How’s it going in your VA business?
Are you happy? Fulfilled? Excited to get to work every day?
Okay maybe that last one might be a stretch every day (!) but if your business is not exciting for you – and if you aren’t generally happy to do what you do, it’s time to step back and take a quick assessment.
What is your biggest struggle with your VA business?
When I ask VAs this I usually get the following answers: not enough clients, not enough money, not enough time to market or network … that type of thing.
It’s always a matter of not enough of one thing and too much of another.
Many of these problems have very simple solutions.
It’s about where you spend your time, and how you make decisions.
Let’s break these down.
Not enough clients.
If you don’t have enough clients, why is that? Are you talking with people who are not signing with you? Are you not talking to enough people? Getting clients requires connecting with people who might use your services.
A lot of VAs I know hang out their shingle and wait for clients to come to them. Or they reach out to people once and leave it at that. Or when they reach out to people, they don’t get the right message across, and the client says no.
These things will never get you clients.
To get clients, you need to have a solid goal and solid action steps that you work at every day (or every week). Especially in the beginning, you have to work to get your name out to clients. Referrals come after you have found a great pool of clients who need your services, but it often doesn’t start like that.
So if you don’t have enough clients, look at what you are doing to get them. If you aren’t reaching out daily to prospects with a really solid marketing message, that’s one reason. If you are talking to people and they aren’t signing, it’s what you are saying (or not saying) that is the problem.
Not enough money.
If you aren’t making enough money in your VA business, why is that?
You set your rates. You sign the clients you bring on. If you aren’t making enough money, it’s not the clients’ fault, is it?
The good news is you can change this today!
If this is your biggest problem, look at how you are charging your clients. If you are billing by the hour, you could be losing time – you see, the faster you get at any task, you end up making less money. This often happens when we get busy. We work faster, but earn less. Switching your billing to by the task from by the hour makes more sense.
If your hourly (or billable) rate is too low, you may have to raise it. There are ways to raise your rates for existing clients – yes, they may choose to stay or go – but bringing in new clients for a higher rate is a quick solution.
Analyze your rates and make a change where needed to solve this very common problem for VAs.
Not enough time.
We all have the same amount of time in every day. How are you using yours?
If you find you don’t have enough time to market your business, or to get our networking, you aren’t using your time right.
Take a look at how you are spending your time every day. I often suggest writing down everything you do in a day (and how long you spend doing it) on a piece of paper. Do this for a week and you will have a very good idea of where your time is going.
I can absolutely guarantee you that it’s not all client time or even productive non-billable time for your own business. There is a lot of time that you are probably wasting that could be used in a better way. Like networking or marketing. Or doing sales conversations with prospective new clients.
Our time is the thing we need to manage very well in order to have a successful business. Where are you spending your time?
When you look at these three very common problems, your business probably has one issue (or maybe even all three).
The way to shape your business into the one you want – the one that you dreamed of – is to focus on the issues one at a time and solve them.
Not just solve them for the moment, but change the way you handle them moving forward. It’s how you grow as a business owner, and how your business grows as a result.
Take action on these simple steps above to make a difference in your business today.
Make decisions that help move yourself forward. If something is not going right, fix it. Trust me, you will wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.
And, if you are really struggling to get clients, make more money, or manage your time better, maybe it’s time to get some help.
The business skills I teach are skills that you can take forward in your business and use over and over again (I have, in my own business!)
Check out my events page here: www.yourvamentor.com/events to see the options. Can’t get started? See the Getting Started as a VA program to build your foundation. Need more money? See the Creating Services Packages Program to restructure your service offerings. Need more clients? Look at the Earn 50K as a VA Live Group Program to rebuild your business model and marketing message for a higher level of clients.
Or if you just need help setting goals and reaching them, check out our Inspired Action Mastermind Group for VAs. It’s a low-cost, high value group program for you to set goals, get accountability and achieve success. We’d love to have you!