I was so sad to receive yesterday the news of Janet Jordan’s passing.
Janet was an industry leader of the Virtual Assistance profession. As a young widow back in the 1980s, she supported her family by doing secretarial work from home. That humble start turned into a very successful, profitable business, and little did she know then that her resourcefulness would lead her to become one of the pioneers of the Virtual Assistance profession in the 1990s.
Janet went on to establish a very well-respected Virtual Assistant training program, that has helped hundreds of entrepreneurial-spirited men and women to create their own successful VA practices.
She was an enterprising, resourceful, determined woman with a kind, generous nature who loved nothing more than to help others. She was a charismatic character, and if she took it upon herself to tell you “you can do it,” you damn well believed her.
Around September of last year, out of the blue, Janet called me on the phone. We shared a passion about maintaining the integrity of the profession, and she had read one of my opinionated posts on an industry forum. We literally talked for four hours!
Now, I did not know Janet at the time she called me, although her reputation preceded her. By the end of that call, I felt like I had known her a lifetime–she was that kind of warm, sweet, giving person. But get her going on a topic she was passionate about, and you’d meet the no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is spitfire in her. I LOVE that in a person.
That conversation led to an email correspondence over the past several months, and one other phone call, the beginning of what I looked forward to being a real friendship. I saw in her a person who genuinely cared about others, and who was deeply committed to the Virtual Assistance profession.
I regret that I won’t have an opportunity to talk with her again, or get to know her better.
She is beloved and treasured by the Virtual Assistant community, and she will be sorely missed.
Thanks for commenting. Yeah, the virtual assistant term is really completely idiotic to...
