Avoid isolation when you work from home

Working as a Virtual Assistant/Secretary, I sometimes find that the working day can be solitary with limited contact with the outside world.  When I left work to have my first child, I went from working in an open plan office with 300 people to working remotely at home.  I really missed (and sometimes still do!) the discussions that used to take place around me; the banter, teasing and chit chat.

There are many positives to being self-employed, but the negatives can be isolation and loneliness as we miss those “water cooler moments”.

I have put together some tips below on overcoming these feelings and keeping a good balance.

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Have you ever considered working for an hour or so from your local café?  If there are tasks that you can carry out where noise isn’t too much of a distraction, then take your laptop and head off out the door.  It’s good to feel part of the “real world” for a bit.

Keeping healthy

Eating a well balanced diet and doing some kind of physical activity is really important.  A diet that includes protein, carbohydrates and good fats will ensure your brain and body functions well.  We should all be aiming to drink lots of water throughout the day too and avoiding caffeine as much as possible.

A daily walk is a good idea – maybe to school and back, or just to pop out and buy a newspaper.  The endorphins released when we exercise help improve our mood and this in turn helps with productivity levels.  Exercising with friends is a great idea, or in a class (such as Zumba) so that you have contact with others before going back to the home office.  Interaction with other people, even if it’s just for an hour, can lift your spirits and put you in a more positive frame of mind for the rest of the day.

Make contacts

There are lots of networking events all around your town – your local Chamber of Commerce will hold regular small business networking events and they are a good way of promoting your services, as well as getting some contact with the world of business.

You could start your own networking group – a great chance to share the advantages and disadvantages of working for yourself as well as discussing remote working in general and getting new ideas.  You never know where your next project might come from!

Take time out

We all have days where motivation is low and productivity levels drop.  Recognising them is a good thing – we’ve all been there at some point.

Rather than staring at your computer screen, press the off button. Go for a walk, flick through a magazine or meet a friend for a cuppa.  Or you could watch TV, or do something else to take your mind away from work so that you can collect your thoughts.  When you’re feeling refreshed, you can resume where you left off.

I would love to hear what you think – do you work from home?  If so, how do you combat loneliness and isolation?  Please leave your comments here.

Technology is great – until it goes wrong!

How many times have we heard that old saying?  And just what do you do when it does go wrong?

I recently experienced being without electricity, due to our washing machine breaking down and tripping out the rest of the electrics.  This was very unfortunate, as my job as a VA means that my whole business is internet based.  So what did I do?  I decamped to my in-laws house and logged onto their Wi-fi so that I could at least see my emails, if nothing else.  But it got me thinking…what did we used to do before all this modern technology was invented and how did people manage?

Well, years ago you couldn’t just “Google” something – if you didn’t know something, you just didn’t know.  Or you went to a library to read about it in an actual book!

There used to be paper maps, rather than SatNav and you had to wait sometimes to get the latest news.  Before the internet, news sources were the TV, radio and the daily morning paper.

Since the 1990s the internet has had a huge impact on business and we have seen the rise of instant communication through email, VoIP, Skype and cloud based technology (such as Dropbox, Evernote, etc…), social networking and online shopping.

The internet has changed things forever for people who are able to access information and share things in a way that was not possible in a previous generation.

So what do you think?  Is life better or worse since the invention of the internet and modern technology?  I would love to hear from you!

The work/life balance in the school holidays

So, that time of year is nearly upon us again and every year I ask myself the same question: “what am I going to do about childcare?”  On this occasion it’s the summer holidays – and it’s six whole weeks!

Both sets of grandparents live locally, but as one set have health issues and one set are becoming increasingly older and frail, I only ever manage to secure childcare for one day per week. This in itself isn’t a problem, as most of my work can be shifted back to the evenings. However, I do have one client that I arrange a lot of meetings for and this inevitably involves making phone calls on her behalf. I may also need to visit other clients, so ideally I need another day of childcare to bring it up to two days. And as Company Secretary of my husband’s business, I need to try and set aside half a day for completing his work too – so what to do?

Being an only child limits my options further and so after weeks of irrational soul searching (what if my daughter doesn’t like it, can we afford it, am I emotionally scarring her for life, etc…) I have decided to send her to a local out of school club and have tied in with a friend in her class who will be going on the same day – result!

My situation got me thinking about professional childcare and how it seems to be an option that more and more parents are relying on, as their families often live far away in other parts of the country and how this is partially a result of modern life and families becoming fragmented.

Whenever I tell people that I have both sets of grandparents living locally, they often pipe up with “oooh, that must be so lovely, I bet you’re never stuck for babysitters like we are!” Well, errr… no, it doesn’t quite work like that for the reasons that I’ve outlined in paragraph two, above!

I would love to hear your thoughts about this.  Are you a working Mum?  What do you do about childcare in the school holidays and do you think we ever get the balance right?

Could your small business benefit from a Virtual Secretary?

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Virtual Secretaries/Assistants are becoming increasingly popular, with many small businesses choosing to hire one. Some business owners find that they need assistance with their office admin but can’t afford to employ a full-time secretary in their office; a virtual secretary can fill in the gaps by providing ad-hoc assistance and it’s cost effective too, as you only pay for the time that you use.

If you are a small business owner and find yourself in the following situations, then it may be time to look at hiring a virtual secretary to help you:

You miss deadlines to follow up
You’re tied up with the day-to-day running of your business
You regularly work evenings and weekends to keep up with routine administrative tasks
You have routine admin tasks that you don’t like performing and these take time away from running your business and generating money

There are many tasks that are suitable for delegating and outsourcing to a virtual secretary. If you’re looking to hire one, but not sure what they could help with, this list can give you some ideas:-

Diary and E-mail management
Appointment bookings
Database building
Internet research
Typing & audio transcription (transcribing podcasts, webinars etc)
Social media management
Proof-reading
Invoicing
Tender proposals
Document Editing and Formatting

This is obviously not exhaustive and you can identify which tasks of your own you can outsource by finding ones that you dislike performing such as invoicing, blogging, tweeting, etc…These are ideal projects to hand over to a virtual secretary.

So, what do you think? Do you have experience of hiring, or working with a virtual secretary/assistant? I would love to hear your comments…

So what exactly is a Virtual Secretary?

I’m asked this question quite a lot, so I thought I would go into more detail in this blog post. 

A Virtual Secretary is an independent self-employed professional who works remotely from their own home office, for clients, on a contract basis.

So what tasks am I asked to perform for my clients?  I have carried out internet research, proof-reading, audio transcription, social media updates and stationery ordering to name just a few.

When I first started my business I couldn’t decide what to call myself – Virtual Assistant or Freelance Secretary?  I thought people might not know what a ‘Virtual Assistant’ was and I would end up having to explain myself over and over again at networking events so I decided on ‘Freelance Secretary’.  I felt this spoke for itself – the clue is in the title!  However, as my business progressed, I was surprised to discover that lots of people are familiar with the term and so I decided that ‘Freelance Secretary’ sounded a bit old fashioned and I decided to change my job title to ‘Virtual Secretary’. 

Or so I thought! The term may be familiar to people, but I was still getting lots of enquiries of “so what is a virtual secretary?  What do you actually do?”  So I thought I would explain in my blog – and now you know!

Why I decided to become a Virtual Secretary

People often ask me why I decided to become a Virtual Secretary.

I had first considered the idea of setting up such a business in 2007 but then discovered that I was expecting my second child (now five) and decided to put it on hold as I couldn’t contemplate trying to run a business while also juggling the demands of a newborn baby.  Added to that my first child had not been an easy baby, suffering first from colic and then from gastric reflux, so I decided that if my second baby was likely to be the same then it just wasn’t going to be possible.  As luck would have it she was a model baby but I wasn’t to know that!

Two years later, I decided that I was ready to return to the world of work, but what could I realistically do?  I had a seven year old son at school, a two year old daughter at nursery, a husband whose job was not flexible and no childcare help from either set of grandparents.  This meant that I was always the parent who was at the school and nursery gates every morning and afternoon – I had no-one else to be there.

I did lots of internet research and decided that becoming a Virtual Secretary would be perfect for me.  It would solve all my flexibility issues and I could bring a wealth of secretarial and admin experience with me of working for big companies, including one of the ‘Big 4’ accountancy firms.

In September 2011 I started Bailey Secretarial, my website went ‘live’ and I haven’t looked back since!  I regularly attend small, local networking groups and have enjoyed meeting some really interesting people.