Recording a Segment of my Top 10 VA Tip's in Boracay!

Location: Home Office, Reading / Viewing Time: 6mins

Number of Days in the Office: 16, Total Number of Employees: 176

This last month was another real eye-opener for me. Amongst other things, I spent a whole week working from a beach resort in Boracay, with absolutely none of my clients actually knowing of the fact – I spoke to people daily, and even made calls to prospective clients without anyone batting an eyelid, so to speak. Another testament to the fact that a fully virtual lifestyle is very much do-able.

I made a couple of new key-hire’s in March, too. First up, we expanded our training and development team with a new Training Supervisor. She will be working with our staff more on a one-on-one basis, coaching on individual needs, so we are all very excited to see how that side of things develops. Secondly, our new Quality Assurance Supervisor will be working directly with our individual Team Leaders, Management and more importantly, our clients, to insure that the quality of work we produce for them i sof the highest standards, as always.

I guess the ‘big news’ this month is the signing of an agreement between our company and one of our long-term clients, who has just become our official US Partner. Eric Lightman, COO of On Hold, Inc., and a 20-year business veteran searched high and low for a decent outsourcing partner before he found my company and we have since forged a very unique client/vendor relationship, as well as becoming good friends! The North American market is a big one for us, and having this new partnership formed is the perfect compliment to the rest of our team here in the Philippines. I am going to ask Eric to write a quick article for the blog in regards to his journey in outsourcing work, so hopefully that will appear here soon!

Bit of sad news – we unfortunately lost two clients this month for different reasons. I guess the ‘shining light’ is that neither of the reasons were down to us! One simply had been fighting the economic woes for a while, and eventually had to cease operations. The second had an Outbound Telemarketing campaign with us and had to cancel due to regulatory changes in their local area in regards to cold calling. It’s always a shame to lose clients (it doesn’t happen often, thanksfully), but nonetheless it is part of doing business.

Good news, however, is that our Head of Client Services, Ray, has been doing a fine job bringing on board new clients and I am particularly excited on a couple of them as they look like they have massive growth potential, which is excellent for all involved.

We also celebrated two management birthdays in the Management section of our business, too, and so I am now left with a larger waste line because of this! Time to hit the gym, I believe. In regards to the blog, and its growth/interest levels online, we’ve had the following happen:

• Several cool guest posts around the web
• I’ve been interviewed three times by other bloggers (two more due, too!)
• My Top 10 Virtual Assistant Video Tips series of YouTube posts were received with open arms and created a lot of very positive feedback – thank you!
• I flew to Manila to spend time with Dan from OutsourcetothePhilippines.com and LifestyleBusinessPodacast.com, and recorded some great footage for the blog with him! He also recorded a podcast with me. hear it by clicking HERE.
• Increase in visitors, links, tweets, alexa ranking and overall interest across the board – awesome!
• The VBL Facebook Fan Page continues to grow and we’re getting close to that 1,000 fan landmark! Spread the word!

Another fantastically busy month, but also very productive one. The one thing that I am really enjoying on this journey of mine is being able to get it ‘out there’ via the pages of this blog. I receive so many great emails from people (some people say I’m nuts for being so transparent!) giving me a thumbs up and writing with such great comments, it is truly humbling to be able to produce the content and have it enjoyed by so many interesting, enthusiastic and appreciative people – thanks for all your communication guys.

See you next month for another VBL round-up!

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