Let me take you back in time to a world where the PC barely existed with dialup and DOS. Life before even MySpace and did we even have Craigslist then?
Well back then, I had my 1st taste of what life could be like virtually! I started dabbling in brokering our own semi-truck-loads of lumber or grain or whatever I could get my hands on, through a few states in the west. I was living all country-like in the mountains in Idaho. I loved working with a PC with the wide-world and taking care of family at home at the same time.
Life changed and I moved to the big city of Portland, Oregon, entering a world of new adventures, and went to work in Corporate America. All through the next 9 years, I dreamed of working for myself virtually. Many of my skills were honed during this time. In 2007, I was laid-off from Corporate America. I was scared! Free to fly, but scared. It was a new world out there with all these new PC’s, Windows, LANs, WANs, and DSL. Facebook was making an appearance, and Twitter was big. I found that working from home virtually with companies was still very much a new concept, and I just couldn’t break in to it yet. Still night dreaming… A few months later I went to work for a small business, soon to be laid off again in 2009.
By then the economy was shifting. Companies were downsizing and starting to see the benefits of hiring virtually. Facebook and Twitter were huge. I could find many virtual assistant networking sites. I became a sponge finding as much material as I could. I decided to see if I could make a way into the virtual world. I put my ad up on virtualassistants.com. I started a website and twitter account, using my direct selling name of shopwithannie putting VA at the end. I started talking about it on my Facebook profile.
My 1st client came from Elance several months later. He was a writer who needed client/vendor management. Shortly after, I received responses from my ad on a VA website. Virtual was happening. I love my clients, love my work, and love being virtual and still being a vital part of growing companies. It makes me smile to know I have finally made it to virtual-ality!
We want to thank Annette for her guest blog post.
This is Shilonda Downing, signing out for Virtual Work Team LLC!