Some years ago, I wrote a newsletter piece for my professional organization, the International Virtual Assistant Association (IVAA), called “A Few of our Favorite Things.” This was just prior to IVAA’s first-ever Summit. I was volunteering on the vendor committee, and the idea was to identify VA must-haves, and then approach the manufacturers of the [...]

Tagged by Trina Lamarche, I haven’t done a meme for awhile. A gentle activity for a blustery day… The rules of the game are: 1. Mention the person who tagged you and create a link back to them. 2. Pick your month of birth. 3. Copy-paste the traits for all the twelve months (see below). [...]

Today I have the privilege of meeting with a group of Virtual Assistants who live and work in Northern Arizona. Professional support and camaraderie is one of the true benefits of working in this industry. Since we have few true metro areas in Arizona, our AZ VA population is widely scattered. As such, distance prevents [...]

I hope I haven’t lost my readership completely after digressing into personal style issues for a couple of weeks. Apologies to men in the audience for this round of girl-style commentary. And, to those who have decided that ktcosmos is entirely too vain, or shallow, or superficial, oh well. I lived for many years in [...]

Erin Blasky publishes the VA Coach blog and has recently introduced the Savvy Virtual Assistant Award, or SVA. Erin says of her work today: “My business has changed immensely and things got SO much easier once I figured it out. I figured out the best way to go from point A to point Z with [...]

This is the final installment in a three-part series on wardrobe management for self-employed women. To read the the previous articles in this series: VA Fashionista Part 1: Review and Edit Your Wardrobe VA Fashionista Part 2: Scrutinizing and Updating Your Wardrobe In this installment, we’re going to talk about how to organize your luggage [...]

In Part 1 of this series on wardrobe management, we talked about how to review and edit what you have. That post is here. This post, Part 2, is where you actually decide what to wear (and what not to wear, as the case may be… resulting in additional discards/donations). This is something I preferred [...]

Warning: this is a rather girly post. If you aren’t into that, you’ll want to skip to a different read! Back before you were your own boss, you knew how to put yourself together for work, and how that look was distinct from casual, glamour, and gardening duds. Back in about 1983 I remember feeling [...]

A post here on writing thank you notes a few months ago has drawn a fair amount of attention. Getting ready for my annual winter holiday the last few days has me thinking again about that topic. Here’s the thing. I am fortunate to be able to close for a month every winter (five weeks [...]

My bags are packed, the plants are watered, cat litter box “refreshed,” and … I started wondering where to eat once I get to MacWorld. Checking out some random posts about MW on MacRumors.com, I found this: MacWorldEats, which you can download, install in the Notes folder on your iPod (which of course you would [...]