Number 8 of the Top Ten Things I’ve Learned Being a VA is especially appropriate for this time of year, being the last day of the financial year in Australia. It probably applies to every small business and that is, to invest in a good bookkeeping programme and to keep one’s own books up to date. I use Quickbooks and find it intuitive, powerful and easy to use.  I once let my books slip behind by a couple of months and it was a nightmare and time consuming to catch up. Never again. I always make sure I set aside time once a week (usually on Friday) to do my books and make sure everything is up to date. This little bit of regular maintenance is huge peace of mind and my business and I are thankful every day!

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Number Nine on my list is I am not an employee, I am an independent business owner.

This was a tricky one to grasp when I first started Net Secretary almost five years ago. I had just come from being an employee in the corporate sector and still had that "employee mentality" – if the boss said jump, my response was ‘how high?’  I made quite a few mistakes in those early days, bowing to pressure from clients on when and how they wanted things done, not trusting my own professional judgement or having the confidence to say "no".

It is extremely liberating once this concept has been grasped and I am now comfortable with the fact I am a business owner, just as my clients are, and I deserve to be treated with the same level of professional respect as I treat them.

I have realistic boundaries – for example, no weekend work or evening work unless we are appropriately compensated and it is mutually agreed, not expected. For the most part I choose my clients and who I want to work with, not the other way around.

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I’ve going to share with you my Top 10 Valuable lessons I’ve learned since opening Net Secretary and becoming a Virtual Assistant. I continue to learn new things every day in my business but these are the 10 most valuable lessons that help define my business. Today I start at Number 10.

Number 10 – You can’t be all things to all people

Net Secretary provides a core range of virtual assistance services to a regular group of clients in select industries. We do what we are experts at and what provides the best service to our clients. We do not provide bookkeeping services nor legal or medical transcription or related legal/medical services. We do not do telemarketing or cold calling. We are not experts in these fields and nor do we want to be. There are plenty of other niche service providers out there that offer these services. Our niche is transcription, copywriting, web design/updates and all general admin and virtual assistant services. We strive to be the best at what we are good at. We do not aspire to be ‘jack of all trades’ and master of none.

Stay tuned for Number 9…

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