From the other side of the outsourcing spectrum.

All the stress coming from the holidays, family emergencies, and the recent hospitalization of a family member sucked the energy out of me since last month. I must admit, I took pains to start the year 2008 bright, optimistic, and well-planned, but certain events can really stop us on our tracks.

But I won’t dwell on that. To start off the new year with good vibes, I would like to share how I started out as a Virtual Assistant, and I am quoting from my website:

Eliza has more than five (5) years of experience working as an administrative and executive secretary in her ten (10) years of offline employment history in the corporate, government, and NGO sectors. While working fulltime, she pursued her graduate studies in Law and became a fulltime working mom, wife, and law student. But in 2005, while she was heavily pregnant with her second child, she made the difficult decision of giving up regular employment for health reasons as doctors found a possible congenital defect on the baby. It was then that she decided to become a work-at-home mom. She first started out in the content writing business as part of a team of writers for a UK-based company, but later on left the team and became a project hunter for writing services. Later, she landed a home-based business transcription job.

Realizing that with her years of work experience in varius capacities and acquired skills, she believed that she can build a business of offering offsite administrative services to those seeking support for their business. Researching the Internet, she came across several websites owned by established Virtual Assistants and found that this is exactly the right kind of business for her. In 2006 she launched VA 24/7 Services where she first accepted her very first client as a VA. In 2007, Eliza decided to change the business name and Virtual Workdesk was born.

To get credible and authority materials on the subject, I spent days reading through a number of websites of VA networks and VAs who have already established their professional and business reputation in the industry. It is not surprising to know that the first few VAs came from developed countries such as the U.S.A, Australia, Canada, and also in Europe where we first saw computer and Internet technology flourish, and make possible home-based work arrangements.

Who first established business as a Virtual Assistant?

There doesn’t seem to be an exact answer for this question because the international VA industry seems to have varying views on this matter. From the International Virtual Assistants Association (IVAA) website, it was life coach Thomas Leonard who coined the term “Virtual Assistant” in 1996, referring to Stacey Brice who was said to be then doing virtual administrative, travel, and personal assistance work with the former. Brice went on to establish Assist4U in 1997.

But then, I came upon Christine and Mike Durst’s The Rat Race Rebellion an authority website that basically espouses on the joys, benefits and advantages of telecommuting and working from home. Christine is the CEO of Staffcentrix, a training development company that provides virtual careers training to their clients. There I read Mike’s clarificatory article about the history of the Virtual Assistant industry.

Before founding Staffcentrix, Chris was the CEO of the Internet’s first denominated “Virtual Assistant” practice, MyStaff, which was launched in 1995 from the basement of her home in rural Connecticut. The result of Chris’s earlier role (1993-94) as Virtual Assistant to a Priority Management franchisee, MyStaff grew quickly to international dimensions, with clients drawn from the first wave of businesses in North America, Europe, and Australia migrating to the Web.

Searching some more, I read up on Kathie A. Thomas blog entitled, The History of Virtual Assistant Industry, where she shared that “No-one knows for sure the history of Virtual Assistants or how long ago secretaries and other admin staff started working at home. I’ve heard of a lady that was working at home with a typewriter in the 1970’s.” However, she further adds that she knows of at least 2 networks of secretaries way back in mid-1980’s, one in the U.S., and another in her home country Australia. She founded “A Clayton’s Secretary” in April 1996.