The 5 Best Reasons to Become a Virtual Assistant

2008-05-13 | Filed Under Virtual Assistance |

  1. You love working 60 hours a week. OK, I might be exaggerating here, but I can assure you that when you become your own boss, you will be working more hours than you imagined. For every hour of billable time you put in, you’ll need an hour of set-up, billing, marketing, and networking.
  2. You don’t fall apart when you don’t have work for days or weeks at a time. Virtual Assistance can be a rollercoaster ride – lots of work one week and nothing the next, especially when you’re first starting out. Use those down times to work on your marketing ideas and blog, and don’t forget to relax and enjoy having the time to go to lunch with friends and family. Part of the fun of being a VA is having the ability to do those things you didn’t have time for when you were confined to a cubicle all day.
  3. You live to learn. You may start your business providing services that you know well, but eventually one of your clients will ask if you can “help me set up my projects in Outlook” or “create a pdf of an oversized poster”. You’ll either have to say “No” and lose the work (and the money it would bring in), pass it on to someone who CAN do the work (so they can reap the benefits), or…. you can swallow your fear, do your research, and learn to do it yourself. The third option is a lot more fun, by the way.
  4. Your motto is “Variety is the spice of life”. On Monday you’ll be adding contacts to a client database; Tuesday you’ll create a PowerPoint presentation and go to a networking event; Wednesday is the day you write your blog posts for the following week; Thursday finds you designing and distributing an e-zine; Friday you’ll be creating Excel graphs; and on the weekend you’ll be doing your billing and creating marketing pieces. You definitely won’t be bored!
  5. You enjoy surprises. Being a virtual assistant means not always knowing exactly what the day will bring. You start out with your to-do list, all nice and organized with plenty of time to get all your tasks completed. You sign on to your client’s computer to update their contact database, and your internet provider goes down. Surprise! So you gather up the business cards from your client and run to the nearest coffee shop that provides free Wi-Fi. You finish that up and start the newsletter that is suppose to be done by tomorrow when your cell phone rings. It’s the school saying your son sick and could you pick him up? Surprise! You run and get the little darling, get him tucked in bed with a comic book and a barf bucket, and start working on the newsletter, not realizing that a major client that you’ve been courting for weeks has just emailed you (that darn internet connection is still down!) that they have a rush job – call now and you’ll have their undying gratitude and lots more work. Surprise!

Of course, these are just a few reasons to become a VA – there’s a lot more. What did you find was your best reason for becoming a VA?

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