Archives for June 2018

What to do During Slow Times in Your Virtual Assistant Business

June 27, 2018 By Alicia Jay Leave a Comment

As a business owner and virtual assistant, you’re going to have very busy times and some quiet times, too. But how do you handle this up and down?

That’s what we’ll address in today’s video post.

Watch the video here (transcript below):

Full transcript:

It’s Alicia here at New VA Advice where I offer business, marketing and mindset coaching to help virtual assistants get out of overwhelm and create a business that they love. Today I’m here to answer a question from one of my coaching clients.

In your VA business, what do you do during the slow times, when everything slows down and you’re not as busy?

This particular coaching client has been very busy with client work. Now things are quiet. Her clients don’t need anything from her right now.

First, this is normal. A lot of VAs go through this. It depends on the services that you offer, the clients that you work with, and their schedules. It does happen. We get this ebb and flow. There are busy times and then there are quiet times.

What do you do during the quiet times?

It really depends on your answer to this question:

During this time, are you looking to bring in more income? Yes or no?

I’ll give you a list of things that you can do for both answers.

If you’re not focusing on income building activities

If you’re not looking to bring in more income at this time, there are things that you can do with your down time.

First, you can just relax. You are allowed to take time off in your business if it makes sense for you. I’m giving you permission to do that. It is okay to step away from it for a little and take a break. We all need that. It’s nice when you can get it.

However, if you’re looking for other things to do in order to fill your time, here are some suggestions.

You can organize and clean. There is always something to do, whether it’s in your office or on your computer. Think about your computer files and client files. You might have a physical filing cabinet. It’s a great time to clean and organize these things. Clean it all up and make it easier for yourself.

It’s the same thing with processes and systems in your business. This is a good time to see what’s working and what’s not. What can you do to make things more efficient, so that when things are busy, you don’t feel overwhelmed?

Another thing you can do during this down time is restructure your schedule. Is your current schedule working for you? Remember, we’re building a business around our lives, not the other way around. Does it make sense for you the way that you have things right now?

We’ve talked before about creating time blocks for things and moving those blocks around so that you have a bit of structure but also a bit of fluidity in your schedule. Think about the time blocks that you use in your life. You might have client work time, time to work on your business, personal time, family time and household duties time. Look at your schedule and see if it makes sense right now for you or if you want to change something around.

It’s also a good time to revisit your income and business goals. I’m a firm believer that you don’t want to just write your goals down, put them aside, and never look at them again. If you haven’t checked in on those things recently and taken a bird’s eye view of your business, now is a great time to do that. Make sure that it’s still working for you and that you have a plan in place to reach those goals.

If you feel that you need to work on your schedule, organizing things or revising your goals, then the Ultimate VA Business Planning Blueprint is what you need. I give you the processes that I use in my business. You get worksheets and checklists. This product walks you through the different things that you can do to clean, organize, change your processes, and focus on your goals.

Grab the Ultimate VA Business Planning Blueprint here.

Are you caught up in tracking income and expenses for taxes? Yes, it’s something that we can do continuously in our businesses, but some people don’t. Check in on that. Are you documenting things properly so that you don’t feel stressed at tax time? Now is a good time to start making a plan for how you can implement that into your schedule regularly so that you’re not waiting until tax time to do those things.

You can also use the down time to take some new courses. Maybe there’s something that you’ve been looking into for your business. Maybe it’s personal growth or business growth. Now might be the time to fit those things in.

Those are suggestions of things that you can do when it’s not as busy in your VA business if bringing in more income is not your main goal during this time.

Here are some suggestions if bringing in income is a main goal during this slow time.

The most important thing to have in place is a marketing plan that works for you. It will help you to fill the down times more easily than if you don’t have a marketing plan in place and you’re not working it regularly.

I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but you always want to be marketing. You always want to do something to market your business. When you have those busy times, it doesn’t mean that you have to do marketing activities that take up so much time in your schedule that you don’t have time for client work. There are things that, if you implement them during these down times, you can go into maintenance mode and fit in small pockets of time for marketing while you’re busy.

What kinds of things am I talking about?

During a slow period, make sure that your current clients know all of the services that you provide. It’s always easier to get more work from existing clients than it is to bring in new clients. Maybe you haven’t communicated with your clients to share what else you do. You can tell them, “By the way, I also offer XYZ. I’d be happy to help you with that. Let’s look at how we can work on that together.” This would be a good time to talk to your existing clients about what else they might have going on that you can support them with.

It’s also a good time to think about networking and getting in front of new people. What kinds of events can you attend in order to get in front of a new audience? This can be offline or online. It can be local networking meetings. Don’t waste your time just going to any and all of them. Make sure that they include your target market. Look for online networking events or groups that make sense for you to join where you can get in front of your target market. Show up and be helpful. It’s not a salesy thing. You want to be helpful, show that you’re there, and that you care about the type of business that they run. Show them that you want to help them run it more successfully.

Another big thing that you can do if you’re looking to bring in more income during a down time is to work on your list building strategy. List building is one of my favorite ways to bring in new clients. The best way to do it is to create some type of free offer that your target market would be interested in. They will exchange their name and email address in order to receive that free offer from you. They are also giving you permission to continue contacting them via email.

You give them the free offer, but then you keep that line of contact going. You keep connecting with them. Everyone’s schedule is different. You might write to them a couple of times a week or a couple of times a month. You’re staying top of mind because you’re keeping in touch with them. You’ve given them something valuable that will help them in their business—your free offer that they signed up for.

Then you’re going to keep checking in with them here and there to offer tips and advice. List building does work. It’s great when you have those down times and you need to fill a client spot. You can go to that list that’s made up of people already interested in what you do. You can let them know. It doesn’t have to be a negative thing. You can tell them, “I have great news for you. I have this opening. I’m looking specifically to help people with X. If this is you and you’re struggling with this in your business, this is the solution that I offer for that. I would love to work with you.”

If you need help with list building, get my Grow Your Client Base ebook. It’s all about list building for virtual assistants. It’s very specific on how you can create a free offer to attract your target market and set it up on your website. This product walks you through setup with WordPress and AWeber as your list building tool. However, you can still do these things with other tools. Maybe you have Squarespace, or you don’t have a website at all. You can still use the concepts. This product will show you how to create your free offer, get the word out there about it without spending a bunch of money on ads, and how to continue to connect with those people on your list so that you can eventually turn them into clients.

Get your copy of Grow Your Client Base right here.

You can also think about working with clients who don’t just have one-off projects. Maybe you want to restructure your target market to work with people who do have ongoing things. This way, you’re always doing something for them. Maybe that means restructuring your services or the way that you’re pricing things. Instead of charging hourly, maybe you need to think about creating packages or ongoing monthly retainers where clients are working with you every month.

Those are some of my best suggestions for handling the down time in your business.

I’m also available via one-on-one and group coaching if you need more help. My clients get some of these products for free when they work with me. For example, if you need help with marketing, I offer a one-on-one and a group option. We can figure out a plan that makes sense specifically for you, not all VAs in general.

I hope that this was helpful. I gave you some free actionable tips. You can read this over and do something in your business today to help you with those down times.

You can take a look at the product resources that I’ve mentioned.

You can also schedule a free call with me to talk about coaching so that the two of us can figure out the best plan for you.

I’d love to hear your opinions on what you do with your down time. If you’ve tried any of these techniques, let me know.

Getting Started Series Part 7: How to Track Money in Your VA Business

June 21, 2018 By Alicia Jay Leave a Comment

Hi, it’s Alicia here at newVAadvice.com and I’m back with another segment in the Getting Started Series.

Grab the audio version of this post here:

Today we’re going to talk about tracking your money in your virtual assistant business.

Disclaimer: I am not an accountant and I’m also not providing legal advice. This is simply an informative session. The information that I share is based on guidelines for the US. Please seek professional advice if you have any questions as to what’s best for you and your business.

There are a couple of things that you need to think about when it comes to this topic.

First, you need to consider how you’re going to collect money from clients and where you store that money. Second, you need to consider tracking your income and expenses.

Housing Your Money

Let’s start with collecting money from your clients. First you need a place to house that money. You want to start with opening a separate bank account for your business. The IRS requires that you keep your business and personal financials separate from one another.

If you already have a good relationship with a bank for your personal account, you may want to check with them about a separate account for your business. You also have the option of a credit union. I suggest that you do some research and check into your options to decide what’s best for you.

Collecting Money

Once you have your separate account set up, you can start receiving payments from clients. We talked a little about this in Part 2 of the series. You want to make it easy for clients to pay you. And it’s easier now more than ever to receive payments virtually. But you’re not going to get away from some type of payment processing fee. It’s just the reality of doing business this way. I hear people asking all the time for the best option to receive payments online without having to pay fees. You’re not going to get around it. It’s the cost of doing business online. The good thing is that you’re able to write off those payment processing fees on your taxes. We’ll talk about taxes more later.

So, if you’re looking for a simple way to collect money from clients online, you can use PayPal. If you have a PayPal account, their invoicing feature is free to use. A client can choose to pay your invoice via their own PayPal account, and if they don’t have an account, they can pay with a credit card. You link your business bank account to your PayPal account. And once a payment is received, you can transfer the funds from PayPal to your bank account.

This way, if you’re accepting all of your payments via PayPal, it’s also an easy way to track your income. It’s all in one place, and you can print an income report any time you want.

Another free tool you can use to collect and track payments is Wave. You can send an invoice to a client, and they can pay with a credit card or bank transfer payment. You’re also able to track your expenses with this one, so you’d have income and expense tracking all in one place.

If you’d like other options for invoicing tools, you can check out this article that Loretta Oliver wrote on the topic over at VAHelper.com. She gives you a full breakdown on cost and ease of use for each tool, as well as comments from other service providers explaining what they use in their businesses.

Tracking Expenses

So, we’ve talked about where to keep your money, how to send invoices, and tracking income.

Now let’s talk about expenses. The type of expenses that you have in your business may be slightly different than someone else’s based on the equipment that you use and the services that you offer, for example. You need a way to track those expenses so that you can easily reference them for taxes and be able to write them off for your business.

Here is a list of some basic expenses that you may have in your business:

Office equipment/supplies (Ex: desk, computer, printer, toner, daily planner, pens, etc.)
Coaching and educational courses (Ex: business coaching, mastermind, skills courses, ebooks, etc.)
All or part of your phone bill if you use that phone for your business
If you have a dedicated office space, you can deduct part of your utilities and possibly homeowner’s insurance for the space
Tools or software that you use to run your business (Ex: AWeber, Dropbox, CRM)
Website hosting and domain name
All of part of your internet expenses
Internet security software
If you hire someone to handle something in your business (Ex: accountant, social media manager, tech VA)
Meals when meeting with a client or colleague
Travel expenses when related to your business
Payment processing fees

Those are just a few of the basic expenses that you can consider in your VA business. You need a way to keep track of these expenses. I mentioned Wave Apps earlier as an easy way to track your expenses. You want to use a system that’s easy for you and allows you to itemize.

Take a look at that article again over at VAHelper.com for more solutions.

If you’re trying to keep your business as paperless as possible, I recommend scanning in hard copy receipts and downloading or taking screen shots of online receipts. Most expense tracking tools allow you to scan or save a copy of a receipt and link it to the expense that you’re documenting. Then if you need to, you can click on that expense item and open up a copy of the receipt.

My suggestion is to make tracking your expenses a regular habit. If you stop by Staples, in store or online, and buy some toner, immediately open up your expense tracking software and add that item. Then you don’t have to stress and spend tons of time documenting things when tax times rolls around.

For more info on taxes and your VA business, listen in here as I interview a tax expert.

And that covers tracking money in your virtual assistant business. Setting up tools and processes like this now will save you time and effort in the future, and help you to run your business more smoothly.

Action steps:

Open up a separate bank account for your business
Decide on a tool for receiving payments
Decide on a tool for tracking income and expenses

Let me know what you use to track your money or leave a comment below.

Missed the previous segment? You can find it here.

Is Your Mindset Holding You Back From Success?

June 16, 2018 By Alicia Jay Leave a Comment

When I first started out online and was researching the virtual assistant industry, I didn’t really have a clue as to what I was doing.

I’d never run my own business.

I’d never worked online.

I didn’t know how to make a website.

I didn’t know how to market in order to get clients online.

But guess what?

I learned all of that.

It took a lot of time and effort, but it was so worth it to me to be able to run my own business.

To have time freedom and flexibility.

To spend more time with my family.

To make my own money so that we could pay the bills and have the extras in life that we wanted.

And I was successful in my VA business. I had regular clients that I really enjoyed working with. Since my focus is more on my coaching business now, I’ve chosen not to have as many VA clients anymore. But I do still have some, and some of those people still refer new clients to me.

It’s nice to have the option and know that this is all on MY terms.

The great thing is, the information is out there and available to you if you want to learn, too.

The internet is a pretty awesome tool that most of us have regular access to—it opens up the world to you.

But before I could do any of that learning, I had to BELIEVE that I could do it.

Honestly, I think that part was WAY harder than building a business.

When I first started, I constantly second-guessed myself.

I thought things like, “Why should this work out for ME? Do I think I’m special or something? I don’t know enough to make this work.”

Have you ever said any of those things to yourself?

The FIRST thing I had to learn was how to change my mindset.

I started by following people that I considered successful in the VA industry.

And you know what I found when I did that?

I found that a lot of them were just like me.

They were what I considered “regular” people. The people I followed didn’t have experience running a business or creating a website before they started online either.

But they did it.

And that gave me the smallest inkling that I could do it, too.

From there, I found other ways to make mindset shifts.

A lot of them were because my mentality was that of an employee and not a business owner.

I’d only ever been someone’s employee. I had to really think differently to be a business owner.

Once I started making some of these shifts, I was able to make progress in other areas of building and marketing my business.

So, is this mindset issue getting in YOUR way?

If so, I’d like to help.

I’ve packaged up all the things that helped me and put it all into a free ecourse.

It includes mental shifts as well as practical things that you can do to start thinking and acting like the business owner that you want to become. It has everything that helped me along the way, including resources, links, and action steps for you to take.

It’s called Shedding the Employee Mindset.

Just fill out the form below and get immediate access to the free ecourse.

How To Get A Mentor As A New Virtual Assistant

June 12, 2018 By Alicia Jay Leave a Comment

If you’re a new virtual assistant just starting out and/or you’re low on funds to invest in your business, you may be wondering if there’s a way to receive free mentoring so that you learn what you need to know.

I pondered this myself when I first started out online, but I did a lot of research and learned some things that helped me far more than I initially had planned. In this post, I’ll give you some examples, and I’ll tell you what you can do to get the results you really want.

Here are posts that I see often in my own private Facebook group as well as other places that new VAs congregate:

Example post #1: “Hey! I’m brand new to the VA industry and I was hoping that I could work for another VA for free or at a really reduced rate so that you can teach me everything you know about being a VA. I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”

Example post #2: “Hey! I’m brand new to the VA industry and I’m looking for someone to mentor or coach me for free to teach me everything I need to know about being a VA. In return, I’ll offer you my services for free.”

You might have seen posts like this in your online travels. Those people are hoping to get offers of free support from experienced VAs and VA coaches/mentors.

Those experienced VAs and VA coaches are NOT going to be willing to work with you for free. Let’s get into why that is, and how you can get the help you really need.

What’s in it for them?

Often, when I come across a situation where someone wants a mentor, they’re concentrating solely on what the mentor can do for THEM. But what are YOU bringing to the relationship?

Simply offering to do whatever tasks they might assign you in order to free up some of their time probably isn’t enough. If they accept that offer, they’ll actually be spending more of their time teaching you how to do those tasks.

This person will be taking time away from their business and money-making activities in order to help you.

In an article about mentoring, Selena Soo says, “You already know that relationships don’t work like that. In fact, relationships are a two-way street where both parties are equally invested in the partnership.” Read the full article here.

How did they get where they are?

You’re probably looking for help from this person because they are where you someday want to be with your business. Think about what they’ve done to get to this point. I’m sure they’ve put in a lot of effort to get here.

They’ve invested their time and finances. That’s not something they’re going to want to hand over for free. It seems fair that they would charge in order to share this knowledge and train/teach someone else.

Then what should you do instead?

Put some work in.

If you’re just starting your VA business now, you have so much at your disposal when it comes to technology and being able to research what you need. Google and YouTube are your friends!

I’m not suggesting that you use internet research in place of taking a course to advance a specific skill set. But when you’re stuck on something like adding an image to a blog post or how to purchase a domain name for your website, a quick internet search will most likely get you the answer that you need.

In an article on this topic, Ramit Sethi says, “If you want a mentor, DO YOUR HOMEWORK.” Read the full article here.

And you can get tons of basic business building info for free from places like SBA.gov (If you’re in the US) and your local SCORE chapter. Take some time and do a little research on your own.

Start where you are.

When I first started my business, I quickly realized the importance of investing in it. And I figured out that working with a coach or mentor could get me where I wanted to go much faster. But I just didn’t have the funds. So, what did I do?

I did as much research as I could on my own. I used Google and YouTube to answer basic questions.

I found a couple of people in the industry that I looked up to, and because I couldn’t afford to hire them as a coach or mentor, I did everything else I could to learn from them. I subscribed to their blogs and poured over the materials that I found there. I attended their free webinars. I joined their free groups. Then I purchased their lower ticket items.

Once I knew that I’d be a great fit, and this was the person that I wanted to learn from, I invested in their group coaching because it was more affordable. When I wanted to move up from there, build my business faster, and get all the info I needed in one place so that I could stop feeling so overwhelmed, I saved and invested in one-on-one coaching with them.

You could also approach a more experienced VA about subcontracting for them, but you want to make sure that you already have a skill set that will really bring value to their business and team.

Do your research.

We’ve been seeing an upswing lately in the industry on the number of people who are offering VA mentoring and coaching–but have only been a VA themselves for a few months to a year. Do some research. You can ask others who they work with as a coach or mentor. If you’ve found someone you’re interested in working with, check to see if they have testimonials. Ask to speak to past or existing coaching clients. Google them and check out their website and social media profiles.

Before I bought the very first product that I was interested in online, I checked reviews for the product, but I also researched the person who created it. I Googled her name with the words “scam” and “reviews” to see what came up. I did the same before working with my first business coach.

Many coaches and mentors offer a free consultation call. If you’re serious about working with them, schedule the call so that you can get to know more about each other and your options. For example, I offer a free startup call to people who want to learn more about coaching with me and/or are deciding if the VA industry is right for them.

So, if you’re really serious about starting and growing your VA business, start taking action to show that you’re serious. Do your research. Put in the effort. Invest when, where and however you can in your business.