The Gritty Virtual Assistant | THE Virtual Assistant Expert

July 1, 2009 – 10:00 am

Dear Gritty VA: How Do I Find My Target Market?

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Dear Gritty VA:

I understand the need and benefit of having a target market. I totally get that. My problem is I don’t know how to choose one? Do you have any suggestions? –SL

There really isn’t a formula or scientific way to choose a target market. Ultimately, it comes down to just deciding: choosing a place to start and moving forward from there.

Lots of Virtual Assistants start with a target market they are familiar and/or have experience with. Perhaps you worked in a certain industry before you started your business and therefore know what that industry is about, can already speak their language, know what administrative work is involved, how you can help and so forth. This is a great place to start because there isn’t as much ramp up time as far as getting to know and understand your desired audience and marketing appropriately to them.

On the other hand, perhaps there’s an industry that you’ve always been interested in. And as you study and research that industry, you find there are lots of opportunities and avenues for networking with people in it, the needs and pains they have fit perfectly with what you are in business to do, and it’s generally a healthy industry where, in general, most people in it charge enough and make enough to be able to easily afford your service. This can be a great, adventurous place to start, although there is going to be more upfront research involved.

Sometimes our target market find us. For example: perhaps you draw a wild card and take on a client from a profession you have absolutely no experience with and you discover you really, really enjoy the work and the people. You find the industry really interesting and you have an affinity for all that is involved. This is often how Virtual Assistants arrive at a new target market. And what could be more perfect–finding your kindred spirits and doing work you love each and every day.

Choosing a target market is a process. You might switch target markets several times throughout the life of your business, but the point is to start somewhere. You can always change and refine anywhere, anytime along the way.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Ask the Gritty VA, Business Savvy, Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Tagged Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistants | Comments (0)

June 29, 2009 – 1:00 pm

Put It on Auto-Pilot

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Here’s an article published today in “The Portable Business™.” If you’d like to subscribe, go here:

autopilot So much to do, so little time to do it. That’s business, right? We could work 24 hours a day if we let ourselves. There’s always something else to do. But what if you’re looking to see more of life beyond your computer screen? Then it’s time to automate and streamline a few things…

1. Use your calendar. Schedule all that can be scheduled. Don’t take meetings on the fly. Follow a basic routine and honor the boundaries you’ve set for your time such as stepping away from the business and into family time at a certain point in the day. It’s much easier to prioritize your work (and your life) when you’ve got control over what’s on your plate.

2. Organize incoming emails. Utilize whatever tools are provided by your email client to the fullest. If you use Outlook, make use of flags and rules. You (or your Virtual Assistant) can set things up so that emails go straight into particular folders. It’s much easier (and less overwhelming) to sort through and prioritize messages when they’re already organized for you.

3. Automate your bills. If you have recurring bills each month, set them up to be auto-withdrawn from your account. Whenever possible, pay annually—you might even save a chunk of change. For other bills, take advantage of the ease and convenience of online Bill Pay—it comes with most checking accounts these days. It will save you the steps and cost of writing checks, addressing envelopes and paying for stamps.

4. Use a blog reader. Blog-reading can be a great way to learn new things, not to mention a nice distraction when you need a mental break now and then. But it can also easily turn into a full-time job trying to keep up with all of them. Instead, use an RSS reader to organize all of your blog reading. You can create categories or sort blogs by importance. Another suggestion: schedule your blog reading for once a week so that you don’t miss a thing, but aren’t being wasteful with your time and energy reserves.

5. Set up your listserv reading for digest mode. Instead of a constant incoming stream of (often irrelevant) messages that you have to spend time deleting, elect digest mode instead. That way, not only do you save yourself time, but the threads will come to you already organized.

6. Use a tickler file. This is a system where you have 31 folders representing all the possible days in a month. This is a great way to organize to-do’s and clear paper clutter from your desk. You can free your mind from worrying about anything that isn’t in that particular day’s folder. Weren’t able to take care of something that day? No problem–just move it forward to the next appropriate day’s folder.

RESOURCE: Omea Reader is a free all-in-one RSS reader that you donwload to your computer. You can even manage your podcast listening! For an online alternative, you can’t beat Bloglines.

About the Author: Danielle Keister is a business advisor and innovator in the Virtual Assistance profession. An administrative professional of 20+ years and veteran Virtual Assistant of 12+ years, her logical, no-nonsense approach to business development has gained her recognition as one of the leaders in the field. She loves what she does and is passionate about sharing her knowledge and know-how with the world. She’s all about inspiring others to reach for their highest excellence. When not taking care of clients in her own Virtual Assistant practice, she is busy leading the Virtual Assistance Chamber of Commerce and helping Virtual Assistants create six figure businesses.

© Copyright 2009, The Portable Business™. All U.S. and International rights reserved. You may print this article for personal use or republish it online only if it is left unaltered and used in its entirety, including bylines, links, copyright notice, resource and author information. Contact the author for any other permission.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Business Savvy, Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Tagged Automate, Virtual Assistant | Comments (0)

June 24, 2009 – 10:00 am

Dear Gritty VA: Virtual Assistant Growing Pains

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Dear Gritty VA:

I wanted to know your advice on growing. I am just on the verge of maybe needing help. Do I hire another Virtual Assistant with her own company, hire an employee, or bring in a partner? I just don’t know. I feel like hiring is taking me out of the Virtual Assistant industry that I hold so near and dear to my heart. Also, do you have advice on how to select a person to bring into your business. I have had some offers from people, but they are not familiar with the industry. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing. Could be good to teach someone from ground zero, but also time-consuming. –LE

Here’s what I always tell Virtual Assistants–just because you are a solopreneur doesn’t mean you should be working alone. Solopreneur does not mean you doing everything yourself. It just means that the stock you are trading in is your own intellectual capital and your particular skill, talent, know-how and experience in your craft. You can’t delegate those things, but you can certainly surround yourself with the right professional support so that the primary thing you are doing in your business is your stock-in-trade and letting those in supporting roles to you handle the rest.

Those supporting roles could be a bookkeeper so that you aren’t expending your time on that work (and also ensuring that it’s done correctly), an accountant to make sure you stay in compliance with any financial or taxing agencies and to give you the best financial management advice, and/or a business attorney to look over your contracts (both those in your own business as well as those others may want you to sign), run legal things by, and get advice on situations that hold potential liability for you and any other business matters that arise.

I also recommend Virtual Assistants have their own Virtual Assistant, staff or a combination of both. When you work with someone who you develop a relationship with over time, the possibilies are endless with regard to the support they can provide. Because they get to know you and how things work in your business, they are able to support you in a way and to a degree that you just can’t get by outsourcing individual tasks occasionally to people you don’t work with consistently. On top of that, there is a greater ease and efficiency when you have someone you work closely and continuously like that.

You may even identify non-critical parts of the work you do with clients that don’t require your particular brand of expertise that you can have them do for you. Of course, the relationship is always between you and your client and I never recommend outsourcing that. When clients hire you, it’s for your brain, your critical thinking, your creativity and your expertise. Never abdicate that. It’s part of your value and part of the thing that makes your business distinctive. But that doesn’t mean that parts of the work can’t be delegated within your own house to staff or your own Virtual Assistant whom you have hired because they have impeccable skills and in whom you have absolute confidence. In fact, I will tell you that you will always be stuck within a certain income level if you don’t ever get your own help.

As already mentioned, another way to get support is to hire staff (an employee or two). You really don’t need much help in order for that support to make a hugely significant difference in your business. And there are all kinds of ways to get that kind of help. You can get interns from local colleges. You can participant in state work-study programs (where the state will repay you a percentage of whatever wages are paid to the student employee). Of course with employees, there is more adminstration and taxes involved, but if you have a professional bookkeeper, you should have them take care of processing paychecks and so forth.

I personally like a combination of both. I like to have someone in-house who can take care of filing and other things that just require a physical presence. Once a week or two for just a few hours, just light clerical stuff. Someone like that you might not even end up paying more than $600 in a year in which case you wouldn’t be required to formally process that person as an employee.

But for the bigger, more important meat-and-potatoes work, if you will, I definitely recommend hiring the best, most highly skilled person you can afford. Training just takes too much time and energy. And it doesn’t happen overnight. Think of yourself–it took years to establish the kind of skill and expertise you now possess. How much time and energy will you have to invest before that unskilled, untrained person becomes a real, viable asset to your business rather than a drain? Just something to think about.

As far as bringing on a partner, I can only offer my opinion which is emphatically NO!

Seriously, I have never seen a business partnership end well. There are far too many agreements and understandings and potentialities to take into consideration. And it seems it’s always the one thing you didn’t think about ahead of time that ends up causing a rift. There can really only ever been one captain of a ship. And regardless of legalities, the person who started the business always feels (at least emotionally) that they “own” more of the business and that feeling of “more ownership” often causes resentment with the other partner.

Decision-making, conflicting workstyles, having to compromise, differing visions or opinions… all of these things just become more tedious and cumbersome. They just complicate and slow down the business. On top of that, the business now has to earn for two owners instead of just the one–you. I don’t think you need a partner. I think you just need the right professional advisors, and business support and strategies.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Ask the Gritty VA, Business Savvy, Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Tagged Virtual Assistance, Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistants | Comments (2)

June 23, 2009 – 10:00 am

Being Solo Doesn’t Mean Doing It Alone

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(This post was originally published May 21, 2008, but I thought it was a timely subject for those who are confused about the topic.)

I read an article today in one of the newsletters I keep up with that talked about the myth of being a successful solopreneur by bootstrapping. This is a topic I have been intending to write on myself so it came at the right time and got me in gear.

Virtual Assistance is inherently a solo-based business model due to the close, collaborative relationship the concept is based on.

But running a solo business does NOT mean doing everything yourself. By no means at all!

Just as we advise our clients and remind the marketplace that they simply cannot do it all themselves and trying to do so will keep them from becoming successful, the same is true for Virtual Assistants.

I’m always advising Virtual Assistants, get help–the sooner the better.

Now, I’m not talking about farming out other VAs to clients… that’s not Virtual Assistance, that’s virtual staffing (and lots of times, the ways in which folks are doing that is flat-out illegal).

What I’m talking about is hiring the staff and providers in your own business to help you run behind the scenes.

Don’t do your own bookkeeping–hire a bookkeeper. Have an accountant take care of your taxes. Maintain a relationship with a business attorney to answer legal questions when they arise. Hire employees and/or your own Virtual Assistant to take care of the administrative work necessary to run your business and take on portions of your own client work that don’t require your personal expertise. Leave certain jobs to the right professionals (for example, having a professional web designer create a business site that will attract clients, place well in the search engines and act as an actual work partner in your business and marketing).

Having all the key players to help you run your business will leave you to focus on clients, help you grow to the next level, and give you more free time and mental space to brainstorm and just enjoy life. Hey, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t go into business with the intention that all I’d ever have time for was work and being chained to my computer.

Trust me, you will never make it to a six figure business unless you have the right help supporting you.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Business Savvy, Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Tagged Virtual Assistance, Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistants | Comments (2)

June 22, 2009 – 10:55 am

Regularity is Necessary to the Relationship

(2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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Here’s an article published today in “The Portable Business™.” If you’d like to subscribe, go here:

continuouscircle One of the great things about working with a Virtual Assistant is that her (or his) interest is in supporting your business as a whole, the idea being that in understanding how your business runs, what your goals and objectives are, she/he can get work done with the bigger picture of your business in mind. Why is that helpful to you? Because ongoing work and projects can then be completed so that they fit just a bit better, make more sense, make workflows more seamless, systems more streamlined and efficient, or afford greater service and communication with your own clients and customers.

When big picture kind of support is what you’re looking for in a Virtual Assistant, regularity becomes a very necessary ingredient in building upon the relationship and creating continuity. It’s the difference between “Intermittent/transactional” support and “ongoing/systemic” support. Here are some of the conditions needed in order to set the stage:

1. Work with a Virtual Assistant on retainer rather than task by task. When you make a commitment to work together in a continuous, rather than sporadic, basis, it allows your Virtual Assistant to gain the perspective and understanding needed to focus on your overall objectives, rather than merely the task at hand.

2. Think “big picture” rather than “transaction.” When you just hand off a task here and there transactionally, your Virtual Assistant can only get done what’s immediately before her. But when you’re working together in an ongoing way, she/he begins to understand why certain tasks are done, where they fit into the overall scheme of things, how they affect other tasks or processes and how they might be done better or differently to fit in with what you are ultimately trying to accomplish.

3. Meet regularly. A great Virtual Assistant is going to have her or his own processes for working with clients that faciliate relationship-building. One of the ways Virtual Assistants do this is by “meeting” with clients over the phone on a regular basis. Make yourself open to scheduling this into your routine as it is a critical component in getting to know each other.

RESOURCE: Learn more about how Virtual Assistants support your whole business by reading our “Client’s Guide to Virtual Assistgants.”

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Business Savvy, Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Tagged Virtual Assistance, Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistants | Comments (0)

June 17, 2009 – 10:00 am

Dear Gritty VA: Am I Supposed to Know?

(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)

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Dear Gritty VA:

My question is about how much I should get involved with my clients’ businesses outside of what I am hired to do. One client wanted to know if I saw her speaking video on YouTube and I hadn’t. I didn’t even know about it. I think she was disappointed to hear that I hadn’t seen the video. Disappointed in a way that I may not know enough about her and her business. I have many clients and I am just wondering if I should be keeping up with their daily business in this manner, when I am hired to do the administrative side. If this is something I need to be doing I will certainly make the time, but I am just not sure. –LE

I’ll be honest with you… I don’t have an exact answer for you on this one because it comes down to personal choice. Ultimately, the client relationship is one that you’ll have to suss out yourself as you go along, and decide on whatever degree of involvement or intimacy, if you will, you are comfortable with and what’s right for you. I can only share with you my thoughts and opinions, but maybe they’ll at least help you gain a little clarity on what you want to do. I will say that there is no “should” or “need.” The kind or level of relationship you want to have with clients in your business is completely up to you.

I think the nice aspect about this client is that she wants a relationship with you. It validates that this is something that clients really value and want to have with their Virtual Assistants. It’s something to be grateful for.

The flip side of this is that perhaps this is a client who may turn out to be too needy, which I hate to say, but I gotta be honest, can be a real pain in the butt. If she needs a whole lotta extra handholding and validation, it can turn into a real drain. This is business after all. You have your own life, your own interests and events, not to mention other clients. Of course, we often become close with our clients. But being hired to be their best friend I’m sure wasn’t part of the bargain. Our level of closeness with clients, or particular clients, is something that happens organically in its natural course.

Either way, you can’t possibly be expected to know every detail of your clients’ lives and businesses. And to some extent, I personally feel there is much benefit to keeping somewhat of a professional distance. Too often, when you get to be too touchy-feely friends with each other, your time and emotional energy can become drained. Sometimes, it can make it a little bit harder to stand firm in your policies and boundaries and standards. Do you know what I mean? Have you ever had a friend make a request of you and you find it a bit harder to say “no” because of the fact they are a friend? We’re all human. We all have a tougher time saying “no” to family and friends to some degree or another.

Assertivness with those who are extra close to us is an ongoing effort. So that’s what I mean about there being some benefit to keeping a bit of a professional distance. Of course, you want to like your clients and be interested in them (and if you choose them right, you will). You want to be friendly and personable with each other, but you don’t have to become best friends. which isn’t something that can be forced or bought anyway. This is a business relationship after all.

So all that is to say, of course you can’t be expected to know all the goings on of your clients. You’re not a mind reader and you can’t be in all places at once. If you didn’t work on the video, weren’t involved in the event in any way, and she didn’t tell you, how can she expect you to know? Is she going to be as equally interested in the goings-on in your business? Is there a two-way relationship? What else is she going to expect you to be all-knowing about (which is just plain impossible and unrealistic)?

Whichever way you want to go is the right way. YOU get to decide what your boundaries and standards are in your business. If you decide that there’s a degree to which the intimacy, so to speak, is a bit beyond a business level that you are comfortable with, that’s perfectly okay. If you decide you really want to be more involved in your clients’ businesses and be their personal rah-rah section, that’s okay, too. We all cheer our clients on. I think in this situation, you’re feeling it’s a bit more than is warranted of the business relationship, perhaps because it’s not at a particular natural stage, and especially when you aren’t a mind reader. Heck, you might decide this is creating much too much existential agonizing and decide there is a not a fit and let the client the go. That’s perfectly okay, too.

But if you want to continue to try to work with this client, the very best thing you can do is have an open, honest dialogue. On top of anything else, it’s a great opportunity to further understand each other and clarify expectations. Let her know you appreciate that she cares whether you know about her successes and by all means you want to cheer her on, and then invite her to email you whenever there is something she’d like you to know about or share her success in with you just in case it’s not something you would necessarily know about.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Ask the Gritty VA, Business Savvy, Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Tagged Virtual Assistance, Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistants | Comments (0)

June 16, 2009 – 10:00 am

Veddy Interestink…

(2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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You can draw your own conclusions, if there are any to be made, but I find this pattern very interesting (and it’s definitely a pattern)…

The Virtual Assistance Chamber of Commerce is a professional association geared strictly and specifically for Virtual Assistants only. Virtual Assistants are administrative experts. They specialize in providing ongoing administrative support to clients they work in long-term, continous relationship. We spell out very clearly on our home page, on our registration page and in a number of other places that we do not represent virtual staffing agencies, secretarial services or team VA businesses (so please don’t try to join if you are running one of those categories of businesses).

I don’t know how much more clear we can make it. Nothing against those kinds of businesses, but they are completely different business models that are very distinct and different from a true Virtual Assistant practice. They operate differently. They provide a very different solution from what Virtual Assistants provide. And they get to profitability and financial success in completely different ways. Our work and our conversations, however, are geared specifically for the folks who want to learn how to best run a solo practice, and run one that can earn fantastically more money than they realize is possible as a solo (don’t ever listen to those folks who say a six figure solo practice is impossible because it’s not!).

Yet, almost to a one, on the occasion when someone running a virtual staffing agency or multi/team VA business registers for our Peer Networking Club, they are the ones who inevitably fail to follow directions or who it’s clear haven’t read a darn thing. Literally. I could get rich taking bets that anytime a VSA registers, they aren’t going to follow directions. It happens just about every single time. And then they get indignant when they are not approved. For gawd’s sake, you can’t read, you can’t pay attention, you can’t follow directions, you register anyway when the criteria clearly excludes you because you aren’t a solo Virtual Assistant and you want to get pissed off at us? How crazy it that?!

On the other hand, the folks who join that are operating true Virtual Assistant practices, they consistently as a group demonstrate an ability to pay attention. It’s clear they have read the things that are indicated to read because they subsequently follow directions correctly. As a group, they show a superior command of spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. They exercise better judgment and discernment and they provide very articulate, intelligent and thoughtful responses to questions that are posed. What a joy it is to deal with those folks! And what a joy it is to represent them as an organization!

If I was a client, I’d be very concerned about the competence and qualification of anyone who couldn’t demonstrate those things. Look, if the criteria excludes you, it excludes you. Why waste your time and ours? And if you can’t at least demonstrate competence with us by reading carefully and following directions, how can you expect us to represent you to the clients who comes to us seeking competent, qualified Virtual Assistants? We can’t in good conscience tell the marketplace that we stand for a high standard of excellence if the people we accept are unable to operate to that standard.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Tagged Virtual Assistance, Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistants | Comments (6)

June 15, 2009 – 10:00 am

It’s About Them, Not You, Silly (or “Building Trust and Credibility Via Your Website”)

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Here’s an article published today in “The Portable Business™.” If you’d like to subscribe, go here:

twofriends When your business is virtual, your website becomes the public office and face of your business. But because you are virtual, visitors can’t walk into your office and get any sense about the personality of the business or its professionalism and legitimacy… Or can they?

Just because you may run an online-based business doesn’t mean you can’t create the same feelings of trust and credibility in your site visitors that a physical brick-and-mortar office does for its visitors. There are little details you can provide on your website that will have a powerful impact in establishing rapport and building trust with your prospective clients and customers.

1. Your Name. People do business with people, not anonymous, impersonal machines. They want to know who it is they will actually be dealing with. Clearly display your name, if not on all the pages of your site, at least on your Contact page. Lead your business loud and proud and just see what a difference it makes.

2. Address. It doesn’t matter if you use a physical address (although be cautious about this if you run a home-based business) or a post office box—just have an address of some kind or another. There isn’t a logical reason for this and it may not be relevant since your customers or clients don’t come to your office, but this one doesn’t have to do with logic or reason. It’s an emotional thing. People just feel safer about a business if they can clearly see there is an address attached to it.

3. Contact Info. Don’t make it difficult for folks to figure out how to contact you (although in some part, it’s not even about the ability to contact you, it’s just simply knowing it is easy to do so if they ever need to). The more clearly you display contact info, the better visitors feel about your site. The best sites not only display at least their basic contact info on all pages of their site, but also consolidate their full information (including hours of operation and other helpful data) on a Contact page of some sort.

4. Photo. Nothing does more to instil rapport than providing a photo of yourself on your website. It’s a great idea to have your image right there on your Home page to immediately greet your site visitors. But if not there, at least provide a photo of yourself on your About or Contact page. You don’t have to be the most beautiful or sharpest dresser. Forget the cheesy glamour shots and unnecessary Photoshopping. Don’t use any photo that is more than five years old–better to take a fresh, current photo of the real you. Wearing something simple and professionally modest is perfectly fine. The most important, stylish thing you should be wearing in your photo is your smile.

5. Your Office. If you have a separate office area that is presentable (such as a dedicated room or space in your home that you have turned into your office), take a photo and put that on your site. Prospective clients like to see these glimpses into your operations. It makes it more real to them and they get a sense of who you are as a person at the same time.

6. Don’t be a robot. Long gone are the days of impersonal corporate-speak and the royal “we.” Talk with your site visitors like you would a real living, breathing person. Have a conversation with them in your copy. One technique for doing this is to imagine your ideal client in full detail, clearly picture their face and personality before you, and then write your content as if they were sitting right next to you asking questions (with your answers serving as your content).

7. It’s not about you. Never forget that your site is for your visitors, not an indulgence for your ego. I don’t know how to put this more delicately, but when folks are shopping for solutions, they don’t care about you. They are looking with a “what’s in it for me” mentality. They want to know what you do and how you do it as it applies to their interests, their needs. They want that information provided from their perspective, not yours. That means using lots of “you” in your writing rather than “I” and “we.” If you have lots of “I” and “we” in your copy now, go through and do a more personalized rewrite with a “you” perspective. It will really transform the whole personality of your content–you’ll see.

RESOURCE: Julia Hyde offers some further great tips for effective contant writing on your business website: “10 Tips for Writing Effective Web Copy.”

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Business Savvy, Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Tagged Business Trust | Comments (0)

June 12, 2009 – 10:05 am

Tell Fear to Take a Hike

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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So we’ve been having this fantastic conversation over at our Virtual Assistant Mastermind Forum. A new member who is in the very beginning stages of her Virtual Assistant business was considering offering her services pro bono for a limited time. I think she instinctively knew this might be selling herself short and it prompted her to ask the group if this was a good idea. And the group, of course, validated what she herself knew already–that it would only attract those seeking something for nothing, and those folks almost never turn into real paying clients.

We explored where this idea might be coming from and the new member confirmed that a lot of it was being new to business and not having confidence just yet. It was a wonderful, educational conversation. Confidence is something everyone struggles with to some degree or another and in some aspect or another depending on where they’re at in their business. It’s completely normal and doesn’t make you any less worthy of owning and running your own business. But if this is something you struggle with, I do want to tell you that offering your services for free isn’t going help you grow in your confidence. In fact, it can have the opposite effect and trample all over the professional self-esteem you need to develop in yourself in order to be successful and attract the right kind of people into your life.

First, in practical terms, here’s why pro bono doesn’t work:

1. It devalues the very thing you are in business to offer and make money from. You never want to bargain with your value that way.

2. It only attracts freebie seekers. Trust me, nearly no one ever turned a pro bono freebie-getter into a long-term, retained client. It’s kind of like a one-night stand. They just don’t turn into relationships and the guy does not respect you. And don’t let the one person in the world who is the exception to that rule try to sway you otherwise. Just because they didn’t get killed walking across the freeway doesn’t make crossing the freeway on foot a good idea.

3. It’s a very bad precedent to set in your business. Being a new business owner will require you to hold yourself and the work in high regard. Because if you don’t, no one else will either. And once you start bargaining with your professional self-esteem, it’s downhill from there in ways you will have never anticipated. Working with folks who are there to get something for free will have you stepping all over your boundaries and standards and prevent you from gaining that healthy professional self respect you need to be in business.

None of this will help you grow your confidence. What does grow your confidence is charging appropriately and asking for the fee. Of course, at this point, you’re saying, “Yeah, that’s all well and good, but I have to have confidence in order to do that!” Right?

No, you don’t.

It doesn’t take confidence to build confidence. All it takes is the self-knowledge to know that lack of confidence isn’t a place you want to stay in, a desire to grow into greater confidence, and a willingness to stretch beyond your comfort zones. Charging clients is exactly one of the things that builds your confidence as a new business owner. Not charging clients just keeps you stuck and will be a much longer, more draining path. How do you think you’re ever going to get it (confidence, money, respect, you name it) if you don’t ever push yourself to expect it and then practice asking for it?

Fear really is your only roadblock. The crazy thing about fear is that it is self-imposed. Sure, it’s real, but your confidence will only grow (and grow most quickly) if you put your foot down and simply decide to suck it up and ignore the fear. Get angry about it even! Tell fear to get the hell out and don’t let the door hit its ass on the way out! And then ask for that fee.

Once you pick yourself up off the ground and get over the shock of “Wow! They didn’t bat an eye,” your confidence and belief in yourself and what you have to offer will have just leapt over a building. This is the beginning of your journey into professional self esteem and getting more and more comfortable charging what you’re worth and asking for–and expecting–your fee.

Of course, it isn’t always going to be like that. You will get clients who balk at paying. You will get clients who aren’t a fit. That doesn’t mean you cater to them or bend your standards or change your business to fit them. And you aren’t going to handle every experience smoothly. You’re going to be rough and imperfect and inconsistent in the beginning. But that’s okay because these are the experiences you absolutely do NEED. The idea isn’t to avoid them altogether. They are very necessary learning opportunities that will help you grow into your consultation skills and get better and better at articulating your value, honing your message and standing firm in your expectations and standards for yourself and your business.

Don’t let fear win. Don’t cave in. You ARE a hero. Overcoming fear is a success worth striving for and celebrating!

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Business Savvy, Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Tagged Confidence in Business, Virtual Assistance, Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistants | Comments (0)

June 10, 2009 – 8:51 am

Dear Gritty VA: What System Do You Recommend?

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Dear Gritty VA:

I have enjoyed learning about becoming a better Virtual Assistant through your newsletter and forms. My question now is I have a client that wants me to manage his membership database and newsletter formatting & sending. Is there a system that you have used or recommend for this? His database contains over 800 email addresses & names and is done as an excel spreadsheet. His newsletter content is coming from another source and it is expected that I manage that. Any Hints? Recommendations? Thanks –BD

I’d need a bit more information about the context of his membership database to share any thoughts there (e.g., who is added and how and when, and what are his objectives for collecting and using the information?), but as far as ezines, I always encourage clients to go with a list management, autoresponder and distribution tool such as Aweber.

Managing ezine subscribers via an excel spreadsheet is just so inefficient and archaic. Tools like Aweber not only automate the function of opting in subscribers, it provides the tools to create ezine templates, schedule them ahead of time for publication, utilize autoresponder capabilities, allow subscribers to manage their own subscriptions and the client to leverage and maximize their networking and marketing to a greater, more consistent degree.

With Aweber, you can use one of the many basic ezine templates they provide for free, modify one of their templates or upload your own ezine format in HTML. It’s super flexible and easy to use. And you can upload as many issues ahead of time as you wish and set each of them to publish automatically according to whatever dates you have indicated. The broadcast messaging allows you schedule ezines or any other kind of one-off communications you wish to go out to your lists. And you can have as many lists as you wish–one for your ezine subscribers, one for your members, one for teleseminar registrations, etc.

The autoresponders are another great tool you get with Aweber. With autoresponders, you can set up a series of communications to go out automatically and scheduled to publish not by date, but rather by intervals of days. For example, some people use autoresponders to offer e-courses. Subscribers who are interested will opt-in to the list and the autoresponders will issue the first lesson, then the second lesson 7 days after that (or however many days interval you indicate), and so on and so forth.

Aweber’s tracking, reporting and analysis tools are incredible, and it’s got the highest whitelist ratings and best delivery rates of all the other services.

So you see, simply storing names and contact info in a spreadsheet really doesn’t do much for you. With an autoresponder/list management service such as Aweber, not only are you streamlining all the work and processes that go into list building, but also automating and making dynamic use of the information and actually putting it into action. I would definitely encourage your client in that direction.

Aweber will allow him to import an existing list, but it must be washed clean first of any obsolete email addresses and the subscribers will have to confirm their desire to re-optin so to speak. Moving to any new system like that he can expect to lose some of the people on his current (some experts say the rule of thumb is about 50%) so it’s not entirely painless. But you want to help him understand that communicating or trying to maintain a relationship with folks who aren’t interested in the first place isn’t effort that is well-placed. Aweber will help him build his list back up and what’s better is that he’ll be gaining people who really do have an interest and want to hear from him (as opposed to continuing to send out messages to people he’s just collected biz cards from and who may not have any interest in his business or hearing from him).

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