After you set up your Virtual Assistant business, you may struggle to effectively manage your time. It’s actually quite tricky to complete the work of multiple clients as well as undertake your own business activities and family responsibilities. But don’t worry, I know a multitude of tricks to help you juggle the lot, without losing your sanity.
Every Virtual Assistant needs to find clients, but unless you come from a marketing background, you’ve probably never promoted yourself before. In fact, the thought of marketing may even make you feel a bit anxious. People can only hire you if they know you exist, so here are 40 ways to market your VA business to get you started.
The most frequently asked question from new Virtual Assistants in my VA Handbookers Facebook group is “How do I get my first client?”. Because marketing and looking for work can be daunting when you’re first starting out, here are the four most successful ways I’ve found to land your very first client.
If you’re a Virtual Assistant who charges by the hour, at some point you’re going to reach an income plateau as there are only so many billable hours in a day. You know you need to raise your rates as time goes on, but you’re worried you might lose some of your clients if you do. Here’s how to up your prices like a pro along with a customisable email template.
If you’re a new or potential Virtual Assistant it can be really difficult to imagine what types of business owners would hire you and how that relationship would begin. I already have a blog post on how VAs landed their first client, but I was interested in finding out whether the same methods applied when it came to signing up subsequent clients.
If you’re a new Virtual Assistant or thinking of becoming one, I’m sure you’re worried about how you will get new clients. So to help you get an idea of who could be that elusive and exciting first client, I asked members of my VA Handbookers Facebook group a load of questions about their first one including how they got them and what tasks they needed help with.
If you want a satisfying and fulfilling freelance career it’s really important to have clients that you enjoy working with – because there’s no point in leaving a (horribly unfulfilling, tedious but secure) full-time job to still be miserable at work! A great client is a truly wonderful thing and they’re actually not as hard to find as you might think.
Difficult clients can undermine your business, knock your confidence, feed your insecurity, make you doubt yourself and even make you start to hate freelancing. So it’s really important you know how to identify and manage all the different types. Remember that you work with your clients, not for them, so it pays to steer the process proactively and manage the relationship before it gets out of hand.
Today I’m going to share a MASSIVE blunder that I made with one of my main clients just so you can see that it isn’t so much the mistake that’s the problem, it’s how you respond and deal with that mistake that matters to the client. And hold on to your hats and hide behind your fingers, because this was a pretty big and rather embarrassing error!
Annoyingly, you will regularly be contacted by people who have absolutely no idea what they want you to do. They know they need help, but they’re often so busy they can’t think straight and really aren’t sure of the best way to use you. You obviously need to fix this or you won’t end up doing any work for them at all!
