Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Today I want to answer a few of your most popular questions!
Today’s Quote: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
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Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
Today’s episode is a little bit different because I’m calling it an AMA, an Ask Me Anything episode.
Obviously, over the years, I’ve had thousands of conversations with virtual assistants. I have answered questions inside communities, during coaching calls, through emails, in workshops, and in conversations with VAs who are just getting started and VAs who have been in business for a long time. And there are certain questions that come up again and again.
Questions about getting clients, questions about pricing, about confidence, about what services to offer, and whether they’re actually ready to call themselves a virtual assistant.
So today I picked 5 questions that I hear often, and I’m going to answer them the way that I would answer them if you and I were on a coaching call.
And as always, I want you to remember that there is no magic formula for building a successful VA business. It’s why I do private coaching, because everybody’s just a little bit different, right? The way we want to work, our personalities, the people we want to work with, the services we offer. They’re all very, very different.
And so your stuff, because you have a service business, is different than somebody else’s. And I always try to make sure that you know what the frameworks and the foundations are, but very specific to you. There are strategy systems and things you can do that will absolutely make your process easier.
But the biggest thing that separates VAs who build sustainable businesses from those who stay stuck is confidence and consistency. It’s knowing what steps to take and then actually taking them. Should I repeat that? Actually taking the steps, that last part is really, really important. You have to do something to move forward or to move in a different direction.
So let’s get into today’s AMA.
Question 1: How Do I Get My First Client When I Have No Experience?
This is a very popular question, as you may figure. How can I get a client when I’ve never worked as a VA before? Why would someone hire me?
And I completely understand why that feels like a problem, because when you’re starting something new, it’s super easy to focus on everything that you don’t have.
You don’t have testimonials. You don’t have years of VA experience. You might not even have a website, and you probably feel like everybody else is already ahead of you.
But … your first client isn’t hiring you because you have 10 years of virtual assistant experience. They’re hiring you because they have a problem that you can solve, right? A business owner is not usually sitting there thinking, I need someone with exactly three years of experience managing my inbox. Like, think about it. Or one year or six months or whatever.
They’re thinking, I have 300 emails sitting in my inbox and I cannot keep up. They’re thinking, I have great ideas for content, but I never actually get around to creating it. They’re thinking, my bookkeeping is behind, my calendar is a disaster, and I’m spending hours doing tasks that I should not be doing. I don’t have time to go and find new clients to pay for all my bills.
Your job isn’t to convince people that you’re a virtual assistant and have been for X length of time. Your job is to show people that you understand their challenges and you can help solve them.
New VAs seem to wait until everything is perfect before they start looking for clients. And that’s It’s very normal because we’re nervous. You think you need the perfect website. You think you need every possible certification. You think you need a full list of services. And that kind of personal foundation is important, but you don’t need to spend six months or a year preparing to start your business.
Absolutely, getting some ducks in a row is important when you start, of course. But what you really need to get clients is to start having conversations, to talk about how you can help them. And those conversations have literally nothing to do with you starting your VA business.
You may be new to being your own boss, but you are not new. You’re bringing however many years of corporate experience with you, know, from your jobs.
I remember talking to a new VA once who was so stuck on the fact that she was new. But she was asking me about bartering her services, working for cheap or free, offering discounts, and everything that new VAs talk to me about all the time. She kept saying because she was new, she understood the clients might not want to pay her what they pay experienced VAs. She was offering EA services in her VA business.
Do you know what this woman’s job experience was? 25 years as an EA. 25 years!
And she thought she had to start at the bottom of the ladder. No, ma’am, you do not.
It’s amazing to me how we drag ourselves down before we start getting good clients. Don’t do that. You’re amazing. All of your experience counts. You can and should charge for it right out of the gate.
A great way to start is by looking at the skills you already have. Have you organized schedules, managed projects? created documents, worked with customers, worked with social media, handled administrative tasks, supported a team. Those are all very valuable skills. You’re not starting from zero. You’re simply transferring skills that you already have into a new business model.
And the first client comes from action. It comes from conversations and networking and reaching out and letting people know what you do. Confidence usually comes after action, not before it.
If you do my skills inventory, it can help you pick your best services that you want to offer your clients. if you don’t have 25 years as an EA. Crazy town. That is question one. I sure hope that was helpful.
That’s the way I coach, guys. This is just the way I talk to you. I’ll be really, really honest with you and just say, let’s get off the pot here. You have 25 years experience as an EA. All you need to do is go and find the people who need that kind of support and talk to them, and you’re not going to have any problem getting clients.
Question 2: How Much Should I Charge As A Virtual Assistant?
I get asked this question all the time, actually, three or four times in this past week. And I think pricing is one of the biggest challenges that comes from confidence or lack of confidence for VAs.
So many VAs start with the question, what’s the hourly rate everyone else is charging? You can see it in the VA groups.
Instead, what you need to ask is, what does my business need to earn and what value am I providing? Your pricing is not just about the task you’re doing. You’re not charging someone because it takes you an hour to create a social media graphic. You’re charging them based on your expertise. You understand their brand. You know how to create something that connects with their audience. You’re helping them maintain visibility and take that responsibility off of their plate. There’s a huge difference. Can you see it?
It’s a deliverable, a result, an outcome, whatever you want to call it. It is not a task. There’s a reason that we’re doing it.
And many VAs also get stuck because they compare themselves to every other VA online. I mean, that’s what we think we have to do, right? They see someone charging $25 per hour. They see someone charging $75 per hour. They see someone else offering packages of $2,000 a month, and they wonder which is right, or maybe they think, oh, I could never ask someone for $2,000 a month.
The answer to different pricing or rates is that different businesses are at different stages. Different markets have different expectations, and different services have different levels of responsibility.
What I want you to avoid is pricing yourself based only on fear. Charging less because you’re afraid someone’s going to say no is not a good pricing strategy. It’s a confidence issue. And the reality is, the clients who are looking only for the cheapest option are not the clients that you want to work with long term.
The goal is not to be the cheapest VA available. The goal is to be the right VA for the right client.
Before I chose my target market of six and seven figure business coaches to support, I worked with anyone. If I could help them, I did. And I even charge people differently. I tell you guys all the time,I made all the mistakes, all of them.
I set my rates, I negotiated, I bartered, and I suffered. I did tons of stuff I didn’t even like doing. I worked with people I didn’t want to work with. I definitely was not building the business I deserved. I hung out with other struggling VAs and we cheered each other on, but nothing changed. We were all awful together. I thought struggling was normal.
It took an outside perspective from my business coaches to point out that no, this was not normal. I had to restructure my services and pricing and I had to network with the right people to get great clients. And I had to get out of those VAs groups that were dragging me down.
Everybody was struggling there. When I started networking with business owners that were upbeat and positive and looking to build their business, things looked up!
Setting a profitable billable rate or creating profitable packages is the answer every single time. And I also advise VAs to consider moving away from only thinking hourly. There is a place for hourly. I talk about that all the time too, but packages can create a much better experience for both you and your client because the client knows what they’re getting and you know what you’re responsible for delivering. And instead of selling time, you’re selling a solution. And I think that shift changes everything, but that is another topic for another episode.
Question 3: Do I Need To Choose A Niche (Or Target Market) Right Away?
This question can cause a lot of confusion. Some people will tell you that you absolutely must pick one niche or target market immediately. Others will tell you that niches are limiting and you should offer everything. As usual, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
I do believe that having some kind of focus helps your marketing. I teach it. I tell you every single time. It helps everything in your business, but definitely your marketing. And here’s why:
When you try to talk to everyone, your message often becomes so general that nobody feels like you’re speaking directly to them.
For example, if you say, I help businesses with administrative tasks, that’s technically true, but I don’t think it creates the strong connection that you need to move someone into taking action to pay you.
Compare that to saying, I help busy coaches organize their client onboarding, their calendars and behind-the-scenes systems so they can spend more time serving their clients.
The second one gives someone a much clearer picture. Can you see the difference? It allows the client to self-select. They go, Hey, that’s me. I’m a busy coach and I could use help with all of those things.
So niches are good. But when you’re brand new, you don’t have to lock yourself into one tiny niche forever. It can be difficult to know who you want to work with at all when you first start out. You’re allowed to experiment. You’re allowed to work with different clients. You’re allowed to discover what you enjoy and what you’re good at.
A niche is not the absolute prison cell. It’s mainly a way to make your marketing easier. It’s got fluffy walls, not bars, I guess!
I often encourage VAs to think about three things. Who do you enjoy working with, or who do you think you would enjoy working with? What problems do you enjoy solving? And what skills do you want to use more often?
Those answers can really help guide your direction. Being able to pin down a target to connect with and to market to clarifies your messaging, like in the busy coaches example that I talked about earlier. So it helps your audience, but it also helps you with your confidence.
I did the same thing as you at first. I talked about being a VA, how great it is, why someone should work with a VA. I talked about all the services I offered. I mentioned saving clients time and money. (It makes me cringe when I look back, but I always say, don’t tell them you’ll save them time and money.) I have another episode on that.
Nobody responds to that kind of messaging. They don’t care about my business. They just want to know how I can help their business. And they don’t even realize it. They’re not trying to be mean. It’s just that’s the way it is. If it’s not, it’s the what’s in it for me, right? When I changed my messaging to focus on that, everything got clearer for me and for them.
So the niche question is not meant to be limiting, but focusing. Pick a target, create content for them specifically, understanding that you can still work with anyone, but build your confidence and clarity by focusing on that target. You don’t need to have every answer before you begin.
Sometimes your business becomes clearer because you start working with clients. Mine sure did. I worked with so many industries, hospitality, accounting, literary, sports associations, coaches, and now VAs. You can always change direction.
Changing direction is actually fun. You have to pick one at a time. It’s the key.
Question 4: Why Am I Not Getting Clients Even Though I’m Posting On Social Media?
I get a form of this question, and it’s kind of a combination of several questions that come up.
It’s frustrating when you feel like you’re putting in effort, but you’re not seeing results. And I want to start by saying that posting on social media is not the same thing as marketing.
Posting is a piece of marketing. Marketing is building relationships, creating visibility, starting conversations, and showing people how you can help them. A lot of VAs post things like, I’m available for new clients, or I offer administrative support. These posts aren’t wrong, but they usually do not give someone a reason to stop and think, hey, I need to talk to this person now.
Your content should help people understand problems they have and solutions they need. Instead of only saying what you offer, talk about what your client is experiencing. Talk about the signs that they need support. Talk about mistakes that they might be making. Talk about ways that they can save time. Talk about behind-the-scenes things that they may not understand or they might not have under control.
And the other piece is that social media alone is rarely enough. You need conversations and networking and referrals and you need to connect with people.
So many VAs spend hours creating content but very little time actually talking to potential clients.
Fifteen minutes a day of intentional relationship building can move your business forward faster than spending two hours creating the perfect post or image.
The content is there to showcase your expertise. It’s not meant to be the only thing. You have to use it to get visibility, to have people understand how you can help them, but it still has to move to a conversation for them to become a client.
Make your social media work for you by using your brand colours, creating and using templates to make creating content more efficient, and post consistently. Those are the things that help you get noticed.
What you actually say, the content, is critical. Make it about your clients, their needs, their struggles, their feelings, and your solutions.
Remember our niche example earlier, the busy coaches. You want them to say, hey, that’s me she is talking about, and that’s exactly what I need help with. Not, wow, that’s a nice inspirational quote, or hey, another VA looking for clients, or okay, she looks nice, but scroll on. Does that make sense?
People hire people that they know, like, and trust. Your job is to become visible and build that trust over time. Posting content that leads to conversations is awesome, but don’t lean on it to do all the work for you because often it won’t or it will just take way longer to do.
Question 5: How Do I Know When I Am Ready To Call Myself A VA?
This question is kind of funny because it really just comes down to confidence.
So many women say ‘When I become a VA’ or ‘I’m not actually a VA yet’. I ask them what they think a real VA looks like. Usually the answer is something like someone with years of experience, dozens of clients, a fancy website, and everything figured out. That person, though, does not exist.
Every single successful VA started somewhere – at the beginning. They started with their first client, their first proposal, their first uncomfortable conversation about money, their first discovery call, their first networking meeting. Their first mistake.
Being a virtual assistant is not something you become after you’ve achieved some kind of imaginary level of success.
You become a VA when you decide to provide services to clients as a business.
And that doesn’t mean that you stop learning. Successful VAs continue learning forever. We love it. They improve their skills, their systems, and how they communicate with their clients. But they do that while they’re running their business, not before.
Every single time I talk to someone who asks me this question, I ask them the same thing:
If I need help with whatever one of their services is right now, and I have this budget for it right now, could you help me?
The answer is always a resounding yes. Of course it is! If I pick a service that they tell me that they offer and I tell them I need it and I have money to pay them, they’re not going to say no. But there, that means you’re ready. You’re a VA right now!
And that’s what I tell you on our coaching calls.
I never did have to worry about this because I left my job after I had my son and I started working with my old boss as my first client right away. Very lucky of me, wasn’t it? But I do hear it every day.
Imposter syndrome is real. You think you need this or that to be ready. And honestly, if you’re stuck there in imposter syndrome, what you really need is a big push. Actually, I’m kidding. Support. You need support!
There is something that’s keeping you stuck and if you don’t know what it is, you need to identify it and work through it. If you don’t know what it is, you have to find someone who can find it for you. It can be very hard to do on your own.
We are so blinded by looking at ourselves that we miss a lot of things. If you’re just waiting for confidence before you start, you might be waiting forever. Confidence is built by doing the thing.
It comes from proving to yourself that you can figure things out.
So stop trying to convince yourself that you have to wait for this or that to become a VA. If you’ve made that choice, if you have a service offering and you can talk to somebody about it today, you are a VA. You might have a lot of other things to set up or tweak or whatever, but you could start working for someone right now or working with someone as the case may be. That’s why those conversations are so important and your confidence has to come through in those conversations.
When I talk to VAs and I ask them this question when we’re in our conversation and I say to them, if I needed this service and I had this budget, could you help me? their confidence comes through, it comes blasting through our call. And prior to that, they run a million excuses. They tell me a million reasons why they’re not ready to go yet.
If those are the conversations that you’re having with clients, that’s why you’re not getting clients right now. It’s being able to say, yes, resounding, absolutely, I can help you with that. That’s what your clients want to hear.
So, congratulations, you are a VA. You don’t have to wait around to figure out when that time’s going to come. And your confidence will build with every conversation that you have. And your imposter syndrome is actually going to minimize. You can kick it to behind you whenever you’re actually having good conversations with people. If you’re waiting for the confidence, your confidence will build when you do the stuff, when you do the work, when you have the conversations, when you make the decisions. and when you move forward.
Do You Need Help?
So those are five of the most common questions that I hear from virtual assistants.
How do I get my first client?
How much should I charge?
Do I need a niche?
Why is my marketing not working?
And am I ready to call myself a VA?
I hope you enjoyed this episode. I sure did. I know it’s super long. Thanks for hanging in with me.
But I hope it gives you an idea, like all of my podcast episodes, of how I work with you and how I teach you and how I advise you when we work together. We can get you to where you want to go. Quickly, as a matter of fact.
All you have to do is be willing to make decisions and take action.
You need a client? We can do that.
You need to set your rates or create packages? We can do that.
You need to get better at time management because you’re blowing your budget with your clients all the time so you can work more efficiently and make more money. We can also do that.
Whatever you need, I can help. It’s the only reason I’m here at all, guys, is to help you become a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Check out how we can work together at YourVAMentor.com/links and connect with me on social media, please, and tell me where you’re stuck. Let’s get you moving in the right direction.
Let’s circle back to today’s quote. “Success is not final and failure is not fatal.” Winston is right. If you’re stuck somewhere you don’t want to be right now, just reach out. One step forward will get you out of where you are.
That’s all I’ve got for you today. I’m Tracey D’Aviero, the Confidence Coach for Virtual Assistants, and I want to thank you for listening into this episode. I’ll see you next time!