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Aday said she is not worried about floating to the top of search engines like Google at first and, though she knows her online presence will give her visibility, she said she also believes her initial clients will be local enough to meet her face to face.

"When you're giving someone access to personal business documents I think there has to be a trust issue, at least initially," Aday said.

Because of overtime she had worked at her former job before being laid off and an additional layoff package her husband had received the previous year,

Aday said she was able to tide herself over in the three months leading up to her business launch.

She also says she found aid from the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) and her local small business development center.

"There are so many free resources out there," she added.

And though she remains a small one person operation, Aday also has plans for growth.

"My long term vision is to partner with other VA's who have different specialties," she said.

Her new venture in many ways turns a growing trend toward outsourcing and downsizing that eventually led to her own layoff into an advantage.

In a teleconference featuring John Jantsch, Aday said she found most inspiring the admonition to look for possibilities everywhere and find problems and figure out how to solve them.

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