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Plan your Successful Virtual Assistant Business

Do you have a business plan? If you do, congratulations! I bet you are doing fairly well in your business! Simply by having a plan in place that can help you set goals and build strategies, you are on your way to success! If you don’t, you are probably struggling or unsure about how to find clients, work or just success in general. One of the first things I do with any mentoring client or student in my training classes is look at their business plan. Most don’t actually have one – and so that’s the very first thing we do. Without putting all of your business plans down on paper, you can’t build a solid strategy to sell your… Read More »Plan your Successful Virtual Assistant Business

Want Different Results? Change Your Actions

Look at your business. Is it running the way you want it to? Are you making the money you want? Are you doing the things you love to do every day? Are you balancing your work and family properly? Are you happy? If not, it’s time to do an assessment … and make some changes. Assessing your business regularly – and the things you do in your business – is an essential piece of being a great business owner. Making sure that the things you do every day are working to build your business is essential, but making changes to those things when they aren’t working is one of the most important skills you can learn to master. Let’s look… Read More »Want Different Results? Change Your Actions

Game Changers: What Don’t You Know?

I learned something very interesting a couple of weeks ago. The first thing you need to know is that I hate to vacuum the house. Vacuuming always ends up making my back sore. We have a good vacuum that has an ergonomic handle but still it’s annoying to get to the end and be sore. Now add on top of that vacuuming the pool in the summer, and, well, you get the idea. So I finally googled ‘sore back from vacuuming’ or something to that effect and that’s when I learned it – nose and toes. Nose and toes? What does that mean? Quite simply – keep your nose aligned with your toes when you are doing something like vacuuming… Read More »Game Changers: What Don’t You Know?

Free Webinar: Build Your 50K VA Business in 4 Simple Steps

Virtual Assistants and Virtual Professionals: Do you still have trouble getting enough (or any!) clients? Have you experienced the ‘feast or famine’ income problem in your business? Do you work all hours and still don’t make enough money? Are you still trading your ‘hours for dollars’? Are you wondering why other VAs seems to be more successful than you? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, your business model is broken, and you need to keep reading so you can fix it. When you first started your business, you probably had that fire and drive and you KNEW you were going to make a go of it. But then reality set in when you realized it wasn’t as… Read More »Free Webinar: Build Your 50K VA Business in 4 Simple Steps

Virtual Assistant Rate Setting: Find Your Value

So last week’s article got a lot of great feedback – we talked in that article about how to start looking at packaged and project rates for your business. I’m pleased to continue with the discussion! There is often so much confusion around how to charge clients when you are providing them with a service. It can be a difficult decision – especially if you haven’t been in business all that long. And if you have been a service provider for a while, it can be difficult to change your rate structure. The key to your continued success, is for you to recognize your own value. As you master certain skills in your business, you become a specialized expert, whether… Read More »Virtual Assistant Rate Setting: Find Your Value

Are You Still Charging by the Hour as a Virtual Assistant?

When you started your Virtual Assistant business, it was probably easy to charge your clients by the hour. But in order for your business to grow and be successful, the ‘trading time for money’ model quickly falls short. Why? For one thing, there are only so many hours in a day/week, so you can quickly max out the amount of money you can make in your business. For another thing, it’s much harder to raise your rates with your current clients. And that means if you get so busy that you need to bring on subcontractors to help, you may not be able to earn enough to keep your business successful. These are just two simple reasons why charging by… Read More »Are You Still Charging by the Hour as a Virtual Assistant?

3 Common VA Roadblocks and How to Handle Them

In business, as in life, many things can jump into our path unexpectedly. It’s how we handle these things that will allow us to continue on the path to success, or derail us completely. Here are three common roadblocks that VAs face: 1) Unexpected loss of a client 2) Too much new business at once 3) Late payment by a client Unexpected Loss of a Client When a client decides to leave you (or if you fire them with little notice) it can be devastating to your income. The key is to keep your pipeline filled with prospects on a regular basis, so it’s as easy as contacting people in your audience and getting a new client. But this isn’t… Read More »3 Common VA Roadblocks and How to Handle Them

What Are You Tolerating?

I attended a Virtual Assistant conference several years ago and I listened to Mary Lou Ashton speak about tolerations. It was one of those talks that stays with you, at least it stayed with me. I refer to it all the time when I am in conversation with people who are struggling to focus and move forward in their business. Tolerations are those things that are around you that you probably don’t even consciously notice. A toleration can be a broken step as you walk into your house, or an unfolded basket of laundry, or dishes on the counter, or an unanswered email, or a stack of filing that needs to be done. A toleration is something that you notice,… Read More »What Are You Tolerating?