Five years ago I was extremely pregnant, living in Bathurst with my husband and two boys in our newly built dream home and feeling a little bit lost. I had been studying to re-train as a primary school teacher for the previous 6 years (part time around looking after and making the kids) but I still wasn’t convinced that it was what I wanted to do. I enjoyed my studies but I wasn’t inspired and I wanted to be at home with my kids as much as possible. I ended up finding a job advertised in the local paper “bookkeeper/secretary – must have own laptop” and I instantly thought ‘I could do that easy!’. So I waddled up with my rather large belly (due to pregnancy complications, I was extremely huge at 34 weeks – had looked like I was full term since 24 weeks) and they offered it to me as a contracting position from home.

I like to think of that first client as the catalyst for the start of Tilda Virtual.

Over the last five years I’ve learnt some very important lessons, have achieved what felt like achievable goals and have crashed and burned big time. Being a business owner is hard work and it’s not just about providing a service or product, it’s all the behind the scenes stuff that goes with it. I knew early on that I didn’t just want to have enough work for myself (and effectively create a job), I wanted a team of subcontractors and/or employees and I wanted to do it all from home. I’m extremely proud to say that I have an awesome team and without them I’d still be struggling. So thanks everyone and a big BIG thank you to my awesome husband who said to me five years ago “go for it babe!”.

… to serve on the Board of Directors for the International Virtual Assistant Association (IVAA)!!

This year (May) marks 5 years in business for Tilda Virtual and in some ways I’m really excited but in other ways I’m completely stunned. Who could have predicted 5 years ago that I would create a business that not only financially supports my family but also the families of my employees and subcontractors.

Statistics can be quite scary but most small businesses in Australia fail within the first 2 and 5 years of business and it’s my belief that a business will fail simply due to a lack of resources, support and information.

The day I discovered the Virtual Assistant industry I got so excited. I had already been working from home supporting my husband and his business partner in their IT business at that time for 3 years, I had found a local client needing my bookkeeping and administrative skills and I’d been asked by other business owners to help them out too over the years.  But it wasn’t until my youngest was about 4 months old that I realised that starting my own business was something I needed to do, that it was something I was driven to do. So I created the business name Tilda Virtual, designed my first website and went on to achieve my 5 year goals in 18 months. In 2008 I won the Janet Jordan Achievement Award and everything was full steam ahead.

However, I’ve made mistakes. Yup, it’s true. I’ve made some big mistakes and trusted some people that have cost my business a lot of money and nearly brought it to its knees but I came out of those situations stronger knowing fully what I needed to do to ensure those mistakes never happened again.

But here is my question to you, would I still be here today if it wasn’t for organisations like IVAA, A Clayton’s Secretary (ACS) or VA Networking?

I joined these organisations looking for information and I got so much more than that! I’ve been extremely lucky to learn from experienced Virtual Assistants who thought nothing of sharing tips with the ‘newbies’. I attended as many webinars as I could, subscribed to all their newsletters and I joined and participated on their forums. In my eyes, I needed to learn from the best so I hung out with the best. And it’s thanks to them that I’ve been able to achieve so much in just 5 years. I also gained some very close friends who live on the opposite end of the earth from me. Now, it’s my turn to give back and I am fortunate to be able to do that in serving on the Board of Directors for IVAA. So thank you everyone in the Virtual Assistant industry for helping me to make my dream come true!

I’d like to thank everyone for their support this year. Without it, Tilda Virtual would not be the business it is without it!

The team is also taking a much needed break, so the office will be closed from 23rd December to 2 January 2011. Be safe and have a Merry Christmas!

In case you haven’t heard by now, Tilda Virtual Services has just opened its “actual” doors at Suite 1.13, 202 Jells Road in Wheelers Hill. These are real actual doors to our office which is open to the public where we provide binding, copying and faxing services in addition to our regular bookkeeping and virtual assistance services. And what would be the sense of a bunch of virtual assistants working out of an office suite if we didn’t offer virtual office space to home-based business owners?

Not many VAs actually take the leap and secure an office space outside the home. Truth be told, there’s not really much need of doing so. However, I felt strongly that I could further serve local home-based business owners by offering reception services and mail redirection; services much easier to provide from an “actual” office. Lincoln (code monkey) also wouldn’t have liked me renting meeting rooms before I secured the new office space outside of our home. “I don’t care if there’s a game on, Mr. Smith needs the family room. He booked it last week!”

But I digress. Was it easy for me to take such a big step into the unknown that is 202 Jells Road? No. Was it scary? Yes. Then again, it wasn’t easy for me to start this business when I was preparing to give birth to my third baby! You see, I don’t want to live my life in fear. I don’t believe it does one bit of good. I prefer to live my life in opportunity.

Fear crushes dreams. It stunts business growth and prevents us from reaching our full potential. It’s a nasty beast, isn’t it?

Being an entrepreneur, the very nature of it, means you’re always faced with another risk or a scary decision to make. But the way I see it, if you never feel that fear and go ahead and do it anyway, you’re never going to grow. You won’t really get anywhere if you just keep going with what feels comfortable.

I’d like to challenge you this month to do something that you fear. Go ahead and experience the fear but do it anyway and see how empowering it is. You will hopefully get used to it. After all, at the end of your days would you rather tell your grandchildren you lived your life in opportunity or in fear?

Don’t worry, we haven’t moved interstate like last time but rather we’ve moved into office space. You can now find us at Suite 113, 202 Jells Road, Wheelers Hill, Vic 3150. Our office hours are now 9am to 5pm.

Our phone number has stayed the same at 03 9013 8389.

Thanks for all your support!!

Turns out everyone loves us and raves about my team and the high quality of services provided (yay) and so I’ve decided to conduct some market research to see what else small business owners need from Tilda Virtual Services. After all, if you don’t tell me, I won’t know you need it!

For those of your who do complete the survey I will be offering a coupon to use across any of our services offered. (Coupon excludes bookkeeping software, hosting or domain name registration.)

Click here to complete the survey.

I did something for the first time since starting my business, I took vacation time and didn’t touch my computer for a whole two weeks. And while it was much needed veg-out time, It was also really hard for me to step back from the computer. I realised just how much time I actually spend on the computer each week.

Because I want to embrace the new year I decided to revisit my goals and my sale forecasts for the rest of the financial year. While I seem to be on track for reaching my goals I’ve decided to set some new ones. I’ve broken these goals down into baby steps to make more achievable.

I have a fantastic team in place and we’re working with some great clients. I can’t wait to see what 2010 brings my way.

Yet again, another website has ripped off my content. The only difference this time is how I feel about it. This new case of copyright infringement brings my total to 4. That’s 4 different VAs and now Bookkeeper who has ripped off my content with no regards to the effect it has on me and my business. That’s 4 people who were either too lazy to write their own content or too lazy to check the work their ‘copywriter’ has ‘produced’ for them.

I twittered about the latest infringement during the week and the lovely @BillHarper found me a website that gives you to low down on what to do if your content has been ripped off by asking his followers for any links to help me.

The truly sad thing here is that there are people out there on the web that think content and images are there for the taking. That just because they’re not breaking into someone’s home, office or car to take something that it doesn’t matter. Newsflash… it does matter. When I first had my content ripped off I was devastated and heartbroken. The second time I was mad as all hell. Third time I just rolled my eyes and this time I’m just annoyed at the fact that I now have to chase the offender to have them take it down, that I have to make all the effort here.

So my next step is to find a legitimate contact for this person as the email form on their website bounced. I’ll keep you all up to date as I reclaim my content.

Recently I decided to sit my Ethics Test and Certification with the International Virtual Assistant Association as a way to prove that I do in fact manage my business on a day to day basis that is ethically sound and in accordance with codes of conduct for the various associations of which I am a member.

Needless to say, I passed and have the honour of adding this badge to my website.

So what you do you think about ethics? Is it important to be independently tested as being an ethical online business owner or is it unnecessary in your humble opinion.

Either way, I’m happy!