The Virtual Assistant – Regain Control and Love Your Job

Marie Schulz, an admin to an Air Force general, found herself at a crossroads several years ago when the base closed. She got a new job but hated it because the long commute and office hours drained her, leaving no time or energy to work out or see friends. “The employer expected the employees to live for the job,” says the Rumely, Michigan-based Schulz. “They even had computers put into our homes so that when we weren’t at work, we were still working from home. I wanted my life back.”

Schulz took her life back by rolling up 20-plus years of admin experience and parlaying that to her own business as a virtual assistant, or VA. Now her days are noticeably different.

What is a VA? Stacy Brice, chief visionary officer and founder of AssistU, sums it up this way: “A VA is a small-biz owner who provides administrative and personal support across the board to clients in long-term and collaborative relationships.”

Preparation is key to a VA’s success, and Brice advises against admins jumping into things because they have years of admin experience. “Remember, it’s a business, and you don’t want to start a business on the seat of your pants,” says Brice. “Most startup businesses don’t make it to the five-year mark. You don’t want to make mistakes.”

VAs’ primary client base are the small business owners, or entrepreneurs who need support because they can’t do everything on their own but don’t want the hassle of hiring a full-time employee, according to Brice. She estimates a VA’s rate at $30 per hour. However, that amount can skyrocket if a VA has experience in a niche area.

Being a VA requires numerous hard and soft skills, including:

• Writing: “The world is sloppy when it comes to grammar,” says Brice. And a lack of solid language skills can be a great detriment to a VA. “Even if a client is a poor writer or speller, she won’t accept that in a VA.”
• Organization: Being a VA involves juggling numerous clients. Being able to put your hands on the right files when a client calls is crucial.
• Technological Savvy: A VA must also be comfortable with technology, since the job requires working in a virtual world. “Your primary tools are technological, so if you’re not comfortable in that environment, you’ll have trouble,” says Brice.
• Fast on Your Feet: “You must be able to quickly take in information, synthesize it and logically spit it back out,” says Brice.
• Emotional Responsibility: A VA must be entrepreneurial and self-disciplined, since no one is watching over your shoulder, notes Brice. “One thing that comes with the VA territory is you’re playing at a different level,” says Brice. “You’re not sitting in an office being told how, what and when to do things, with set lunch times and the inability to say no to a project. You must be able to transition to the thinking that you’re a business owner, you get to say what you want to do, and you get to pick your clients and set your rates.”
• Good Communication: Setting business standards and sticking to them can be a rough transition for many VAs. “Sometimes you have to have hard conversations with your clients if things aren’t going the way you initially expected,” says Brice. “You may have to speak frankly that when you started out with the client, you expected X, but Y is happening, and that you two need to discuss how to make things better. Those aren’t easy conversations to have.” The upside to such frank discussions is VAs generally build long-term, collaborative relationships with their clients, she says.
• Vision: While many admins want to work from home, many are not willing to do the hard work to make it happen. “The fear of success keeps many people down,” says Brice. “They sabotage their actions, because they may think that if they’re as successful as they want to be, their lives might change — and that frightens them.”

Sincere Interest Can Take You Far in Your Career

Remember the last time you met someone with whom you wound up having a great deal in common? Remember that “aha” moment when you learned the other person shared one of your strong passions? You probably ended up talking to each other about that common interest for the next hour or two, completely losing track of time along the way.

You didn’t even have to try to connect with the other person. It just happened, simply because you were both enthusiastic about a certain something.

The same thing goes on all the time in the world of work, and you can cultivate it in your career exploration or search for an internship or entry-level job. By simply sharing with people what you’re sincerely interested in and asking them for their advice and ideas, you can uncover or even create all sorts of opportunities that will help your career development.

Let’s look at an example. Suppose you’re a college sophomore majoring in environmental studies, because you have deep-seated feelings and beliefs about environmental protection. If you could find some people who are currently working in environmental protection and tell them about your strong interest in the field, you would almost certainly connect with some similar-thinking professionals (and other students) who would gladly open your eyes to career-related opportunities.

How could you find such people? Several ways:

Join a Professional Organization

Hundreds of professional organizations target people who have an interest in environmental issues, and several of these groups are aimed specifically at students. The Student Conservation Association, for example, offers conservation service opportunities, outdoor education and career training for students interested in the field. As importantly, though, it can expose you to a significant network of people to share your passion with.

Meanwhile, professional organizations like the National Environmental Health Association have dozens of state chapters. Find the chapter in your state, join it and attend meetings and conferences to find hundreds of people in the field with whom you can discuss your common concerns — and uncover employment opportunities.

Go on Informational Interviews

Informational interviewing is just a fancy term for talking to people about their jobs. In the vast majority of cases, if you ask someone whose job interests you to talk to you about that job, the person will happily do so. Why? Because you’ve shown interest in something he feels strongly about and people love talking about themselves and what they do.

With the explosion of the Internet, you don’t even need to live in the same area as the person you want to talk to. Instead of or in addition to an in-person interview, you can contact people by email and speak to them that way at their convenience. (Often, you can email people who seem too famous or too inaccessible to talk to you and be surprised when they respond, sometimes with much more information and advice than you would have expected, solely because you’ve shown sincere interest in them and what they do.)

Volunteer

There is perhaps no better way to prove your strong interest in a certain field than to volunteer with an organization in that field. After all, you won’t be getting paid for your efforts, so the people you’re working for and with have to conclude you’re contributing simply because you enjoy the field so much.

In many cities, the local chapter of the United Way serves as a clearinghouse for hundreds of volunteer opportunities in the area. So if you were interested in volunteering in an environmental capacity, you could check with the nearest United Way chapter and see what possibilities exist.

Just as you might hit it off with someone at a party, you can also hit it off with someone in the world of work. And that someone, seeing your sincere interest, will more often than not be flattered to introduce you to the many career-related opportunities that await you. All you have to do is ask.