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	<title>The Gritty Virtual Assistant Blog &#187; Virtual Assistance</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.grittyva.com/tag/virtual-assistance/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.grittyva.com</link>
	<description>Straight-Shooting Business Savvy for Administrative Support Consultants</description>
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		<title>You Can Now Earn Commissions By Promoting the Virtual Assistant Industry Survey</title>
		<link>http://www.grittyva.com/2011/03/10/you-can-now-earn-commissions-by-promoting-the-virtual-assistant-industry-survey/</link>
		<comments>http://www.grittyva.com/2011/03/10/you-can-now-earn-commissions-by-promoting-the-virtual-assistant-industry-survey/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Mar 2011 17:00:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Danielle Keister</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Savvy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cool Stuff]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Don't-Miss-It Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fab Ideas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Great News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant Industry Survey]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistants]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.grittyva.com/?p=5524</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Exciting news! I just set up a special affiliate code so that you can also earn commissions by displaying your Virtual Assistant Industry Survey participation badge. What that means is that by displaying the badge on your site, you will earn 25% commissions on all purchases if someone clicks on your badge and ends up [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Exciting news! I just set up a special affiliate code so that you can also earn commissions by displaying your Virtual Assistant Industry Survey participation badge.</p>
<p>What that means is that by displaying the badge on your site, you will earn 25% commissions on all purchases if someone clicks on your badge and ends up making a purchase from us at some point, whether it&#8217;s the same day or six months down the road.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s cool about this is that you don&#8217;t have to directly promote the products sold on our site in order to earn commissions. Just by referring people to our site via your survey badge, you can earn commissions on any purchases those folks make now or later.</p>
<p>I know some people don&#8217;t like to blatantly &#8220;hard sell&#8221; product referrals and would rather refer to the organization rather than the products directly so this is a nice option. Not only will you be helping to increase survey participation, you&#8217;ll also benefit from the earning potential. You can even swap out your membership seal link with your affiliate link in this way as well.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s super simple to get started. Here&#8217;s the link with the 3 simple steps:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/surveyflair.htm" target="_blank">http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/surveyflair.htm</a></p>
<p>Thanks for all your enthusiastic participation! Keep up those reminders about the survey. We&#8217;re at 504 participants as of today&#8211;the half way mark to our goal of 1,000.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/survey.htm"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-5342" title="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/survey.htm" src="http://www.grittyva.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/surveyheader400px.png" alt="Time to Take the 2011 Virtual Assistant Industry Survey!" width="400" height="119" /></a></p>
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		<title>Why Are You Asking a Plumber to Fix Your Car?</title>
		<link>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/12/03/why-are-you-asking-a-plumber-to-fix-your-car/</link>
		<comments>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/12/03/why-are-you-asking-a-plumber-to-fix-your-car/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 03 Dec 2010 17:00:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Danielle Keister</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Savvy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Administrative Consultants]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Administrative Support]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Distinguishing Business Categories]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistants]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.grittyva.com/?p=5176</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you&#8217;re a plumber, you wouldn&#8217;t expect people to ask you to fix their car, right? You&#8217;re someone who deals with plumbing, pipes and fixing toilets, not someone who works on cars. So if people are asking you to fix their car, perhaps you aren&#8217;t making it clear exactly what business you are in and [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>If you&#8217;re a plumber, you wouldn&#8217;t expect people to ask you to fix their car, right?</p>
<p>You&#8217;re someone who deals with plumbing, pipes and fixing toilets, not someone who works on cars.</p>
<p>So if people are asking you to fix their car, perhaps you aren&#8217;t making it clear exactly what business you are in and what your expertise is.</p>
<p>Or, let&#8217;s say you are both a plumber AND a mechanic.</p>
<p>Would anyone with a properly working brain think that plumbing and auto repair are the same thing?</p>
<p>Of course not.</p>
<p>They&#8217;d expect to be charged and processed separately for each because they are two completely different things.</p>
<p>Just because you might do both things doesn&#8217;t make them the same thing.</p>
<p>Get clear about what you are in business to do. Distinguish the one main thing from other, differing things you might offer as well.</p>
<p>Because &#8220;anything and everything&#8221; isn&#8217;t a business category or a profession, much less an expertise.</p>
<p>HINT: Administrative Support is a niche, profession, business category, specialty and expertise all its own. You might also do web design, bookkeeping and any number of other things, but that does not make all those other things the same thing as administrative support. <img src='http://www.grittyva.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
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		<title>How Working More Hours Can Mean Earning LESS Money</title>
		<link>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/11/26/how-working-more-hours-can-mean-earning-less-money/</link>
		<comments>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/11/26/how-working-more-hours-can-mean-earning-less-money/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Nov 2010 17:00:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Danielle Keister</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Savvy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pricing and Getting Paid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Value-Based Pricing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistants]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.grittyva.com/?p=5084</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Continuing the conversation in this week&#8217;s Dear Gritty VA post (&#8220;I&#8217;ve Lost All Boundaries&#8211;Is this Relationship Salvageable?&#8221;), I wanted to illustrate how a Virtual Assistant can be working 50 hours a week and still not be making &#8220;any&#8221; money. I use quotations marks because, sure, she&#8217;s getting paid something. But &#8220;something&#8221; doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean &#8220;enough.&#8221; [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Continuing the conversation in this week&#8217;s Dear Gritty VA post<a href="http://www.grittyva.com/2010/11/24/dear-gritty-va-ive-lost-all-boundaries-is-this-relationship-salvageable/" target="_blank"> (&#8220;I&#8217;ve Lost All Boundaries&#8211;Is this Relationship Salvageable?&#8221;)</a>, I wanted to illustrate how a Virtual Assistant can be working 50 hours a week and still not be making &#8220;any&#8221; money. I use quotations marks because, sure, she&#8217;s getting paid <em>something</em>. But &#8220;something&#8221; doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean &#8220;enough.&#8221;</p>
<p>There are all kinds of VAs out there who fall into the &#8220;working poor&#8221; category. A lot of this is because a) they aren&#8217;t charging enough and b) they are looking at this as a virtual job instead of a business and so they keep working with clients as if they were still that employee, except that instead of working outside the boss&#8217;s door, they&#8217;re working virtually from home. That they might call themselves business owners means nothing, because for all intents and purposes, they&#8217;re not.</p>
<p>I see this thing all the time in our annual <a href="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/virtualassistantbusinessforms.htm#surv10" target="_blank">Virtual Assistant Industry Survey</a>. While the report that goes out to VAs shows the collective totals of all responses as a single group, as an admin, I get to see the results in individual context. What I mean is that when someone fills out our survey, their submission gets recorded as an individual number. When you click on the number (the number representing that individual, anonymous respondent), it shows you that particular number&#8217;s individual responses to all questions in the survey. In this way, you can see what an individual business looks like.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a common theme to see individual businesses who are working with, sometimes, 11 or more clients and still only making maybe $30,000 a year! Sometimes it&#8217;s because they aren&#8217;t charging enough. Often it&#8217;s because those clients aren&#8217;t retained clients, they are only project clients. The ones faring the worst are the ones who are working with that many retained clients and still only making that little per year.</p>
<p>And they aren&#8217;t an anomaly. Many of those are making less than $10,000 a year! There&#8217;s something definitely wrong with that picture and it&#8217;s what fuels my passion to help Virtual Assistants/Administrative Consultants start earning better.</p>
<p>But getting back to our example, to provide some illustration, I asked the person who originally submitted the question if she would mind sharing what she was making with this client so we could work with some actual figures.  She was really embarrassed (which I assured her she shouldn&#8217;t be; we&#8217;ve ALL done things in the initial stages of our businesses that we cringe at later). Still, she very graciously obliged my request (thank you!) knowing that I always keep these things confidential and never use anyone&#8217;s real name.</p>
<p>If you remember in the original post, the VA stated that she &#8220;took less to build the relationship.&#8221; Problem is that &#8220;less&#8221; amounted to less than the national minimum wage that an employee would make!</p>
<p>If you look carefully at the choice of words, &#8220;took&#8221; tellingly suggests that the client was calling the shots and dictating the terms and the VA merely accepted them.</p>
<p>And to use a crude analogy, how often do we hear of one night stands turning into real relationships? Not that this situation here is a one-night stand (sort of the opposite, LOL), but it&#8217;s the same concept of devaluing and dishonoring ourselves that leads to clients (and one-night lovers) not having any respect. A relationship that is flawed from the beginning just isn&#8217;t going to grow into something better.</p>
<p>I point this out only because it&#8217;s so important to examine the underlying thinking and default modes that drive our actions because they are what allow us to accept things that aren&#8217;t always in our best interests. In this case, she had relinquished ownership of her business, took a subservient role in the relationship and let her personal needs and standards take a backseat to the client&#8217;s. In recognizing this, she knows that this will be an area of personal growth she will need to focus on and be conscious of as she continues to move forward with her business and interact with clients.</p>
<p>And what was this VA making? $350 a week.</p>
<p>So let&#8217;s pick this apart&#8230; At 50 hours a week, that amounts to $7 an hour&#8211;if I&#8217;m not mistaken, that&#8217;s less than the national minimum wage that an employee would make. And even an employee would really be making more than that if you figure in the Social Security, Medicare, vacation pay, sick leave and all the other myriad benefits that they don&#8217;t necessarily take home, but are there nonetheless.</p>
<p>At $350 a week and 52 weeks in a year, this VA is only making $18,200 annually. And actually, she&#8217;s making even less than that after you subtract taxes, business expenses and operating costs. I don&#8217;t know about you, but I certainly couldn&#8217;t live on that little money all by myself, much less with any kind of family to take care.</p>
<p>So yeah, she&#8217;s making <em>something</em>. But that something is relatively &#8220;nothing.&#8221; It&#8217;s only enough to barely survive and exist on.</p>
<p>And in this particular case, the VA actually is a single mom with a high-school age child nearing the college years. She is barely making enough to keep them fed with a roof over their heads; forget about any kind of money for college.</p>
<p>Plus, at 50 hours a week, she doesn&#8217;t have any time left to do much of anything else, let alone work with other clients to increase her income.</p>
<p>There are other things we all have to do in life besides working in our business&#8211;things like nurturing and taking care of kids, grocery shopping, helping with homework, spending time with our husbands or boyfriends, exercising&#8230; SLEEPING.</p>
<p>Again, I don&#8217;t know about you, but I am a mere mortal. I&#8217;m just not going to have a lot of time and energy left to do much of anything else in my business after a 50 hour work week. Even if technically there are more hours left in the day, I&#8217;ve still got a life to live, responsibilities to take care and simply a finite amount of energy with which to do it all.</p>
<p>As you can see, this isn&#8217;t a healthy situation in any way, shape or form. It&#8217;s certainly not a business situation as this VA recognizes.</p>
<p>I can hear some folks out there saying, &#8220;Well, she isn&#8217;t charging enough! If she would just raise her rates, all her problems would be solved!&#8221;</p>
<p>Not really. Because a) she&#8217;d still have all her eggs in one basket; b) she&#8217;d still be working in what amounts to basically a job; and c) there&#8217;s no room for any kind of growth.</p>
<p>Success is not success unless you are both making money (and by money, I mean MONEY!) and are profiting in terms of also having the extra time and freedom to enjoy it.</p>
<p>And maybe you&#8217;ve got the inside track, but I charge what amounts to roughly $75 an hour and even I would be hard-pressed to find a client willing to pay $15,000 for 200 hours of administrative support a month.</p>
<p>And not that I would ever advocate this as an adequate, sustainable professional fee, but even if she was only charging as little as $20/hr, that&#8217;s still $4000 a month. While there are clients in the world who can afford that, how many of those kind of clients is this VA&#8211;or any VA&#8211;realistically going to find?</p>
<p>And that still doesn&#8217;t resolve the problem of working that many hours, having time for a life and doing anything else in or with her business.</p>
<p>When you are operating a business, it shouldn&#8217;t be in what amounts to the role of an employee to your clients. And dammit, you have a right to want more, to want better, for yourself and for your kids and your family! You have a right to not settle for merely a meager, subsistence income that you have to work your ass off just to get! That&#8217;s never what business is about!</p>
<p>This is why, like I say, it&#8217;s infinitely easier to work with&#8211;and find&#8211;a handful of 20-hour a month clients. The work is more broken up. It&#8217;s easier to give superior attention to each relationship. AND you&#8217;ll have room to grow or take on other kinds of work and projects in your business if you so choose, not to mention a healthier amount of time left for the rest of your life and to simply BREATHE.</p>
<p>To put some numbers to this, let&#8217;s go with a nice middle of the road fee of $50/an hour. If you had 5 clients each on a 20-hour retainer of $1000/mo, that&#8217;s $5,000 a month.</p>
<p>Obviously, that&#8217;s before taxes, expenses and operating costs, but you get the idea. It&#8217;s still a very nice, healthy income, much more than what most of us ever made as employees. And that&#8217;s working what would amount to 25 hours a week (if my math is correct, LOL).</p>
<p>This is why you have to understand your role differently and redefine that role. You will never create the kind of circumstances I&#8217;m talking about here by working like an assistant to your clients.</p>
<p>AND, if you <a href="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/virtualassistantbusinessforms.htm#gde39" target="_blank">get away from selling hours entirely</a>, your potential skyrockets for reaching a six-figure business that doesn&#8217;t have you working slave hours to earn it.</p>
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		<title>Dear Gritty VA: What Is &#8220;the Work?&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/11/10/dear-gritty-va-what-is-the-work/</link>
		<comments>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/11/10/dear-gritty-va-what-is-the-work/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:00:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Danielle Keister</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Savvy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dear Gritty VA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Administrative Consultants]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Danielle Keister]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gritty VA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistants]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.grittyva.com/?p=4959</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Dear Gritty VA: I am just starting my Virtual Assistant business.  I am networking and setting things up, but I have a question (hope it does not sound silly)&#8230; If you could, please list and/or explain some of the duties/work you in real terms. I hear all these Virtual Assistants talk about &#8220;the work,&#8221; but [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Dear Gritty VA:</strong></p>
<p><strong>I am just starting my Virtual Assistant business.  I am networking and setting things up, but I have a question (hope it does not sound silly)&#8230; If you could, please list and/or explain some of the duties/work you in real terms. I hear all these Virtual Assistants talk about &#8220;the work,&#8221; but I want to know the details. What kinds of things do people hire you to do? &#8211;AC</strong></p>
<p>Not a silly question at all. Although I can&#8217;t say it&#8217;s the easiest to answer, LOL.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s because the administrative support that one VA provides to her clients can be completely different from what another VA provides.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s impossible to create any kind of comprehensive list because the work we do is so much more than that. More importantly, there&#8217;s no way to do that because no two clients, businesses and professions are the same. There might be some general similarities and overlap, but overall &#8220;the work&#8221; all depends on the clients, the industry they are in, the work <em>they</em> do and what their goals, objectives and challenges are.</p>
<p>So like me, for instance, I work with attorneys and business consultants. HUGE amounts of document work involved in both. I also have a lot of contact with their clients in various capacities, such as interviewing, doing intakes, making calls&#8230; I also have to interact with the courts, JAs and use the various filing systems. That&#8217;s just the teeniest tip of the iceberg.</p>
<p>What I do for my clients, given the professions they are in, is VERY different from the work VAs who, for example, work with Internet marketers provide. Those two markets do completely different things, have completely different interests and motivations, and the work, therefore, is vastly different.</p>
<p>Instead of trying to identify &#8220;the work&#8221; in only the most general sense, I would instead have you look at things from a different perspective.</p>
<p><strong>1. You can&#8217;t be in business to do everything</strong>. So YOU have to define what you are in business to do. How I look at things is that administrative support is a skill, expertise and specialty all its own. As a business owner, I am not anyone&#8217;s assistant, personal valet or gopher. I am in business to provide administrative support to clients who need that expertise in their business.</p>
<p><strong>2. Once you know what you are in business to do</strong>, you will have a better idea and focus about the kind of work you provide for clients. But that&#8217;s not the end of the story&#8230;</p>
<p><strong>3. You also want to define what administrative support means to you</strong>. The best way I have to explain administrative support is that it is the collection of ongoing tasks, functions and roles that keep a business organized, running smoothly and moving forward. Where a lot of people get confused (including a whole lot of VAs themselves) is thinking that administrative work is simply paperwork.</p>
<p>And administrative support isn&#8217;t just about administration (the back-end running of the business). Administration is only one area of a business where administrative support is provided. Administrative support encompasses work in ALL four areas of a business&#8211;administration, business development, marketing and networking, and working with clients.</p>
<p>Take a look at the quick video below and see if that doesn&#8217;t help you understand a bit better.</p>
<p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="360" height="227" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/z0S1__SV7cA?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="360" height="227" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/z0S1__SV7cA?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>
<p><strong>4. You also want to define a target market</strong>. For the same reason that you can&#8217;t be in business to do anything and everything, it is also impossible to try to work with anyone and everyone and create any kind of unique, meaningful, resonate and compelling message at the same time.</p>
<p>As Seth Godin says, &#8220;You can be a wandering generality or a meaningful specific.&#8221; Once you know who it is you are intending to work with, that right there is going to hugely allow you to identify and define &#8220;the work&#8221; you want to do with and for clients and separate it from different categories of project work you may want to charge separately for.</p>
<p>(And by the way, when you work with a very specific target market, the work and running your business becomes INFINITELY easier.)</p>
<p><strong>5. Beyond all that, EVERYTHING depends on the consultation</strong>. Everything. You can&#8217;t begin to know how to support someone or what work is involved until you have spoken at length to the client to learn more about them, their business, their values, goals and the challenges they face.</p>
<p><strong>If you want to get REALLY good at doing consultations and know EXACTLY how to proceed with them</strong> (what to talk about when, questions to ask, how to ask, what to look for, etc.), then I highly recommend you get my <a href="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/virtualassistantbusinessforms.htm#gde03">Client Consultation Process, &#8220;Breaking the Ice (GDE-03).&#8221;</a> It covers everything from before, during and how to follow-up afterward.</p>
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		<title>New Video: How to Work with a Virtual Assistant</title>
		<link>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/11/09/new-video-how-to-work-with-a-virtual-assistant/</link>
		<comments>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/11/09/new-video-how-to-work-with-a-virtual-assistant/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Nov 2010 17:00:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Danielle Keister</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Savvy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cool Stuff]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Danielle Keister]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[How to Work with a Virtual Assistant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant Chamber of Commerce]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistants]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.grittyva.com/?p=4949</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hey, check out our new video to help clients understand how to work with a Virtual Assistant/Administrative Consultant. Would love you to subscribe to our channel, rate the video and leave your comments. Let me know how you like it. Oh, and by the way, this was made for Virtual Assistants and Administrative Consultants to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Hey, check out our new video to help clients understand how to work with a Virtual Assistant/Administrative Consultant. Would love you to subscribe to our channel, rate the video and leave your comments. Let me know how you like it.</p>
<p>Oh, and by the way, this was made for Virtual Assistants and Administrative Consultants to use on their websites so feel free!</p>
<p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="360" height="227" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/z0S1__SV7cA?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="360" height="227" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/z0S1__SV7cA?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>
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		<title>Take These Words Out of Your Vocabulary</title>
		<link>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/10/28/take-these-words-out-of-your-vocabulary/</link>
		<comments>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/10/28/take-these-words-out-of-your-vocabulary/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Oct 2010 17:16:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Danielle Keister</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Savvy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Administrative Consultant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Administrative Support]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistants]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.grittyva.com/?p=4846</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We are having a great conversation about yet another dumb article about Virtual Assistants over on our Facebook group page. One thing I am always trying to get through to Virtual Assistants and Administrative Consultants is to take certain words out of their vocabulary when it comes to their marketing and conversations with clients. First, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>We are having a great conversation about yet another dumb article about Virtual Assistants over on our <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Danielle-Keister/105689129495050?ref=ts" target="_blank">Facebook group page</a>.</p>
<p>One thing I am always trying to get through to Virtual Assistants and Administrative Consultants is to take certain words out of their vocabulary when it comes to their marketing and conversations with clients.</p>
<p>First, the word &#8220;assistant.&#8221; If you are a business owner, you aren&#8217;t anyone&#8217;s assistant. You are a professional providing an expertise. In our case, that is administrative support. The only connotation people understand when it comes to &#8220;assistant&#8221; is the employee kind. If you want clients to approach you as a fellow business peer with a valuable expertise to offer, stop calling yourself an assistant.</p>
<p>Second, the word &#8220;employee.&#8221; Stop making all those comparisons to employees (how much they save over employees, those ridiculous cost comparison charts, etc.). What we do isn&#8217;t about replacing employees. It&#8217;s about providing an expertise and a service for people who need it. When you compare yourself to an employee, all people hear and understand is the word &#8220;employee&#8221; and think that&#8217;s what you are.</p>
<p>Third, stop using derogatory words about our work like &#8220;menial,&#8221; &#8220;mundane&#8221; and the like. People don&#8217;t value grunt work and if that&#8217;s how you are portraying your work, they certainly aren&#8217;t going to see it as an expertise, much less pay professional fees for it. Words like that only portray you as a flunky and a gopher. If you don&#8217;t value and respect your work, no one else is going to either. You will never be able to help clients see and understand your work as valuable in the bigger context of their business if you keep using words like that.</p>
<p>Our work IS important. It is the backbone of every business and it absolutely does help business owners grow and move forward.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t confuse the fact that there might be some mundane tasks and steps involved with the work overall (every expertise has those). Because it&#8217;s not about the tasks, it&#8217;s about the results&#8211;how your work helps clients grow and progress and keeps their businesses humming along smoothly, professionally, effectively and profitably.</p>
<p>For more words to be take out of your vocabulary, see a couple of my older posts here, <a href="http://www.grittyva.com/2009/06/01/some-words-to-delete-from-your-business-vocabulary/" target="_blank">Delete These Words from Your Business Vocabulary</a> and here, <a href="http://www.grittyva.com/2007/10/16/affordable-should-be-taken-out-back-and-shot/" target="_blank">Affordable Should Be Taken Out Back and Shot</a>.</p>
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		<title>Dear Gritty Virtual Assistant: I&#8217;ve Got a Bunch of Questions!</title>
		<link>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/10/06/4707/</link>
		<comments>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/10/06/4707/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Oct 2010 17:41:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Danielle Keister</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Savvy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dear Gritty VA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Danielle Keister]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gritty VA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gritty Virtual Assistant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[referral marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistants]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.grittyva.com/?p=4707</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Dear Gritty VA: Thank you so much for all of your offerings through the Virtual Assistant Business Store! Getting my company planned and put together has been much easier thanks to you than it might have been.  I just need some clarification: How exactly do referrals work?  I am giving a two-hour free referral bonus [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Dear Gritty VA:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Thank you so much for all of your offerings through the <a href="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/virtualassistantbusinessforms.htm">Virtual Assistant Business Store!</a> Getting my company planned and put together has been much easier thanks to you than it might have been.  I just need some clarification:</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ol>
<li><strong>How exactly do referrals work?  I am giving a two-hour free referral bonus to any client that refers another paying client.  What do you think of that idea?</strong></li>
<li><strong>What marketing tools have you found the most effective?  I am on unemployment which is not enough to make ends meet, and I have had to get things for my business by raiding my grocery money (maxed out credit).  I am trying to get a micro-business loan, but have not done so yet.  Are online directories and search engines the way to go?</strong></li>
<li><strong>How did you find your industries small prospects for sales calls?  Do we have to worry about &#8220;Do Not Call&#8221; lists if someone uses one phone number for everything?  How much &#8220;cold calling&#8221; did you do to get started?</strong></li>
<li><strong>About your website screening intake form:  I could not find your business website, only the Gritty VA, nor could I find anything in the store about an intake form.  Is there another resource or should I just pull together my own and tweak it through experience?</strong></li>
<li><strong>If a client asks for a particularly dicey project that I am not sure I can handle, how do I address that without looking incompetent, undersupplied technologically, or setting myself up to fail?</strong></li>
</ol>
<p><strong><br />
I apologize if you have already addressed these issues.  Thanks for your help! &#8211;AJ</strong></p>
<p>Whew! I&#8217;ll do my best to answer these, keeping &#8216;em short and sweet&#8230;</p>
<p>1. I&#8217;ve written a couple things on the topic of referral recently:  <a href="http://www.grittyva.com/2010/09/29/dear-gritty-va-2/" target="_blank">&#8220;Dear Gritty Virtual Assistant: How do I Advertise for Referral Partners?&#8221; </a>and <a href="http://www.grittyva.com/2010/09/13/10-tips-for-harnessing-the-power-of-referrals/" target="_blank">&#8220;10 Tips for Harnessing the Power of Referrals.&#8221;</a> Those should cover your questions on this topic (particularly the part about paying for referrals&#8211;not the best thing to do and unnecessary).</p>
<p>2. It&#8217;s helpful to be in directories, if only for the added SEO, but in our industry, hands down the most effective marketing strategy is networking. Not ads. Not cold calling. Not direct mail. The great thing is that networking doesn&#8217;t cost anything but your time. And the reason it&#8217;s so effective is because people look to work with those they have established some kind of relationship with, that they feel some kind of rapport with and have come to know, like and trust because of it. Every opportunity you glean that let&#8217;s a group of people get to know, like and trust you is going to make it that much easier for you to attract clients.</p>
<p>3. How did I find my industry&#8217;s small prospects for sales calls? I didn&#8217;t look. <img src='http://www.grittyva.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' />  I never did cold calling. People don&#8217;t like to be sold to; it&#8217;s completely the wrong strategy. Professional services are a bigger ticket item and require more relationship building that that. And I can just about guarantee you, you don&#8217;t have the kind of money and energy to ever make cold calling a worthwhile ROI. Even if you get one project, it isn&#8217;t going to come close to covering all the time, energy and effort you put into getting it. And think about it&#8211;you really think you can keep putting in that kind of work just to get one or two measly nickel-and-dime projects? There are MUCH quicker, more effective means to getting clients and that&#8217;s by deciding on a target market to focus on and then getting involved with that group in any ways you can (online forums, business groups, events, etc.). The more you interact, the more they get to know, like and trust you.</p>
<p>4.  My own site is undergoing an overhaul (although to be honest, I haven&#8217;t had time to deal with it lately), but I think you are referring to the online form to request a consultation. If that&#8217;s the case, I&#8217;m not sure specifically what your question is on this, but I use this form on my site to help screen and pre-qualify prospects. I can&#8217;t work with everyone and as a Administrative Support Consultant, I&#8217;m not looking to work with anyone and everyone.  I want to make sure they understand what I&#8217;m in business to help people with, that they belong to the industry/profession I focus on and whether they are ready to find a support partner (or only looking) and can afford it. These are the kind of things that inform me as to what my next action with them will be. That is, if someone is only &#8220;browsing,&#8221; you don&#8217;t want to waste time and effort on a consultation. It&#8217;s the wrong approach at the wrong time and you want to reserve those things only for those who are ready. Instead, you&#8217;d want to refer folks in that category to a white paper or video perhaps and then ask them to contact you again when they&#8217;re more seriously interested in working together. You could also invite them to subscribe to your ezine or mailing list so that you can keep them in your pipeline. The fact is that most clients are not ready to work with us immediately. It&#8217;s all a process. But you can read more about the consult form and pre-qualifying clients here: <a href="http://www.grittyva.com/2010/01/21/one-way-to-sort-the-ideal-from-the-unideal/" target="_blank">&#8220;One Way to Sort the Ideal from the Unideal.&#8221;</a> Oh, and I would HIGHLY recommend you get my<a href="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/virtualassistantbusinessforms.htm#gde03"> Client Consultation Process</a> as it walks you through ALL of these things and gives you a system from start to finish for targeting clients, prequalifying them, going through the consultation and all the kinds of questions to ask and how to follow up afterward.</p>
<p>5. Well, first you have to distinguish what kind of business you are in. Are you in the secretarial business where you&#8217;re simply doing one-off, transactional, piecemeal project work? Or are you in the business of administrative support? Because the two are entirely different things and once you answer that question, it will help answer subsequent questions about what kind of client needs that work, what work is entailed and so forth. When you know what you do and who you do it for, this kind of thing isn&#8217;t as much of an issue. However, let&#8217;s say you are in the administrative support business and the client asks if you do X. Honesty is always best so tell them if that isn&#8217;t something you know how to do. However, you can always let them know (that is, if you are even interested) that you are willing to learn how to do it. Otherwise, you might look at the thing and realize, you know, this really doesn&#8217;t fall under administrative support at all and they really need to be working with an &#8220;X&#8221; expert. In that case, you might offer to help them locate that kind of expert who is in business specifically to do that thing. Or, you might have a separate division in your practice that does &#8220;X&#8221; in which case you could charge them separately for that project work. You have to always remember, Virtual Assistance is not a catchall term for &#8220;anything and everything.&#8221; Just because a client asks doesn&#8217;t mean anything. YOU have to decide what administrative support consists of in your business and what it doesn&#8217;t. When you have that clear idea yourself, you shouldn&#8217;t have any qualms about letting clients know when something doesn&#8217;t fall under that umbrella, that you don&#8217;t do it because of that, or that you are willing to learn (and maybe charge separately) for it. Always be honest about what&#8217;s what; you&#8217;re not going to look bad at all about not doing or knowing how to do something if that&#8217;s not the business you&#8217;re in in the first place. I mean, if you&#8217;re a plumber and someone asks you to fix their car, they&#8217;re the ones not making sense and you would naturally explain to them that you are a plumber, not a mechanic.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/virtualassistantbusinessforms.htm"><img src="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/images/vabizforms370x60.png" alt="Virtual Assistant Business Contracts Templates Forms Guides" width="370" height="60" border="0"></a></p>
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		<title>Dear Gritty VA: How Do I Advertise for Referral Partners?</title>
		<link>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/09/29/dear-gritty-va-2/</link>
		<comments>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/09/29/dear-gritty-va-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:00:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Danielle Keister</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Savvy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dear Gritty VA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Danielle Keister]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gritty VA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[referral marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Referral Partners]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistants]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.grittyva.com/?p=4656</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Dear Gritty VA: I am new at publishing e-newletters and blogs, however, I know these are great tools to get the word out about my company and to attract new clients.  I plan to create a monthly e-newsletter and I want to be able to add great news about my referral partners. However, I want [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Dear Gritty VA:</strong></p>
<p><strong>I am new at publishing e-newletters and blogs, however, I know these are great tools to get the word out about my company and to attract new clients.  I plan to create a monthly e-newsletter and I want to be able to add great news about my referral partners. However, I want to know what is the best way to get the word out that I am looking for referral partners. Should I add it to my website or make a note in my e-newsletters.  I have already signed up to become an affiliate with VACOC and will be adding the link to my website and newsletter etc.  Thanks for your advice.  &#8211;GD</strong></p>
<p>I think that&#8217;s a terrific idea&#8211;to spotlight your referral partners in your blog and ezine! Because if you&#8217;re going to be referral partners with someone, it&#8217;s the &#8220;partner-y&#8221; thing to do to actively promote them in the same way you hope they are doing for you.</p>
<p>So often we see folks becoming referral &#8220;partners&#8221; and it becomes a one-way street with one person doing all the referring and the other person not making an equal effort. That&#8217;s not cool, and if that&#8217;s the case, they don&#8217;t deserve to be referral partners with you. What they fail to understand is that one of the best ways to get referrals is to give them.</p>
<p>For those who don&#8217;t know what we&#8217;re talking about, a referral partner is someone in the same or similar business or complementary field that you refer business to. There a lot of reasons you would refer business to someone else. It could be because your practice is full. It could be because the client just isn&#8217;t your cup of tea, but might be perfect for that other person. It might be because the client is seeking a service that you don&#8217;t offer. Or it might be because you like to be a resource to your current clients whenever they seek services that aren&#8217;t related to what you are in business to do.</p>
<p>Printshops offer a good example of the complementary referral relationship. They always know of several designers and photographers they can refer their customers to. They are all in different kinds of businesses, but the work is related and they all serve the same sort of market. So they complement each other in that way. It makes perfect sense to refer to each other, and being a resource who can refer others and make qualified recommendations is HUGE help to clients and customers.</p>
<p>Referral partnering is an informal, but intentional, relationship where one business owner approaches another and says, &#8220;Hey, I think you&#8217;re awesome and you do great work. If you feel the same about me, let&#8217;s refer clients to each other when those opportunities arise. Maybe we can even meet once a month or so to brainstorm ideas on how we can promote and refer business to each other.&#8221;</p>
<p>Now while I think it&#8217;s absolutely wonderful to promote your referral partners whenever you have the chance, I do have a few thoughts about the rest of your question. First, I don&#8217;t know that I would necessarily <em>advertise</em> for referral partners. That is, if I advertised for referral partners, do I <em>really</em> want to receive what might be tons of emails to wade through and create for myself the extra work and burden of basically interviewing people?</p>
<p>And second, how substantive and authentic would it be for me to refer to folks I really don&#8217;t know much about or have actual experience with? I would prefer to find and nurture those relationships more organically, and selectively choose or approach potential referral partners based on the fact that I&#8217;ve developed a relationship and gotten to know them to some good extent over a period of time. I don&#8217;t want to just have people I can refer to. I want to refer to people whose talents, work and reputation I have absolute confidence in and will be a good reflection on the recommendations I give. I want my word to mean something. A disingenuous, unsubstantive referral is not helpful.</p>
<p>One last thought, while you are helping give back to your referral buddies, think about also devoting a separate space or blurb about what makes an ideal client referral for you. Those who are reading your blog and ezine might not be ready to work with you, but they might know of someone who is. So make it really clear about who you are specifically looking to work with (your target market and ideal client) and you&#8217;ll get many more referrals because you&#8217;d made it easy for them to do so.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/virtualassistantbusinessforms.htm"><img src="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/images/vabizforms370x60.png" alt="Virtual Assistant Business Contracts Templates Forms Guides" width="370" height="60" border="0"></a></p>
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		<title>Do You Need a Virtual Assistant or An Employee?</title>
		<link>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/09/20/do-you-need-a-virtual-assistant-or-an-employee/</link>
		<comments>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/09/20/do-you-need-a-virtual-assistant-or-an-employee/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:00:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Danielle Keister</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Savvy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistants]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Working with a VA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.grittyva.com/?p=4601</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the biggest challenges Virtual Assistants have is helping a significant part of the marketplace understand that Virtual Assistants are not employees. In reading this, you might be wondering, “Huh? I just need someone to do my stuff.” But as a business owner intending to work with a Virtual Assistant/Administrative Support Consultant, understanding the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.grittyva.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/twofriends.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4606" title="twofriends" src="http://www.grittyva.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/twofriends.jpg" alt="" width="110" height="74" /></a>One of the biggest challenges Virtual Assistants have is helping a significant part of the marketplace understand that Virtual Assistants are not employees.</p>
<p>In reading this, you might be wondering, “Huh? I just need someone to do my stuff.” But as a business owner intending to work with a Virtual Assistant/Administrative Support Consultant, understanding the nature of your relationship is going to be critical to your success in working together, and making sure there is an alignment of expectations.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s important that you understand one thing very clearly: A VA is not a replacement for employees. As independent professionals running businesses (not working in employment to you), there are going to be very distinct differences in how and when you work together. The better you understand this, the better the chances are for a successful business relationship.</p>
<p><strong>How to Tell When You Need an Employee</strong></p>
<p>Sometimes a business just needs an employee. This is generally the case if you need someone to be solely dedicated to you and pretty much at your beck and call. Also, if you require control over the worker&#8217;s schedule, how the work is performed, etc., you need an employee. You might also need an employee if the workload is so great that it simply requires a dedicated in-house employee (or several) to manage it on a daily basis.</p>
<p><strong>When a Virtual Assistant is the Best Solution</strong></p>
<p>Sometimes, having an employee isn’t an option for a business. It might be because there’s not enough of a workload to warrant hiring an employee (and dealing with all the attendant taxes and legalities that go along with it). Or, you might not have anywhere to put an employee, such as if you work from a home office or are on the road a lot. Or, you simply aren’t interested in the extra administration, supervision and management that comes with an employee, and prefer to work alone. But just because your business is smaller, doesn&#8217;t mean you don&#8217;t need help. Every business does!</p>
<p>When that is the case, working with a Virtual Assistant will absolutely offer you the very best, convenient and strategic alternative in meeting your administrative support needs.</p>
<p><strong>What&#8217;s the Difference?</strong></p>
<p>A Virtual Assistant is an independent professional who is in the business of providing ongoing administrative support to business owners. As administrative experts, they can also help you streamline your business and instill systems and processes to improve your workflows and create a more cost-effective operation. While Virtual Assistants do a lot of work that is similar to what an employee would do, it’s important to keep in mind that since they are not employees, there are going to be differences in when and how you work together.</p>
<p>You want to think of Virtual Assistants as administrative consultants. When you hire a Virtual Assistant, you are hiring an independent professional who runs her own business. That means, unlike an employee who is paid a wage or salary to be solely dedicated to you and your business, a Virtual Assistant sets her own fees, has her own business policies, procedures and systems for working with clients, and is in business to support several clients at once.</p>
<p>The very best way to create a successful, mutually respectful relationship with a Virtual Assistant (and avoid costly liability due to worker misclassification) is to understand that you are a client to your Virtual Assistant, not an employer. That means you understand that:</p>
<ul>
<li>Your Virtual Assistant runs her own business and sets her own fees, hours, policies and procedures;</li>
<li>You won&#8217;t be managing or supervising her, or the work, in any way;</li>
<li>Your Virtual Assistant doesn&#8217;t &#8220;report&#8221; to you in the way that an employee would (e.g., reporting for duty, submitting time sheets, etc.); and</li>
<li>You as the client have the right to control or direct only the result of the work performed by your Virtual Assistant, and not the means and methods of accomplishing that result.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>This Isn&#8217;t a Choice, It&#8217;s the Law</strong></p>
<p>In the United States, the U.S. Dept. of Labor and the IRS govern what constitutes an employee versus an independent contractor relationship. A business owner who gets it wrong can wind up paying not only back taxes and penalties, but also all the expenses that the worker would have had as a full-time employee, including overtime and benefits.</p>
<p>You can avoid all of that by simply understanding that your Virtual Assistant is a business owner—a vendor to whom you turn for administrative consulting services—NOT your employee, and treating the relationship accordingly. The resources below provide excellent information on understanding the differences so that you can establish a great relationship with a Virtual Assistant and avoid getting yourself into legal hot water.</p>
<p><strong>RESOURCES</strong>: For more information, check out these publications: <a href="http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=99921,00.html" target="_blank">IRS: Independent Contractor vs. Employee</a> (U.S.); <a href="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/resources/IRSPub1779.pdf" target="_blank">IRS Publication 1779: Independent Contractor or Employee</a> (U.S.); <a href="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/resources/rc4110-08e.pdf" target="_blank">CRA Publication RC4110(E): Employee or Self-Employed</a> (Canada); and <a href="http://smallbusinessreview.com/regulations/Beware_The_Contractor_Trap/" target="_blank">Beware, The Contractor Trap</a> (Small Business Review).</p>
<p><a href="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/virtualassistantbusinessforms.htm#gde39"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4555" title="Special Sale: Value-Based Pricing &amp; Packaging Toolkit" src="http://www.grittyva.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/ad0913102.gif" alt="" width="400" height="269" /></a></p>
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		<title>Get Ready to Toss Those Timesheets Out the Window for Good!</title>
		<link>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/09/16/get-ready-to-toss-those-timesheets-out-the-window-for-good-3/</link>
		<comments>http://www.grittyva.com/2010/09/16/get-ready-to-toss-those-timesheets-out-the-window-for-good-3/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 Sep 2010 17:00:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Danielle Keister</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Savvy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cool Stuff]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Great News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pricing and Getting Paid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[How to Price and Package Your Support]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Value Pricing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Value-Based Pricing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Value-Based Pricing & Packaging Toolkit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Virtual Assistants]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.grittyva.com/?p=4566</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I know buying business products can be tough. The really good stuff does cost money. There&#8217;s just no way around it. But it&#8217;s an investment in your growth and success. And those of us with the really good stuff to offer can&#8217;t devalue ourselves and the knowledge we share. That&#8217;s a really poor business example, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>I know buying business products can be tough.</strong> The really good stuff does cost money. There&#8217;s just no way around it. But it&#8217;s an investment in your growth and success. And those of us with the really good stuff to offer can&#8217;t devalue ourselves and the knowledge we share. That&#8217;s a really poor business example, and none of us should help others at the expense of our own interests. Right?<br />
<strong><br />
I also know that cost can sometimes make great tools and training inaccessible for a lot of people</strong>. Which is why I price my products at a range I feel honors the value and expertise I offer while still being accessible to a large number of people. Internet marketers charge literally thousands of dollars for the kind of learning, knowledge and guidance I offer in my products.<br />
<strong><br />
That&#8217;s why occasionally I offer a sale to make it a little easier for those who are still struggling financially</strong>. I really want to help this profession grow and succeed to the next level. I have heard from many of you who would really love to get my new <a href="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/virtualassistantbusinessforms.htm#gde39">Value-Based Pricing &amp; Packaging Toolkit</a>, but the regular $147 price tag was still a bit out of reach. Sooooo, I&#8217;m going to open a window here to give you a really great savings&#8230;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/virtualassistantbusinessforms.htm#gde39"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4567" title="Special Sale: Value-Based Pricing &amp; Packaging Toolkit" src="http://www.grittyva.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/ad0913103.gif" alt="" width="400" height="269" /></a></p>
<p><strong>From now until September 25, I&#8217;ve reduced the price of the Value-Based Pricing &amp; Packaging Toolkit to $97 (a savings of $50)</strong>. What&#8217;s also cool is that I&#8217;ve added a ton of new information to the product so you&#8217;re getting the benefit of all the added resources I&#8217;ve realized people need in implementing this new methodology in their business.</p>
<p><strong>You&#8217;ll get</strong>:</p>
<ul>
<li>2 videos where I walk you through the entire presentation.</li>
<li>Written guides to teach you how to implement value-based pricing in your practice.</li>
<li>Success and profitability tips.</li>
<li>Visual illustrations and graphics to make the concepts crystal clear.</li>
<li>A diagram of my own successful business model.</li>
<li>Samples and templates to use in your own practice.</li>
</ul>
<p>I&#8217;m probably leaving something out. The product page will give you the full low-down.  There&#8217;s just so much I&#8217;ve included that you will get with this product. And be sure to read the reviews on the product page from folks who attended my original clinic and purchased the product. I&#8217;m telling you, this is REALLY good stuff and I hope this price break will help give you access to it.</p>
<p>Virtual Assistants and Administrative Support Consultants: get ready to toss those timesheets out the window once and for all!</p>
<p>If you have any questions at all, please do email me. I&#8217;m always happy to help. <img src='http://www.grittyva.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
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