Starting a Virtual Assistant Business - Virtual Assistant Business

Starting a Virtual Assistant Business
By Carolyn Moncel
July 06, 2004
Entrepreneur.com

Interested in starting one of the fastest-growing homebased businesses around? These existing business owners' advice can help you get started.

When Wicked Wordcraft president Angela Allen-Parker started her online business in 1999, she admits her parents feared she'd made a horrible mistake. Allen-Parker is a virtual assistant, and her decision to become one was more than a career change-it was a lifestyle change.

A single mother of three, Allen-Parker left her marketing post at a cancer research organization to start her new venture and moved her family from the city to a 25-acre farm in rural Kentucky. "I knew I had to succeed because there was no 'Plan B,'" says Allen-Parker. Now she serves clients in the United States, Canada and Spain. She specializes in what she knows best-marketing. Her farmhouse is paid in full, completely financed through her work as a virtual assistant.

A critically ill daughter was the reason Pamela Braue became a virtual assistant last year. Working full time in a law office was no longer feasible so Braue decided to take control of her earnings potential. The paralegal enrolled in an online training course at Virtual Assistance U. Specializing in realtor support, Braue opened PS: We Assist from Jackson, New Jersey. Before completing her course, she'd already secured six clients.

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