Ep.053 The Only Times Virtual Assistants Should Take “Unpaid” Clients

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A lot of new virtual assistants have the mistaken belief that they should discount their services or even offer free services at the beginning of their business. They think that because they are not experienced as virtual assistants that they should not be charging the rates that other VAs charge.

This is a trap! Doing work for free will not help you grow your business, except in some very specific situations. 

I’m Sharon Nissen, a virtual assistant mentor and the creator of The Support Squad. My mission is to help women build happy online businesses and find more ease, joy, & profit. Today, I’m going to share why you really shouldn’t be offering your services for free and the few times that it might be okay under the right circumstances.

You are not new!

Maybe you're new to being a virtual assistant and you don't have experience working online, but that doesn't mean that you're new or that you're completely unexperienced!

At this point in your life you've probably had several jobs and invested in education and training. All of your life experience goes into the expertise that you're going to be bringing to your clients.

They will always be looking for the next discount

If you offer your services at a discount, people are always gonna be looking for that next discount from you. They're never going see the value in paying full price for your services.

One thing that I like to recommend instead of discounting your services is to offer a bonus, like a strategy call or a video training. Rather than giving a discount on your service, add some value! 

They are taking up time that you could spend looking for paying clients

When you are taking your time doing work for free in order to gain experience, you are taking away time that you could be spending marketing yourself, networking, and getting paying clients.

There are only so many hours in a day. How many of them do you honestly want to spend doing work for free when you could be investing that same time into earning money? 

They are usually not your ideal client

Your ideal client shouldn't be someone that wants free services, - and if that is your ideal client you might wanna do some work to rework your ideal client avatar.

You may think that you're gaining experience, but you're actually gaining the wrong kind of experience. You’re going to end up working with people that are not on the level that you want to be working with, which could end up teaching you bad lessons about business. 

You will get burned out

When you’re working for free, you're not getting the reward and the satisfaction of earning an income for your work. This makes it a lot harder to justify the hard work, the hours, the training, and the time spent if you're not bringing in any income. 

Trading services with another VA

Let’s say you offer Pinterest management services and you have a virtual assistant friend that does website design. You don't want to design your own website and they don't want to manage their own Pinterest. That's a great place to trade services instead of paying out of pocket.  

Another way that this can really benefit you down the road is if you build relationships with other virtual assistants that have the same ideal client avatar. Down the road is you could end up subcontracting to them or referring them….or vice versa. 

Building these relationships with VAs can be so valuable beyond just getting the experience that you get from doing the tasks, you also get the added benefit of building a long-lasting relationship.

An ideal client that’s already your client, introducing a new service -  

If you are introducing a new service into your repertoire and you don't have a lot of experience in it, you can let your client know that you are offering this new service and you would like to try it out with them. 

If they take you up on it, make sure to set a deadline for when the free or discounted service is going to end. And you want to make sure they're clear on what the pricing will be after that deadline.  

If you want to dive deeper into our thriving virtual assistant community, here’s what’s coming up in the membership this month:

Our theme is Taking Control of Your Business Finances and accounting guru Danielle Hayden is teaching us her method of creating a financial dashboard that will help you get rid of accounting overwhelm, ditch any financial shame, and get you started on the path to a healthy mindset around your business finances.

To help you build a healthy money mindset, members will receive a Visualize Abundance meditation that will help you remove any mental blocks that are keeping you from calling more abundance into your life and business.

I’m also going to be sharing a Monthly Budgeting Workbook to help you get clear about your monthly finances so that you can make smart business decisions.

And of course, we’ll have 2 live group coaching calls and you’ll get access to allllllllll the past content in the membership area.

 Get instant access when you sign up for a free 14-day trial.

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