By now you probably have heard about Nicole Dean & Darina Loakman’s website for women freelancers - Shelancers. If you haven’t heard about it, let me tell you a little about it.

When the site first launched, I grabbed the introductory special price they were offering. I wasn’t planning on continuing my subscription. I was honestly just wanting to go in, look around and see what it was all about. Once I joined and began looking around I realized it was worth the minimal monthly fee to stay a member.

Nicole and Darina have done a nice job of putting together a site for women freelancers where they offer monthly resources. You’ll find audio or video resources, special reports, etc. A new feature they just recently added is the forum.

If you are looking for a way to get your business name out there check out Shelancers.

I’ve been a VA since January 2006. When it comes to implementing new things to work on bringing in new clients or bigger and better things to offer current clients, I tend to struggle with knowing the next step to take.

Not anymore…thanks to the this!

I heard about the Virtual Assistant Revolution right after I started Tishia Saves Time. I cant’ tell you how many times I’ve been ready to join but kept putting it off and putting it off for one reason or another. Recently I attended an open house they had and that was the night I knew it was time, that it was my time to join. I believe there’s always a right time for everything and in the past I wasn’t ready for the Rev but know that I am now.

It’s taken me over two years to get to the point where I’m really serious about my business. In the past I’ve been ok with how things were going but not anymore. I’m ready to step up my game, move out of my comfort zone, and revolutionize my business! I’m ready to become a highly sought after VA.

It’s an awesome community! 

I’m thrilled with the resources, mentoring and all around wonderful people that make up the Virtual Assistant Revolution community. It’s empowering and inspiring being around a group of successful VA’s, ones that have ‘been there done that’ and are willing to share what’s worked for them and what hasn’t. If you’re a VA, whether a newbie or seasoned pro, there’s something to benefit from joining the VA Revolution. I give it two thumbs up

If this is your first time here please read the first conversation that Tricia and I had together. This week I’ve been asked a great question, one that didn’t take long to come up with my answer.

Tricia asks:  

Tishia is there a service out there that you don’t know how to do but wish you could learn so that you can offer it to your clients?

Yes Tricia there is definitely something I wish I could offer my clients that I don’t. I do basic WordPress customization but I want to be able to do more in depth customization! I’ve been intrigued with WordPress ever since I started working with it. I love it but sometimes hate it too ;-)  Eventually I would like to learn more coding, etc so that I can offer more customizations. Until then, I’m enjoying the basic customization I do offer.

A Question for Tricia:

Now that your kids are out of school for the summer, how is this going to affect your schedule? Will you make changes to accommodate your kids being home or will you still work the same hours you have been?

I’m back with another question from my CBC with Tricia of Time Saver VA. If this is your first time visiting, please check out our first conversation here. You can read her answer to my last question here.
Tricia’s Question for Me:

How often do you check your email?  And does checking your email really seem to eat up your time?

I suppose I have to answer this question honestly don’t I? This is one of my downfalls, but I’m working on it every day. I’m obsessive about checking my email. It used to be I was ok with only checking in the morning and then in the afternoon.

Once my business began to grow and I had more emails coming in it was a bit overwhelming opening my email first thing in the morning and seeing all that I needed to deal with. So I picked up a bad habit…leaving my email program open all the while I was online. It’s very distracting and a habit I certainly don’t recommend! Having it open at all times makes reading and responding to emails even more time consuming, in my opinion than if you just schedule say an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon.

I’m back to only checking it in the morning and afternoon. Ok well I’m working really hard on only checking it twice a day! I schedule 1 hour every day for checking my email first thing in the morning. I schedule 30 minutes every day for checking my email in the afternoon (I have more in the mornings than in the afternoon).

When I know that I have a certain amount of time scheduled to deal with email, it keeps me more focused and on target. When I was in the habit of leaving it open all day, it was too time consuming because I would stop what I was doing when I saw that an email had come in.

I think I got a bit wordy on answering that question. I didn’t mean to ramble so much and I hope it made some sort of sense to you Tricia. Now I have another question for you.

A question for Tricia:

Now that you’ve been working as a VA for awhile, what’s the one piece of advice you would give another newbie coming into this market?