On of my clients, Sharon Melnick did a seminar today for the Virtual Assistant Networking Association on ways that virtual assistant get in their own way. Sharon is a Harvard affiliated pscyhologist who has done extensive research on how and why people get stuck in their businesses and in their lives. As part of her research, she asked me what I thought the major issues are for virtual assistants. This is the list that I came up with:
1. Time Management. Danielle nailed this issue today in her blog - The Gritty Virtual Assistant. Virtual assistants are basically in the business of selling time and convenience. I think many VAs are very good at managing their clients time, but much less good at managing their own time. This also shows up as a very weak boundaries around work. Being on call available 24/7 to clients does not really increase the value of your time.
2. Feeling Like You Have to Be All Things To All People Many VAs feel that they have to be able to do everything personally for their clients. I’m guilty of this one (mostly because I love learning how to do new things…) Stacy Brice hinted at a solution to this problem in Virtual Moxie – simply that VAs should not do everything. Do what you love and arrange for someone else to do the rest. I’ve finally started to do this with some of the editing work in my VA practice with great success 
3. Acting Like An Employee Many, many VAs have decades of experience in support roles. They still act like employees and wait for instructions. When vitual assistants don’t take initiative and treat their client’s business as their own they are shortchaniging themselves and their clients.
4. Working in the Business not ON the Business Many people decide to do VA work because of the possibiity of earning a full time income billing less than 40 hours a week. Virtual Assistants are sometimes hesitant to budget time and money on their own personal development.
5. Not Owning Their Value Many new Virtual Assisants don’t realize that they are running a business not contracting several part-time jobs. It is impossible to break even in business when you charge $10 an hour. Charging low rates shows that you don’t value the services or the partnership that you can provide to your clients.
What do you think are the main things VAs do that hold themselves back?
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kathiemt 04.11.08 at 3:04 am
Great outline, thanks for sharing it.
The mindset thing is something many new VAs struggle to get over - behaving like an employee instead of thinking like a buisness owner. So important. I have written about this often at my blog http://www.vadirectory.net
Working on the business - it took me several years (I’ve been in business for over 14 years) before I realised I really needed time to do my own bookkeeping, thinking, reading and writing and not on the weekends. I now only do client work 4 days a week and work on my own business on the 5th day. This has allowed me to have weekends back to myself and if I want to continue reading and writing, that’s fine, but I’m not working in my business at those times anymore. However, it is important for new VAs to establish a reputation with their clients and working longer hours in the early years is often necessary if they are going to meet deadlines and show the client they are reliable. Once a good working relationship is established they can pull back on the number of hours they are working as the client base is usually more stable.
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