Virtual Marketeers

Archive for September, 2009

Niche marketing can be pretty much summed up by your refining a specialty in your business.  It is usually, but not always, something that the person establishing the business/blog is good at, maybe has a love for.  It could be a hobby, it could be something you enjoy, or something that you are really good at, maybe you are a professional and have done a degree in this particular area.  The selection of niche areas possible is huge; larger than anyone can ever imagine.  Actually I am certain that their are currently niche areas that haven’t been recognised yet, especially in areas such as science and technology where knowledge and hardware are continually developing, changing and growing.

Some people starting out in business know exactly what their niche is going to be.  Some example might be an Business Accountant, or a Web Marketer, or Environmental Consultancy, or Association Management… the list goes on for miles and miles and miles!  Others will most certainly start out broader and then eventually they will refine the niche area for their business.

Why Establish a Niche Area?

Establishing a niche is a marketing tool for telling the world that you are a specialist in that particular field.
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A couple of good examples of some really successful Work at Home Mums are below:

The Online Resource for Christian Work at Home Mom’s founded by Jill Hart who is also the co-author of So You Want To Be a Work-At-Home Mom (Beacon Hill Press, 2009).  Jill has an excellent newsletter that she sends out to her subscribers actually.

A Clayton’s Secretary, owned by Kathie Thomas, who started a Virtual Assistant when her children were of school age.  Kathie is still going strong in this industry today.  Through her life experience Kathie has written two books, the first one was titled Worth More than Rubies and was written keeping in mind her experiences as a work from home and the second book being It Happened by Design which she finished more recently, this second book is about true life experiences of God’s design on lives.  Kathie Thomas provides ongoing support in the Virtual Assistance Industry and to her clients in numerous ways, but the two that stand out to me the most are the 10 Week Training Program to start or enhance your VA business (probably stands out as I am a VA Graduate) and the ‘For Clients‘ section of her website as she provides a positive result for both clients and her members, by connecting available Virtual Assistant members with new Clients.

WAHMtastic! – The best Work at Home Mums & Dads in Australian Business.
Although I haven’t really had a proper look around the site, it looks interesting and I will be heading over there soon to have a peak.  An excerpt from the site, which tells us what WAHMtastic is all about:
“WAHMtastic exists to get you connected with quality work at home parents with proven quality in their offerings and customer service with real, validated reviews from professional reviewers, previous customers and hunt participants.”

I know that there are stacks more business run by work at home Mums or Dads, these are but a few…

Following are 12 tips for establishing good habits for work at home Mums and Dads.  Hope they are helpful to you!

GOOD PRACTICES

1. Flexible Routine

The aim of the very first habit here is to allow you to put your personal and family needs and wants first, put them on a pedestal so to speak.  Yeah sure, business and career is important – but what’s the fun in life if you can’t share these experiences with your family?

You might be saying here ‘this isn’t a habit, this is a one off thing to get me on the right track, get me started’.  Actually I do this particular exercise at least once a year, sometimes more often if there is a need to.  I find that I get things rolling along real smoothly in life and then the next day something changes, and I have to reevaluate again.  A healthy life and work balance is one of my visions and goals for my business, so I feel that it is a necessity that I review where I am at regularly, to make sure that I am focussing on what is most important in my life.

So how do you establish a flexible routine?  You plan the hours you want to work around your own and your family commitments.  To do this you should prepare a weekly (Monday to Sunday) calendar with no dates included.  First add all those things in your day that are a must, and cannot be missed.  Include on the the flexible routine any Favourite TV shows, sports, chores and any other things that might impact on your time – mark your personal and family commitments in one colour.  Once you have added in your current commitments you will see the white blank areas, these are the areas where you can do some work if you choose to.

Oh, by the way, keep your eyes peeled.  I have a template that I use for this purpose, and are hoping to make this template available for you to use real soon. Read the rest of this entry »

The beauty of working from home is that a business can be built into what we, as parents, want it to be!  It can be as big as we want for it to be, or as small.  It can be as flexible as we want it to be, or as rigid.  Some parents would prefer to work in the evenings when their children are tucked up in bed asleep.  Other parents might prefer to work while their children are either preoccupied, or taking a nap, that way they can spend quality time with the family in the evenings.  This is all about figuring out what works for you, what makes your family run smoothly, what is right for your particular situation and your family?

I have heard people say that ‘quality’ time is the important thing when you have kids, in fact I’m pretty sure that these exact words have managed to make their way from my lips at some point.  Yes I agree, this is true, but fact is that quantity is also up there in importance.  If we spent 15 minutes in each day with our child, but made sure that the child had our absolute full focused attention in those 15 minutes, would this be enough, would the child’s needs be fulfilled?  I don’t think so!  I am finding more and more that as our children grow they need more and more focused attention.

Following are two things that immediately sprang to mind when I thought about being in business.  These are things that have constantly come up at every stage of my business, at start up stage, as I started working for clients and also as my business has developed and become what it is today:
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(My Journey Part 5)

It’s funny how in the end I did end up owning my own business.  I am really glad that I do, as it has been a dream to own my own business since probably even before I got married to Paul.  Anyway, what I want to speak about in this last part about my journey is where I see my business into the future and to provide a snapshot of the day in the life of Rachel.

Where to from here?

As a Mum I have family to care for.  I have some creative juices that tend to flow through me, and an adventurous streak that screams out “there just has to be more, we’ve got to find out what it is” absolutely all the time, I just can’t seem to knock it, not that I would want to hey!  So, that being the case I have a couple of business ideas that I am working on at the moment, this being one of them.  I have a bigger picture idea and inspiration for this blog, but you never know it might change as time passes.  I would like to develop this blog in small bite sized pieces because it’s bound to taste even better in small bites, lol!!

My days are really busy, I would like to see this settle down a bit; a lot actually.  I take most of the day Tuesday and all day Sunday off at the moment, but even when I’m not working sometimes work finds its way in there.  I would really love to have more time to spend with Paul and the children and can’t see this happening unless I change my situation – so here I am trying out something different that might help me to develop and grow and maybe change the dynamics  of my business a bit even!
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(My Journey Part 4)

I was really starting to enjoy life a lot when Paul received news that the service centre where he worked (he’s a mobile phone technician) in Adelaide would be closing as at the end of that month.  At the time I was visiting my Mum and Dad in Queensland and received the phone call.  This was a real hard one, it was difficult to decide on the next best move.  I could go back to my job in government, Paul could apply for other jobs in his line of work, or we could move up to Queensland – those were the three options.  We discussed and thought about it, but there did come a time when we did actually have to make the decision.  What happened?  I resigned from my position in government and we moved up to Queensland with our eldest child.  Our life was in absolute limbo for the first, I think it was about four months.  By the fifth month we were living in a rented place North of Brisbane and Paul was working the other side of town.

I had taken a job but it didn’t work out because our son had a major allergic reaction while he was in Childcare and we felt a need to pull him out of Childcare for peace of mind.  Besides the major allergic reaction we felt that he was withdrawing at home and we didn’t want to miss out on this very important stage of his life.  So, I stayed at home with our little one and did some rearranging of our family home so that we could cope on one wage.  Although we were able to establish a good routine where we lived and met a few people, it still didn’t feel like home.

Six months of renting a home came and went, and we purchased and moved into our own home in a different part of Brisbane, where we are now actually.  I had plenty to do when we first moved in.  There was the packing, then the moving and then the unpacking and the cleaning of the previous home.
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(My Journey Part 3)

As a result of my losing three babies through miscarriage I applied for a lower level position in this same office as a job share, part-time 3 days a week, in the hope that I might slow things down a bit in my life and reduce my stress levels.  This seemed to work after a time.  The fourth time I got pregnant we were so blessed with our first and eldest child.

Soon after I started in the new position I was asked to take on higher duties and assist with developing a more comprehensive financial reporting process for the Committee that I had previously provided secretarial services for.  At around the same time I was asked to provide bookkeeping and secretarial services to a not for profit Catchment Group and I volunteered in the role of Treasurer at the Church that I attended at the time. What did this mean for my workload?  That I worked about four out of the five working days a week which was absolutely fine with me.  Some times were busier than others, but the pressures were different and less.  I also really enjoyed the variety in work that this provided.

When our first child was born I took the leave owing to me, and one year unpaid leave on top of that.  I continued to assist with the bookkeeping for the Catchment Group and provide secretarial services to them also.  I also continued in the volunteer role as Treasurer at the Church.  As I worked less than two days a week I had the opportunity to attend Mum’s group, bible study group, visit friends and do all those things that I wanted to do, including cooking lots of yummy dinners, cakes and biscuits in our oven – and it was necessary to do lots of cooking, as our child has allergies to peanuts, seafood, eggs and dairy – and for allergies, especially when you first realise that someone has allergies, the absolute best thing to do is to prepare fresh meals for them and take notice of what is going into the foods.  I loved spending time in the house that my husband and I had chosen, and built together.  This was a great time for me, I really did have the opportunity to be a Mum and spend some really good quality time with our eldest child.
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(My Journey Part 5)

Within probably one and a half years of my commencing in the admin position within the Ministers Office there was a major restructure in government and I was moved back to the department to work with the person who was my supervisor to start with.  Although I went back to the same supervisor, everything was different as the actual department had undergone a major restructure previously as well, which I had actually seen the beginning of before I started in the Ministers Office.  I was not only in a new place, but I was also provided a whole new job description to when I had left.

I didn’t mind one bit, as I was given a really good mix of financial support, admin support and human resources support / liaison which was unique to this particular division – plenty of new things to learn and do!  Again I learned so much from this job and from the people who surrounded me and I grew immensely in my skill set and as a person at the time.  I learned so much more about database management, about human resource management (at a basic level), accounts and admin support. I provided support to the personal assistant to the director once again and was actually asked to fill in for her while she was away.  I was asked to fill in for other personal assistants within the department and I, at times assisted the personal assistant to the CEO of the department by filling in for the receptionist while she was on leave.

If my memory serves me correctly I also completed my first minutes of meeting while I was in this role, although these were probably pretty average and I needed a fair bit of practise in order to bring me to the level I am now with minutes of meeting and transcription.  I have to say that providing a comprehensive and accurate record of minutes of any meeting can be quite difficult, especially when you have not yet developed the skill set needed to do this.

This experience actually helped me in refining my skills even more, as I basically created this as a new position myself, including setting the processes and procedures within this position.
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(My Journey Part 1)

The purpose of the next few articles will be to provide you a picture of how I came to become a home based business entrepreneur and what it is like to own and run my own business from home, “The day in the life of Rachel Reeves” so to speak.

At the moment my business isn’t run fully from home, but that’s okay, because I am loving the interaction that comes with this.  I currently work for three very unique clients and am enjoying the variety of work that comes with this.  The amount of time I work is okay, but there are some tough times when either myself or my boys become ill, or even when I have something extra on in a week.

The Start of My Career Journey

There are a few things that have shaped my life and my career so far.  I started out as a trainee at a small town primary school.  Actually it was with one of the primary schools I had attended, which was in a small country town.  At first I had heaps of trouble remembering to call my supervisor by her first name instead of Mrs S, which is what we all called her when in primary school.  I loved working there and found that I learned so much, because being that it was such a small school I was provided the opportunity to do a bit of everything.  One day I worked in the library, the next day I would be in the office checking off receipts, the next day I would be helping to organise the school concert and then the day after that I would be setting up computers or assisting some students with a software program.

I really loved the interactions I had with both the staff and students, the learning process that I went through and the variety.  I wasn’t paid very well, which you expect when you are a trainee, but I was living at home still with not really any responsibilities and so it didn’t really matter, I adapted.   I absolutely really wouldn’t trade these first ‘working life’ experiences with anything else – it was an awesome way to be able to learn.
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…and what are we about you might be asking right about now!

Virtual Marketeers is a blog (weblog) website aimed at those with an Internet or Home-Based Business with a focus on providing business and marketing information to business owners.  We also have a vision to provide to businesses a means where they can market their own goods or services in a very unique way.

Who is Rachel Reeves?

Virtual Marketers content is produced, or sourced by business entrepreneur, Rachel Reeves.  Rachel also owns a Virtual Assistance business, Proactive Admin Services where she, with over ten years experience, provides administrative support to her clients.

Rachel operates mainly from her home office.  She draws on her passion understanding of web and home-based business to bring to the table helpful information about business and outsources, and a unique way to market business goods and services.

Learn more about Rachel’s life and business journey by reading the next few articles which will be about her business life and career.

Watch this space…