Who are You?

As I rushed my children back into the house this morning after a quick run to Starbucks I thought how silly I must look to some of my neighbors. My son in Halloween pajamas underneath his jacket and me in a green shirt, blue yoga pants and brown and orange flip-flops. The baby, the only normal dressed one of out of all of us, was in her carrier desperately trying to gnaw on my purse that is covered in sequins and boldly states, "happy hour."

I get everyone settled inside and remember that I still need to run back out to the car and grab my two Venti coffees (I'm not playing around this morning.) Still feeling silly, I grab my eye-glasses and put them on. In my mind as I open the front door and walk outside, I'm suddenly transformed into "Rebecca Buscemi, Business Owner" and no longer dirty mommy who really needs a shower.

I started thinking about how I DO present myself to others. I have only been a business owner for seven short months and learn more about myself everyday. I never knew that I had the desire and drive to do something this big in my life. Me, a business owner, wow! Sometimes, I sit back and think to myself that I'm kind of a big deal because I'm doing something great for my family that I love, doesn't stress me out (too much) and I'm helping others while doing it.

So, if I feel this way on the inside, why when I meet people and they ask me what I do for a living do I tell them that I'm a stay at home mom. Of course, this isn't a lie, I am a stay at home mom, but I'm also a work at home mom. Sometimes people ask me if I'm back at work and I'll tell them that I'm working out of the house at the moment. Which again is true, but I'm so much more than that. Very rarely am I able to say that I'm a business owner of a virtual assistance business. I'm not sure it's because I'm humble, I think it's because I'm shy.

Have you ever had this feeling as a new business owner? Are you able to tell anyone and everyone that you are proud of yourself and your success? Leave a comment and let me know!

I decided today, that whether I wear my eye glasses or not, I'm going to start to make a real effort to start to tell people who I really am. I'm Rebecca, a work at home mom who owns her own virtual assistance business, who are you?

Exciting News! The Creation of our Monthly Newsletter!

It has been an exciting beginning of the year for me and Creative Virtual Office! I have gained some wonderful new clients that are as exciting as the work that they provide me with. I have began to expand my services to include Authors and I'm hoping to expand into Business Coaches too!

Because my business is growing, I have decided to have a logo created by a fellow mom-entrepreneur. I hope to have the logo created by the middle of February. I have also signed up for business coaching. My hopes are to learn more about myself and develop a clearer picture of where I see me and my business going in 2009. With the creation of my new logo, I will be able to send out my newly created newsletter: "Creative News and Notes" with my logo attached! I'm also working on having a wonderful company develop personalized blog sites for both of my blogs!

"Creative News and Notes" is created with Virtual Assistants and their clients in mind. I hope to include a Virtual Assistant spotlight, highlighting a new Virtual Assistant or a new niche every month. There will be a section dedicated to time management advice, interesting new websites and technologies and upcoming events! So don't forget to sign up and stay tuned for the first issue!

If you are interested in being interviewed for the first issue or have an upcoming event that you would like me to include, please send me an email: rbuscemi@creativevirtualoffice.net

Social Networking (And All That Other Cool Online Stuff)

I spent the majority of the day with my sick son (who I lovingly refer to as Captain Pukey Pants) and my laptop. Lucky for me it was a slow day, so I was able to do most of my work from the sofa of my living room with my son and his bucket lying next to me. While keeping up-to-date with the Twitter world from Twhirl, a tweet came through about a blog listing the "50 Most Influential Women in Social Networking". Well, I got totally caught up in looking at all 50 of these websites and blogs. Wow, what an amazing group of women! There was so much to learn and look through. So I spent my evening updating my Delicious website and bookmarking all of my favorites and then I had to research some live RSS feeds for my favorite Blogs, so I don't miss a thing! (I ended up with FeedDemon; so far I'm happy with it.)
Anyway, I had wondered in the past if it's too much sometimes, belonging to so many social on-line networking sites. At what point do you get "on-line networking overkill"? But when I was looking at some of these websites of people that have been deemed "Social Networking Gurus" I realized that this is most likely how most of these people got their name out there. Most of them had at least two to three blogs and belonged to at least six social or business networking sites. I also noticed that many websites supported each other with links or blogs about "sister-sites" and so forth.
So, the moral of my story is that I now feel that I will continue my journey of Social Networking because it looks like it does work when you put time and effort into it. I feel like I got a good head start today! And I hope that I eventually will have the support of other virtual assistants, stay at home moms and other entrepreneurs in the future so that we can link up websites and connect!