I run a training course for VAs as many of you know and occasionally I’ll get responses from follow ups of those who haven’t gone through with the course for whatever reason (usually time or money, or both). Below is a question from one recent prospective student and my answer to her.
I am still very interested in doing your course as I think it will be a great help. I guess I wanted to feel more comfortable before deciding to establish a virtual PA business.
My concern has been whether there are enough businesses out there that require this type of service. When speaking to people of my plans they generally have not heard anything about the service and doubt that I could make sufficient income from it. Do you find there is not enough Virtual PA’s out there to fulfil the demand?
Hi, the best way to get over that concern is to join a VA forum where you can mix and mingle with those who are already doing it.
Do you know this industry is 14 years old? It’s been around for quite awhile and there are several thousand VAs worldwide. Despite that there will always be people who don’t know we exist and it is our role to educate them. However, if they’ve never had need for virtual or ad-hoc admin support then chances are it would never have occurred to them to search for us.
If you look in the Yellow Pages under secretarial and wordprocessing in your state you’ll find a listing for “A Clayton’s Secretary” who is the business providing the VA trainer course. The Yellow Pages doesn’t have a ‘virtual assistant’ category but you’ll find that each person listed there is a member of the ACS team and is a virtual assistant. We get requests every day for clients wanting work to be done from simple word processing to transcriptions to powerpoint presentations to data entry.
It’s not until you get involved with the industry that you begin to see how widespread and active it really is. So I encourage you to join the forum linked on the front of the site at www.vadirectory.net and see what could be happening for you.
The reality is it isn’t until you get entrenched in an industry and really involved that you begin to understand how far reaching it is. For those who were wondering the same as the potential VA above, then I encourage you to do the same – get involved, join a VA forum or two or three and see just how much this industry has to offer those who want to join it. You will be pleasantly surprised!
Jaci Amend says
The best way to determine “enough work” is by speaking with other VAs that, in my experience, are more than happy to share information about demand and the number of clients they handle. Most seem to be around 10 clients (more if they have a team of VAs to complete the work). When you think about the number of businesses/entrepreneurs out there, 10 is a pretty low number leaving a ton of other clients available to hire you. And if we continue to educate the industry about what we offer and perform services professionally, hiring a VA will become more and more mainstream.
Kathie Thomas says
Good advise Jaci and this is why I mentioned the forums as VAs generally are very happy to share information there.