Perfect Paralegal (coming soon)

I started researching home-business options not long after returning to work 2.5 years ago, when my second child was a year old. I have always enjoyed having my own career and worked full-time after my first child was born also. But after X (DS #2) was born, I found it more and more difficult to have balance a full-time career, a commute and motherhood. My husband’s job requires long and irregular hours, so I am the one who has been responsible for a lot of the childcare, including taking time off when the daycare closes or one of the kids is sick. I often felt torn and guilty, as if I couldn’t manage everything as well as I would have liked.

So I decided a career from home would be the solution. My first thought was toward wedding planning, as it had always interested me. I shadowed a local planner for a day and realized that while some aspects would be great, the hours required for the actual weddings would be a problem - I wasn’t interested in being gone from 7am to midnight for most Saturdays throughout the year!

Then one day I came across a description of a virtual assistant and realized that it was the ideal choice of career for me!  I have been a legal assistant for around 10 years and I enjoy my work very much.  The only real change I was looking for was to not be chained to an office an hour from my home.  I can operate a virtual assistant (VA) business from my home and have a challenging and rewarding career.  I can provide a valuable service to other business owners and work as many or as few hours as will suit my home life, giving me a chance to find that elusive balance I’m seeking!

So now I have had my third child (another sweet little boy!!) and I’m officially beginning the process of starting my VA practice while I’m on maternity leave. I’m picking names and thinking about what services I’ll offer and who my target clients will be.  I know I want to specialize in the legal field, as it is my area of experience, and also an area I truly love working in.

I decided on the name Perfect Paralegal for this business which will exclusively target lawyers, but as I also want to offer general secretarial and administrative services to small businesses, I am also going to have a general VA practice which I will call Halo Secretarial Services.

I’m so excited to begin these ventures - my next post will be my to-do list for the start-up process!!!!