A 1st Year Online Business Anniversary
HAGERSTOWN, MD (April 2008) – It started with a “wonder” turned into an “idea” and finished with a “reality” when Maplewood Virtual Assistance LLC was born on April 25, 2007. This month MaplewoodVA is celebrating its first anniversary as a full-service online administrative office support business.
Even though MaplewoodVA is a newly formed business, Owner and Virtual Assistant, Ruth Martin has been working virtually from her home-based office since August 2000 when she first started working locally as a church administrative assistant for a Paramount area church and began data entry work for a local non-profit organization. Martin explains, “Many times women are faced with job transitions as our family dynamics change and grow. It was for these reasons, I found myself simultaneously maintaining two work-at-home jobs.” Today her clients span coast-to-coast and international.
The advances in technology make working from home equally as effective as working in any office space. Martin provides this example of how limitless working from home can be: Recently she worked as part of a four-woman special project team to assist a client with a website e-commerce redesign. The client was located in Alberta, Canada and made contact with another virtual assistant (VA) in Alberta who assembled the team. The team’s physical locations spanned three countries, two continents, and coast to coast in the US – representing Canada, Australia, Arizona, and (Martin) in Maryland – and each team member offered her specialized niche talent to the project. Transferring data and tasks via the Internet made working around the different time zones and physical locations very easy and irrelevant to getting the job done.
The numbers of work-at-home mothers are among one of the largest growing industries in recent years. Martin is a member of VAnetworking.com (VANA) one of the largest and fastest growing global virtual assistant associations with 8,000+ members. A survey of 761 virtual assistants, conducted by VANA in October 2007, revealed these interesting statistics: 96.8% of all Virtual Assistants are women and that 69.3% of these are married of whom 76.1% have children, 59.2% have college or trade school training with 82.5% starting their businesses after being in the workforce for some time.
Persons interested in starting their own work-at-home business could follow Martin’s footsteps by 1) doing research into the type of service or job potential customers may be interested in, 2) niche the services to focus on a specific target market’s needs, 3) assemble a team of business consultants – attorney, accountant, and insurance agent – to provide sound business guidance in setting up a viable business structure, 4) create business and marketing plans and 5) join associations relevant to your chosen industry. While there are many more steps these five keys will lay a good foundation for a strong business.
For Martin this past year has been successful and memorable with the honor of being awarded a VANA VAccolade Business Entrepreneurial Award and a Blog of the Week Award, participating in a Christian Work-at-Home Mom (CWAHM) broadcast, and watching her client base grow. “Sometimes that first shaky entrepreneurial step is the hardest to take but I encourage others to turn their ideas into a reality. In the uncertainty of today’s economy, I can be assured of my income, work flow, and time available for my family’s needs. I truly have the best of both worlds – business and family.” says Martin.