The Gritty Virtual Assistant Blog

It seems more and more, clients (especially on the Internet) are getting the (wrong) idea that hiring a Virtual Assistant is a license to blatantly disregard the law.

What am I talking about?

Well, there is a whole segment of clients in our marketplace who seem to want Virtual Assistants to work with them as if they were cheap, under-the-table employees they don’t pay taxes on.

And it’s not all their fault that they are getting this idea. The Virtual Assistance industry has trained them to think of Virtual Assistants in this light with all the beyond-tired comparisons to employees, how they won’t have to pay a Virtual Assistant as much as they would with an employee, yada yada yada.

So the idea that clients are getting is that “Hey, I can have an employee and I won’t have to pay a dime in employment taxes to Uncle Sam.”

But that’s not how it works, folks.

When you are running a business, you simply can’t work with clients as if you were their employee. When you train clients to expect on-demand support, at their beck and call on a daily basis, answering their phones, etc., eventually, once you have more than one client, that will be a pace and an expectation that will become impossible for you to sustain.

The other problem is that this creates a job for yourself, rather than a business. Before you know it, you’ll be wondering where all this time and freedom is that you thought you’d be gaining as a business owner and you won’t be making any money while you’re at it.

Think of the consultations you’ve had where you get into the conversation and realize, geez, this person doesn’t want a service provider, they want an employee… or worse, a slave they don’t want to pay more than a pittance to in exchange.

So there becomes this whole host of misaligned expectations and understandings.

How do we right this?

There are those who say the client should get what they want. And I agree with this, to an extent. But when what they want isn’t what we provide, much less realistic or in accordance with the law, how do we reconcile that?

I didn’t go into business for myself to become someone’s slave. And even if I were willing to do that, it becomes impossible once you start working with more than one client, unless you want to drastically limit your income potential, and what’s the point of that?

Of course, I could hire a bunch of people to do what clients want. But then that requires me to build a bigger and completely different kind of business than I am interested in creating or managing.

Similarly, think of those instances when the client’s understanding of what Virtual Assistants specialize in (ahem… that’s ONGOING ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT, for those who missed it in class) is so far out of the realm of what we do, it’s kind of like, “Um, if you need your car repaired, why are you calling a plumber?”

If I’m a “plumber” and a client wants me to “fix his car,” a) I’m either gonna let him know he’s barking up the wrong tree, or b) I’m going to put on my auto mechanic’s hat and CHARGE him for that work separately (maybe even at a higher rate) because it’s NOT the same thing. Get it?!

I think the answer is in better education. I think it lies in getting back to the clear, specialized, branded definition of Virtual Assistance and helping Virtual Assistants understand that by making employee comparisons and focusing clients on cost-saving (which is never what Virtual Assistance was about anyway), they are basically saying, “What I do is not of value in and of itself, and I have to bribe you with dangling carrots in order to convince you to work with me.”

They are training the marketplace to think in the very ways that are causing problems for them in getting clients, having their work respected and appreciated, and being able to command professional fees like any other provider of professional services.

Virtual Assistants need to stop the bribery and gimmicks and devaluation. They need to recognize that administrative support is an extraordinarily valuable service–it is necessary and integral to every single business out there. Nothing gets done without administrative execution, and skill and efficiency are premiums that instill tremendous value and profitability in our clients’ businesses. Trust me–business would come to a screeching, grinding halt if the administrative professionals of the world went on strike for a day.

So stop with the employee and cost-saving comparisons. That’s NOT where your value is. Your value is in the benefits that clients reap as result of your excellent work, benefits like:

• a smoother-running, more profitable business
• a more professional, competent business image
• improved customer relationships and service delivery
• less stress and more freedom
• space to create and grow more revenue
• more time to spend on work they love, take vacations, enjoy family and friends and just live life.

What do you think is contributing to this more and more common misalignment of understandings and expectations?

Is it Virtual Assistant organizations that don’t get it themselves and aren’t doing you any favors in how they educate your marketplace? Is it new Virtual Assistants who don’t understand their own value and worth and in the process end up creating wrong expectations in clients? Is it due to people–both Virtual Assistants and clients alike–wrongly thinking that a Virtual Assistant is anyone doing anything virtually?

Is it from having those who aren’t Virtual Assistants coopt our title and terminology? And speaking of our title, is it the “assistant” in “Virtual Assistant” that is dooming us to forever be viewed as subservient in our business relationships? But what’s the alternative when there is so much equity built into the name of our profession?

Is it industry outsiders who have usurped our role as leaders of our own profession and are now miseducating our marketplace? Is it a holdover from the days of employee mindset and corporate brainwashing that prevents us from being the masters of our own destiny (and industry), allowing others to lead us around by the nose? And with all the right and accurate information out there about Virtual Assistants, why does the media STILL seem to completely get it wrong 99.9% of the time? Who are they getting their information from?

What do you think are the solutions?