Tisha Lee of Tishia Saves Time and I have been talking back and forth for a couple months now.  I am really learning a lot from her because she has been in the VA business for a couple years now and has been asking and answering some really great questions.  If you want to read our blog conversations you can go Here on my site and Here on Tishia’s site.  Tishia answered my last question and turned around and asked me a awesome question that I was thinking about posting so Thank you so much Tishia.

Now that your kids are out of school for the summer, how is this going to affect your schedule? Will you make changes to accommodate your kids being home or will you still work the same hours you have been?

Tishia once my kids got out of school things really did change alot around the house.  I had to sit down and figure out how many hours I had to work in a week and also had to figure out how I could make those hours week with the kids home all day.  But with some tweaking and figuring I think I have it all figured out.

My husband works 2nd shift so he leaves for work at 2 pm and comes home at 12 pm.  So his time with the children is in the morning.  So after I finish my morning routine I go to work at 9 am and work until 12.  At that time I do lunch and my afternoon routine.  I then spend 12-2 with my hubby and kids.  At 2 I set my youngest up to work on her summer home school and I work.  I work on light things though because I help her with her work and we go out and do a lot of our home school work outside.  I then shut down my business part of the computer at 5 pm.  And do not work on anything else client related the rest of the night. So really there are only  a few little tweaks to my schedule but it is enough to meet the needs of my family and my business.

Great question Tishia.  Thank you so much.  And here is my question to you:

When you struggle to find content for our website blog what do you do?

Tishia of Tishia Saves Time and I are continuing our Cross Blog Conversation. If you have missed any of it you can Go Here and read from the beginning. This week Tishia asks me an awesome question:

“Now that you’ve been working as a VA for awhile, what’s the one piece of advice you would give another newbie coming into this market? “

Great question Tishia! In so many ways I still feel like a newbie myself. I often feel like I can’t offer anyone any advice because I am so new why would they listen to me. But then I realize there are so many people out there newer then my that could maybe use my advice.

I do have one piece of advice that I think really helped me get me where my business is today. And that is don’t be afraid to go after your clients. If you see someone out there talking about needing a VA or even mentioned something they are working on. Jump all over that opportunity and IM them, PM them or Email them. Offer them your services, see if they can use your services in any way.

When people start talking about project they are working on or help they may need they are ready to hire someone. Most of the time they are just not sure where to turn or who to hire. So offer your services.

And don’t let it get you down if they do not take them. Offer it again to the next person you see who seems to be looking for help. It is not hurting you to offer your services and you will get a lot clients that way.

Here is my question to Tishia:

Tishia is there a service out there that you don’t know how to do but wish you could learn so that you can offer it to your clients?

My Good friend Tishia from Tishia Saves Time have been talking back and forth for a couple months now and I am really enjoying the conversations.  If you want to see the first of our conversations you can go HERE on My site Or HERE on Tishia’s site.  Tishia is a feel friend and also a VA.  This week Tishia answered my question HERE and I am going to answer her question:

Tishia Asks

What marketing tool(s) have you found to be the most beneficial to you in getting your name out there and obtaining new clients? 

What a great question Tishia and a super easy question for me because I have found so many great tools that I really want to Share.

I would Say one of my biggest tools is word of mouth.  I started out with one client when I first started.  And that one client when on to tell a good friend of hers about about and so I was at two clients.  From there I just kept moving on up.  They would go on to tell more and more people about me.  They would Twitter about me.  They would post brags in Mom MasterMinds about me.  It was just amazing how fast I got clients all by work of mouth.

I found that posting in forums such as Mom Masterminds, Just Online Jobs, Self Starter Weekly Tips, and  Virtual Assistant Forums are all great to also start networking and meeting potential clients.  All you have to do is sign up for the forums and start posting.  It is a great free way to meet clients and other VA’s.

Some paid places I have started advertising my business is  Community Advertising (they also have free advertising), and Shelancers.  These are the only two paid places I have advertised so far but I am going to continue to look for more places to advertise.

Thank you again Tishia for the great question. Here is my question to you:

How often do you check your email?  And does checking your email really seem to eat up your time?

Tishia Of Tishia Saves Time and I are continuing our cross blog conversation. Here you can see Tishia’s answer to my last question .

Tishia asked me a great question this week.

If you could have someone take you under their wing as an intern what thing(s) would you want to learn? In other words, what would be the perfect intern opportunity for you as a ‘newbie’?

This is an awesome question. And actually I did apply for a internship and did not get it but it was probley a good thing at that time I did not get it because I would not have been able to put all my time into because I did get a good handful of clients when I opened up my business.

These first five months that I have been in business I have a awesome group of clients that have taught me so much. They have taught me so many things that I did not know before. But there is always more I would love to learn.

It is hard to say what the perfect internship would be because what I would like to learn would probley take two or three different people to teach me. Just because what I would like to learn has a pretty wide range.

I would love to find someone to teach me more about wordpress customization. I don’t want to be able to build a wordpress theme. I would just love to learn how to add a header, tweak sidebars, just small things like that.

I would also love to learn how to make buttons. I want to be able to create my own buttons for my websites but also be able to create buttons for my clients too.

I would love to learn more about affiliate managements. I am dabbling in this now but I am not near as knowledgeable as I would like to be.

So what I am trying to say is I would love to be in an internship and learn more to help my business grow into what I want it to be.
Thank you so much for asking me this question.

It was a great question.

Now My question for your Tishia.

“If you had to hire an intern what qualities would you look for in an intern?”

Well Tishia and I are back at it again.  We have picked that ball right back up (oppps did a little dropping of the ball for awhile huh Tisha) and we are back to our Cross Blog Conversation.  Tishia of Tishia Saves Time just gave me a great answer to her question and also asked me an even better question that I am excited to answer.

“Where do you see yourself taking your business over the next year? By this I mean do you have plans for starting a newsletter, releasing any info products, etc.”

Tishia to me this is like a little ok Tricia get all that stuff you have in the works and get working on it.  Ok ok maybe you did not say that but that is what I heard lol.

I do have some plans for the future:

1. Create an product that I can give to any client that signs up for a newsletter (yes that is number tw0)

2. Create a monthly newsletter to send out to my clients with great info about what is going on in my VA world, What openings I have, And if I have any special offers going on right now.

3. I would like to create about 12 information products a year to give out to my clients as a thank you.  I would like to give on out ever news letter.  Or just every so often for being a great client.

4. I would like to get worked up a contact form on my site so that when a client contacts me they can fill out the form and everything would be on the form.

5. I would like to also have a couple of different forms once a client hires me for them to fill out with different information on it such as websites I would be working with, passwords, things like that.  So that I can keep them in their file and have them for quick look ups (ohhh I might do that one first lol)

I of course have many more ideas but that is what I am looking at for right now. And of course as I was typing this I came up with some more great ideas.  Isn’t that how it always happens.

Great Question Tishia.  Keep them coming. ANd here is your question.

“Name me five sites where you have learned the most about becoming a VA and working from home.  Why were these sites so important and what kind of information did you get from them?”

Well,  It has been a while since I blogged on here and I need to start again.  Tishia and I are supposed to be Cross Blogging but I have slacked.  Sorry Tishia.  But Tishia has asked me a great question that I need to answer, more for myself then anything else.

 As a ‘newbie’ VA what is the one thing you find yourself struggling with most?

As a newbie I struggle with one thing the most.  I struggle with saying no.  I don’t know how to say no.  I always think that if they ask I should say yes.  I think that as a newbie how can I say no to anything.  I am too new to say no.  But when I don’t say no then I become more and more stressed. 

I did this for the first month my business was open.  Now I say no.  I have to say no.  Customer service is so much more important to me then the money. I have ran across so many people that seem to be more interested in the money aspect of things and less interested in the Customer Service part of it.  That problem I see with that is you will loose both if you don’t have the customer service part of it. Customer Service keeps your customers happy and there for that keeps the money coming in.

I have been on both sides of the customer service fence.  I have been on the client side and on the VA side and I believe that has helped me so much.  I helped me see not only my side as a business owner but also the side the client side.  It opened my eyes and has helped me build a good strong customer service relationship with my clients.

And this all goes back to saying no.  The more You say yes the more wrapped and overwhelmed you become.  The more overwhelmed you become the more your customer satisfaction goes down.  The more your customer satisfaction goes down the less money you will be making and the less customers you will have. 

So Say no. Trust me it will help your business in the long run.

Ok Tishia. Here is your question. 

What do you use to keep track of your hours and clients projects?

When I decided to be a Virtual Assistant it was a hard decision for me.  I was not sure what I wanted to do or if I could even be a good VA.  I Belong to Mom  Masterminds and I am also a very close follower of Mom’s Morning Show. Ok and I have to admit the one person that I follow the most is Tishia of Tishialee.com and also of Tishia Saves Time. 

Tishia is an awesome VA that although she may not know it but has had me looking up to her for some time.  Well now Tishia and I have finally become friends.  At first I was very nervous to approach her because I knew she was super busy and had tons of clients so I always figured that she was just too busy to chit chat.  But then one day it all changed.  It gets very deep why I contacted Tishia but lets just say Someone Told me I needed to. And leave it at that.  So I started talking back and forth with Tishai and she has been so good to me.  She always answers all my questions about being a VA or how to do something or even tells me OK this is how I do it.  Tishia has given me a ton of confidence (although she may not know it) but she has.

So when we started talking about doing a Cross Blog Conversation between two VA’s I was so excited.  This is a chance for me to get to know all the things this newbie needs to learn. Tishia has been in the VA business for a few years now and knows the market of being a VA. SO if you are ready Tishia here is my first question!

“When you decided to become a VA what was your though process?  How did you decide this was what you wanted to do?”

Please come back and continue to read what Tishia an I have to say to each other. You will not want to miss it.