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Happy Thanksgiving

Posted by Laurie on Oct 12, 2010 in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Shhhh, I’m a day late, but I was actually spending Thanksgiving with my family and I just didn’t quite get here until now! My boys were off for a four day weekend, combining a PD day with the holiday weekend, so it was a pretty hectic and fun time.

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to give thanks for so many things – of course your family and friends, but also so many things in business. Here are my top five things I’m grateful for at Halo Secretarial this Thanksgiving:

1. Great clients
2. Interesting projects
3. Opportunities to learn and grow as a business owner
4. The knowledge that I can make life easier for my clients
5. My iPhone….I know, I know, but it really does make my life so much easier sometimes!

Happy Thanksgiving – hope you enjoyed your turkey (or bbq if you were at my house!) Of course if you’re not Canadian, you won’t have Thanksgiving for another month and a half, but it’s never too early to start thinking about it, is it?!

Summer is Really Over

Posted by Laurie on Sep 15, 2010 in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Summer is a wonderful time to be self-employed. I took a couple of vacations, spent afternoons at the park with my children, and kept up with my client work! I did not keep up with blogging or even tweeting though. Now that summer is really over, it’s time to get back on track. Summer might be a good time for just keeping up, but fall, with it’s invigorating weather and beautiful colors, is a time for starting fresh and getting motivated.

Weekly posts will be resuming shortly, and I’m also planning on starting a monthly newsletter with helpful information and the latest happenings at Halo Secretarial. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a beautiful fall photo. Here in Alberta, the leaves are already changing and the weather is brisk!

Article in the Carolina Paralegal News

Posted by Laurie on Jun 14, 2010 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

A while back I was interviewed for this piece (Virtual Paralegals – Page 3) and it was quite exciting to see some quotes attributed to me in the article!

I also enjoyed reading the comments from some of my contemporaries like Cathy Ribble and Tina Marie Hilton.  I haven’t been as heavily into the social networking scene lately (too busy!) and the article was a nice reminder of the amazing community that is evolving for virtual legal assistants and virtual paralegals. I need to spend more time in it!

Maybe later though….work is calling my name again. Later all!

Holiday Hours for Halo Secretarial

Posted by Laurie on Dec 14, 2009 in Uncategorized | Comments Off

I’ve already had one or two clients ask about this, so I probably should have been on the ball sooner and shared my hours. I’m going to send out an email to all clients as well, but just to make sure potential clients are aware too, I’m posting the holiday “hours” for Halo Secretarial below:

Closed: Dec 24, Dec 25, Dec 26 and  Dec 31, Jan 1

As always, feel free to email questions anytime, but I won’t check my email too often over those two periods.  We’ll be entertaining a semi-large crowd for dinner on Christmas and of course it is just nice to spend time with family over the holidays!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

Organization for Your Business

Posted by Laurie on Aug 13, 2009 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

Keeping organized and on top of projects is how I keep up with my growing virtual legal assistant business, three boys, a house, a dog and general life, especially with my husband regularly working out of town for weeks at a time.

I stay organized with a number of tools, each with its own purpose. I use Google Calendar a lot, because not only does it help me stay on top of meetings and appointments, but it also lets me share calendars with some clients, which allows us to plan and work together easily. I can access my Google calendar on any computer and even a mobile version on my phone’s web browser – perfect! If you are a student like, Izzie, 1L Poet or No Reins Girl, you may want to have a shared calendar with your study group even!

For keeping track of personal appointments I use both my Google Calendar and a family wall calendar. I used to only use the wall calendar for this, but learned the necessity of having personal appointments in my work calendar thanks to one incredibly frustrating double-booking experience.

In addition to my calendars, I use task lists to help me stay organized and on my game. I use the task list in my email system for a simple daily to-do list and I use the milestones and tasks within my project management system to stay on top of project deadlines. I also use a wall chalkboard for personal to-dos (yup, I like lists!!)

In general, I personally like cloud applications for organization and business management, but having a physical reminder in front of me (like a to-do list on the back of some scrap paper, or my wall chalkboard) is also very helpful.

New Business Cards

Posted by Laurie on Jun 24, 2009 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

I recently decided to order some personal calling cards for my mom blog, as I’m traveling  to BlogHer in July and have heard that having cards there really helps keep track of who you are meeting in the huge crowd.  While making my selections for cards I decided I should maybe update my business cards for Halo Secretarial as well. My first set of cards, while not out of date, are fairly bland looking and a bit too pink! They mostly matched my original website, but since I had my logo and colors updated this winter I realize that I needed a classier looking card to go with it.

My first card also emphasized the title of Virtual Assistant, and my new card uses the term I’ve since used more often to describe myself, Virtual Legal Assistant. I love both parts of what I do (admin and legal assistant work) but for the purposes of my business card I prefer to distinguish myself by adding in the “legal”.

With that said, check out my new cards and tell me what you think!

Virtual Legal Assistant business card

Sorry, I didn’t get them onto the scanner very straight!