April 25 was the National celebration, “Bring Your Daughters
and Sons to Work Day”. I had my son
participate; although to be honest, for him, it was more like the “Get of Jail”
card from the game of Monopoly—he got a free day off from school! Later, he remarked to me “You take this bringing
your kids to work thing very serious, don’t you?” Chuckle, chuckle. I did have him make coffee, not out of child
labor, but because he enjoys making it (no Keurig), plus it gave me a chance to
organize.
Working at home seems to be a bit of a mystery for a lot of
folks, and we as Virtual Assistants find ourselves explaining what exactly it
is that we do. My son got the
opportunity to sit alongside of me, seeing first-hand what I do when I am in my
home office (don’t you secretly wish everyone who questions what you do for a
living could sit down next to you for a day?).
First on the agenda, I (briefly) showed him how I put
together my To Do and Pending items for my one client. This client sells medical journal advertising.
I had worked for him in another company, and then he started his own business
in journal ad sales and representation. I
showed my son how I go about trafficking the ads, obtaining the signed
contracts or insertion orders, and all pertinent information pertaining to the
ad—the advertiser, size of ad, description of ad, if color or BW, and cost, and
compile it all onto a production spreadsheet. This work is all done through
using a cloud service. I showed him a final product, the actual print out of
the ad in the journal. He even involved himself with the cost and how to figure
the 15% discount agencies receive.
Then it was onto the next client’s work, which is done
through LogMeIn, where I log directly onto his computer, and I began preparing
a mail merge of follow-up Emails. Being
able to work directly on this client's computer held my sons interest a bit, and for this
12-year old kid who games daily, and I would think he would be hard to impress—he said he thought
that was cool (he was probably just pacifying me). Then I had a delivery to
make on a poster I had completed for a client’s meeting.
All in all, I thought it was a pretty productive and enjoyable day, and
we got to spend it together. That “Get
Out of Jail”, came with a price—he had to endure my laboring on and on about what I
do. But as much he put up with me, I really hope that seeing me
interact professionally, in a trustworthy manner, taking my “work at home”
seriously, and being able to work independently, will give him some type
of a valuable lesson in life, that these are just some of the qualifications
that go a long way in dealing with anyone who you provide work for.
I had been noticing that my phone data usage had been creeping up before the end of each month lately due to apps like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. Since one of my marketing responsibilities is posting on Instagram and other social media events, and instead of adding more data to my plan and paying more, I installed this app called BlueStacks on my PC. 
