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

Starting Your Virtual Assistance Business Week #!

I joined Twitter about 1 month ago and since that time, I have been asked by quite a few people to give some advice about starting up their own Virtual Assistance business. I was driving myself crazy trying to remember all of the people that I promised to send information to, so I decided to start a blog series on the basics of starting up your own Virtual Assistance Business. I hope you enjoy my tipsand I wish all of you luck! The wonderful thing about being a Virtual Assistant is that we all have our own specialities and niches; which makes us unique! There is enough work out there for all of us. Please feel free to comment with questions or your own stories!

Let me start with saying, that you do not necessarily have to have a business or administrative background/degree to do this type of work from home. (Of course it always helps though!) I have a Bachelors in Education and I’m working on Masters in Education. I do have administrative experience though, but only about 5 years of it. What do I have? I love to help people, I have a niche that works well for me because it’s my passion, I learn quickly and I’m very computer savvy.


Take out some paper or even start a journal and let's start with some questions: "What do you have to offer?" or "What can you bring to the table?" What are you passionate about? My passions are children, education, special education, disabilities, health care and non-profits. The things in my life that drive me are the same things that my Virtual Assistance business is built on. My services are geared to helping professionals in these fields because I find these topics to be exciting and the people worthwhile to work with. Think about those two questions and decide for yourself, who do you want to work with, what do you have that makes you different than others and what are you good at? Don't feel frustrated if you aren't able to answer all of these questions in one day or even a week! This is a learning process, so enjoy the process and don't feel pressured to know all the answers right away.

So, you have a general idea of what kind of people or businesses you would like to offer support services to. Next, you need to decide if you have the dedicated space in your house to offer to your business. If you don't have this space yet, you need to have it before you start your business. Take a look around your house and decide where can you make your business "fit." If you already have this dedicated space, then you can move on to the next step.

Evaluate what technology you may already have and what do you need to make your Virtual Assistance business work. Generally speaking, you will need a computer (Mac/PC; your preference) with Internet access (high speed preferably), a business phone line (there are many low cost options out there), a fax machine, scanner, and a printer. There are other things that could be included in this list, but it depends on what type of services you plan on offering your clients. You may want to purchase a scale to weigh mail if you plan on offering a mailing service to your clients, for example.

Your homework for the week:

1.) Find out more about yourself and what you can offer others...what is your gift?

2.) Where is the space that you can dedicate to your business?

3.) What services can you offer your clients and what technology do you need or do you have to purchase to make your services possible? (Start writing a list of possible purchases you may need to buy so you know beforehand how to budget your business.)

4.) Do some research. Look at other Virtual Assistant's websites and see what services they offer and who their clients are.

Leave me comments! I would love to know about your beginning Virtual Assistance ventures! Until next week!

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!

And So it Began...Because I Was on Bedrest

Wow...so I started my Virtual Assistance business in July of 2008. It has been a fun journey so far, even though I'm only 3 months into it! First, it would make most sense to give you a background on me! For some reason, I feel that this blog will bring me the type of clients that I'm looking for. Not to say that the clients that I currently have are not worthy of my time, they most certainly are! Especially the ones that fit into my "population" that I have in mind. But, if I tell my story, maybe the people that I want to help the most will come forward, ha ha!

Okay, so a short education background: Graduated in 2004 with a Bachelors degree in Early Childhood Administration and I am currently enrolled in a Masters program in Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment. But, I feel that I learned the most valuable lessons in life from working with children and adults. I feel at times the degree is there to "validate" that I'm a professional in my field and I'll take it!

I discovered my love for educating when I was in high school. We had a child development lab in-house that provided child care services for parents. We were responsible for creating lesson plans for the children, providing the material for the lesson plans and even developing the curriculum that they were going to follow that year. I loved it! I loved discovering new ways to teach the children. I was a firm believer from the moment I started working with children, that we all learn differently and that a teacher is responsible for providing these various learning methods to ensure the success of her children.

Okay...so I graduated from high school (yeah)! I started my first "real" job in the Baltimore County School systems. I was a reading tutor for elementary school students. I learned a lot from this job. I learned that I didn't necessarily like to work with children who were taller than me (that eliminated everyone older than 8) and that when you work for someone and you are being paid from a "Poverty Grant" you may not have a job the next school year:) The wonderful thing about this job is I learned the importance of data collecting and written observations as they pertain to education. I also discovered that I LOVED kindergartners; which further proved that I was meant to be an early childhood educator.

I moved onto two different children's learning centers. I started out as an assistant in the classroom at the first one; got my certification and started teaching as soon as possible. The problem was there were no teaching positions available at this center. So I learned my most valuable lesson at this center: negotiating. I negotiated with the center director to change every one's work day to a 10 hour day (a 4 day work week) versus 8 hour (a 5 day work week) day. Everyone loved the idea! And it allowed me to teach every day! The teachers alternated their days off and I taught in their class in their absence. When I left this center, it was because I wanted my own class. I loved the variety of a different age group everyday, but I had no space to call my own. At the second center in which I taught, I had a fabulous class of fifteen three year olds. Yes, you heard me right, fifteen three year olds. At this center I learned the valuable lesson of team work. Let me tell you...there is some great help out there when it comes to assistants in the classroom...and then there is the other people. I went through four-five assistants in the one year that I taught at the center before I found the assistant of my dreams. She was wonderful and we made a great team!

I decided that although I loved the classroom and the children, I needed to go back to school and earn a Bachelors Degree so that I move up the "educational ladder." To do this, I needed a job with a little more flexibility and shorter days. I left the children's center and started working for Kennedy Krieger Institute as a 1:1 aide in a classroom for children with various special needs. I worked with children with Autism, Fragile-X syndrome and traumatic brain injuries (to name a few). Guess what...I was a little disappointed that I was working with children that were older than the age that I thought was comfort zone (therefore the children were all taller than me) until I realized that working with children who had special needs isn't something that everyone can do...but I could and I think I did it really well! Kennedy Krieger Institute proved to have so many opportunities for me...I was a Child Development Teacher for a while at an Early Head Start that they funded and an Activities Coordinator in KKI's pediatric rehabilitation hospital. While working at the hospital I finished up my Bachelors Degree.

After receiving my degree, I was promoted to a Therapy Center Specialist and co-ran the Therapy Center. The Therapy Center was a very unique department. In it, you could find Child Life Specialists, Therapeutic Recreation Specialists and a plethora of other professionals. My responsibilities (along with my partner in crime) were to create rehabilitation goals for the patients that they were responsible to work on in every therapy, develop an appropriate curriculum to follow through out the year, develop activities for the patients to participate in when they weren't in therapies, running orientation to the department and other administrative tasks that come with running a center. I also started working for a non-profit organization at this time that provided services to families with children who have Autism. I supervised technicians that worked in the homes with children providing them with individualized support, respite care and family training.

I was where I wanted to be! I had two jobs where I was respected and was working with the populations that I loved: early childhood and special needs.

So, of course, I get pregnant...

I came back to work after three months off with my beautiful baby boy. I was excited to come back to work. With some negotiation, I was able to come back part-time. I still loved my job, especially the administrative aspects of it. I'm a planner and developer. I loved to develop new data collection sheets or lesson plans or groups for the patients to participate in. But something in me had changed, I was a mother and I wanted to be home with my son. I thought that if I worked three days a week, that would be enough for me and I would be satisfied, both at home and at work. Not so much. I lasted nine months and decided to be a stay at home before his first birthday.

Fast forward a bit...I got bored...so I decided to go back to school and earn my Masters Degree. I still worked for my non-profit organization also and once again was loving the administrative side of my job. I started to get busier with my non-profit and started to work with more families.

Guess what? Pregnant again! Well, 26 weeks into this pregnancy, I end up on bed rest after a hug gone wrong by my now two year old whose head managed to dive-bomb my lower stomach so hard, it caused me to have contractions which led into pre-term labor. I was on bed rest until my 36th week. I went a little stir crazy. I had to stop my work with my non-profit for the time being because I couldn't visit my families. So I began to think about me, my life, my children and where I wanted to be after I had this baby. I did some research and discovered the wonderful world of Virtual Assistants.

I was excited because I had a niche....already, I had a niche! This is one of the hardest things about being a VA, is finding that one thing that you were good at and wanted to work with. I knew that I wanted to provide services to the areas of my work experience that I loved the most: Educators, Health Care Professionals and Non-Profits. So, here I am three months later with two clients, one that falls into my "niche" and one that doesn't. But that's okay, because we all have to start somewhere.

So, what now? Now I'm working on marketing to my "niche" which isn't easy. The bad thing about the majority of clients that I want to help have no idea how they would use my services. The good thing about that is I think I'm one of the few that provides this service, so it shouldn't be so hard to find clients. Once again, not so much. But it's only been three months and I keep plugging along.

And here I am, a two year old who finally fell asleep at quarter of twelve, a six week old that will be awake any minute and me, who just finished her first ever blog...and all of this, because I was on bed rest!