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A woman showed up
at Sharon Williams' door with a 10-cent Xerox copying job for
her to do. I smiled,
"I smiled, said
'Hi, how ya doing?' " recalls Williams, who owns and operates
The 24 Hour Secretary, a business geared toward meeting the
needs of clients day and night. "You have to stand by what you
advertise."
Most people,
unless they were in a hurry, would have waited until morning.
"There are those
who take advantage of you, and those who are considerate,:
says the Lochern resident who recently opened a Pikesville
branch of her business. "But I have to be grateful -- my phone
could not be ringing."
Most people,
unless they were in a hurry, would have waited until morning.
"There are those
who take advantage of you, and those who are considerate,:
says the Lochern resident who recently opened a Pikesville
branch of her business. "But I have to be grateful -- my phone
could not be ringing."
Williams, 42,
opened The 24 Hour Secretary three years ago on Liberty Road,
after being laid off of a government job. "I said 'never again
will somebody else determine whether I get a pay check.' "
She worked six
months delivering pizza, saving her tips toward her goal. With
support form her husband Hollis and daughter Chantal Randall,
she was able to fall back on her old secretarial skills and
open The 24 Hour Secretary.
Armed with a
computer and dot matrix printer, she began an aggressive
networking campaign to spread her name around.
She worked alone
for the first year, building a client base of about 20 regular
customers and dozens of occasional ones. Today, she employs
two part-time workers, Chantal and Linda Rubio. When her work
load becomes too heavy, she has a couple of associates whom
she can count on.
On Jan. 18, at
the invitation of a client who had some extra space, she
opened a second office at 1004 Reisterstown Road. Before
making the expansion move, she did a survey to see if there
was a need in the area.
There was.
"People have been
very receptive," says Williams as she gazes down onto the
bustling Reisterstown Road from her second-story picture
window.
Williams focuses
on small business entrepreneurs who perhaps don't need a
full-time secretary, but have occasional jobs that need to be
done. Mostly self-taught, she is proficient in 10 types of
computer software including WordPerfect, Microsoft Windows and
Pagemaker. Her versatility allows her to do correspondence,
billing, transcriptions, legal documents, binding, list
management, mailings, faxing and desktop publishing.
"I haven't had a
whole day off since I started," she boasts, noting that she
can go for months on three or four hours of sleep a night. "I
don't know how to spell 'a-whole-day-off."
She admits she
couldn't keep up with the pace if she had children at home, or
if her husband was not supportive. "Hollis understands, but he
says I don't cook enough."
If the proof is
in customer satisfaction, then two-year-client Joi Eveens says
it all.
"I'd be lost"
without Williams' help, declares Eveens, who owns and operates
A Salon Clinique on Reisterstown Road. "I tried renting a
typewriter from the library, but it just didn't work out."
Williams aspires
to eventually open branches in a number of areas. She will
train people to provide the services that she now offers.
"But, I don't
expect them to work as hard as I do."
Williams
established her business in November 1990 after being laid
off. After being told her services as an administrator for a
municipal agency were no longer needed, she began delivering
pizzas for Domino's, Williams said. "I used the money that I
made from tips to buy a computer and the other equipment that
I needed to launch my company. Running my own business was
something that I wanted to do," she said.
Reprinted with
permission from Owings Mills Times |
Message
from Denise Trifiletti of 
