Inside Secrets of a Virtual Assistant

I’m a professional organizer.  I work as a personal assistant who spends time organizing my business clients, their offices, appointments and projects. Soon after I opened my company, Gal Friday, my first client moved her business to Washington D.C. and I suddenly found it necessary to become a Virtual Assistant (VA). 

It was a “do or die” situation.  We had a face-to-face relationship, but after moving across the country, the client needed to have a virtual relationship.  How could I be the right-hand to a client that I actually never see?

It might surprise the CEO of Yahoo who banned employee telecommuting, but a virtual job works amazingly well.  

My Washington-based client interviews people for articles that she writes and then she sends me the digital recording electronically.  I am able to download the recording to my computer, and with the help of a digital foot pedal, my computer becomes a transcription machine.  After transcribing the interviews, I e-mail the Word document back to the client.  We never see each other or even talk on the phone.  It’s all done electronically, or virtually.

Another way a Virtual Assistant can service a client is by remotely checking e-mail, deleting junk, responding to timely messages, and saving some in folders for future reference.  The folders are created for the sake of keeping e-mail organized and an empty in-box. 

Advantages of a virtual office are that it is a very GREEN and environmentally responsible endeavor.  A paperless office is a virtue to strive toward, though a challenge to maintain.  Paper tries to sneak into my office, but I do my best to keep it at bay and always recycle the paper that does manage to find its way in.  

Another advantage is that a VA frees up the client to do their work, by taking over the tasks that they don’t have time for or that they don’t enjoy doing.  It leaves the client more time to do the work that they get paid to do.   

Claudia Byrne is the owner of Gal Friday, a member business of the La Grange Business Association that provides individual and business support services in many areas such as personal assistant, business assistant, e-publishing, computer set-up and training, business writing, bookkeeping, administrative and clerical tasks.  She serves on the LGBA executive board.