I’ve only done one PowerPoint presentation. Since it was for the IVAA summit and my topic was about continuing education, I did it myself. My next one will be for Infinity Publishing’s Express Yourself Authors’ Conference late next month. I will be speaking at the Writers’ Day program. Hope you can join me.

Once upon a time…so begins most fairy tales. Yet not all real-life tales end with the “happily ever after.� Some people spend their whole lives chasing that elusive fairy tale ending. Others take the quest to a different level; trying to find a substitute or in some way duplicate the person which, at some point in their life, they’ve identified as the perfect lover and/or soulmate. A few do track down the lost object of their desire, while others settle for a look-alike or feel-alike while they try to rekindle a never-forgotten romance. If you or someone you know has walked up and down memory lane in search of such a happy ending (regardless of the conclusion), I would like to hear from you. My name is Maria Grazia Swan and I’m an author collecting material for a non-fiction book. Send your stories to swan3@mindspring.com

I have a couple of items to share: 1) I am now the Managing Editor of IVAACast, the International Virtual Assistants Association’s online magazine. It has a circulation of 4,000 and hasn’t been published in a while, so the “first” issue (again) will go out next month. I have a great staff and I’m looking forward to resuming this fine publication.

On a related note, I’m about to throw my router out the window. For some reason, it will not let me access the ivaa site. This is a problem (see paragraph above). Since I have to check IVAA for email, etc., I need to be on that site. My poor husband has been troubleshooting for about a week trying to figure out what’s going on. He was on the phone with Linksys last night for at least an hour and still can’t figure out a solution. But if I plug my laptop directly into my cable connection, it works. Then, however, I lose my Vonage phone line. Technology is great when it works!!

Right now I’m editing a really great book, and I have 3 more lined up after this one. I can’t think of a better career.

Next week I travel to Manchester, CT, to the Manchester Community College to give a presentation based on my book, Entrepreneurial Freedom. The staff up there has been incredibly helpful and kind and I’m looking forward to it.

At the end of the month, I’m giving a presentation during one of Myron Golden’s workshops on the bookwriting process. Those are always fun and Myron is one of the most positive people I’ve ever met.

And it wouldn’t be the month of March without my older son’s birthday. He’ll be 7. That’s hard to believe.

In April, I’ll be going to the IVAA summit in San Francisco, and giving a presentation on Continuing Education–Investing in Your Own Mind! And in researching flights, I’m really wishing there were direct flights from Harrisburg, PA to San Francisco, but I don’t see that happening in my lifetime!!

Happy Spring everyone!
Lauren

1. I got an IM from someone on MSN messenger asking me if I was hiring any writers. I told her I wasn’t, and she said to let me know when I was. Umm okay. The thing is, we do business with people we have a relationship with. I have no idea who this person is. I haven’t seen her website, I don’t know her from a professional group, I’ve seen no writing samples, and I don’t know what type of writing she does. People need to network effectively…that’s how you have a chance to get overflow work. If you need to brush up on your networking skills, let me suggest Entrepreneurial Freedom for starters.

2. I have a new client who is an actor/screenwriter. Now, I know other VAs are working in this niche, but I really didn’t think too much about it until I got this client. Another interesting note is that this new client was a referral from his brother, a former client of mine working in the financial services industry. You just never know who knows whom. I still keep in touch with the former client. He knows that I focus on editorial services now, and voila.

3. I posted some new pictures on Myspace. If you’d like to see pictures of my kids dressed up for Halloween and my exquisite pumpkin-carving skills, click here.

4. There was an article in yesterday’s Harrisburg Patriot about MySpace becoming “Our Space” and they profiled local people who had gotten in trouble for some of the private information they posted on their public myspace account. Folks, if you wouldn’t shout out the message on your blog post into a crowd, don’t post it online. Your blog, your myspace account, etc., is not a private diary with a lock and key. It is public information. I try to keep the Hidden Blog mostly business related, where I may talk about my kids, vacations, shopping bargains, etc. on my myspace account. But I never post anything that would embarrass me tomorrow, 5 years from now, or 50 years from now.

Have a great week!

When the South Park crew asked what they were stealing underwear, the gnomes said, “Step One: Steal Underwear. Step Three, Make a Profit” The South Park crew asked, “What’s Step Two?” The gnomes said, “Step Three is Make a Profit”. They didn’t know what Step Two was.

Do YOU know what Step Two is? I’ve seen this with new virtual assistants quite a bit. They think Step One is to declare themselves a virtual assistant, Step Three is to make a good living and have a balanced life. But they don’t stop to consider Step Two.

Step Two is why Jeannine Clontz and I wrote Entrepreneurial Freedom. Step Two is actually many steps. It’s your technical (project skills), it’s your business skills (how you organize and run your business), it’s your attitude, and it’s your perseverance.

Do you realize that opening your VA practice means you’ll have to wear all the hats of a business? You’ll be the employee, the boss, the marketer, the salesperson, the CFO, the mailroom person, etc.? Once you’ve achieved some success, you can start delegating that? Do you take on any work that comes your way or do you stick to the projects you excel at and enjoy? Do you set competitive rates, or do you try to be the lowest bidder? Do you have your clients sign contracts or do you just hope your client pays on time? Do you invest money in conferences and training or do you just keep doing the same old thing? Are your goals to fill all your available hours with client work and turn anyone else away, or are you going to expand your business to have others working for you so you and your child can be at the moview while someone else is making you money? All these and much more are what leads you to Step Three: Making a Profit.

I was struck as I watched this, the competition between two up-and-coming magicians, that the movie paralleled an entrepreneur’s life. To become really successful in business, we need to be inventive and come up with the new thing that “wows”–that’s what differentiates us from our competition.

For example, right now, I’m thinking of what to write for my next book. What is going to be really unique and marketable? What is going to really benefit someone? You never stop thinking of your next move. Now in the movie, the characters became very devious and sometimes violent, and I can’t identify with that. But the movie definitely made me think. It took four of us discussing it over an ice cream sundae at Friendly’s to fill-in all the parts that confused us.

I also thought about how I can easily become obsessed with work. It’s on my mind all the time. Not client projects…but bigger dreams of where to take my business and how to get there. It’s nothing for me to have my laptop in front of me surfing bulletin boards and blogs when I watch TV at night. I “talk” to my professional contacts and other VAs more than my real-life friends. I spend more money on business conferences than I do on vacations. This reminds me to get out and go to dinner, a movie, and ice cream with my friends as often as possible. It’s refreshing to the soul. It’s far too easy to get wrapped up in your virtual, entrepreneurial world.

All that said, I wouldn’t change what I do for a thing. I never had even 25% of the passion for any “job” I ever held as I do for The Hidden Helpers. The flexibility is amazing. I can volunteer at my son’s school, I can put my boys on and off the bus, I can show them first-hand that they can start their own businesses and be successful someday, I get to travel to conferences and business meetings and meet some really interesting and inspiring people…it’s far more exciting than any “job” I’ve ever had. It’s not for everyone, but it “is” for me.

Shirky defintes a meganiche as “a thin slice of the Web that nonetheless reprensents roughly a million users”, or one tenth of one percent of today’s web audience. He further states that a tiny piece of an immense pie is huge. One tenth of one percent of today’s web audience is a million people. That’s nothing to sneeze at.

So, it got me wondering….will “virtual assistance” one day be a meganiche? Unfortunately, there’s no way to know exactly how many virtual assistants exist in the world today. Part of the problem is what your definition of a virtual assistant is. If you mean solely someone who provides administrative assistance virtually, your numbers will be much lower than if you include everyone who provides services virtually, from graphic designers to writers to legal assistants to web designers. I know that VANF has around 3,000 members. Other VA groups may have close to that many people and some will overlap and some won’t.

So how many virtual assistants will have to have how many clients each to turn our profession into a meganiche? Anyone care to do the math?

I emailed him at an alternate email address. That one bounced back, too. Mailbox full.

So I tried calling him about 10 minutes ago. I got an automated recording that said, “sorry, this mailbox is full and not accepting new messages. To leave your callback number, press star.” So I did that.

This guy is phenomenally successful and the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet. Think of all the potential business he could be missing because people can’t leave him messages and he obviously doesn’t have time to respond to the old ones.

Does this sound like you? Then it’s time to hire a VA.

Combine this with needing a professional bio for my website, one for my book, one for press releases, etc., and you end up having multiple, though necessary, versions of basically the same thing. My full bio is a whole lot longer than the one I’ve used in a press release. It’s a matter of editing, editing and editing.

It’s easy to just include your author box at the end of an article and then forget about it. A time-saving tip is to copy it and paste it into another document and name it “authorbox 10-20-06″ or something similar and create a folder with “promo materials” or some other title that makes sense for you.

You really need to customize promotional writing materials for your audience…both the topic and the length.

In writing, one size does not fit all.