If you’re in business, you aren’t anyone’s assistant. Too many organizations are training Virtual Assistants to work with clients like nothing more than contract employees (and a contract employee is an employee). This keeps them from growing and earning better. You will keep yourself stuck if you continue to buy into that thinking.

Your value does not depend on you being an “assistant.” Your value is that you are providing an experience and a body of administrative skill and expertise with the big picture goal of helping clients move forward in their businesses–with your specialty being administrative support. You do not have to work with clients in an assistant’s role in order to accomplish that objective, and you can still have a very close and personal one-on-one relationship without working with clients like that.

Providing administrative support does not require you to be an “assistant.” It is a profession, skill and expertise all its own. As an administrative support consultant, your role is not to work with clients as if you were a substitute for an employee or in-house assistant. How and when you work with clients must necessarily be very different. I call this providing strategic support. Even just a little helps them make incredible strides.

Ran into this issue and thought I would share what I learned in case it’s helpful to anyone else…

In offering my first training classes, I’ve been getting an education by fire of all the ins and outs of doing webinar recording. I used GoToTraining for my first class. It’s a nice interface, the customer support is awesome and they really do seem to listen and heed user feedback, but there are still enough drawbacks that my hunt continues for a more ideal platform for  my purposes in the future. One thing that turned into quite the fiasco was dealing with the recording.

All the Citrix products come with the ability to do the onscreen capture and audio recording of your online meetings for you and they provide a built-in bridgeline as well. On the surface, this sounded mighty easy and convenient, so I naturally opted to do that. And it would have been, if I had no need to do anything to the recording. The problem was that in wanting to clean up the audio/video afterwards and also convert it to a more universal format, I discovered it wasn’t really compatible with Camtasia. This really turned into a nightmare and caused a lot a disruption in the high quality service delivery I naturally wanted those who attended to get from me.

Ah, well, live and learn. We ended up having to separate the audio from the recording, editing it separately in Audacity, and then re-recording the whole 2-hour presentation and synching up the edited audio back up with it.

Yeah, not fun. And maybe there’s another, better, way to do it, but I’m still new to using Camtasia and everything the support people told me to try was not working. Everyone pretty much threw up their hands and could only surmise that the recording I was provided with must have been corrupted in some way (which, I learned later is a known problem).

At any rate, this all led to me determining that while I might use a platform like GoToTraining or WebEx to conduct future webinars, I want to do the recording myself using Camtasia and our own bridgeline. What was stumping me, though, was how would Camtasia record the conference call?

The answer, apparently, is purchasing a devise called a “recording adapter” or “conference recording adapter.” I was told I could purchase one of these from Radio Shack for $19.99. On their website, it’s called a “mini recorder control.” However, in consulting with folks more knowledgeable than I about all the ins and outs of this subject, I was told that it’s not very high quality and also doesn’t work with cordless/wireless phones (which is what I have).

These folks suggested the better option is to go with one of the recording adapters offered by DynaMetric.com. They have two products for this, depending on what kind of phone you have.

a). If you have a corded phone, you want the TMP636 Webinar Recorder which sells for $85.95.

b). If you have a cordless/wireless phone, you want the TLP124HS Cordless Phone Adapter which sells for $84.95. The problem this one solves is the issue of your phone handset not having enough ports (particularly if you use a headset so you can speak hands-free). With this model, one end of the adapter cable plugs into your computer mic port, the other end plugs into your phone handset, and then your hands-free headset plug into a port built into the adapter device itself. Perfect!

These cost more than $20, but they are much better products for higher quality results and more sturdy, long-lasting life.

When you go to record your webinar using Camtasia, after hooking up the adapter, you would then select that option from your “Audio” mic list.

I saw a Google Alert recently where a Virtual Assistant posted to a forum regarding a certain font she required to complete a project. The Virtual Assistant mentioned that $25 for the font was a bit steep, and I had to chuckle because I’ve paid hundreds of dollars for a single font.

I realize most VAs do not start their businesses properly capitalized, but they have to understand that being in business does cost money sometimes. There are going to be times when, if you want to be smart in business, you are simply going to have to cough up the money. You can’t expect others to provide you everything for free (just as you don’t want clients expecting you to provide everything for free).

That said, there are a couple things this Virtual Assistant could do:

1. Go ahead and purchase the font. She will then have that font for future projects, so it becomes an investment in her library of design resources.

2. She could charge the client for the expense of the font, particularly if it’s one she wouldn’t have ever purchased for herself otherwise and is only purchasing it specifically for that client’s design project. If the client doesn’t want to pay for the font, then you simply inform the client he or she must choose another font (because it’s not your responsibility to bear their business expenses, and this is part of the cost of completing their design project). The choice is theirs.

There are people who care about this industry, and then there are exploiters in this industry who only care about picking your pockets.

Look beneath the surface. Are these people even in the business they are trying to teach you about? Do they actually DO the thing they profess to have the knowledge about? How can they be Virtual Assistant experts when they are not even VAs themselves?

Don’t buy into slick marketing and promises too good to be true. NO ONE can guarantee you clients. When they start doing that, those are INTERNET MARKETERS and you had better run the other direction with your money because that’s all they are trying to get–is your money, any which way they can. They will tell you whatever you want to hear because they prey on your desperation to believe it will be true. They know that telling people they are guaranteed clients is what will make those folks salivate–and hand over their money–because that’s what they want and need most.

It is reprehensible and anyone trying to sell you that kind of BS is a dishonest, unethical slimeball.

Dear Gritty VA:

Brief question–how do you get clients? I know this is on every Virtual Assistant’s mind in America whom is starting out. I know that the Virtual Assistant business is referral-based, but my God! I know that you can’t just jump up and think you are going to get rich from this (not my intentions). However, it’s one person I did some donated hours for, I have tried working with another client and lowered my prices to accommodate her. Still a no-go on this one. If I would have said it was free for the service, she would have been all over it. I think if I had at least two clients, I would feel like my business is progressing forward. But not having anyone get discouraging at times and you wonder if it’s worth it if your business is solely based off referrals, you know? –ST

Well, first, I had to chuckle because there’s nothing brief about the question, “How do you get clients?” LOL. Not laughing at you, but it’s sort of like asking, “How do we achieve world peace?” It’s a BIG, complicated question with no quick, simple, pat answer.  It’s difficult to start a business, as you recognize. For a large number of Virtual Assistants, they are not going to get clients right away. While they’re waiting, there’s a lot of learning and studying they can be doing to better understand marketing and client psychology. Here are a few thoughts to help you get started in the right direction…

1. Stop donating hours. When you give away your value (the very product you are in business to earn your living from), you devalue it in the eyes of clients. Worse, all giving stuff away for free does is attract freebie-seekers. These are not your clients. They will be gone as soon as you take the free buffet away. If they can’t afford professional services, they either shouldn’t be in business, or they should at least not expect you to subsidize their business (to your own detriment) until they can. These are very selfish, self-centered thinking people. You have your own bills to pay and people to take care of. You can’t put your time and energy into those folks. You’ve got to market to people who can already afford you and who don’t expect you to be footing the bill for their business. If you keep giving it away for free, you’re just going to keep getting more of the same. “Why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free?” applies here. If you’re dishing it out, they’re gonna take it. You are attracting what you are giving. So stop the gravy train and get serious about serious clients.

2. I’m not sure why you think this, but this is not strictly a referral-based business. A business can become mostly referral-based once they’ve established their business, had a chance to get their foot in the networking door, and have clients and others who happily recommend them. If you’re new, you don’t have that right off the bat. But there are things you can do and ways you can network that will better draw/pull prospective clients to you. What will help here is having a target market to focus your message on and give you direction on where to find those folks you wish to be talking with and expend your efforts and energy there (which are limited and need to be conserved for the highest and best possible use). Two of the most important criteria in deciding on a target market are that a) it must be one where the people in it generally are earning enough money that they can afford professional services, and b) there are enough of them that it’s easy enough to figure out where they are (offline and off) and then find ways to interact with them, come up in their search terms and be found by them.

3. Never, ever bargain with or negotiate your fee. All you are doing is teaching clients to devalue you and your support. You start doing that and they forever after expect freebies and discounts and that everything is up for negotiation. You don’t even have to tell me what you’re charging. I can pretty much guarantee that you are undercharging–all these issues you describe are always symptomatic of rates that are too low. They cater to the wrong crowd. On top of that, I’m willing to bet the conversation on your site is all about cost and discounts and freebies and savings and how much cheaper and more affordable than an employee you are, yada yada yada… am I right? That’s exactly the problem. I would tell you to raise your fee. You likely will be ALL kinds of uncomfortable doing that and at the same time you will need to learn how to market differently and change your message. But when you do that, you will begin to attract a clientele with an entirely different mindset and more professional business sense. Those folks are looking for skill and quality and competence, not handouts. You simply can’t waste your time and energy–and money, because that’s what it boils down to–on folks who can’t afford you and would have you harm yourself in order to help them.

4. Adding onto the idea of changing your message, you’ve got to frame what you have to offer in respectful ways. You’ve got to hold what you do in high esteem and talk about it in respectful terms. If you use words like “generalist” and “mundane” and “affordable” and the like, you are lowering the perceived value of what you have to offer. You are teaching prospects to look down upon your work and view it as lowly, and thus, not worthy of professional fees. And the industry as a whole has GOT to get off the cost conversation and all the employee comparisons. If you have any of that stuff on your site, take it off immediately. You are creating and attracting the very mindsets you are complaining about now. If everything you put on your website is about how cheap you are, how much they can save, how much more affordable you are than employees, save this, get a discount on that, guess what you are focusing people on? MONEY. You can’t make your marketing message about that–unless you want to continue to attract nothing but people who are looking for savings and discounts and bargains and cheap and affordable. Stop talking about costs whatsoever. That’s the last thing you should be talking about. And if you don’t have anything else to talk about with regard to what you do for your clients and your value to them, then you’ve got a lot more work to do about understanding what you are and what you do.

Marketing and attracting clients is an area of ongoing learning and study. It’s not anything that can be answered quickly or simply in a mere blogpost, but I hope this at least gets your wheels turning. The very best way I can help you is to recommend that you get my e-book, “Understanding Your Value: How to Craft Your Own Unique Marketing Message and Make More Money with Alternative Billing Strategies.” This is a self-study guide that will help you determine your target market, define an ideal client profile, differentiate yourself with your own unique marketing message and value proposition and use value-based pricing methodologies to package up your support in much more attractive, marketable ways.

Seth Godin recently wrote about short-sighted, greedy, selfish consumers in his blog post, “More, more more.” You give them an inch, and they want a pound of your flesh for the rest of your life.

He writes that basically every business owner who wants to provide “remarkable service and an honest human connection” will face the challenge of being abused by a few.

You always have options, as he illustrates: “Put up with the whiners, write off everyone or deliberately exclude the ungrateful curs.”

That last one is my personal philosophy. As Godin so eloquently puts it, “Firing customers you can’t possibly please gives you the bandwidth and resources to coddle the ones that truly deserve your attention and repay you with referrals, applause and loyalty.”

For me, this doesn’t just apply to clients. If someone is abusive, tries to take advantage, is a jerk, an energy-suck, has broken my trust in them or just doesn’t “get it” all the way around, I don’t deal with them anymore.  I ignore them. I remove them. I delete them. I block them. I move on. Go bother someone else. I have better things to do.

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

All of us make mistakes. We all have learning curves when we’re trying something new. Every single one of us. One of the best things you can do in business is go easy on yourself. If you are constantly beating yourself up, you will ensure more of the same. Honestly, we are all our own worst critics. But you’ve got to be gentle with yourself. Here’s how you can do that and make things far less stressful for yourself in business:

1. Expect upfront that there are going to be snafus. No ifs, ands or buts about it. Just accept that and acknowledge it going in. No apologies.

2. Give yourself space. Your value is not in how fast you can kill yourself obeying a client’s wishes. Forget that! Establish work request policies and turn-around times that allow you to breathe and do a great job. If you don’t, you are creating conditions that will cause you to make more mistakes and feel worse about yourself and your work.

3. Set client expectations. Thoroughly discuss your workflow policies and turn-around times. Talk about the fact that mistakes are inevitable here and there and how to communicate (including how you expect to be treated) when they are are made. Don’t forget to remind them that smart management policies like yours are what facilitates great work and successful relationships. You simply cannot do good work for clients if you don’t have protocols in place for these things.

4. Fire ill-fitting clients. Get rid of any client who drains your energy, including those who expect you to work with them like an employee. Working with ill-fitting clients sets you up for failure and brings down your professional self-esteem. You can’t afford to work with anyone who can’t work within your protocols, who constantly complains, belittles and is never pleased, or who otherwise doesn’t create positive reciprocal energy in your business.

5. Look at critics as learning partners. There’s usually a positive side to everything. See what you can learn in these situations and view them as opportunities for improvement. When you try something new, there will be people who aren’t happy with the effort. That’s okay. Learn from what they have to say if it’s helpful, but don’t internalize any upset beyond that.

6. Know when to ignore abuse. There’s a difference between constructive feedback and gloating. Be grateful for constructive feedback and thank those people who provide it. You can even glean useful bits from those who only want to point out your flaws to make themselves feel better. Just remember that you aren’t obligated to indulge or engage with those folks. It’s okay to ignore and delete.

7. Que Sera, Sera! Whatever will be, will be. This is life, darling. There isn’t a darn thing you can do about the fact that when you put yourself out there, you put yourself on people’s radars and a few may want to shoot you down. So what. Instead of cowering, congratulate yourself for learning and growing! Celebrate the success of taking a risk! These are the things that make you feel wonderful about yourself. And when you feel great about yourself as a person, you bring even more wonderful stuff to your clients as a professional.

RESOURCE: In searching for a relevant resource related to nurturing professional self-esteem, I came across this book by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander: The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life. Not sure if it fits exactly with professional self-esteem, but it looks like an interesting read.

So I’m conducting my first-ever business class for Virtual Assistants and Administrative Consultants next week on February 18 and I’m really excited. It’s taken me a long time to get over my aversion to offering classes. It seems like so many VAs open their doors and two seconds later they’re coaching other VAs. What is up with that? Especially when so many of those folks have no clients themselves and are making diddly squat–exactly what can they offer anyone else if they haven’t succeeded in their own businesses? I just did not want to add to all the noise and crap out there.

My business is administrative support to clients, not coaching other VAs. I freely share my knowledge and guidance in my blog here, in my Virtual Assistant forum, and I often talk with VAs on the phone. I have my own business to run and I can’t help everyone so I’ve packaged much of what I have to teach in my Virtual Assistant business forms and self-study guides. But I’ve come to realize there are just some things that are best taught and learned in a training-type platform.

I’m not interested in offering certifications and “coaching.” Blech. If you are a highly skilled and experienced administrative professional, you don’t need anyone’s certification to prove your worth. But I see all these women struggling so much in their Virtual Assistant practices… they come into the industry with all these hopes and dreams for earning a living and having a new way of life. And then they are immediately taught by our industry how to run their business in ways that allow them to do anything but earn a real living and have time and money for the things they dream of. Most of them are barely scraping by and making under $10,000 a year.

I know it’s not fun to hear that, but it’s the God’s-honest truth of the matter. And as Dr. Phil says, you can’t fix what you don’t acknowledge.

You know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you? You know I’m speaking the truth.

This is what drives me to want to help. As I see survey results come in from our Virtual Assistant survey, I see the same issues over and over and over:

• VAs not being able to find clients and not knowing how to attract and connect with them;
• VAs finding clients, but working with them in ways that don’t leave them any room for growth and making more money whatsoever. Forget about any kind of freedom;
• VAs working with 10 clients on up… slaving away around the clock yet still making $10,000 or less a year!

It’s absolutely crazy and it doesn’t have to be that way. They just haven’t been shown or given the right tools and knowledge in order to change this path to burnout and the poorhouse for themselves. And look, turning into a multi/team VA practice isn’t going to change anything. If you couldn’t do it as an independent consultant, it’s going to be 10 times even more undoable for you as a staffing agency.

So that’s what I want to do… share with you a completely new and different way of thinking about what you do and give you the tools and knowledge you need to turn your practice around. I’m going to be offering three very targeted learning modules–I’m calling them Biz Smart Intensives–the first of which is how to price and package your support based on value and expertise, not selling hours.

You may be going, “Wha?! Not selling hours?” Yup, not selling hours. I’m going introduce you to the concept of VALUE pricing and show you several ways you can package your support in innovative ways that don’t have anything to do with tracking hours. Really. It’s going to blow your mind and, if I can be cliche, revolutionize your business. There is so much I’m going to share in this class… it’s going to be really interesting, fun and a radical departure from everything you’ve learned before in our industry.

I am offering an early-bird registration special, but it ends Sunday, February 14, so you’ll want to get registered right away to get in on that savings. Learn more and register here for my “Pricing & Packaging Your Support” class on February 18, 2010.

Dear Gritty VA:

It is that time of year… taxes!!! And I was wondering if there were any helpful tips or tricks that you could share for a new Virtual Assistant to help stay organized. What you do to keep track of your business expenses from your personal expenses? My tax accountant told me that it is very difficult to write off office expenses from home because you have to keep track of EVERYTHING. She also stated that being paid as an employee is better than being paid as an independent contractor for tax purposes. Is that true? I would love to hear your thoughts. –MB

Omigosh, you need a new accountant! The one you have doesn’t sound like she understands small business at all! First of all, you aren’t an employee so you don’t have a choice about that, just like clients do not get to choose to pay employees as independent contractors. That’s called misclassification of employees and it’s against the law. You are either an employee or you are a business. Independent contractor is not a third option. It’s just another name for someone who is in self-employment and self-employment is a business, just like any other. The first thing I highly recommend is that you find an accountant who understands these things as well as the fact that you are a business owner, not an employee. Of course, you have to be clear about that in your own mind as well.

In response to your accountant’s claim that it’s very difficult to write off office expenses from home: No, it’s really not. EVERYONE in business has to keep track of everything; where your office is has nothing to do with anything (except for maybe the square footage of your office space).

Here is what I recommend: If you don’t have a dedicated room in your home for your office, at least have a  dedicated space, whether that is a desk in a corner or a tabletop in your den. Wherever your space is, keep it off-limits to anyone and anything else. That becomes your dedicated business space that may not be used by anyone else or for anything else other than your business. The square footage of that space is what you then get to use to calculate that business expense when you file taxes.

As far as keeping track of expenses, yes, of course, save your receipts. If a receipt isn’t clear about what it was for, you will need to make notes on them by hand. Whatever you buy for the business is pretty much a business expense, as long as you don’t use it for anything else. Just keep that in mind and you’ll be good. It’s only when you mix things for personal and business use that you have to start figuring out percentages and calculations and make things complicated so the way to keep things simple is to just not mix them. Get dedicated everything.

It is never a good idea to co-mingle business and personal funds, and, in fact, the law can dictate that you may not do that. Therefore, plan on getting a dedicated checking and savings account with a debit and/or credit card that you use strictly for the business. (Depending on the bank and account, these can earn you rewards points that might come in handy as well.) Each month, transfer funds over to the savings account to set aside for taxes. Your new accountant can advise you on the right percentage to set aside. That way, when it’s time to pay estimated self-employment taxes, you don’t have to scramble.

Also, if you haven’t already, I really recommend investing in a proper business accounting software like Quickbooks Pro. Not only will it make entering and keeping track of things a breeze, but the reports you can pull up in analyzing your business and seeing how it’s doing will be invaluable. Your tax preparer will love you more, too.

I also want to be clear that when it comes to anything financial, legal and tax-related, you should never, ever rely on the advice, and especially not the opinions, of laypeople and colleagues, no matter how experienced that may be or how smart they think they are. Always, always go to the source and seek the guidance of those who are educated, licensed and qualified to be giving the information (ahem, accountant and attorney). In your case, you did the smart thing by consulting with an accountant; you just need to find one a little more knowledgeable, current and supportive of the small home-based business owner.

We just need about 125 more participate to close out the 2009 Virtual Assistant Industry Survey. I was wondering why on earth we hadn’t been getting any further survey submissions. Well, I happened to be talking to a Virtual Assistant today on the phone and she said she had tried to complete the survey but it said it was offline. So I go take a look and sure enough, it indeed had been taken offline!

Oy vey! LOL

Obviously a human error by one of my assistants. Not a big deal and easily fixed (survey is online again), but I do want to remind you to tell all the administrative support consultants you know to take the survey if they haven’t already. We just need that last little bit to reach goal and get the results report compiled. So mention this on your blog, post in your VA forums and listservs, sound the bell to your VA Facebook friends and however else you can pass the word along.

Thanks for your help and understanding!