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I want to chat with you today about the three rookie mistakes that you’re making when you’re starting your virtual assistant business.
My business has been shifting over the last eight months. I have started taking on clients as an online business manager and I’ve been building a virtual assistance agency so I can serve the VA clients that I had and the many referrals that are still coming in. And what this means is that I have been working with many VAs in different stages of their business. Some are brand new to the fields and others are seasoned.
There were three rookie mistakes that I see newer virtual assistants make in their business that are keeping them from finding success and keeping them from establishing trust with their clients. I know that I made all three of these mistakes and I was starting in my business, so I want to give you the advice that I would give myself three years ago when I was just starting out.
Not communicating effectively with your clients
The first rookie mistake you’re probably making is not communicating effectively with your clients. This absolutely starts from day one. I highly recommend that, as part of your onboarding process for clients, you put together a welcome packet that goes over your hours of operation, how you handle holidays and vacations, talking about where you’ll be communicating and what that will look like. If clients know from day one how they can expect to hear from you, you’re going to prevent a lot of issues down the road. Another secret tool I have in my handbag is that every Friday we send out emails to clients, letting them know what was accomplished that week, what is on deck for the next week and how many hours they’ve used in their monthly retainer. And they absolutely love having these updates. Most clients will not want you to send a daily update saying, “I did all these things today” but they want to know where you’re at on their projects. They want to make sure that you’re making consistent action so taking that time just to connect with them once a week is super, super powerful.
Struggling with your niche
The second rookie mistake you’re probably making is that you’re struggling with your niche. There’s a lot of advice out there about how to come up with your ideal client avatar. Some people recommend getting so specific like you’re going down to what loves their reading and what color hair they have and how many kids they have. I think a lot of times when you get so specific it’s almost like that and you sit around waiting for a magical unicorn to appear. And the reality is that when you’re starting out, it is more realistic to niche down by the service that you will provide a client. I will say that deciding whether you want to work with a service-based business like a coach or somebody who is providing online courses or doing something like that versus somebody who is working in the e-commerce space.
Making sure you’re specific about how you’re going to show up because the skill sets are very different is important. But saying from the get-go, “I’m going to start by getting really good at social media marketing and I’m going to provide those services to different kinds of businesses as I figure out who it is that I love to work with” is helpful. If I look at my ideal client Avatar from day one of my business, there are a lot of ways that what I’m doing right now is just totally not within that at all. But I learned what I love to do by working with a lot of different types of clients. So niche down by the service that you provide instead of getting so hung up on the type of person that you’re going to serve.
Showing up in your business consistently
The last mistake that I see, I know that I still struggle with in my business is showing up consistently. A lot of people I see don’t want to market their services because they feel like they’re not ready. You know their website’s not ready or they feel like they want to have a lead magnet or they just feel really self-conscious about going on Facebook live or how to come up with content for their Facebook page or Instagram page. The reality is that you’re never going to feel ready for anything that you do. This is true for me. This is true for the clients that I work with. Done is always better than perfect because you will literally never find perfection. You need to focus on taking imperfect action daily because if you show up regularly, you connect with people, you’re going to find results.
My favorite tip for this (and what I did a lot when I was starting my business that started leading to success) is that I would hang out in Facebook groups where I knew kind of the people that I wanted to serve. I would focus on building relationships. I would say, “Hey, I would love to hop on a coffee chat with you just to learn about the work that you’re doing in the world and just to connect with you literally no sales pitch”. There were a lot of amazing things that came out of that. I made entrepreneur friends and I also found people that I could refer to and they started referring me. Just because somebody is not your ideal client doesn’t mean that they’re not worth connecting with because they may know your ideal client, they may find that dreamboat client for you and pass them your way.
When you’re starting your business, the biggest asset that you have is time because you’re not spending all your time serving clients. So make the most of it. Leverage your time and go out and just connect. Because if you do this consistently and you recognize that done is better than perfect, you will find results.
