In 2011, Audrey Isbell took a calculated risk and ended her employment to be closer to home. She knew she could either use her skill set to get another job — or she could start her own business with the experience and talents she had.

The result was a “secretarial service” in the small but quickly growing industry of Virtual Assistance. As the business flourished, Audrey acquired subcontractors and began to build a team to assist with the workload. By the end of the third year of business, the VA practice moved out of the house, and a year later it was re-branded as AVA Virtual Assistance.

In determining the company’s vision, we battled with the trending expectation that businesses need to “specialize,” serving only one type of client or doing only one type of task. We knew that would be limiting to what we could offer our clients, who may have a need out of the “specialty” niche. In the end we decided to specialize after all . . . in solutions!

AVA Virtual Assistance has since been a creative solution for a variety of businesses who need a VA for a diverse range of tasks. Besides, Audrey says, “Specializing in Solutions is much more fun!”