The SMART model is recognised as a standard way of structuring successful personal and professional goals and many of us are familiar with the idea of goals being specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound.

However, in many cases goals only focus on WHAT we want to achieve, simply defining the final objective or outcome.

While this can be effective it often leaves out the powerful motivational (or ‘motive in action) energy that drives us to reach outside our comfort zone and really make lasting change.

Powering a goal with an emotional reason or benefit really ramps up the possibility of our achieving the goal because we clearly understand the compelling benefit to us in making it happen.

I received an interesting email today about an upcoming feature in a financial publication which was going to spotlight Virtual Assistants.  I suppose the fact that Google had classed it as spam should have been a forewarning. They were looking to cover various aspects of how a Virtual Assistant could help another business as well [...]

In this months #iVAmeet chat Joan Alban talked to us from the clients perspective about the client/VA relationship and what’s important to the client when searching for and working with a Virtual Assistant.

Michelle and I recently carried out this webinar and really enjoyed it. It was good to be able to share our experiences of what worked and what didn’t work for us over the last few years, hopefully enabling other VA’s to avoid some of the pitfalls we’ve encountered.

We wrote it based on the questions we’re most frequently asked about pricing, and also on the most common things we see going wrong for Virtual Assistants.

As I mention in my book, 30 Day Setting up as a Virtual Assistant Challenge, there’s an awful lot more to working out your rates than just picking a figure out of thin air.

That’s what we hope to have covered off in this webinar for you.

Running your own business can sometimes feel relentlessly demanding and challenging – as well as brilliant and exciting! So how can you stay focussed and energised all day long in order to meet these challenges?

Suzan St Maur shares her expertise on the subject of Business Writing for Virtual Assitants. The transcript of the chat is shown below. (Please allow a moment or two for it to load).

When restructuring your work day or moving offices you might feel like you are wasting time on the moving process. It is therefore even more important to get the layout and structures of your office right from the word go, so that you can restore capacity as quickly as possible. This is particularly evident if you have decided to take the plunge and set up for yourself or you are starting to work more from your home. This requires you to set up a home office, a hub in your house that is dedicated to your work and encourages efficiency and potentially also creativity

One thing I have noticed is that the Virtual Assistant industry is growing at a rapid rate. Granted several of the VA’s I knew when I started up have now branched off in other directions, but there are many new people entering the industry.

What is even more pleasing are the number of VA businesses celebrating their business birthdays, for example, my own business HLS Business Solutions, Call Team and Help Ahoy all celebrated our third business birthdays in the past few weeks!

To-do-lists…deadlines…phone calls…emails… So many tasks to remember and all requiring full focus and concentration! How can you keep your brain sharp and clear all day long?

Top tips for gaining clarity and focus are:

Make sure your diet is rich in essential fats
Stay hydrated all day
Breathe!

The trouble with being, for want of a better word, ‘an entrepreneur’ is that they tend to be entrepreneurial! Er….yes…..tell me something I don’t know Gary!

Let me explain.

By that I mean entrepreneurs tend to be highly positive, hot wired towards a ‘can do’ attitude, often impatient and, sometimes, slightly disorganised. After all who wants to worry about whether that invoice has been paid when there’s the next idea to bring to market?