Quietly Run Your Week — Virtual Assistant Services
Correspondence answered in your voice, a diary that holds, records that are current, and a note on Thursday telling you what was handled. A small practice, deliberately.
Arrangements
Retained by the week, not the task. Hours are held for you whether or not they are spent.
Notice is a calendar month on either side. No engagement has ever ended badly; several have ended because the client hired someone in-house, which we consider a success.
Why Seven
The limit is the product. Everything below follows from it.
Because Judgement Needs Context
An assistant who knows that the Thursday client is difficult about dates, and that the accountant is slow in April, can decide things. An assistant with forty clients can only ask.
Because Voice Takes Time
Writing as you do is a matter of hearing you for a few months. It cannot be briefed in a document, and it cannot be outsourced twice.
Because We Would Rather Refuse
When the practice is full it is full. We keep a short list and an honest recommendation for anyone we cannot take.
Tell Us What You Would Rather Not Do
Half an hour. We will say plainly whether the practice can help and, if not, who might.
The Clients This Suits
Independent Professionals
Solicitors, architects, advisers and consultants whose day is correspondence and whose evenings have become admin.
Owner-Run Businesses
Dealers, makers, galleries and small firms where the owner is still the person answering the telephone.
Family Offices & Trusts
Where records must be current and correspondence must be careful, and discretion is the whole point.
How An Engagement Starts
A Conversation
Half an hour on what you would rather not do. If the practice is full we say so at the start rather than the end.
An Afternoon
We spend it with your correspondence, your diary and your filing, agreeing your voice, your preferences and what may be decided without asking.
A Month Of Drafts
Everything comes to you before it leaves. By the fourth week the drafts stop being corrected, and that is when they stop being drafted.
Thursdays
The week closes with a short note: what was handled, what is waiting, and the two things that need you.
What You Can Expect
Confidentiality in writing
Signed before any account is opened, and binding after the engagement ends.
Your own password manager
Access is granted by you and withdrawn by you, without asking us.
Cover you have met
A second assistant, introduced at the start, who works from the same written preferences.
No subcontracting
Your work is not passed to anyone outside the practice, ever, including at busy times.
Notice of a calendar month
On either side, with unspent retained hours returned.
Kept For Years
I have had assistants before. What is different here is that nothing is ever announced. Things are simply handled, and the note that arrives on Thursday tells me what was.
My correspondence sounds like me, because we spent an afternoon at the start agreeing what that sounds like. Nobody had ever asked me that before.
Seven clients means seven. I asked once whether they would take a friend of mine and the answer was a straight no, with a recommendation instead. That is why I stay.
What The Practice Does Not Take
Bookkeeping
We raise invoices and chase them. We do not reconcile accounts or file returns, and we will introduce you to someone who does.
Marketing
We will schedule what you have written. We do not write your newsletter or run your advertising.
Anything Round The Clock
Monday to Thursday, nine until four. An owner who needs a telephone answered at midnight needs a service, not a practice.
Questions We Are Asked
Why only Monday to Thursday?
Friday is kept for the practice's own work — filing, writing procedures, and the Thursday notes. Clients have told us for twelve years that a shorter, reliable week beats a longer, thinner one.
Do you work with clients outside New England?
Most of them are. Correspondence, diaries and records do not care where anyone sits; we keep Eastern hours and clients in the Mountain and Pacific time zones tend to find their mornings already handled.
Will you use my email address?
If you would like us to, yes — with our own signature beneath yours, so nobody is deceived about who wrote to them. Many clients prefer a separate studio address, which we also keep.
What happens to the records if we part?
They are yours. Every procedure, template and file is handed over in a form you can open, and your access is removed from our systems within a week.
Is there a minimum term?
No. A calendar month's notice on either side, and retained hours you have paid for but not used are returned rather than kept.
There Is Usually One Place
We keep seven. When one opens it is offered to the short list first, and then here.
Arrange A Call
A note about what you would rather not do, and a day that suits. We answer the same working day.