Is Azna your first name? I think Azna Administrative Services is good and your logo can include AAS Virtual Services as well. I am The Virtual Paralegal and I use TVP in my branding logo.

Originally Posted by dawndmd

Is Azna your first name? I think Azna Administrative Services is good and your logo can include AAS Virtual Services as well. I am The Virtual Paralegal and I use TVP in my branding logo.

Sigh. Don't think I am crazyut:, okay? Azna is the name of the Mother God She is believed (by me) to be the activator. If you ask her for assistance you will get it. I will need all of the assistance I can get to be successful, so I decided to call on her.

I noticed that there was a thread that discussed putting the right energy out there to drum up success for your business. That thread and the presence of a Goddess ( I noticed the name immediatly)leads me to believe I am not the only new age lady on this site.

AZNA
http://www.angelfire.com/me4/angelichealing/azna.html

I decided on Oakville Admin. I initially went looking for a short (5 letter) domain name and found "oakaa.com" available so I registered Oakville Admin Associates. After a couple of networking events when people asked me "what was the Oakville Admin Association?", I decided to drop the "Associates", so now I'm just plain old Oakville Admin. While the name sounds kind of boring and pedestrian, it does have the advantage that if someone local Googles "Oakville" + "admin" or "virtual assistance" or "secretarial services", I come up near the top in Google and it seems to have worked to my advantage. I have many clients some ongoing, some one-off projects that found me that way.

I do have Oakville Admin Associates and Oakville Admin registered with the province, so if I become a multi-va practice or associate with others, I can still use that.

I recently registered YourVirtualTimesaver.com which is forwarded to oakaa.com and I'm using that in my marketing. I also registered oakvilleadmin.com and that is the url for my web space that is hosted on IVAA.

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Julia

Great question. It took me quite some time to come up with my biz name. I started thinking of catchy types of puns that I could use based on the name ie: VA Genie .... Poof! Your admin is done.

It carried on for a while with others and eventually I came up with the idea that a VA is always in their clients Back Pockets and are available when they need them.

Then the decision to go with VA in the name or Business Solutions or Business Services or Office Services, etc. You get the idea.
Well, I had to roll the names off my tongue and I actually - no lie - picked up the phone pretending to answer a call just to see how it sounded and felt.
Okay sounds stupid but it was fun at the time.

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Internet Marketing Specialist
Back Pocket Business Solutions

I had to choose my name almost on the spot because I was going to do some freelance writing for a company who requested I supply an EIN. I had just begun thinking about starting a VA business, so I figured if I was getting the EIN I should probably just jump in and attach a business name to it. I chose iQuill Virtual Solutions. I intend to focus on writing, document preparation, design services, and author assistance, so I wanted something that hinted at writing and I'm an office supply freak and collect fountain pens (I managed an office supply store for a few years, so I blame my obsession on that!), so 'quill' popped in my head. I added the little 'i' at the beginning to support the technical/internet aspect, and now my logo has a feather quill above the words with a droplet of ink where the dot on the little 'i' goes. I was going for a high quality old school meets technologically advanced efficiency feel...not sure I succeeded, but I'm digging it so far nonetheless.

I don't think you are crazy, I am not much into the new age but my daughter and some of my best friends are.

I went with eSSIST Me. I knew I wanted to start the virtual assisting company, and one night... laying in bed, while trying to write out the things I wanted to accomplish... it just hit me . I ran to the computer, did a search for the business name to make sure it wasn't taken... did a site search... .com was taken so I went with .net instead.
I think though, I initially wanted eSSISTANCE... I'm kind of happy it didn't pan out because I like the latter a lot better.

Ciboney is the name of an indigenous group of people who lived in the Caribbean before the arrival of Columbus. Most of them died out when the Europeans came to the region but there are a few who live in the region and in Florida. I thought the name would give tribute to one of the original groups of people of the region. The name is uncommon and I always have people asking about it and by my response it brings awareness to this indigenous group of people.

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Carlana Charles - Ciboney Virtual Solutions
Web: http://ciboneyvirtual.com Blog:http://ciboneyvirtual.com/blog

Speed-E-Skills... Well, I wanted people to know that I offer my skills in a timely fashion. LOL Plus, I wanted people to make the e-connection (like e-mail, e-commerce, etc.) My dh thought it was clever, and I liked it, so it just stuck!

Hi,

I have really enjoyed reading about how all of you named your businesses.

We brainstormed a number of ideas but when we went to register our business name most of them were already taken or were too close to other business names or domain names were taken. So we ended up with "Online Personal Assistants". The concept was just to make sure that people could ascertain that we were a virtual business just by our name.

I guess there were many options but in the end this was available and I thought that it was perfect for the image I wanted to portray. We decided that it possibly created a 'pigeon hole' effect due the the "Personal Assistants" but in my previous experience as a PA I didn't just answer the phone and provide diary management, the job is a lot more involved than that, so we moved past that thought.

In working with our Graphic Designer on our logo and branding for our business cards, I decided that I wanted to have something with the initials "OPA" or "OPAs" in there somewhere. After a little explaining to him what it was that I did (took him a little while to get his head around the whole VA concept), he came up with a design that I really liked.

He did the "OPA" in a black circle that was us, ("O" in green to highlight the online, "PA" in white), then a larger circle that represented the client base that we service.

We ended up choosing green for the colour of the larger circle as we thought that it was a fresh colour to go along with a fresh idea (to many people it is a fresh idea anyway).

The end result is that I am really happy to have a professional look on my business cards with services provided on the back of the card to really grab a prospective clients attention and so they don't look at the card later on and think "What is it that she does???"

As for a tagline, we came up with "The cost effective way to have a professional PA!" but I am still working on this and may change it......I'm still unsure about this one. After recently reading some material from a VA site I think that this may be focussing on the cost benefit rather than the value of having a highly qualified person assisting them with their business support requirements. Also, I think that it may add to the pigeon hole effect of PA services when that is not as far as our services go.

Any feedback on this would be appreciated.

Anyway that is our story. We have carried on with the branding and logo past our business cards and the design of the website reflects this so we are happy!

Debra