Visit Virtual Assistant
For over 25 years Sue Canfield, Virtual Office Administrator and Owner of Awesome Assistant, has helped small business owners with administrative tasks. Since she officially began working as a VA in 2005, she has worked with over 30 clients to help them grow their businesses, specifically by using online marketing strategies such as email newsletters, blogs, articles, and social networking. Her mission is to partner with her clients to create and implement strategies to promote their businesses. Sue assists Joel in coaching other virtual assistants.
Joel D Canfield is an author and award-winning speaker who helps businesses grow using the trust that comes from communication that's more human. He has written two business books, 49 Commonsense Business Observations, The Commonsense Entrepreneur which more fully explores these commonsense business observations, and a mystery, Through the Fog, which takes place in the Irish countryside. Joel co-authored with Sue The Commonsense Virtual Assistant: Becoming an Entrepreneur, Not an Employee. Joel has been coaching virtual assistants since 2005.
Contact Information
Call Sue and Joel at 530.268.5635 or email Contact@BizBa6.com with any questions. We would be happy to discuss your specific needs and create a custom coaching program. If you'd like to just give us a one-month try, we can do that!
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A Personal Note from Both of Us
Read About Sue Here; Read About Joel Below
My name is Sue Canfield. When I was a young girl I knew I wanted to become the 'world's best secretary'. My room was at one end of the house and from my open doorway I could look down the hallway that ran the length of the house with rooms on each side. I would sit at my desk in my open doorway looking down the hall and pretend to be working as a secretary for the top floor executives of a corporation. The idea of working for several different people at once doing a variety of tasks was very exciting to me.
My dream of being the world's best secretary to many executives at once juggling a variety of responsibilities came true in 1995 when I worked at International Office Supply. In addition to working in the accounting department (the controller was Joel, who is now my husband), I was the assistant to the Owner and President of the company and administrative assistant to the ten persons on the sales team. Everyday I did something different for several different people.
A couple of years later I started working for L&M Tire Co., dba Express Tire, in the accounting department training to take over the Accounts Payable Manager's position when she retired. But when the Owner of the company discovered I knew shorthand, the position of Special Projects Coordinator was created and my responsibilities changed. Now in addition to handling the corporate payables and receivables and assisting the Director of Finance, my tasks included administrative support to the Owner, President, Sales Managers and sales team.
The wide variety of tasks I handled during the seven years I worked for Express Tire really prepared me for the work I now do as a virtual assistant.
After moving from southern California to northern California in 2003 and having our little girl in 2004, I did not want to work for anyone else anymore. I was working for my husband as General Manager of Spinhead Web Design, handling the accounting, preparing proposals and maintaining websites.
One day in 2005 my husband, Joel, told me of a colleague, Marcy, who needed an assistant to work from home making phone calls, preparing documents, sending emails, etc. Joel encouraged me to talk with Marcy and offer my services. So we talked, I set my rate and we got to work. At the time I had never heard of a virtual assistant.
For nearly a year after falling seriously ill in 2006 I was unable to work. However early in 2007 another colleague of Joel's needed some work done and I added her as a client. By mid-year I heard the term virtual assistant for the first time, realized that's what I was, set up my website and started marketing my services. From those two clients mid-2007, our client list has grown to over 30 in early 2009.
I love being able to work for so many different people doing such a variety of things.
My goal is to help small business owners and solopreneurs, especially other women entrepreneurs, to succeed in business. It's one reason why I helped found the Northern California Association of Entreprenuers in 2007.
My hobbies include poetry, reading, planning a move to Ireland someday, and spending time with friends and family.
I look forward to helping you grow your business!
Sue L Canfield
Howdy! Yeah, I really talk like that. I'm Joel D Canfield (I'm fussy about the middle initial, and the fact that there's no period after it; you'll discover I tend to obsess about little details.)
I've known Sue since she was 9 and I was 14. Our work together is really just an extension of our life together. While there's a huge overlap in our interests and skill sets, there are areas where we differ greatly. (Sue is not a fan of Led Zeppelin. Don't ask me why; I don't get it either. And she doesn't eat sauerkraut, not even on a chili dog. Beats me.)
Sue has always pictured herself as the consummate assistant, managing the Big Guy's affairs and making sure things got done. She is, in fact, far beyond the world's greatest secretary. She's an entrepreneur, a writer, and still the best administrative assistant in the world. (We used to take road trips a lot before Fiona was born. As we were driving, all I had to do was change my tone of voice and Sue knew she should take notes; change it again, and she knew to take it down verbatim in shorthand. I didn't have to say a word; just change my tone of voice. Hard act to follow, that.)
I've never been very good at having someone else make the decisions and tell me what to do; I prefer to be the driver, not a passenger. That's one reason I've had my own businesses over the past 25 years (off and on).
Besides my various jobs (analyst for a telecom consulting company, IT and accounting manager for an office supply company, web developer for a wireless startup and then a health insurance administration company) I've maintained Spinhead Web Design since 1999, though its roots go back much further. I was playing on the web before most people knew what it was. My 15 years of experience make most web challenges fairly trivial to overcome.
During my years in web development, I started to specialise. I like the freedom that comes from designing tools for internal use in small companies. Gravitating toward intranet tools, I discovered how much enjoyed the problem-solving part of the process. Soon, I was spending most of my time analyzing business processes and less time coding. Lifelong training from my father, whose career for 30 years was quality and production control (problem solving at both ends of the production chain) made problem-solving for a living sound pretty good. (I tell all my clients to specialise, which is what I've done more and more of over the decades.)
My first step in building a business around problem-solving was to write a book (another thing I encourage all my clients to do; something about the process of writing an entire book helps clarify your thinking). The Commonsense Entrepreneur was published a year ago, and since then, Sue and I have sharpened our focus even more. Now, rather than helping small businesses, we've chosen to focus on Sue's industry, and help virtual office professionals and virtual assistants learn how to operate their businesses efficiently, and enjoy themselves at the same time.
To launch that focus, we created a new version of The Commonsense Entrepreneur designed specifically with virtual assistants in mind. It's called The Commonsense Virtual Assistant, and it seems to be selling quite well.
I love writing of all kinds. I'm currently writing the sequel to my first fiction book; they're both mysteries set primarily in the west of Ireland where we plan to live sooner than later. I have three more business books in the works right now. And every year I participate in February Album Writing Month, where a growing crowd of lunatics commit to writing an entire album of music (14 songs, each) during the shortest month of the year.
As a parent of 7 (Sue's, mine, and ours) one of my greatest joys is teaching others simple ways to do complex things. After 30 years, I'm pretty good at it.
I'd love a chance to prove it to you. Call or email and tell me your greatest business challenge.
Joel D Canfield
Author, Speaker & Business Heretic