Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Today we are going to talk about how to get to 5K months in your VA business.
Today’s Quote: You can’t have a million-dollar dream with a minimum-wage work ethic. – Stephen C. Hogan
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Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
One of the first things I ask VAs that I coach is how much money they want to earn in their VA business.
So many of them can’t tell me that. They say they don’t know.
We don’t like to talk about money, I get that, but if you can’t tell me what your expectations are from your VA business, then that’s where we need to start.
Do you want to replace your corporate salary? How much is that?
Do you want to make enough to pay bills in your household? What bills? Mortgage, groceries, car? How much is that?
Do you want to earn the fun money – savings, vacations, clothes and tickets to concerts or sporting events? How much is that?
You have to quantify what you need to earn in order to figure out how to earn it.
When I ask them if 5K is something that they strive for, many of them say yes for sure. That’s a happy amount of money.
Oh,, so you do know how much you want to earn (and yes, it can be more than grocery money!)
Earning 5K usually means that you can pay yourself 1K a week and pay all of your expenses too.
Remember that not all of the revenue your business brings in is yours. Paying yourself first is a great concept but what it means is that you need to set your rates at a place where bringing in x dollars means you can pay yourself y, and still have enough left to pay expenses of z.
So now that we know we want to earn 5K a month, how do we do that?
Like I said earlier, it takes some mindset shifting, some math, some confidence, and a plan.
First, you need to shift your mindset to believe you can do it. Nothing happens if you don’t believe it will.
How can you do that? You need to find someone who has earned 5K as a VA so they can show you the way. Hello!
Luckily I have earned way more than 5K as a VA. So it’s a good thing you’re here today listening to this episode.
You also have to be able to see the path you need to take to get there.
Not knowing where you are going doesn’t work. You need to see the steps to the path. You need to plan your route. Even if you haven’t been there before, you still need to plan it.
If you were going to drive to another city, you would find a map to help you decide which roads to take to get there. It’s okay if it’s your first time driving to that city, but you need to choose a route from the map to have a path to follow.
It’s the same thing when you are planning in your business. You need to know every step of the route you are going to take – the action steps you are going to take – to get you to the goal you seek.
If you don’t know what those steps are, you need to work with someone who does.
The next thing you have to do is plan how you are going to earn that 5K.
And that means money.
It’s called revenue forecasting, and you need to understand how it works to build your 5K a month business.
You can’t just decide that you are going to make 5K and then hope that it happens.
Everything you do has to be focused on that – strategically.
Here’s what I mean:
I’m going to make 5K this month. Oh I didn’t. Oh next month I will for sure. Oh I didn’t again. Oh I’m going to try something new to do it and I’ll definitely get there this month. Oh I didn’t.
That’s what happens when you don’t have a plan.
So let’s talk about it in better detail than that.
How many clients do you need to earn 5K?
If your clients pay you $500 a month, you need 10 clients to earn 5K
If your clients pay you $800 a month, you need 6 clients to earn almost 5K
If your clients pay you $1000 a month, you need 5 clients to earn 5K.
Sound good? Make sense?
Great – but you aren’t there yet. That’s not a plan. That’s just the starting blocks.
You need to be able to predict how many of each of those clients you will work towards getting in the coming month, so you can do the math.
Maybe it’s 5 high ticket clients. Great.
But more likely than not, if you don’t have those $1000 clients yet, you will need to get some combination of clients to make up your 5K.
You can’t suddenly just expect to find $1K clients if you have never gotten one before. It’s not impossible, but it’s rare. So we need to build our business to that.
It might instead look something like this:
4 $500 clients (2K) + 2 $800 clients (1600) + 1 $1000 client (1K) = 4600
As you get better at networking and client acquisition, you will get more high level clients. But you can still get to 5K before that happens.
How?
You need to learn how to get clients. It’s that simple.
You can do it though. You’ve learned things before.
Let’s say you wanted to knit a sweater. What do you need to do to get that done? You need to learn to knit. Maybe Youtube videos. Maybe Grandma will show you.
Let’s say you wanted to bake a loaf of bread. What do you need to do to bake a great loaf of bread? You need a recipe, and you need to probably practice because dough can be challenging, and you might need to do it a few times before you get it right, or get it to your liking.
Let’s say you wanted to drive a car. What do you need to do to get your license? You need to learn to drive. Maybe take a drivers course. Or maybe your older sister will teach you like mine did. You need to practice. A lot.
All of these things are things you can learn, or maybe already have learned.
It’s exactly the same thing that we need to do to get clients.
You can’t just expect to figure it out and have it miraculously work.
Why would you expect that of yourself?
This is a very important part of your business – getting clients. And yet, so many VAs have never learned to do it properly, and therefore they struggle.
Are you struggling? Why?
Sometimes you can get lucky and get clients without understanding why or how you did it. That’s cool, but most times it doesn’t happen that way.
That’s why according to a US bank study, more than 82% of business fail. They don’t have enough clients. They don’t have enough cash flow or they don’t manage what does come in well enough to sustain their business.
If you don’t have enough clients, you need to learn how to get them.
What can we put in place to help us learn?
Training, like knitting that sweater. Maybe some practice to get the tension of the yarn right, the combination of colours, and so on. Learning what you need to do to get clients is one part – but the doing, the practice is essential too.
A plan, like the recipe to make the bread. You need to have something to follow that will help you identify your action steps and your path – and will help you to know what to do and when. This plan will differ for everyone regarding getting clients, but you need to start with something. And again, practice makes you better at this.
And a deadline, like booking your drivers license test and then practicing like crazy to be ready in time for that date. When you are looking to get clients, you have to put a date on the calendar for your goal, and then practice, practice, practice.
Practice what? Talking about how you help your clients.
If you don’t have enough clients, you should be spending all of your time networking and having business conversations with people.
If you aren’t doing that right now, then that’s why you have no clients.
Getting yourself out there with social media is not the way to get clients.
Sitting waiting for the perfect rfp to come along is not the way to get clients.
You need to go out and get the clients. Especially if you don’t have enough.
And that means you need to have conversations with people.
That’s the next part of our episode – if we go back to our example cited earlier, you need 4 $500 clients, 2 $800 clients and 1 $1K client, that’s 7 clients.
That means 7 sales conversations need to go in our favour. 7 people need to say yes to working with us.
What is your conversion rate for sales conversations?
If you don’t know, go back to your last 10 sales conversations and figure out how many of them said yes.
If 3 of them said yes, then your conversion rate is 30% – which is not very good, but it’s a decent start for this math.
So that means 3 out of the 10 said yes.
And therefore if you needed 3 clients you would have to have 10 sales conversations to get them, right?
So if you need 7 clients, you will need to multiply the number of conversations you are having – and you will need to have approx 21 conversations to get your 7.
That might sound like a lot, but 22 conversations in a month is only 5 a week. One a day.
And as I said, if you aren’t booked out with clients, you should easily be able to do one sales conversation a day.
It should be your highest priority!
Of course as your conversion rate gets higher, you can talk to fewer people. Because more of them are saying yes.
My conversion rate was 80% when I was a VA – and that was simply because I was fully entrenched in my clients community where they were networking and seeking business support and advice. I was there, every day. Networking and working with their colleagues. It was easy to get clients.
I was on a waiting list. I raised my rates. I hired a team. I did great!
It pays off to get better at conversions.
It pays off to have sales conversations.
But to get them you can’t just ask for them. You have to build know, like and trust with your clients and potential clients first.
Go where they are.
Find them where they hang out. Hang out with them.
Be their expert. Get eyes on your business. Get eyes on you helping people in that community.
Forecast what you need to bring in and then work to bring it in.
I challenge you to do some forecasting and planning with your VA business right now.
What do you have coming in next month?
Maybe you already have 2400 coming in. To get to your 5K, what more do you need?
Another 2600.
So maybe you work to get 3 $500 clients, one $800 client, and a one off $300 project.
When you know exactly what you need to hit your goal, you can seek it out so much more easily.
If you work with someone like me to create your plan and learn how to forecast, you can even create services that help you reach your goals.
Of course we want consistent 5K months, but learning to do it helps you get there.
And you have to believe it’s possible (it totally is).
Let’s go back to today’s quote: You can’t have a million-dollar dream with a minimum-wage work ethic. – Stephen C. Hogan
Amazing quote.
If you are working towards squeaking by – by not doing the work, by not spending what you need to spend, by letting clients nickel and dime you, then you will stay at your minimum-wage level.
Your work ethic has to exceed what you have ever done before – doing the right things, thinking the right way, and always always moving in the direction of your goal – in order to reach it.
Want 5K months? You need to map it out. You need to learn what you don’t know. You need to take daily actions. You need to get help when you are stuck.
Don’t be the VA who wishes for 5K months. Be the 5K VA who easily gets them every month.
I can help you get there. I can help with your mindset, boost your confidence, help you do the math, and help you create your plan.
What You Need to Do Next:
I am here to help. It’s the only reason I’m here at all, as you know. To help you become a ridiculously good VA.
I’ve helped hundreds of VAs through challenges just like yours, and got them on their way to growing their business and the lifestyle that they dream of. That you dream of.
I’d love to do the same for you.
Let’s work together privately to get you to your really big goal. It’s the fastest way to get results and we can start right away. Learn more about private coaching here.
The Virtual Circle (TVC) is a monthly mastermind group for Virtual Assistants just like you. We get together 3 times a month for group Zoom sessions to talk about what you are struggling with, working on, or celebrating. It’s a close knit community of your VA colleagues that provides the best kind of support for your VA business. Learn more about TVC here.
My self study program Getting Started as a VA can help you get your VA business started easily and quickly too. You can sign up right away and be on your way to getting clients by the end of the program, with all the right foundations in place. Check out the program here.
Reach out to me if you need to talk about where you are stuck and what the right option might be to get you moving. It’s literally all I’m here to do is help you get to where you want to go. Book a complimentary Cut to the Chase call with me here.