I am considering starting a Virtual Assistant business.  I have been self-employed for 10 years and know about the hard work and research which goes into embarking upon entrepreneurship.  I would like to know how the economy has impacted this business.  On one hand, I can see businesses downsizing employees and benefiting from hiring administration support without the extra costs of taxes and providing benefits, which is more cost effective to their bottom line.  On the other hand, I can also see how some businesses would think hiring a Virtual Assistant can be another added expense to their bottom line. Any feedback from you would be greatly appreciated –DA

Thanks for the question and I’ll do my best to help shed some light so you can look at this another way.  You see, I always struggle with questions like this (which is why it has taken me this long to answer) because… well, how do I say this… it’s not the right question to ask. Not that you are wrong for asking. I’m here to help.

So let me try to explain…

The first thing I want to help you get a clearer understanding about is the fact that Virtual Assistants are not replacement staff or contract workers (a contract worker is a legal term for someone who is an employee of a staffing company). In fact, if you read any of the back posts on this blog, you’ll see that I don’t like the term Virtual Assistant at all as it miseducates clients and industry newcomers alike and sets wrong expectations and perceptions right from the get-go (I prefer the term Administrative Consultant). On top of that, when you are running a business, you are not anyone’s assistant anymore than, say, an attorney is an assistant to their clients or a coach is an assistant to their clients and so on.

As someone in this profession, you are providing a skilled professional service, no different than an attorney, an accountant, a bookkeeper, a coach, a designer or what have you. All of these professions, ours included, requires a high degree of specific skill, experience and expertise. We aren’t replacement workers. As administrative experts, we are providing an expertise–the expertise of administrative support–to businesses that require our particular skills and knowledge.

Once you understand things from that perspective, the question isn’t about how the economy is affecting companies that are downsizing. Those aren’t your clients. Because anyone who is simply looking to replace employees at a cheaper cost is not looking to value the skills or the relationship and is only interested in saving money. If you make those folks your clients, you can bank on always being on a hamster wheel trying to fend off competitors willing to work even cheaper than you.

Which leads me to my next point. You will need to educate yourself about who you are seeking to work with and what their motivation is in hiring you. When you seek the right clients, the economy has no bearing on anything at all. You want to focus on a market that truly has a need for the expertise you offer, not the ones whose initial motivation is looking for cheap right from the get-go. So let me walk you through this thought process…

Who is going to truly need and value having an administrative partner? Is it going to be the big company who can afford their own employees or who is only looking to reduce their bottom line? Or is it the solo and boutique companies who run smaller scale operations, often from home offices of their own, that don’t warrant employees  or don’t have anywhere to put them even if they wanted them, but who still need the support and understand how it will help them run a more profitable business and make faster progress? Who do you think has the greater need for what we do and will therefore place a higher value on it because it has more meaning to their business success?

This is why the economy has no bearing once you understand who your market is. Those who need and value what you are in business will pay because people who want or need something, find a way to pay for it. Which again, makes the whole question about the economy irrelevant because you are going to seek only markets who need and value the expertise and are able and willing to afford it.

So your task as a new business owner in this profession is to find a target market who a) has the highest need for what you are in business to do, b) can be found easily enough in order to market to them and fill your practice, and c) earns enough money to pay for professional level fees.

Always remember, you can’t afford to work with anyone who can’t afford you (not my quote, but one I love a lot although I’m not sure of its origins).

Hope that helps!

When you hire an attorney, accountant, designer or any kind of professional, does that person come to your office to do their work? Do they work according to hours you set? Do they sign in and out with you whenever they begin or end working on your stuff?

Sounds silly, right? Of course they don’t do those things. That’s the nature of working with independent businesses and professionals. They do their work from their own places of business and according to their own work schedules, processes and policies. You may or may not have ever even meet in person.

And things get done, right? When you retain someone to draft a contract or design a logo or take care of your accounts, they do what they do without needing to be physically present, right? So how does that happen?

Well, you communicate by phone and email, maybe even video chat. Files are sent by email or fax. Electronic signatures are obtained with tools like Echosign. Working documents are shared and transferred via tools like Dropbox. Shared collaborative workspaces are set up with services such as Airset to keep files and information organized in one place. Remote access or online accounts is sometimes used to get things done on your behalf.

This is the day and age of technology, baby! There is a mind-boggling array of tools and services that make working together “virtually” a breeze. Anyone who uses a computer and has ever done business with any other business or professional has already been working “virtually.”

Clients work with an Administrative Consultant exactly the same way. But people get hung up on the word “virtual.” Which is why I’ve always been an advocate for not using it whatsoever in your marketing.

Reason being, a business is a business. It matters not how or where or when you work. If you’re a traveling salesperson, your vehicle is the platform by which you connect and work with clients. If you are a flower shop, it’s your brick and mortar store. Operating a professional service business is no different–it’s just that the computer happens to be your “office” and your tool for working with clients and delivering your services.

The fact that you are an online business is of no importance. The tools are incidental details–don’t focus on that or you will continue to confuse clients and make it seem much more complicated and mysterious than need be.

And for goodness sakes, stop using the analogy of the administrative assistant or secretary. All that does is confuse clients and keep them (mistakenly) thinking that you are some kind of remote, telecommuting employee.

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’s the same day or six months down the road.

What’s cool about this is that you don’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.

I know some people don’t like to blatantly “hard sell” 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’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.

It’s super simple to get started. Here’s the link with the 3 simple steps:

http://www.virtualassistantnetworking.com/surveyflair.htm

Thanks for all your enthusiastic participation! Keep up those reminders about the survey. We’re at 504 participants as of today–the half way mark to our goal of 1,000.

That kind of question is a sure sign that you have written about yourself and what you do as if you were a substitute employee or virtual worker instead of an administrative expert and professional service provider.

You will never have a client ask that question if your marketing copy is written properly.

And if you don’t know how to do that, you need my guide: Articulating Your Value: How to Craft Your Own Unique, Compelling Marketing Message (GDE-38).

I have been toying with the idea of starting my own business for some time and recent events (notably, a layoff) have pushed this idea to the forefront.  I have purchased your business forms, contracts, etc. and have found your resources and expertise to be exactly what I was looking for.  I noted that you work with attorneys. I am interested in targeting sole practitioner attorneys as well and was wondering if obtaining a paralegal certificate would be helpful in breaking into this market?  –LP

Great question and I love seeing that you have narrowed things down to a target market. That right there is going to help you get things rolling more quickly and easily, and save you soooo much time and effort because it gives you a direction and focus.

In answer to your specific question, you do not necessarily need a paralegal certificate to support attorneys. Administrative support is administrative support. EVERY business needs it, including law offices, and you don’t need any kind of certification to do that work. However, if you plan to also do paralegal work, then you’ll need to check with your state or locality to find out the rules on that. Some states require a degree or certification to be a paralegal while others do not.

That said, if you want to support the legal profession, there are some specific skills and knowledge you will need. You’ll be more successful if you already have that kind of experience; it’ll be a harder sell if not. Either way, it’s always a great idea to take whatever kind of training or classes you can find, and read any information you can that will help you become more knowledgeable about supporting this market.

Law practice management is extremely valuable knowledge to have or obtain. Plan on keeping up on that every chance you get. It’s especially prized by solo attorneys because you are then able to help get their business organized and running smoothly so that can be more profitable and have more time for their client work (or just have some time off! These guys work like dogs, most of them).

You also want to learn about all the various legal industry specific software and tools that can be utilized so you can bring that knowledge and skillset to the table.

Getting back to the target market thing, I love that you already understand that it’s the solos who are going to have the most need and therefore are going to find greater value in having an administrative support partner.

Large firms don’t really need what we do because they have bigger workloads and can afford in-house employees required to handle it. Therefore, when you do find one that’s even interested in outsourcing, it’s only to save a buck and get it as cheaply as possible, not because they value the work and it’s important to their practice. They aren’t interested in a partnering relationship whereas that partnering relationship plays a critical role in supporting solos. This is why you’ll find greater success with them. They have a great need for what we do and therefore place higher value and are willing to pay for it. Which is one of the first rules in selecting a target market: It must have a real need for what you are in business to offer so that it values it enough to pay for it.

I would have you narrow that down even further that, though. There are all kinds of practice areas in the law and the work and processes involved therefore can vary dramatically.  By narrowing down to a solos in a specific practice area, you will be better able to learn more about the work specifically involved and see how you can support them. This, in turn, will allow you to compose a much more compelling marketing message that really speaks their language–all to your greater, faster success in attracting and getting those clients.

Once you do narrow thing down more, you can then start doing your homework by researching and talking with solo attorneys, finding out where their biggest headaches are, how they are currently managing their work and administrative and what solutions they’ve be most interested in.

If you want to learn more about how to craft your own unique, compelling marketing message, I recommend my guide Articulating Your Value: How to Craft Your Own Unique, Compelling Marketing Message (GDE-38).

Hope that helps!

UPDATE: 480 participants so far! Spread the word so we can reach goal by April 1!

She asked for feedback on what she might be missing. My response was this:

“It also depends on the request. Many Virtual Assistants/Administrative Consultants are turned off by requests that indicate the business owner does not understand the nature of the relationship (one of business owner to business owner), speaks in employment terms, or otherwise appears to be seeking either an employee or a flunky, rather than a skilled professional in the expertise of administrative support.”

Which is exactly what goes on so much of the time. So many potential clients these days have been misinformed about the nature of our work and the relationship (which, by the way, is our own fault, not theirs). Without knowing it, they speak to us in ways that raise our red flags that this is a client who “doesn’t get it” and “could be difficult to work with” and “sounds like he thinks I’m going to be at his beck-and-call like an employee.” And there you have that first disconnect.

It doesn’t help that the term “Virtual Assistant” has branded itself as the cheap labor pool of flunkies. So when you have a segment of the marketplace with that perception, that definitely colors how they look upon the work, what they’re looking for (cheap, which you can’t be if you’re in business) and how they approach VAs.

Anyway, after a few responses, the woman went on to lament that she was seeking skilled Virtual Assistants with “qualified references” and those who were interested in real partnering relationships. It also turned out that she charges a fee to join her network. She was really frustrated; she thought she had such a kick-butt idea but it was falling on deaf ears.

I could tell her that using phrasing such as “qualified references” is often an indication that someone doesn’t understand the nature of the relationship. Employees provides references. Business owners offer testimonials and case studies and such.  That would be my first red flag that this could be person expecting some kind of employment dog and pony show which is not how you approach a business-to-business relationship.

But here again, the term “Virtual Assistant” confuses clients and contradicts things and causes exactly this kind of misunderstanding and miscommunication. If you are a business owner, you aren’t anyone’s assistant. You are an administrative support expert. We keep saying we are business owners and experts in our own right, but then we go and negate all that by calling ourselves assistants.

It’s no wonder so many poor clients just don’t understand. Gotta stop that, folks. Moving onto a term like Administrative Consultant helps alleviate these kind of issues and better advances the perceptions and understandings we want and need for clients to have so that there is more alignment in understandings and expectations and we can have better, more productive initial conversations.

Getting back to this woman’s dilemma, I could tell her the other part of the problem which is that the kind of VAs (Administrative Consultants) she’s seeking don’t need those kind of referrals and therefore aren’t interested in paying for them. Those who are more established and successful have learned how to create their own pipelines. They don’t need to pay someone else to find clients for them.

And even if they did join, there’s nothing guaranteeing that the prospects they are sent are the kind of qualified prospects they want. Just because you have a boatload of potential clients seeking VAs doesn’t mean they are going to be the kind of clients VAs want to work with or that any of them match an individual VA’s particular target market and ideal client profile.

There are just too many other, more effective and direct ways for Virtual Assistants (heck, any business owners) to find exactly the kind of clients they want for free. And those who know how to create their own pipelines don’t want or need to pay for referral networks to do it.

UPDATE: 479 participants so far! Spread the word so we can reach goal by April 1!

So if an attorney emails him about a matter, is he going to say, “Tell your client to call me himself!”

Of course not. That’s patently ridiculous. He may be the absolute genius when it comes to consulting, and I definitely respect his knowledge in that, but on this point he is dead wrong.

There’s absolutely no difference between clients having their Administrative Consultant (Virtual Assistant) take care of certain matters on their behalf and having their attorney or accountant or any other kind of professional handle matters related to what they were hired to do.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with one person’s time being more important than another person’s.

It has everything to do with that client who works with an Administrative Consultant (Virtual Assistant) being a smart business person who knows that his time and energy levels are finite commodities. That business person realizes he shouldn’t be spending his own personal time on certain details, but instead should prioritize and reserve those limited resources for taking excellent care of clients and focusing on marketing and revenue generation. He knows he is able to give more support and higher quality service to his clients when he doesn’t squander those things trying to do everything himself.

But Weiss’s position is that if you’re going to say you are a solo, you should be COMPLETELY solo. And that’s just as ridiculous.

Solo doesn’t mean you literally do everything yourself. It just means that you are the primary brain power and craftsman in your business. Using his logic, solos would never hire ANY professionals whatsoever to help them in their business. They wouldn’t hire an attorney, an accountant, a bookkeeper or literally anyone. Again, patently ridiculous. No man is an island and that man’s business and clients will suffer if he tries to be. Guaranteed.

Choosing to be supported (and in some cases coached and advised) administratively by an Administrative Consultant (Virtual Assistant) is no different than hiring any other kind of independent professional to help in their business. We are hired for our expertise of administrative support and guidance in those matters.

However, this once again underscores the fact that the term “Virtual Assistant” is completely misunderstood and does us a great disservice by causing people to automatically perceive that we are “mere” assistants or lackeys.

If that person’s accountant had contacted him for the information, I really doubt he would have had the same attitude. He automatically has less professional respect because he views us as some kind of underlings–much like a maid or butler–and all because of the term “Virtual Assistant.” But as business owners and professionals who are hired for our particular expertise and support, we are no more assistants to our clients than an accountant or attorney or bookkeeper is an assistant to their clients.

Of course, to be fair, there are some real turkeys in our industry who seemingly have no brain cells with which to think independently or critically and take initiative. Those folks do give us a bad name. And it’s the reason why I see the smarter, more experienced people in our industry–the ones who have professional self-esteem and view themselves as true business owners and masters of the expertise of administrative support–embracing the term Administrative Consultant as a better representative and more respectful name for who we are and what we do.

It’s definitely a legitimate issue since many people bring the topic up every so often. I’m not judging or discounting it, but I have to admit I’ve never understood it.

When I was in the workforce, I loved to gab with others as much as the next person, but when I was intent on working, I really didn’t like being bothered and much preferred to be alone.

I remember one position I had before I advanced up to administrative assistant where we sat in quads with four people inside a cubicle. And there was one girl who chattered away incessantly every single day, all day long, from the the time we arrived until it was time to go home. It about drove me insane!

Come to think of it, I’m sort of like that in my personal life. Our home is my cocoon. I can’t stand people dropping by unannounced and don’t like lots of company. Just me and my honey-bunny. But get me out on the town or have me throw a party, and I’m a totally gregarious social butterfly.

So one of the things I love about working for myself and working in my own home office is that I don’t have to deal with the Chatty Kathies anymore. I can totally go into my own little world and work without distraction for hours on end to my heart’s content.

Of course, my daughter is grown and on her own now so I don’t have to deal with young ones about, but I can totally empathize with how challenging that must be for those with kids still at home to also try to run a business at the same time.

Yet I never suffer from feelings of isolation. Generally speaking, I work until I don’t feel like working and then I stop. I just let my body and my mind and my mood be my guide. I have a full life outside of business so there’s always something else to do if that’s what I feel like. And if I need to take a little break during the day now and then (which I do frequently) and want to connect with colleagues, that’s what Virtual Assistant forums and other online business groups are great for. And on those occasions when I’d like a bit of human contact and live socializing, I just scoop up my laptop and head to one of my favorite local coffee shops.

Of course, I do realize that I consciously and intentionally engineered my life this way. And for that I am deeply grateful every single day.

I’m assuming other Virtual Assistants/Administrative Consultants have family, friends and other interests outside of their businesses. So for those who still suffer from feeling isolated, I’m curious about why or when those feelings comes up for you? Is it the need for the physical presence of other people? Does networking and conversing in our industry forums alleviate isolation for you at all? If you have kids at home while you work, does that help alleviate feelings of isolation or do you really just need more adult interaction? Or are you just working so much and have so much to do, you just don’t have time to partake in anything that would alleviate those feelings? Is that lack of self-care in that particular area affecting your work/life and if so, in what ways?

Please do share in this discussion as I think it will be really helpful to those who are suffering with this issue in our industry.

I have a client who only sells wholesale products with an occasional retail customer. I have convinced him to think about sending a mass email marketing campaign/newsletter for his wholesale customers since his previous website designer never even introduced this idea to him. His response was that he only sells to wholesale customers and is not sure what to send to them.  My suggestion was to send loyalty rewards, small one-time bonus, or a small gift thanking them for their business. Do you have any suggestions for a marketing campaign from a wholesale company to its customers? –LN

Nah, I don’t get into advising clients on how to market their businesses. That’s not administrative support and marketing consulting isn’t the business I’m in.

I might offer my views and suggestions from an administrative standpoint. I would also provide them with the administrative support related to executing and implementing many of their marketing activities and initiatives.

But beyond that, how they market their business is up to them. Or between them and their marketing consultant.

I think too many VAs are pressured into thinking that they have to fill ALL these other roles in their clients’ businesses. And that’s just not the case. The ONLY role you have to fulfill is the one you are in business to fulfill–administrative support. You will burn yourself out really quick trying to be all things, do all things, for clients, not to mention greatly diminish your effectiveness with all the constant switching of gears.

I mean, would you ask a plumber to fix your car? Of course not. They’re completely different kinds of expertise and lines of work.

Have opinions. Share ideas, resources and suggestions. Being a partner to clients means they get the benefits of your experiences and input. That’s definitely of value and they might learn or hear about something new because of that that they wouldn’t otherwise. But don’t feel like you have to take on roles you aren’t in business to take on.

And definitely don’t expend your time and energy being more invested in helping with something that the client isn’t even interested in. You can’t care more about their business than they do themselves.

You’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’t making it clear exactly what business you are in and what your expertise is.

Or, let’s say you are both a plumber AND a mechanic.

Would anyone with a properly working brain think that plumbing and auto repair are the same thing?

Of course not.

They’d expect to be charged and processed separately for each because they are two completely different things.

Just because you might do both things doesn’t make them the same thing.

Get clear about what you are in business to do. Distinguish the one main thing from other, differing things you might offer as well.

Because “anything and everything” isn’t a business category or a profession, much less an expertise.

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.