If you’re like me, my web-based business is almost 24/7 all year
round, including vacation time with my family This past April, for spring break,
we treated ourselves to a mini-vacation at a lovely resort in Virginia. Whenever
we’ve gone on vacation, my husband packs his laptop. I’ve always scoffed at him
for doing so. After all, we’re supposed to be on vacation, so why torture
yourself with work?
This time around, the laugh was on me. By the third day of vacation, I was
sweating and shaking…and not from the weather either. I was worrying about my
email. I just knew my inbox was full and my emails were bouncing left and right.
I finally broke down and ran to the local Food Lion to grab an AOL disc to
download into my husband’s laptop (we have cable broadband at home and didn’t
need access to another account). When we finally loaded it up and found a local
telephone number to dial into, sure enough, there was the dreaded message “Your
inbox is full…” I spent the better part of two hours weeding through all the
emails and agonized over the thought of the bounced ones. Did I lose any
business or money? I can’t say for sure, but I did lose some sleep and valuable
vacation time with my family.
The first thing I did when we came home was to get a bigger mailbox. But I
figured there had to be a better way. Well, there might be, to learn about
another way of handling your day-to-day website chores, check out the following
article.
P.S.: The next time we go away, I’m packing my own laptop!
There is one word that strikes terror into the heart of this home-based
entrepreneur. No, it's not "taxes" and no, it's not "postage increase" (after
all, that's TWO words). The word that makes me tense up and shudder is...
"vacation."
After all, that is when the virtues of sole proprietorship become liabilities.
With no other staff members to cover me when I'm away, I have often been left
with some hard choices: take the vacation with the knowledge that I would lose
money and business while gone... or take a computer along and keep tabs on
things while the rest of the family is enjoying themselves.
And for an online entrepreneur, just checking email can be an arduous task,
tying up the phone line at a hotel or family member's home for a couple of hours
a day. Neglecting your email means missed opportunities, thousands of emails to
cull through... and that if there is a problem on your site, you may not know
about it until a couple of weeks later when you return. So for the last three
years, my vacation packing was not complete without my trusty notebook -- and
resentful comments from my husband, who never has fully understood the nature of
my business.
It never occurred to me that there was a third option that would allow me to
take my vacation and enjoy it, too: a Virtual Assistant.
As the webmaster of a site dedicated to helping moms and dads become
work-at-home parents, I've not only been aware of VA's as a force in the
entrepreneurial community... I've wholeheartedly endorsed the concept as a
viable option to enable moms to turn their office experience into a profitable
business. But due to the fact that the only product I sell is advertising space
and the extremely low volume of telephone calls that come to my business, it
never occurred to me that a VA might be the solution to my vacation dilemma...
...until one of my readers pointed out the obvious: by forwarding my email to a
trusted VA, I could take a real break, secure in the knowledge that a live
person (not an autoresponder) was answering my customers, sorting my messages,
and would call me if there was something that needed immediate attention.
So last summer, I decided to give it a try, and you know what? It worked - just
the way my reader said it would!
HOW TO FIND VIRTUAL HELP
Do a search on the term "virtual assistant" on Google and it will return over
half a million listings. Obviously, there are a lot of folks out there plying
this new trade.
Narrowing down your search is easy when you visit the following sites, which
train, certify and then match VA's with prospective clients:
IVAA.org
AssistU.com
VACertification.com
One of the benefits of working with a VA is that he or she will be an
independent contractor instead of an employee. However, you should treat your
search as you would if you were hiring a permanent staff member. I suggest
inviting bids from at least three prospective assistants. DO Be specific about
the estimated work load and the complexity of your needs. And DO obtain
references - just as you would when interviewing a prospective employee.
BEFORE YOU LEAVE...
I put out the call for a virtual assistant about a month before our vacation.
After selecting my VA, I went about documenting the tasks I performed daily,
most without much thought. As I was mainly looking for someone to handle my
email, it was pretty easy to log each kind of message I routinely receive and
write down some instructions on dealing with it. If your business involves heavy
phones, you need to do the same for the telephone. During the course of this
exercise, I realized that I would also need my VA to upload my newsletter and
perform some additional tasks. After some discussion with her, we agreed on a
rate change to reflect the added work load.
Send your VA a detailed message including:
1. The period his or her services will be required 2. Your itinerary and how you
can be reached while you are gone 3. Who, if anyone, may be given this
information 4. What you would like others to be told in your absence 5. Step by
step details on the contracted tasks and how they should be performed.
My VA requested 50% of the fee paid prior to the beginning of her service, with
the remainder to be paid upon completion. As she and I are both in the same
home-based entrepreneurial boat, I made it a point to pay her fees promptly.
My family agrees that our last vacation was the best we've ever had, and much of
that is due to the fact that it truly was a vacation. Will I be using a VA the
next time I go away? You bet - and I recommend it wholeheartedly to you, too!
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Donna Schwartz Mills writes about the specific needs of work at home parents at
her website, The ParentPreneur Club, "For Parents Who Want Choices, Not Office
Politics." Tools tips and advice you need to help grow your home based business
while raising a family. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter by clicking here.
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