People who try to pose as industry experts who don’t do their own work and merely offshore it to cheap third-world workers are no industry experts.
Anyone trying to position themselves as some kind of trainer or mentor in our industry and then teaching you how NOT to earn well in your own economy is no industry expert.
Use your brain and discernment. Stop falling for smoke and mirrors and flash in the pan gimmicks.
If you live in the developed world and economy, you can’t live, much less create a self-sustaining business, off the kind of fees that third-world countries charge. And anyone who calls normal, professional-level fees “excessive” has never worked with upper-level clients (the kind you want) and isn’t someone who should be advising you if you want and need to earn well in your own economy.
But people like that also do not know what administrative support is. They aren’t doing the work we do so they don’t get it. All they are doing is merely piecemeal, transactional secretarial work. When you say “virtual assistance” to them, all they think it is is typing and answering the phone.
Anyone who provides support–and not merely piecemeal project work–knows that our work is vastly more involved and complicated and requires more skill, experience and sensibility than simply being a secretary. Do you really want to take advice from people who don’t even understand what it is this business is all about and who understand even less what administrative support is, often because they themselves lack that kind of background and experience?
Use your heads, people.
They can’t help you learn how to market and be able to charge well because they themselves don’t know how to do it and think all they are capable of charging is “fair” (code for cheap, third-world) rates.
Learning how to market in a way that allows you to charge professional level fees (not third-world rates) in your own economy is absolutely doable. It is an art and science, though, and involves understanding the market and marketing psychology. You won’t learn that kind of thing from people who don’t know how to charge well themselves.
So often in business we focus on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas to give out extra helpings of gratitude to our clients. I happen to think Valentine’s Day is a perfect holiday to let them know how much we appreciate them. It’s not just for lovers, you know. It’s for sweethearts of all kinds–even clients. So let’s take a moment today to let them know just how much we appreciate them.
