Some of you may know that I have been working on my business for over the past 2 years. Now quite a bit of that was going back to school, at the age of 50, and taking the Virtual Assistant Program at Red Deer College.

My background is 5 years as Office Manager/Mortgage Cooridinator for a brokerage firm in Vancouver, and 7 years as Assistant to the President at a brokerage firm in Toronto. Both involved very diverse support.

Then for the next 15 years I have been a stay at home mom to be there for our son, both for school and other activities. I cleaned houses, my own business, and then worked for Wal-Mart at night stocking shelves for two years. One night I had an issue with our supervisor (one of many) and left...

Nancy's Virtual Office

Hi Everyone

I had major surgery on September 21 and was in the hospital for 9 days. Before going in a made a plan to write articles, work on my blog, and learning how to link and use LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. I was going to be able to work from the hospital and come home and start implementing all the articles to various avenues and be able to twitter and post etc to my heart's content. Boy was I wrong.

From the moment I woke up in ICU I had such terrible back pain. I had no issues per se with the surgery, just this back pain. They said it was because you lie on the table for 4 hours with no movement. So if your body is not in a great position you do not feel it until you wake up.

I was also on...

Nancy's Virtual Office

Hi Everyone

I am writing today about a subject that is non related to the VA industry but I really wanted to write about it.

It is unfortunately a sad story. Last week a young man was killed here in Alix in a car crash. There was a group of them in two cars, alcohol and speed were both factors in what happened. They are young and invincible and nothing could happen to them playing tag down the highway, it was only fun, so they thought. Then a deer crossed the road, causing the first car to slow down and the truck rammed them from behind. Neither Doug or Chelsea had seat belts on and were thrown from the truck. Doug was killed and Chelsea has spine and brain injuries (although they both seem to be treatable, thank goodness)....

Nancy's Virtual Office

Hi Everyone

There have been posts on this forum about the importance of making sure your name is unique. This is my story to reinforce this have-to step in branding your name.

I started thinking about creating my business January 2009, when I started the Virtual Assistant Program. Right from the beginning I wanted Nancy's Virtual Office. My goal and forte is to provide a complete office support, from data base management to web page design. My target market would require this type of support. I felt my name encompassed this, I never wavered from having this name.

I registered my name, but only in Canada, so step number one, (which I will find out about on Monday) is to do a Global search. My name was not...

Nancy's Virtual Office

With a blog you should be writing about things you know about and be able to offer great information to your target market.

As I have just started my business, I do not have much content so far. I thought I would write about my journey to where I am now.

My background is 12 years in the mortgage brokerage business. I have been out of the work force for almost 16 years, being a stay at home mom. Our son is grown and I now have the opportunity to go back and do what I love and do it on my terms.

I have not had a computer in my home for 16 years, but when I worked in Toronto, we were at that time quite computer savvy. When I left there the internet was just coming in, there were no emails, you could not go...

Nancy's Virtual Office

I am just starting my business and the one thing that I know is that social media marketing, especially for my target market, is a very important part of growing a business.

There are quite a few things to learn. I am now just finishing my Virtual Assistant programme, graduate in 2 weeks, and once done I want to concentrate on courses about social media marketing and continuing courses on web page design.

I have created my web page, my blog, a newsletter, and joined Linkedin. These are all very basic and I am still researching my target market so I can be up on what my target market is up to, what I could write that would be relevant to them and that would allow them to get to know me and what I am all about....

Nancy's Virtual Office

I have just joined the Virtual Assistant Forums and I have already written one blog and recorded my elevator speech for everyone to see. I do not believe I would have had the confidence to do this if I did not feel the support from everyone.

I have been able to join groups that have a great interest for me and will help guide me to where I want to be.

I believe the Virtual Assistant Forums will have a great impact on my business, as not only will it help build my confidence in myself, I will also learn many new skills and information that will help me in my support for my clients.

It is great to be able to connect with people from all over and learn from them. As well, I hope in the future that...

Nancy's Virtual Office

I have just created my web site and am learning about SEO, keywords, meta tags, and many other ways of driving traffic to my site.

The one I like the best is blogging. I have always been interested in writing and believe this is a great way to get yourself out there while providing relevant information to my target market and/or my peers. I want to be able to write so that people will want to know more and go to my web site.

I am also planning a newsletter. We needed to create one in my Desktop Publishing course and I really enjoyed it and would like to put one out about every 2 months. Again, I hope that I create enough interest that they will want to visit my web site.

These are just a few ideas for...

Nancy's Virtual Office