Ep. 055 How to Overcome an Income Plateau as a Virtual Assistant with Tasha Booth
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Every virtual assistant hits an income plateau at some point in their business.
It’s that tricky place where you’ve finally filled your client roster and are earning a consistent income, but you can’t seem to reach your higher income goals.
There are lots of ways to overcome this business milestone, and I’ve brought Tasha Booth on the podcast to explain why income plateaus happen and how to move past them.
Tasha Booth began her journey in the online business space five years ago as a virtual assistant when she decided she was tired of living an ‘ordinary’ life on someone else’s terms. As her business grew, so did her commitment to helping others figure out how to make the life they craved a reality.
Now, whether she’s leading her team of 18 to support established coaches and course creators as the Founder and CEO of The Launch Guild agency, coaching virtual support professionals as they start and scale their own business, or hosting the ‘How She Did That’ podcast for VAs, OBMs, and project managers, Tasha is always helping other entrepreneurs live more fully in their zone of genius.
When she’s not supporting her team of 18, she proudly spends her time as an Air Force wife to her husband Scott, stepmom to Grace and Meredith, and work from home dog mom to Stanley and Boomer.
Connect with Tasha: The Launch Guild | Facebook | Instagram
Today we’re going to talk about
- When virtual assistants can expect an income plateau
- How to know if raising your prices is the answer
- And the impact a signature service can have on your income
Let’s dive in with Tasha!
Sharon Nissen:
What brought you into the online space and what has it looked like for you up until this point?
Tasha Booth:
I'm going on year five now in my business, which is a little bit crazy. I started off as a VA and I kind of stumbled into that. I had a blog that I was doing as a hobby blog. I was in a lot of Facebook groups because of that. I started seeing people looking for VA's, had no idea what it was, and then quickly realized that that meant virtual assistant. And so I just had some student loan debt, some credit card debt to pay off and decided, hey, I've got some extra time - why don't I put the skills that I'm finding and utilizing in my own blog to use in helping others? So that's what I did.
It kind of quickly grew from there and kind of spiraled to the point where I think I was eight months in when I left my full-time job when I put in my notice. But I started thinking about it around month five of my business and then I went part-time first in my full-time job. Then about four months later I went full time in my business, left my full-time job completely. Now I have a team of 22 and growing, which is- a little insane.
Sharon Nissen:
Tell me about that team. Did you hire many team members at once or how did you start going into that?
Tasha Booth:
For the most part, it kind of started in trickles.
I started hiring in the place that I now teach people not to do, which was when I was overwhelmed, when I had absolutely no space and time. I hired my first person, she was a Pinterest manager that was helping me with the Pinterest part of my business and I did all the things wrong. I didn't train her. I kind of just threw her in because I didn't know number one, what I was doing in terms of being a leader and being a boss. But also I didn't have time to do that. And so people have come and gone, but we do have a pretty great, amazing core team that has been around. I think my longest team member has been with me for like almost two years now, so half of my business for the most part, yeah.
Sharon Nissen:
Can tell us what an income plateau is and when does that come up in your business?
Tasha Booth:
Yeah, so I see that an income plateau isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think when we think of the word plateau, we all have negative connotations with it, right? But sometimes we have a plateau in our business that allows us to kind of slow down after a period of growth in our business. Slow down, put the brakes on things, clean up our systems and everything, get a little bit more refined, really love on our current clients and then start growing again. So those sorts of plateaus aren't necessarily bad things.
It kind of starts becoming a bad thing when you've been stuck there for several months and you don't have a clear path forward in terms of how you are then going to grow your business again.
There are a few ways that we can grow our business, right? We can charge more, we can work with more clients, we can hire a team, we can have a signature service. There's a bunch of different ways, but I consider an income plateau when you don't have a clear path forward and you kind of just feel stuck in there for awhile.
Sharon Nissen:
When you're in that income plateau and you're faced with those choices that you mentioned, like raising your prices or bringing on another client or whatever it is, how do you know which one of those things to choose? I know a lot of virtual assistants, they hear all the time to raise your prices, raise your prices. Is that always the right answer?
Tasha Booth:
Yes. So raising your prices is not always the right answer. I know everybody's in this whole charge what you're worth kind of thing. It's so objective. So do not do that.
I would look at what is important to you, right? Time freedom is important to some people. So if you are already close to your cap of how many hours you want to be working, if you're already seeing maybe it's putting a strain on your family, you're not spending as much time with your spouse or your kids or your friends as much as you want, then that could be an indication that maybe even if you raise your prices, you're still going to have as many clients.
Even if you get more clients, that's going to be an issue because that means less time freedom, right? So something like hiring a team member or two may be that best bet for you.
It's going to be a harder in the short term, but definitely easier in the longterm.
But if something like financial freedom, if you've got a really big financial goal and that's important to you, then maybe you do want to push, raise your prices a little bit more, get a few more clients and be making a little bit more money before you hire that team member.
So really the start of it is figuring out what is your why, what's the center of why you started your business in the beginning and which path is going to get you to that goal faster.
Sharon Nissen:
What advice do you have for virtual assistants that kind have been operating sort of as a jack of all trades? I know one thing that you suggest often is creating a signature service or niching a little bit more. So could you tell us a little bit about that? How can creating a signature service help take you to that next level in your business?
Tasha Booth:
. Number one, I think that a lot of times we are not even cognizant of the hard work we've put in and the fact that we are not the same VA that we were even six months ago. Right? So I want you to celebrate that and be proud of that and realize it's okay to raise your prices because you've learned all these new systems, you've gotten more efficient with your time and with how you work with your clients and everything. So you're bringing so much more to the table. So I like to kind of lead that in the conversation when we're having that with our clients and lead from the positive in terms of what you've brought to the table, celebrate with them the accomplishments that you've had as a team, as a strategic partner with your clients.
Tasha Booth:
And that's a great way to kind of frame the price adjustment or price increase instead of like, "Hey Susie Q, I'm just going to raise your price." Right? So it helps to frame it. The other couple of ways that you can do it is definitely through a signature service. So I consider a signature service, that sweet spot in terms of what the majority of people come to you for, what people are just like, oh my gosh, you are so amazing at X, Y, Z and what you love to do. Right? And if we look at that as a Venn diagram, but the center right is the super exciting part where we're like, this is the center of my zone of genius. This is exactly what I love to do. I'll give you the example even in my own business in terms of course launches. That's basically how we became The Launch Guild because so many of my clients were launching and for some VA's they just don't enjoy launches, right?
Tasha Booth:
It's a lot of frantic energy. It's a lot of high pressure situation, but I thrive in that environment and all of the technology for launches just always made sense to me, which is why I was like, I'm going to go all in on launches. I'm going to go full steam ahead in terms of like this is going to be the thing that The Launch Guild is known for and so that's why we can charge anywhere from 4,000 all the way up to $20,000 for a launch because we're known for that and we've kind of also niched down, which is my other suggestion to do, other tip is to really once you figure out what your signature service is, that doesn't mean you only need to offer that signature service, but what else are complimentary services that you can kind of niche down in terms of either like what you're offering or who you're offering it to so you can get really, really good and really well known for that cluster of things instead of just for everything.
Sharon Nissen:
Besides your business, besides all these amazing things that you're doing, what personally for you lights you up in your life? What do you always find that you're trying to make more space for? What is that thing for you?
Tasha Booth:
Yeah, so definitely musical theater is that thing.
My degree is actually in musical theater and I did that professionally for 12 years. I was on the international tour of Hairspray. I've done Aida four times. Love, love, love, musical theater. I even still take karaoke breaks every day and just sing musical theater in my house. But the crazy thing is so my husband and I live in Tucson, Arizona because he's Air Force. And before we lived here, we lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which strangest thing, but they have an amazing theater community in Albuquerque.
So I was constantly doing theater all the time and then we moved to Tucson and Tucson is the complete opposite. There's no theater here. So we just found out that we're moving back to Albuquerque in August and I'm so excited because I'm going to be getting to do musicals again. And that's just been a part of me that I've missed for a while that I'm really excited that I'll be able to get back into and explore again.
Sharon Nissen:
I'm excited because you're going to be an expert in the Support Squad community this month and we're going to talk a little bit more about how to develop a signature service. I would love if you could share a little bit about what kinds of stuff you can share with us in that.
Tasha Booth:
So I'm going to be talking about how to develop a signature service and also how to price that signature service. So I kind of have a little secret sauce thing that I do that I'm super excited to share with your community about in terms of how I teach my clients to create their signature service or to figure out what that should be. So I'm excited to share that, but it's going to be an awesome training.
Sharon Nissen:
You've got your great podcast, you just had a big launch, I'd love to know what's coming up for you and how we can stay in touch with you?
Tasha Booth:
Yes. So you can find me at tashabooth.com. I also hang out on Instagram a lot @TheTashaBooth and I have a bunch of new trainings coming out.
Tasha Booth:
I'm doing a monthly masterclass now, so it's tashabooth.com/masterclass and I also have an entire course coming out about hiring. So if anybody's interested specifically in hiring, I know that was a big learning curve for me and I just want to help other people be able to hire with ease.
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 Creating a Signature Service and Founder and CEO of The Launch Guild agency, Tasha Booth is sharing strategies for defining and pricing your Signature Service.
To help you start to create your own Signature Service, members will receive a guide with 20 ideas for high value services.
I’m also going to be sharing a Canva Training where you’ll learn how to create short, engaging videos that will make you stand out on social media.
And of course, we’ll have 2 live group coaching calls and you’ll get access to all the past content in the membership area.
Get instant access when you sign up for a free 14-day trial.
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