time.  Going to the grocery store just after lunch on a weekday or first thing on a Sunday morning is much less time consuming than going on a Saturday afternoon. Commute times can be slashed if you can leave much earlier or later than the general population.

These are just a few simple suggestions, but many of your regular activities involve more time than you realize simply because of when you do them.  Maybe you can’t adjust them all, but any flexibility you use to allow you to complete tasks or errands at off-peak times will improve both your efficiency and your attitude (after all nothing is as frustrating as wasting time!!)

Hope that this helps a little – take care!!

This week’s time tip is very simple, but truly powerful.  It involves two parts:

1. Every Sunday morning spend 15 minutes reviewing your calendar for the next 2 weeks.  Make sure you have no conflicts and that you know how much free time you have.
2. Now that you’ve reviewed your schedule make sure you add something to it – time for yourself!  Even if it’s just one 15 minute block during each day, it’s very important to get that little break each day.

Hope you have a great week everyone!

I mean political payoff in a positive way of course!  It’s election time soon (yes, here in Canada too!) and while I always follow some of the issues and make a point of voting, I never have given much thought to volunteering in any way.  Then I read this great post over at Counsel to Counsel and realized there could be so many benefits to getting involved in politics.

For one, I can show my kids how important it is to take action. I want them to know there is no change unless we all work toward it together.

For another, it will be a great opportunity to network with others in my community.  I might make a friend or a business contact, and that would be great!

My political candidate usually does quite well where I live, but victory is never certain and we all need to contribute when we can.  Have you thought about getting involved with politics this fall?