Holiday SingUp

Together with a few of my lovely colleagues we have made this video to wish everyone a Happy Holiday Season and a Prosperous 2011.

VAs for the Holidays

Glitter Graphics by missyemory

Take a Break from your busy schedule - some of my favourite music

Today's blog post is nothing more than a list of my very favourite music. My favourite ever ever ever must be Herman Brood's Saturday Night. But I like a lot of different music, Gene Pitney, Frank Sinatra, (old) BeeGees, Small Faces, TheThe and wonderful, wonderful Kenny Werner. I picked out a few of my favourites to share with you.

Herman Brood - Saturday Night

TheThe - Uncertain Smile - unfortunately no video, just the music

BeeGees - To Love Somebody

Rod Stewart & Stereophonics - Handbags + Gladrags

Gene Pitney + Marc Almond - Something's Gotten Hold of my Heart 

ABC - All of my Heart

Who can resist a bit of Abba

Rollng Stones - Midnight Rambler

Kenny Werner Trio

Miles Davis - Tutu

JJ Cale - Cocaine

George Michael - Freedom - because of Linda, Christy, Tatiana, Cindy and Naomi

Tom Jones - Sex Bomb

Blondie - Rapture

Chi Coltrane - Go like Elijah

Now, back to work!

Is the internet pushing us back in time?

Many of you know I live in Spain. I have written about it many times.

Many people I meet on the web and in real life think Spain is very old fashioned. The way to do business here is completely dependent on your network. You need family, relations and a strong network to find a job, or customers or anything to earn money. It is often called nepotism. This is the way it has been done for centuries. It seems to work, by the way.

But, since a few months I've had to rely on the internet for finding work. And after a few months I find that I am completely dependent on my network. I need family, relations and my network to find clients. Exactly the way it is done in Spain. And it seems to work.

I think about this a lot. Is the internet pushing us back in time, or is this the way things work in general? Is it that the world is now so big without boundaries that we fall back on things that served us well in the past to give us a sense of security.

Whatever it is, it is a different way of working and a challenge which I much enjoy.

How to Manage your Inbox Effectively

In my attempt to share some of my knowledge with others, I have made a short videoclip about managing inboxes. It is one of the issues I know many people struggle with. There are tools on the market that are supposed to help with managing the inbox, such as categories and flags, but I find they are lacking in effectiveness. Rather, they make reading the inbox even more complicated. I use a system which is based on scheduling and actioning. If done right, it means an empty inbox and does away with the need to remember things. Below is a short instruction video which explains the principles of the system.

This should give you a lot to work with. If executed well, it will help you manage your email. This way of working can be transferred to other areas such as tasks lists or snail mail. If you are interested, but feel that this video hasn't given you enough, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Twitter, tweet, tweet, tweet

I tweet, of course I tweet. If only to find out what Twitter is about and not to become a person who doesn't understand new media.
But what is it about? I do get useful information via Twitter, it has given me a chance to connect with people in my new country. It gives me news alerts and that's great. But still, what am I doing on Twitter?

Without doing anything my followers are up to a 137 (5 November at 09.38), and they just keep on coming in - I do have to block some of them. But, why do they follow me? They don't seem to read my tweets, or are they just not interested. And if they are not interested, why do they follow me? Is it just to get to a certain number of followers/following, and if so, why?

Yesterday when I reached a 100 followers I decided to ask them why they follow me. And the best answer (IMO) would get two hours of my time. Only one person answered. And if she remains the only one, she very deservedly gets 2 hours of my time.

As much as I'm trying to find parallels with the real world, I haven't managed to find one yet. Any comments much appreciated - don't hesitate to tweet.

What is the difference between an office and a home office

More and more do I get convinced that although there are advantages to being a business owner rather than an employee, the world doesn't really change.

In my home office I am completely reliant on my internet networking skills. Through the net I get in touch with many people in many different environments.
Just like I when I used to have colleagues. I met a few this week in a virtual meeting. And I meet them on forums.

And just like when I used to have colleagues, some of them are great and some of them just simply annoying. People you need and people you really don't need. People who know what they're talking about and people who just don't have a clue. The coffee lady has been replaced by the fun website which brings a little light entertainment during the day. The boss has been replaced by the client. The IT department hasn't been replaced at all, just different people.

The other thing I find is that I need my regular breaks. I need to have structure, very similar to when I was in the office. Work from 09.00-12.00, have a short break, work form 12.30-15.00, have lunch.

So what is the difference between an office and a home office: not much really. And that's an eye opener for me.

Fact checking and how the internet can fool you..................

Generally, whenever we said "it must be true, I read it in the newspaper" or "I heard it on the television" is now easily replaced by "I read it on the internet".

So, when we were in Seville yesterday - lovely city where we met with a friend - we went in search of the Apple store. We had read about it on the internet and even seen a picture. It was supposed to be near the Cathedral which was exctly where we met our friend.

Completely against my normal way of working, we had not written down the address. It wasn't necessary, we had seen it on the internet. We walked around and around, being pointed in this direction and that. Consulted the TomTom, but not an Apple store in sight.

When we got home later that evening (we did enjoy Seville for a while longer, since the weather was so beautiful), we looked it up again and found our page: Apple store in Seville **

So, just like when hearing it on the television or reading it in the newspaper, fact check whatever you read on the Internet.

                          Oiseau by Karel Appel
                              

** For those not speaking Spanish, the page says: My creation to show how nice an Apple Store would look in Seville.

Dealing with a difficult client

I thought it might be a nice idea to share some of the knowledge which has helped me reach the top of my profession. It's about dealing with a difficult client.
I asked around and it seems that people most often want to know how to deal with an unreasonable or difficult boss - and I have had some. As a Virtual Assistant I no longer have a boss. I have clients. Same difference.

My advice and my experience is:
The customer/boss is always right. Affirmative noises immediately create an atmosphere where agression is no longer necessary and the customer feels heard.
Create a relationship where you are equal to the one you serve. That relationship starts long before the client acts unreasonable or difficult. Right from the beginning establish yourself as a grown-up, as a person in your own right and as an individual who knows what she's talking about.
Listen. Listen. Listen. You might actually learn something. Be open to input.
Count to 10 before you answer (silence is powerful) and do not contradict, it will only make things worse.
Take ownership of the issue. Show that you care and that you want to do better.

Do all this whilst keeping your integrity intact. Show that you have values, put yourself at the same level as your client and you will be able to hold a real conversation about the issues. You will be able to resolve issues and work with a difficult client.

I pad

When I left my job to move to Spain and become a so-called Virtual Assistant, my boss gave me an Ipad as a farewell present. 
I hadn't wanted any farewells or farewell presents and had made that very clear. He insisted on giving me something and had thought this through carefully. They weren't for sale yet  in The Netherlands at the time and he went through a lot of trouble to get me one.

In the beginning I hardly used it. I downloaded ebooks and PDF documents that I read on my Ipad. My 3 year old nephew used it a lot to play games and look at Cars videos. At one point he was better at using it than I was.

But now, I've seen the light. I'm using it every day. To read my email, to Twitter, to LinkIn, to read the valuable courses which aid me very much in my work - they will be the subject of a later post. And I can do that without being bound to the house. Weather is still lovely here, so we are outside a lot.

In short, I love my Ipad and we are inseperable. My nephew still gets to use it around lunchtime, but for the rest it's mine. I've bought a lovely pink leather holder and carry it with me everywhere.

So, really, this is to thank my boss for such a thoughtful gift and to let others know that although it's a bit bulky and there is room for improvement, it's a very useful tool for a virtual assistant.

Surfing

We live close to Tarifa which is surfer's heaven. The whole town (small as it is) is about surfing. I wanted to take up surfing by decided I'm just too old, have no sense of balance and and a wetsuit just doesn't look good on me either.

What I do do is surf the web. When I worked in an office we were never really allowed to surf the internet, only the intranet. For work purposes of course it was necessary, but even sites that were useful were barred. Now I find that surfing the web is taking up a big chunck of my day and that it is really useful for my work. It's so liberating that I can do whatever I please because I'm my own boss. Here are some of the websites I like and visit every day.

http://www.workingnaked.com/
http://www.noded.biz/
http://www.virtualassistantforums.com/
http://mashable.com/
http://jezebel.com/

Out with the Old, In with the New

You will have noticed that most of my blog posts indicate that I struggle with new technologies and draw upon old technologies to help me. Indeed, I am old.

Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook are old to many, new to me. The challenge is to interpret the new media in a way that they work for me. This is most often a combination of the two. Find a new job via findvirtual.com, but speak to the client via phone or skype (also quite a new medium). Twitter with people in my new area, but the tweets concern things like the weather.

A good example of in out with the old and in with the new gone nearly wrong is my new haircolour. I always trusted my hairdresser. Since moving to a new country I haven't found a new hairdresser yet and decided to try dying it myself. Not exactly the result I wanted. But I'll live and am getting used to my new image. I leave you with it below.

Communication, Communication, Communication

As I said in my previous blog post, things are going really well for me. I have clients who give me a lot of work, 2 of them people I don't know personally and who have a different lifestyle. When one takes up a new task, the most important thing is understanding the task. 

In the Virtual Assistant world it is not unusual to communicate only via email. Communications in writing is not new, rather it used to be the main means of communications. But it most often was accompanied by face-to-face contact. A king looking for a new bride would perhaps not make the track to another country by himself, but he did send his aides to have a look.
Since computers, email and texting, written communications have changed. They have become faster and shorter. And with it the habit of thinking before writing has become faster and shorter.

This happened to me too with the 2 clients I mention above. It took a bit of emailing, misunderstanding on my part and frustration on their part before I decided to do the old fashioned thing and communicated face-to-face, that is via Skype. Face to face contact certainly makes it a lot easier to communicate. Facial expression, tone of voice - all these things get lost in email communications.

I have heard other VAs speaking about "intake" forms or "get to know" forms. I have not done that until now, sticking only to the business basic. The experiences I mention above have taught me that I have to invest more time in getting to know the client, and I will.

It is going the right way

Over the last week I have been very busy and things are going very well for me. I have a lot of work, my blog has got some comments (!!! - thank you very much comment posters, I really appreciate it) and Twitter is getting me some results.

Working virtually seems to be easier than I thought it would be. I say "seems" as I don't want to sound as if I've got it all under control. 

I did mention the tools that I use already in an earlier post. Skype is a great help, it easily connects me to my bosses. Exchanging views via email is also very doable. It takes some writing skills I find. In an email it is easy to just type away the way one would speak.  I take more time to reread my emails to make sure it is clear.
Other tools are for example DropBox to share documents and plain old-fashioned telephone.

I have a good feeling about this, and I'm continuing to learn about tools and effective communication. I hope you will be continuing to read my blog and post comments.

Networking also means meeting friends - part II

Today was a very exciting day in many aspects. We are trying to get our family to live together here in Spain. Today we found a very nice apartment for my Mum, right next door to our's and we live a stone's throw (literally) away from my sister. This is really good. It was a serious case of networking. My brother-in-law once owned a bar. One of his staff lived in this apartment building well over 5 years ago. We looked her up, she found the owner of the apartment and - coincidence or not - the apartment was vacated yesterday and is available now.

Another thing that is most exciting is that I've spent time on Skype with a colleague from overseas. She's a colleague because she is in the same business as I am, not because she's in the same company. We are both business owners, virtual assistants. Our field of expertise is different, but our challenges are the same.
We got together because we were both looking for a mentor/mentee. We found each other via a forum. She is in the US, I am in Europe, but borders and oceans don't bother us, since everything is online. It was a very pleasant conversation, and I am sure we will be able to help each other with what we are looking for.

When we moved here about 6 weeks ago I thought working at home might be lonely, especially in the beginning.  This time spent with a colleague showed me the possibilities of the 'virtual' world. The world has different dimensions and life is good! 

The Danny Brown Blog Challenge

Over the past few days I have been spending time again on finding out more about blogging, twitter, facebook, linkedin to grow my business.

I came across http://dannybrown.me/ and his 7 day blog challenge. It looks to be a good challenge and I wanted to comment on his blog post - which for the life of me I couldn't manage. The technicalities of posting a comment were beyond me I guess.

However, I will take him up on the challenge and find a new blog out of my normal blog routine, comment on it (if it will let me) and highlight them in some way, either on here or in a twitter or so.

I hope I will learn something through doing this. Learn more about the blogging world, learn how to use the Lifefyre, and who knows extend my network a bit.

Leaving you with a picture which incorporates my previous and my future life.

Oh no! My internet is down

One of the things a virtual assistant completely depends on is of course the internet. It is something we just cannot live without.

Yesterday when I had to pop out for a lunch appointment I was really in the middle of a quite urgent task for one of my clients. I took my Ipad with me so that I could be updated and run back home if I had to. I never thought about the fact that the location where I was going didn't have wifi. Having my Ipad gave me such a secure feeling I never even realised I needed more than just the Ipad.

And this morning my internet was down. Oh no!! I immediately blamed the Spanish provider, the way a Nothern European does: you see they are useless, I can't work like this - you know the drill. And it was already 09.00 and how was I going to serve my clients?
I called the provider and got a message that the internet was indeed down and they were doing all they could to repare it. And within 15 minutes it was fixed.
As it turned out I hadn't received any important emails and my state of panic had been unnecessary.

It was an eye opener. How dependent have we become on the internet, and also how it just sometimes doesn't work. Even if you are in an office this happens, even in The Netherlands.

Sometimes it's just good to let things be the way they are............

Networking also means meeting friends

I always thought I wasn't good at networking. When I look at my sister and see how easily she speaks to everyone about any subject at all, I can see how she is a really good networker. Apart from that she's very pretty which also helps in meeting new people.
I find it quite difficult to speak to people just like that. I'm not an extrovert.

But over the past few years I have had jobs in which a network was of the utmost importance. I decided to stop calling it networking. I called it building relationships with my colleagues all over the world. It meant making friends all over the world, something that I loved. And now that I work alone and rely on myself to find new clients, it becomes clear how important those friends are and how this really is a network. A vast network.

It is easy to email my network of friends or for example send them a postcard from where I live now. These emails and cards get responses, lovely responses from lovely people all over the world. And hey, I see now that I am good at networking too. Even though I gave it a different name, it is now a solid network on which I can build further and build new relationships and hopefully friendships.

Another blog doomed?

I am just wondering if I'm blogging for the right reason. I am not a writer by nature and it takes quite some effort for me to write the short pieces. I am blogging to get my website and my services noticed. And that is not easy.
I like to read blogs. I visit many every day, especially fashion blogs. I like fashion and I like the brevity of trends. And that brings me to my blogging again.

I see many blogs that don't last. The writers start full of enthusiasm, but don't last. Blogs that haven't been updated for 3 months are never visited again - at least not by me. And blogs I followed and liked, that have just disappeared. And I'm even thinking about blogging in itself. Will it last? There are thousands of blogs, hundreds of thousand.  Are they just a trend, or will the good ones survive? 

So, I'm hoping that I will keep getting the inspiration and getting the visitors and hopefully the faithful readers.

For now I leave you with a picture of something that inspires me.

SEO - my website hit Google

SEO. I hadn't even heard of it when I started my website. But the Virtual Assistant Forum started giving me an insight into SEO. And now, here I am trying to figure out what is what and why and how. Metatags and code and all these things that are very difficult for me to understand.

But then, I did a search on Google. Virtual Assistant Services: I'm sure I might be there somewhere, but perhaps on page 10102. However, on the Dutch pages of Google, our website comes up first!! 
And when I type in our names (Hilde van den Braak and Susanne Wesselink) we both come up on Google (.com and .nl) and on Yahoo. I know MSN is important, but my MSN comes up with Dutch politicians and I'd really rather avoid them.

I also understand that a blog is rather important as an SEO tool, and I'll be blogging away as much as I can. I'll have to learn to see if my Google blog is well coded enough to do what it has to do. The other thing is of course, to see if my blog is interesting enough. I would therefore be very grateful if those reading this blog could leave a comment with some input.

Whether or not I'm ever going to get a job via my website, I really cannot tell. But, I might as well try.

To make this blog a little more interesting, I want to post another picture. A picture I found when searching the web. I love it so much. It's an ice cream tulip. What could be better than that. Tulips are my favourite flower and who doesn't love ice cream!

I changed the name of my blog

I changed the name of my blog to "A Beginner's Guide to Working Virtually". I think this is much more appropriate than "A blog about my life and my work". After all, I'm a beginner at working virtually and that is really what this blog is about.

Virtual Assistance is my business and I'm new to it. I do have 2 clients and a 3rd on the way, but still I'm figuring out everything, one step at a time. For example, in my previous post I wrote about the etiquette of blogging. I did some research and found that there is so much on the web to help me with that.
Another great resource for me is the Virtual Assistant Forum. The VAs on this forum are so ready to help and share experiences. I hope that with time I will be able to help new VAs in this way.

Anyway, the sun is shining (as it is nearly every day here), I've done my morning's work and I'm going out to enjoy the day.

Have a great weekend!

Yesterday was a great day!

What a fantastic day yesterday was. Not only did I work several billable hours, put up my blog, I landed 2 clients, the weather was beautiful, we had a lovely lunch with my family and in the evening I received an email from an important figure in the oil industry I respect very much. He took the time to respond to my LinkedIn message. He is a very busy man, so to take time to respond to me is really something.

To me this indicates that the social media networking can do something for me. One of the 2 clients we landed yesterday, also came out of my LinkedIn email.
Today I have therefore done my best to update my blog a little and put links into it. Not only for my own benefit, but also to make it a little more interesting.
I will be thinking about blog etiquette - do I just link to other blogs without their permission? - and make that a subject of a further post.

What picture to add to this litte blog entry? Something happy and relevant to the area, so I attach a picture of the Alcazar.

My first blog entry

This is my first blog entry. Why would I want to start a blog? Because I have too much time on my hands perhaps, or because I want to see how much value I can get out of a blog to connect with my family and friends and to connect with possible clients.
My blog will be a combination of personal and business. My life is a combination of personal and business. Our move to Spain was very personal, but I had to start my virtual assistance business www.hildeandsusanne.net in order to be able to make that move.

Since 4 August we have been in Spain and it has been a great experience so far. Although my Spanish is not very good yet, I have been able to buy a car, get a NIE, register myself as a Spanish citizen and more.
I have managed to contract two customers and just received an enquiry from a third. The work that I do for them consists for now mainly of booking travel and formatting documents. But I'm confident that this can be built up over time and I can take more work out of their hands.

I'm posting a picture of the square in front of our apartment - you see the little red arrow pointing to our place. It's lovely. I feel very lucky that I am able to live this life and am very thankful for the people around me who make this possible.