Home is where the heart is. Home is also where the office is if you are a new breed of administrative and executive assistant. Today, you don't have to be in an office to go to work. You don't even have to be in the same state, because modern technology has permitted us a whole new way of looking at and doing work. Just when you think you have heard it all, make room for this new idea.

You live in New York City and your administrative and executive assistant lives in Massachusetts. Or you live in Baltimore, Maryland and your boss, now called a "client," lives in Orlando, Florida. Is this possible? Not only is it possible, it is happening right now, as you read this column, and is part of a budding new career and service called Virtual Assistance.

"A Virtual Assistant (VA) can offer solid assistance to anyone who needs help with administrative, or executive help and who needs to make time and space for more creative efforts," says Anastacia Brice , President of Assist U, a virtual training organization, located in Baltimore, Maryland that teaches people how to become successful VAs.

Who would want to become a VA? Anyone, with the office skills and interested in becoming a resource to a client and who also may want to build a business. ( Notice that I didn't say "boss," because a VA works with a client, not for a boss, according to those I interviewed.)

Michelle Tomaso, lives in Franklin, Massachusetts and is a VA for an entrepreneur in Manhattan. She has been working with him for four months and loves her work. Why? Because she can stay at home with her two-year-old daughter and work at the same time. Tomaso thinks this job is ideal because she can do it all from home and get paid for it at the rate of $20 an hour. (In some cases, the rate goes up to $35 an hour.)

"I enjoy being someone's right hand and being proactive. My client runs Teleconferencing courses over the phone and I handle all his registration and payment for the courses and ultimately do all the bookkeeping for this part of his business," she boasts. And she never leaves her house.

Tomaso has found the way to keep her client happy and keep close to her family. She stays in constant contact with him and can anticipate his needs. When he is out of town, she picks up all his voice mail messages, follows up on those that need attention and then faxes the necessary information to him, "so he doesn't have to worry about them." Oh, and by the way, he has put in a dedicated line into her home for his business. Taking care of his business needs frees him to concentrate more on developing his business.

So what's the difference between a traditional executive assistant and a VA? Virtual Assistants don't take up space. That's a key advantage, according to David Goldsmith, President of Customer Edge in Orlando, Florida who uses a VA, miles away, in Maryland, but only seconds away by fax and e-mail. "I hired a VA because, I publish a daily newsletter and don't want the burden of sending it out and monitoring subscribers, while I travel about 10-15 weeks a year." As a traveling business consultant, without a huge staff, Goldsmith doesn't have an eight hour a day need for an assistant. He does have a 35 hour-a-month one so he "time-shares" his VA with others who, like himself, prefer not to have someone work in their offices which are often small or home-based.

Another advantage to having a VA work offsite, is that you have full use of all your office equipment. If you only have one fax machine, one computer, it's all yours. So, having a VA helps you expand your office, while cutting back on real estate costs.

So, how do you become a VA and what kind of person best fits this type of work?

Assist U offers a 16 week training course that you can take from anywhere in the country because it's held over the telephone. That's right. If you're going to learn how to be a VA, you start over the wires. Private or group lessons range in cost from $1600 to $800.

Brice teaches students Internet skills, gives homework assignments, and offers one-to-one supervision to her students. She also teaches VA students great techniques on how to build successful practices as well. So you can learn how to do the work and how to attract more clients! Frankly, I know of few other courses that combine training in the core business skills with skills in how to build successful home-based businesses.

Brice lists the skills required to become a successful VA:

• You should have great office skills. If you have previously worked as an assistant, executive assistant and have not been away from work for more than six months, you qualify for her program. You also have to have references, because her web site is a source for clients to locate help. She wants to be certain that all of her referrals, who are students that have completed her training are solid, dependable, and qualified.
• You should be "insatiably curious" since a lot of the work that a VA does is research on the Internet.
• One of the key purposes of having a VA is to get your business-life simplified, so as a potential VA you need to learn how to simplify your own life so you can do it for others.
• Have superior listening skills. Since most communication is over the wires, fax, e-mail and phone, good listening skills are critical. You need to be able to hear what your clients say and what they are not saying. So, for example, getting in tune with your client means that you can hear when they are stressed or upset. Since this is a new way of working with someone, you are less distracted by what you see and more focused on what you hear. For example, you might say to Harry, your client, "Gee Harry, you sound really pressed and stressed, what can I do to make it simpler for you?" (Gee, that sounds good. Sign me up.)
• You can't be meek. This kind of job calls for a proactive person. Since you can't see the client, you need to be able to anticipate his or her needs.
• You can't be easily distracted, need confidence, enjoy solitude and have great phone skills. You need to be able to trust your instincts, since there are no people you can brainstorm with around the old water cooler.
• You want a partnership relationship. A good VA becomes a top commodity when she is willing to stand toe-to-toe with her client and act as a total resource. Virtual Assistants function as the right arm or right whatever to their clients. They should be able to take care of anything the client needs, be able to anticipate what may come up in the future. If partnership is the current business buzzword, then this exemplifies it.

Brice, who is also a VA for several people, forecasts, "In the future, I see people working with people, not for them. A VA partners with her clients the way an Executive Coach might, except the VA does the work."

Being a VA seems like a neat idea, if you ask me, particularly if you are someone who prefers to stay at home, or for that matter, has to stay at home but also wants to work. I think of older workers who may have the talent but don't have the "look," or those who are bound at home but with super skills and brains. This new way or working seems amazingly attractive. Being a VA means that, for the most part, you have great flexibility. You can do work at night, or while your little one naps or on weekends. Sure there are those projects which need immediate attention, and you need to take care of them as soon as possible, but again, you may still be in your pajamas. So, how bad is hectic if you don't have to put on stockings and heels?

What is it like being a VA? Michael Gerrish a Massachusetts-based writer, Holistic Fitness Consultant and a counseling psychotherapist uses a VA in Maryland. He likes using his VA because, "I am a creative person, writer and artist. The paperwork, research and phone calls are very tedious to me and they take up valuable time."

His VA researched publists and publishers for the book that he wrote. Gerrish thinks having a VA is advantageous because the "work gets done more efficiently, without a lot of distracting chit chat that happens when people are in the same space in the same office."

Goldsmith agrees that work gets done more quickly but concedes some small disadvantages, when you require immediate feedback on something. "That is missing with a VA" but he agrees that short of that, having a VA more than meets his needs.

Both recommend that you start out slowly when working with a new VA. Check the person's references and begin slowly. Give the VA different tasks and get to know how she works. You can later begin to give her more involved projects, like doing follow up with clients and dealing with scheduling changes and arrangements.

Gerrish calls himself a "night owl," so he makes a list of things, sometimes at 2 a.m., that he needs to do in the morning. The next morning, while he is sleeping, his VA is hard at work, completing the tasks by the time he wakes up. And she doesn't have to leave her house to get to work, to boot! Now, that's a sweet dream if ever there was one.

Stephen Cluney, a Manhattan-based coach, of Life Basics, a new business, designed to help people on personal development using a teleconference bridge, uses Michelle Tomaso as his VA.

"She is a jewel," he boasts. He likes the flexible work hours too. " I pay her every two weeks, as needed, which helps me a lot with this new start-up business. And I don't have to worry about her showing up at work, since she is already there. It's like having a branch office."

Cluney thinks that all this stuff is really not that new. "If you have been an assistant, in an office and have worked four feet away from your boss, it's not much different 40 or 400 miles away. Expertise is expertise."

For those men out there that think this is just for women, think again. It's just that the folks who have taken the course, so far, have been women. It could be your turn now.

Whether you want to become a VA or hire one, you can locate Assist U on the Internet at this address:

• http://www.assistu.com