Can I Make Other Sources of Income in My Business?

The answer to that question is a resounding YES! If you are someone like me, a hard-at-work Virtual Assistant, then you can understand that biggest desire for my business is to bring in more income and work less hours. I’ve got to slowly step back from my business and bring back that time I need to spend with my family, now more than ever.

So how do I make this plan work? Do I increase my hourly rate to existing clients and prospective new clients? Then I could reduce my hours, but make about the same income each month. That is one solution, but it may not be accepted well with current clients that are really watching their spending dollar right now.

There are a number of ways you can bring in additional income without working more hours. It’s called “dollars for hours” instead of “hours for dollars”. It’s a phrase I picked up from my business coach, Suzanne Evans.

What I am noticing more and more is my VA and coach colleagues are finding ways to market their business through the use of teleseminars and products. Because more prospective clients are not willing to commit to your services on an ongoing basis, they are now turning more towards participating in workshops and purchasing products to help them in their business. They want to learn how to set up their own products and services and they are willing to spend the money to have someone teach or consult them in that process. They are arming themselves with the knowledge they need to set up their own administrative processes.

Having this knowledge of the small business industry, you should already be thinking of ways you can reach out to your market and promote yourself and what you can offer in the form of products or teleseminars. The possibilities are endless. You could create a survey and send it to your VA or coaching community and get their input on what they would like to learn and that could be basis of what you could put together and market for your business! So it’s not as difficult as it sounds. What can be challenging is actually putting the program together. You will need to invest more time in putting the program or product together, but once it’s done, it’s done! Other than you having to tweak or improve upon what you already have, you have a new stream of income potential for your business.

As a VA, I can also look at investing my time in learning from other VA’s that have managed to grow their business, using a mutiple stream of income model. And that’s the Six-Figure VA System. It is worth a look if you are a VA looking for ways to build your business, but not spend more time in doing so.

So if you have ideas you want to share on the subject, please feel free to comment or drop me a line at aletha(at)dcvirtualoffice(dot)com. I would love to hear your advice and stories on what you are doing to increase your bottom line, but not sacrificing your personal time with family and friends.

This Small Biz Owner Has a Life/Work Balance Now

It seems lately that there has been a lot of conversation around the topic of having a life and work balance if you are a business owner. And one aspect of being able to make the balance work is to set boundaries within your business. The boundary concept was put best in Vickie Turley’s recent blog posting, How does a Small Business Owner Have a Work/Life Balance? But what I want to focus more on is not necessarily the boundaries you make, but the kind of schedule you can create for yourself that will allow you to work at a certain time of day and still have time to spend with family, particularly your children if you have youngsters in your life (like me!).

What makes a usual work day productive for me is to have a set daily schedule of the number of hours I work that day, the clients that I will be working with and times within the day that I can take breaks, especially a lunch break. It is important to also nourish and take care of yourself so that you are a productive and happy biz owner. I cannot stress that enough. Sometimes you catch yourself skipping breakfast, followed by a sparse lunch and you wonder why you feel so sluggish and lethargic by the end of the day. It doesn’t make for a great attitude towards your family when you haven’t taken care of yourself. Trust me…I’ve been there.

One other thing I want to add about having a set schedule (and it can be as simple as a Word or Excel document you create) is that it cuts off at the same time my office closes. Before I stop working on client tasks at the end of the day, I go ahead and answer any emails that need my attention before the following business day. It sure cuts down on emails I need to reply to first thing the next morning! That also means that I do not work on client tasks in the evening. That time is my family time. It allows me to prepare meals, help my children with their homework, make sure they are fed and bathed each day and it allows me to relax after a busy day working with clients. And sometimes, I need to have that “away” time as I attend women’s meetings or prayer meetings at my local church.

So being a business owner doesn’t mean you have to work 24/7 to make your business work. You will find the time to continue to work your business AND build your business. But it also means you take care of what is really important FIRST: that’s you and your family. They come first whether you have a business or not. Succeeding at the life/work balance is not a science. It’s like a see-saw. It does have its ups and downs! But once you start to take action and make subtle changes in your schedule and set the boundaries that Vickie speaks of, you will start to see that see-saw balance out and you will see the difference it makes in your daily interaction with your clients.

I would love to hear from you if you have success stories (or horror stories) that have challenged your life/work balance. There’s not a wrong answer here. Your comments and questions are welcome!

March Snow in North Carolina???

It was really hard for me to focus on work as I’m looking out my office window to a white, beautiful canvas of snow, coupled with a light sprinkling of flakes on occasion. What is really interesting to add to this week is that it will be a balmy 72 degrees outside by the end of the week. Now that is what I’m really looking for!

As I had a few minutes out of my day yesterday, I did manage to grab out the camera and take a couple of shots of the kids playing in the “white stuff”. Check them out!

Dakotah & Chloe - Snow Day March 2009

I Fought the Facebook Virus and Won

Over the weekend, I managed to click on a video link embedded in one of my Facebook friend’s personal message not realizing that it would end up being a headache later on. That link ended up being a malicious, virus-infected web page that decided to attach itself to my hard drive and continued to irritate me to no end. It turned out that it was a bogus ad telling me I needed to download their virus protection software, when in fact, it was a way for malware and trojan files to attach itself to my own hardware files. Yikes!

Quickly I visited the Facebook security section and the virus was one that came out back in December 2008 called the “Koobface” virus. Here’s a complete definition of the virus:

Koobface is a worm that infects computers by using the messaging system of social networks like Facebook and MySpace. Other Koobface known variants are Boface, W32.Koobface, Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.b, and W32/Koobface. The Koobface worm attacks profiles by sending an email to a user’s Facebook inbox with subjects like “You look just awesome in this new movie” or “You look funny in this new video” and the email message provides a link to a malicious video website. The malicious video website will prompt the user to download the fake video codec file flash_player.exe under the assumption that the user needs to update the Flash program to view a video. The flash_player.exe is really a doorway meant to let Koobface infect your computer.

Once installed, Koobface downloads a program called tinyproxy.exe. Tinyproxy.exe loads a proxy server called Security Accounts Manager which Koobface uses to monitor traffic on TCP port 9090 and proxies all outgoing HTTP traffic. Koobface hijacks search results from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN and replaces the results with links of malicious websites.

Koobface may redirect you to malicous websites that sell rogue security tools. Koobface has the ability to recreate itself after reboot. It is strongly recommended to remove Koobface from your system upon detection.

I knew that I had good virus protection software, but still felt unsecure knowing that I have my own personal information stored on my computer. I ended up losing sleep over the fact that someone could be spying on my computer within the short time that I had the infected files on my hard drive. But it also forced me to realize that I needed to continue to change my userid and passwords on a regular basis so that I can deter the potential invasion of my personal information (bank information, credit cards, etc.)

I ran several scans on my computer, finding some infected files, but most of them were cache files that I cleaned off my computer. Plus, I also restored my computer back before the infection incident. That did clear up the “ad” problem I was having too.

Did I learn a lesson here? Oh, you bet I did! One of the most important lessons that I want to ingrain in everyone’s mind is before you decide to open a questionable message or link, consider that you are running a business and know that this type of activity can impact your client base if they are associated with your database. Have the mindset that you are running a business, not catering to your personal needs and opening up every email, every link that hits your inbox.

If you want to learn more about how to secure yourself on Facebook, visit their security section at www.facebook.com/security. They have a great list of resource sites for security protection which I strongly urge you to have on your own computer. It will give you that peace of mind you deserve.