Picture the scene. I’m 17 years old, it’s around 8.45 in the morning and I’m on a bus on my way to work. It’s one of my very first jobs out of school, I work from 9 to 5.30 every day in a huge airless room at a faceless call centre in a massive building with hundreds of other people. As I look out of the window, the bus passes a tree in the park… and it suddenly hits me.
Although I had often outsourced the occasional one-off task, I was actually doing everything myself and only started regularly working with a VA after I broke down in tears after spending most of the week dealing with a host of support emails instead of getting any real work done. That was the moment I knew it was time to get some help.
Because you don’t need any formal qualifications to become a Virtual Assistant, there’s often confusion and misunderstanding in the VA Handbookers Facebook group around what being one entails, and it’s sometimes described as being an ‘easy side gig’, I thought I’d explain what it actually means to be a Virtual Assistant.
One of my favourite sayings is “you’re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with”, so if the people around you are negative complainers who always find a reason why something can’t be done, they will eventually bring you down to their level and you’ll never reach your full potential. This is why you need a Mastermind or Accountability group.
Following a family bereavement, Lauren Moon took some time to evaluate and decided that life was way too short to be unhappy. Lauren wanted something that would fit around her two young children and she definitely wanted to see if she could ‘have her cake and eat it’!
If you charge by the hour, at some point you’re going to reach an income plateau as there are only so many billable hours you can work in a day. You know you need to raise your rates as time goes on, but you’re also worried you might lose some of your clients if you do. Here’s how to up your prices like a pro along with a customisable email template.
Because Associate work is a great way to take on more work both when starting out and as you become more successful, I asked my VA Handbookers Facebook group to post up any questions they had on the subject and then I asked some volunteers who had experience of both sides to answer them. This is what they said:
If you’re a new Virtual Assistant or thinking of becoming one, I’m sure you’re worried about how you will get new clients. So to help you get an idea of who could be that elusive and exciting first client, I asked members of my VA Handbookers Facebook group a load of questions about their first one including how they got them and what tasks they needed help with.
Although you may really want to set up your own VA business, stepping into the unknown can be quite scary. Because I know that going freelance will change your life in so many fantastic ways, I asked members of my VA Handbookers Facebook group what the best thing about being a Virtual Assistant was. This is what they said:
Members of my VA Handbookers Facebook group often ask whether it’s worth writing a blog. On one hand they hear that it’s good for search engine optimisation (SEO), but they also don’t want to write one if they don’t really need it – plus they’re not really too sure what to write about even if they do decide to start one.
