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Are You on Sale? Stop Giving Yourself Away for Free

Posted by Danielle Keister on
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Stop giving yourself/your work away for free.

Because that’s all you’re doing by working in unpaid “internships.” You’re just giving someone else free labor and delaying the start of your REAL business.

The best way to gain confidence and learn how to run your business? By working with your own clients, not someone else’s. It’s the only way you’ll hone your own consulting skills, define your own policies, standards and boundaries, and figure out who your ideal and unideal clients are.

The truth is most of these unpaid “internships” are not in compliance with labor laws. And of all the unpaid “internships” and the conversations around them I’ve observed online and in the forums and listservs I belong to, people really are offering these as a way to get free labor: “Want help in your business? Get some unpaid interns!” They don’t even realize that what they are proposing is illegal.

As one unpaid intern who ending up sueing stated, “This culture of expecting to be able to get free labor if you slap the title intern on it has become so pervasive that people don’t question whether it’s ethically wrong or legally acceptable.”

Even in our own industry, people like to pretend (even to themselves) that they’re somehow doing a favor for the interns, but really, they’re just taking advantage of those who are new, naive and don’t know better.

The NY Times did a piece on this topic recently: The Unpaid Intern: Legal or Not?

In the article, acting director of the Labor Department’s wage and hour division Nancy J. Leppink states: “If you’re a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren’t going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law.”

There are 6 federal legal criteria that must ALL be met for an unpaid internship to be legal:

  1. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in a vocational school;
  2. The training is for the benefit of the trainee;
  3. The trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under close observation;
  4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees and, on occasion, the employer’s operations are actually impeded;
  5. The trainees are not necessarily entitled to employment at the completion of the training period;
  6. The employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

From the Warshanksky Law Firm in New York:

“These are very strict criteria that effectively bar most unpaid internships, which are intended to benefit both the intern and the company; otherwise, why would the company offer the internship in the first place? Yet the Wage and Hour Division has stated unequivocally that a company may derive ‘no immediate advantage’ from the internship. The upshot is that if an intern performs any useful work, however simple or menial or clerical in nature, the intern must be treated as an employee, subject to all applicable labor and employment laws. Failure to comply with these laws can result in liability for back wages, back taxes, and other civil and criminal penalties.”

People who want you to work for free are taking advantage of your newness, eagerness and naivete.

Everyone who starts a new business is unsure of themselves and lacks confidence to some extent. But there’s an important distinction I want you to understand:  just because you are new to starting and growing a business does not mean you are new to the work. Just about everyone who starts a service-based business does so because they already know how to do the work. They just need to grow their business skills.

If you need to gain confidence in getting your business off the ground, you can get mentoring, encouragement and know-how from people like me and my blog here, and by joining our forums and Facebook groups, etc. And you don’t need to work as an unpaid employee to get them. ;)

Dear Danielle: Should I Market on Craigslist?

Posted by Danielle Keister on
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Dear Danielle:

I literally am starting my business. No customers yet. My question is this:  I am COMPLETELY lost when it comes to marketing. I have had some suggestions on advertising on Craigslist. I am not comfortable doing so due to the negative reports I’m hearing about scammers and crime. What are your thoughts on this? —Ramona Hartley, Hartley’s Clerical Service

Hi Ramona :)

Thanks for the great question!

The first thing that jumped out at me was your use of the word  “customers,” which might be telling about how much thought and planning you’ve done so far for your business.

Now, I’m not assuming anything, and your use of that word could be innocuous. Still, it’s important to make this clarification in case anyone else is unclear:  When you are providing a professional service where the intention is to create a business relationship (which is what we have as Administrative Consultants) you have clients, not customers. A customer is someone who buys something on a one-time or sporadic basis. There is no relationship beyond that.

This may seem pedantic, but it’s really not because how you understand and decide specifically what you intend to be in business to do (as well as how you do it and who you do it for) informs how you go about everything else moving forward, including marketing. And with marketing (which is also about educating, aligning understandings and setting proper expectations), the words you use are always, always important.

Getting back to your original question, what’s happening here is what I call haphazard marketing because there is no rhyme or reason for your efforts. You don’t really know where to market so you’re just trying to think of anything and everything that might work. In a sense, where there is no intentional basis, it can be said that that is not really marketing at all.

What you need is to come up with some direction for your efforts. To do that, you must first engage in some business planning.

This is an important step because the exercise of planning your business forces you to get clarity around things such as what business you really intend to be in, the kind of money you need to make, who would make the best (most needful and profitable) clients for that service and, given that information, where to best find them.

Fortunately, you don’t have to do this from scratch. Until April 21, you can purchase our Administrative Consultant Business Plan Template individually. This gives you a template already laid out in professional format that gives you a map to follow for the entire process.

Part of business planning is determining who your target market is going to be. This is a frequent topic of business so rather than reposting everything, I want to direct you to the Target Market category of my blog. Here you will always find any and all posts I’ve written on the topic of target marketing so you can begin learning about what that is and how to go about it.

As far as Craigslist (or any of those bargain basement kinds of places such as elance, odesk, etc.) I would tell you to steer clear and not waste your time. It’s really the wrong platform for professional services such as ours. There are many reasons, but probably the most important is that it cultivates and caters to the wrong mindset.

Craigslist (and the like) overarchingly is where penny pinchers go to find bargains. So trying to offer a professional service on that platform is like trying to sell a Mercedes at a yard sale. The people going there are looking to spend pennies and get something for practically nothing. They’re not in the right mindset for that kind of purchase because it’s the wrong environment. You see? And you can’t be in business to cater to penny pinchers if you expect to make a living at this.

Marketing itself is going to be a field of ongoing learning throughout the life of your business. Meaning, you’ll never know all there is to know, but the more you study and read up on this topic, the smarter and savvier you will become. In fact, many will say when you are business, marketing IS your primary job. And this all starts with the business planning process.

Dear Danielle: How Do I Get Clients?

Posted by Danielle Keister on
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Dear Danielle:

Brief question–how do you get clients? I know this is on every Administrative Consultant’s mind in America whom is starting out. I know that this kind of business is referral-based, but my God! I know that you can’t just jump up and think you are going to get rich from this (not my intentions). However, it’s one person I did some donated hours for, I have tried working with another client and lowered my prices to accommodate her. Still a no-go on this one. If I would have said it was free for the service, she would have been all over it. I think if I had at least two clients, I would feel like my business is progressing forward. But not having anyone gets discouraging at times and you wonder if it’s worth it if your business is solely based off referrals, you know? –ST

(FYI: This “Ask Danielle” question was originally posted on my old blog back in March 2010.)

Well, first, I had to chuckle because there’s nothing brief about the question, “How do you get clients?” LOL. Not laughing at you, but it’s sort of like asking, “How do we achieve world peace?” It’s a BIG, complicated question with no quick, simple, pat answer.  It’s difficult to start a business, as you recognize. For a large number of people, they are not going to get clients right away. While they’re waiting, there’s a lot of learning and studying they can be doing to better understand marketing and client psychology. Here are a few thoughts to help you get started in the right direction…

1. Stop donating hours. When you give away your value (the very product you are in business to earn your living from), you devalue it in the eyes of clients. Worse, all giving stuff away for free does is attract freebie-seekers. These are not your clients. They will be gone as soon as you take the free buffet away. If they can’t afford professional services, they either shouldn’t be in business, or they should at least not expect you to subsidize their business (to your own detriment) until they can. These are very selfish, self-centered thinking people. You have your own bills to pay and people to take care of. You can’t put your time and energy into those folks. You’ve got to market to people who can already afford you and who don’t expect you to be footing the bill for their business. If you keep giving it away for free, you’re just going to keep getting more of the same. “Why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free?” applies here. If you’re dishing it out, they’re gonna take it. You are attracting what you are giving. So stop the gravy train and get serious about serious clients.

2. I’m not sure why you think this, but this is not strictly a referral-based business. A business can become mostly referral-based once they’ve established their business, had a chance to get their foot in the networking door, and have clients and others who happily recommend them. If you’re new, you don’t have that right off the bat. But there are things you can do and ways you can network that will better draw/attract prospective clients to you. What will help here is having a target market to focus your message on and give you direction on where to find those folks you wish to be talking with and expend your efforts and energy there (which are limited and need to be conserved for the highest and best possible use). Two of the most important criteria in deciding on a target market are that 1) it must be one where the people in it generally are earning enough money that they can afford professional services, and 2) there are enough of them that it’s easy enough to figure out where they are (offline and off) and then find ways to interact with them, come up in their search terms and be found by them.

3. Never, ever bargain with or negotiate your fee. All you are doing is teaching clients to devalue you and your support. You start doing that and they forever after expect freebies and discounts and that everything is up for negotiation. You don’t even have to tell me what you’re charging. I can pretty much guarantee that you are undercharging–all these issues you describe are always symptomatic of rates that are way too low. They cater to and attract the wrong crowd. On top of that, I’m willing to bet the conversation on your site is all about cost and discounts and freebies and savings and how much cheaper and more affordable than an employee you are, yada yada yada… am I right? That’s exactly the problem. I would tell you to raise your fee. You likely will be ALL kinds of uncomfortable doing that. And while you’re doing that, you also will need to learn how to market differently and change your message. But when you do those things, you will begin to attract a clientele with an entirely different mindset and more professional business sense. Those folks are looking for skill and quality and competence, not handouts. You simply can’t waste your time and energy–and money, because that’s what it boils down to–on folks who can’t afford you and would have you harm yourself financially in order to help them.

4. Adding onto the idea of changing your message, you’ve got to frame what you have to offer in respectful ways. You’ve got to hold what you do in high esteem and talk about it in respectful terms. If you use words like “generalist” and “mundane” and “affordable” and the like, you are lowering the perceived value of what you have to offer. You are teaching prospects to look down upon your work and view it as lowly, and thus, not worthy of professional fees. And the industry as a whole has GOT to get off the cost conversation and all the employee comparisons. If you have any of that stuff on your site, take it off immediately. You are creating and attracting the very mindsets you are complaining about now. If everything you put on your website is about how cheap you are, how much they can save, how much more affordable you are than employees, save this, get a discount on that, guess what you are focusing people on? MONEY. You can’t make your marketing message about that–unless you want to continue to attract nothing but people who are looking for savings and discounts and bargains and cheap and affordable. Stop talking about costs whatsoever. That’s the last thing you should be talking about. And if you don’t have anything else to talk about with regard to what you do for your clients and your value to them (the results you help them achieve), then you’ve got a lot more work to do about understanding what you are and what you do.

Marketing and attracting clients is an area of ongoing learning and study. It’s not anything that can be answered quickly or simply in a mere blogpost, but I hope this at least gets your wheels turning. The very best way I can help you is to recommend that you get my e-book, “Articulating Your Value: How to Craft Your Own Unique Marketing Message to Get More Clients, Make More Money and Stand Apart from the Crowd.” This is a self-study guide that will help you determine your target market, define an ideal client profile, differentiate yourself with your own unique marketing message and value proposition and package up that info in much more attractive, marketable ways.

Dear Danielle: My Friend/Client Is Balking at My New Standards

Posted by Danielle Keister on
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Dear Danielle:

My first client came by chance, prior to me making the decision to start a business. They are a non profit organization and the owner is my friend/past co worker. Because of this we started with no clear rules or barriers. Now that I am putting structure in place, the client gets uncomfortable at times. Should I feel bad for adding formality/professionalism where there was none? —Patricia, PMB Admin Services

Oh gosh, no! You have nothing to feel bad about. These are normal growing pains and you are doing exactly as you should be—instilling structure, standards and boundaries. These things are critical to the improving health, continued growth and financial viability of your business—and your own self-care, I might add.

This is a very common path for many of us in this industry. We start with a vague idea of being self-employed, come into a sort of accidental business to one extent or another, and become more intentioned and conscious about our business and what we want for it as we go along. Very, very normal.

It’s also very normal to outgrow some clients along the way. As we gain more and more clarity about what we want to do and be in our business and enact standards and improvements around those intentions, there will always be some clients who balk at your growth. A lot of times, it’s because we’ve spoiled them with unsustainable ways of working together in the beginning that ultimately don’t work for us in the long-run. As you’ve discovered, the business and relationship has to work for both you and the client equally, not one or the other, or it just won’t last.

And while we certainly want to be friendly and feel warm-fuzzies toward our clients, there’s also something to be said for keeping somewhat of a friendly-but-professional distance. I have seen (and have had myself) more problems with clients when they get too comfy in the relationship and feel like they are “more than a client, I’m a friend.” This is a slippery slope, and I find most people end up having more trouble keeping and standing up for their boundaries when they find themselves in that kind of a relationship with a client.

It’s one of the reasons that friends and past employers do not often make for good clients.  With friends, there’s a sort of implicit or unconcious idea that they will be given special privileges and exceptions (“Can’t you do it my way, make this exception, just this once, for me? I thought we were friends!“). We hate to disappoint them and often find it more difficult to say “no” when we need to. With past employers, they too often come into the relationship mistakenly assuming that you will be working in the same employee/employer dynamic (which makes a proper, formal consultation even more important).

I’ve been there myself so I know exactly what you’re going through.

When you make changes and improvements in your business, some clients may happily stay and grow forward with you, and some may choose not to. That’s okay. Let those clients go who can’t get on board with how you need for your business to operate or they will stand in the way of your continued growth and evolution. Here are a few things you can do moving forward to help with these growing pains.

1. Start a living Client Guide. I say living because it should be a document that you continue to hone and develop throughout the life of your business. And what is a Client Guide, some may ask? It’s simply a handbook for clients that gives them all the information they need about getting the most out of your relationship and how things work in your business. It should outline your policies, procedures and protocols. It should include your standards and values for working together.  It should let them know how work is handled and how work requests are to be submitted to you. There are a whole host of things you can include and these will become evident as you continue along in your business. Whatever they need to know about how to work with you should be documented in this guide and given to all your clients.

By the way, a free guide to developing a New Client Welcome Kit (also known as the Client Guide) is included in our Whole Shebang and Biz Starter sets.

2. Have a New Client Orientation. Whenever a new retainer client comes on board with you, have a special welcoming meeting (on the phone or video chat) where you give them a refresher orientation on working together (how things work, what procedures they should follow, etc.)

3. Include the topic of standards, boundaries, policies and protocols in your consultation conversations. This discussion is important to finding fit with each other and helps ensure clients go into the relationship with proper understandings and expectations. Let them know that as your business grows and things change, you will always let them know ahead of time. It’s when clients are left in the dark and caught off-guard that they are most unhappy about changes.

4. Always let clients know of changes in your business. Whenever you enact a change in policy or protocol or what-have-you, be sure and let clients know. Depending on what kind of change it is, that can be in a formal letter, an email or your newsletter/ezine. Some may say it’s better to do so “in-person” over the phone. While it never hurts to have a follow-up conversation if clients need more clarification (like in your weekly telephone or video chat meeting), I think it’s important that a formal, written notice go out first to all your clients. Maintaining business formalities and protocols in this manner helps both of you remember that first and foremost, this is a business relationship.

5. Always follow your full consultation process and normal procedures. One of the biggest mistakes I see folks make in our business is taking shortcuts with their processes when it comes to friends, former employers as well as project/occasional clients who now are interested in ongoing retained support. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve had a prior relationship or how well you know (or think you know) a potential client, always, always go through your full, usual processes for consulting with them and bringing them onto your roster. This goes a long way toward helping instill proper boundaries and expectations with those clients right from the beginning so that they respect you and your business as a business. Remember, you might know each other, but they don’t know your business or how you do things in it. That’s partly what your consultation process and orientations are for. ;)

Dear Danielle: What If I’m New and Don’t Have Any Testimonials Yet?

Posted by Danielle Keister on
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Dear Danielle:

What if you are brand new and only have one testimonial for your site? Should I wait until I have more and add that component later? –EB

Heck no! Get ‘er up on your site today. :)

You’ve heard the expression “you gotta use what you’ve got.” Well, if you only have one testimonial so far, work it, girl!

So how do you do that? By making it a feature on your site instead of an afterthought. That means using the client’s full name and link to their site. Bonus points if you can add a headshot (people like to see faces with names). Give it a dedicated page, perhaps, and even list the client’s contact information.

(Caveat: Make sure you ask and that the client gives you permission to do this first. Inbound links are always great for SEO so it doesn’t hurt to point that out as well.)

People are skeptical about anonymous testimonials so you never want to use initials or only first names. Prospective clients put more stock in testimonials they can see are from actual, real people.

You also don’t need millions of testimonials, just a handful of quality ones. So the other thing I recommend you do immediately is institute a feedback process in your business. For example, in my business, I solicit feedback from my monthly retained clients every 3 or 6 months and immediately upon project completion from any project clients I work with.

The very best way to get your feedback process going is with my Client Feedback Form which you can get for only $9 from the Success Store. My Client Feedback Form is designed especially to help you elicit meaningful testimonials and start building great before/after case studies.

Now, what if you don’t have any testimonials yet? There are a couple things you can do.

  1. Use comments/reviews of past employers.
  2. Use comments/reviews from volunteer work you’ve done.

Again, get permission or ask them if they’d be willing to write something fresh for you.

Anyone who can speak to the quality of your skills and professional qualities and how great it is to work with you can provide you with a testimonial. It doesn’t necessarily need to be clients. It’s just better coming from paying clients so work toward replacing those employer/volunteer testimonials as you get established.

Here’s another great little trick you can do that has lots of credibility and “social proof” (which, again, is ultimately what clients are seeking in testimonials)…

If you are using social media like Twitter and Facebook, you can use those positive comments you get as testimonials. Post them on your website. Compile them in a PDF. You can even use widgets to your advantage such as the Twitter Faves widget (really simple: whenever someone says something nice about you, favorite it and it will show up in the widget, which you can place on your website).

Let me know if that helps you, and if anyone else has tips, please do share in the comments!

Dear Danielle: Do Clients Need to Know If I Am PT or FT?

Posted by Danielle Keister on
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Dear Danielle:

I am launching soon, but still have to work 9-5 to support myself so I don’t have to take a paycheck from the biz right away. I will cut back to part-time and give more time to the biz ASAP on my way to full-time with it. In the meantime, I don’t want to be thought of as someone unreliable, distracted, or who can’t get back to people in a timely fashion. Any ideas about minimizing how obvious it is that I am just starting out part-time? –JN

Ah, this is the beauty of making sure you don’t think of nor market yourself as an assistant, something I’m always preaching here.

I want to talk about that some more, but first here are some practical tips for being timely and professional in your business, whether it’s full-time or part-time (and really, anyone could tell you these):

  1. Only take on retained clients you can support or projects you can complete timely and professionally.
  2. Establish a communication turn-around policy and display that policy on your website (e.g., “I will return your call or email within 24-48 hours.”)
  3. Do what you say you will. This is a form of being consistent, and consistency is about reliability and dependability. So, if you say you’re going to do something, do it. If you say you’re going to do something by a certain date/time, do it by that date/time. Things come up and exceptions happen, but make sure they are RARE. Yes, life happens and by all means you are allowed and you should immediately communicate when you aren’t able to honor a commitment you made. BUT you WILL still be viewed as an unreliable flake if you constantly use that as an excuse or crutch. The solution–only make commitments that you are 99.999% sure you can keep.
  4. Along those lines, give yourself PLENTY of space to honor your commitments. Where people go wrong with making promises and commitments is that they allow clients to have wrong or unrealistic expectations and simply don’t give themselves enough room and time. Don’t box yourself into a corner. Manage expectations in clients by setting conscious, specific policies in your business when it comes to communication, work requests/management and turn-around times.

Now, let’s talk about some conceptual things that will really change the entire ballgame for you and how you approach your business.

Let’s first clarify the terms “part-time” and “full-time.” When I refer to part-time and full-time, it has nothing to do with the number of hours you put in or are available in a day or week. When I refer to part-time and full-time, it has to do with whether your business is your sole livelihood (“full-time”) or whether you are still working a job to support yourself (which makes your business a “part-time” effort/livelihood).

When you call yourself assistant, clients come to the table with the mindset that you should be doing assistant-like things for them and be at their on-demand beck-and-call.

That just doesn’t work in business (that is, if you are trying to create the kind of business where you can both earn AND live well without having what amounts to a J-O-B and having to take on hundreds of clients just to break even).

If you create a business like that and allow those kind of expectations, your daily PT or FT availability will be an issue. You don’t want your value to be dependant upon that.

So how do you change expectations around that and how you are able to operate your business in a manner more like a professional and not an assistant? It starts with not calling yourself an assistant. ;)

If you don’t want part-time or full-time status to matter, then you want to instead frame yourself as an administrative expert, not an assistant. As an adminstrative expert, you focus clients on the fact that your expertise and skills are all about administrative work, not in being an assistant. These are two completely separate concepts.

When you frame yourself in this manner, you begin to see your role in your business very differently. You begin to understand that like any other kind of professional who is hired for a specific expertise and talent, the fact that you “assist” clients doesn’t make you an assistant.

When you decide to be an administrative expert and not an assistant, you then realize that you do not need to operate and work with clients nor be available to them in the same manner as an assistant. Since you aren’t an assistant, you aren’t working with them for specified hours in a day or week.

And because you aren’t trying to be an “assistant,” clients don’t need to know whether you have a full-time or part-time business. The point becomes moot because you aren’t selling your availability of hours, you are providing a partnership of administrative expertise.

The other thing here that will change the game entirely is to sell your value and expertise, not your hours. Your value is about how your work and expertise ultimately helps clients grow and move forward in their businesses to accomplish their goals and overcome obstacles. If you keep trying to sell your time (hourly billing) or packages of hours, you will keep yourself enslaved to the clock, which will automatically put a lid on your earning potential.

When you make these shifts in your thinking about who you are and what you do in your business, you are freed from all kinds of burdens that those who are trying to be assistants find themselves saddled with. When you are not an assistant, you do not need to accept on-demand kinds of work and roles that others are enslaved by. (I always say, if a client needs an assistant, then they need to employ one. ;) )

As an administrative specialist, you can instead choose to take on only work that can be scheduled and where you can give yourself plenty of space to complete. This is the kind of business model I teach folks how to build. When you operate this kind of business, whether you are full-time or part-time in your business becomes irrelevent because you aren’t marketing yourself like someone who is going to be available to clients like an assistant and you aren’t selling hours.

 

 

 

How Billing by the Hour Is KILLING Your Business

Posted by Danielle Keister on
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When your income is tied to how many hours you can sell, you automatically limit your earning potential because there are only so many hours in the day. This is exactly what you’re doing by charging by the hour in your business.

What I bet you didn’t know is that the hourly billing model is a relatively new artifice. In fact, there was a time in the not too distant past when everyone charged for their services based on value, not by the time it took.

Administrative Consultants and virtual assistants are giving all this wonderful support and expertise to clients and helping them succeed, while they are just barely scraping by in their own businesses.

I know how little people are earning in this industry and how much they struggle to stay afloat because of it, and it’s evidenced every year since 2006 in our annual industry survey.

This is when we start to see them grasping onto straws or making a mass exodus into another business entirely. They think, “I just need to turn the work into a factory and hire all these subcontractors to do the work. Then I’ll make more money.”

But they soon find out that that is a much bigger, more complicated and involved business to run than the one they had, one they might not have bargained for or enjoy. It’s also not necessarily one that earns any better because the profit margins have decreased further while overhead, administrative time and expenses have doubled or tripled.

This new video explains all the many ways that billing by the hour is keeping you from earning well and serving clients better and what to do about it.

I am here to tell you that it is ABSOLUTELY possible to create a beautiful, well-earning (even into six figures) solo or boutique administrative support business that doesn’t have you killing yourself or feeling icky in any way.

If you’re ready to get out of the hourly billing trap so you can stop trading hours for dollars and start making the kind of money you can actually live on and sustain your business, be sure and check out my Value-Based Pricing & Packaging Toolkit. I can show you how to change all of it around in your business AND create a simpler, easier business to run on top of it!

You Are Not an Assistant

Posted by Danielle Keister on
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From both a legal and practical standpoint, the fact is when you are in business, you are not anyone’s assistant.

The term “assistant” is a term of employment, not business, and shouldn’t ever be used in your business relationships and conversations.

When you stop calling yourself an assistant, you’ll get less pushback from clients when it comes to your fees.

People automatically equate “assistant” with employment. So when you call yourself an assistant, you predispose clients to balking at your fees because they don’t understand why they would pay you more than they would any other in-house employee/assistant.

You can talk until you’re blue in the face about your standards and boundaries and that you are a biz owner, that you have your own taxes and expenses to pay, yada yada yada–but you negate all of that when you call yourself an assistant.

It’s all about positioning and using the right words to pre-set proper expectations and mindsets–all for vastly easier conversations and more successful relationships with clients. You’ll always have more problems when you call yourself an assistant.

When you frame yourself instead as an expert in the art of administrative support, it’s a whole other ballgame. People EXPECT to pay experts professional fees. Instead of looking at you as an employee they don’t pay taxes on, they view you as a professional who is hired for a particular expertise that will help them meet a solve, solve a problem and move forward and improve their businesses–in our case, that’s the expertise of administrative support and guidance.

Another reason to stop calling yourself an assistant is to reduce the likelihood of the IRS (or your country’s similar governing agency) determining you are an employee and going after the client for back taxes and penalties for misclassification of employees.

This is one of the many, many reasons we as an organization moved to the term Administrative Consultant.

If you’re not comfortable with the word “consultant,” call yourself an administrative partner or administrative expert or administrative specialist… ANYTHING but assistant.

Dear Danielle: How Do I Get Over Blogging Writer’s Block

Posted by Danielle Keister on
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Dear Danielle:

There are so many things to consider in starting or re-starting a business, as I’m sure you know. At this point, there are so many different marketing avenues to promote our business and the industry as a whole.  Let me tell you, I am so excited about this up and coming ‘virtual’ profession.

One of the areas I was going to start off with again is a blog. And you are correct – sometimes it’s difficult to come up with ideas or topics to talk about. Frankly, sometimes I even think before I start to write ‘What could I possibly have to say that may make a difference in someone’s life?’ or ‘Do I really have anything to offer to benefit the VA industry – individually and as a whole?’

Do you have any suggestions on how to overcome this writer’s block or how to research what topics would be interesting to my peers and potential customers?

Oh, you know I do. ;)

My first bit of clarity for you is to stop thinking you need to write for your peers and the industry. You are wasting your business building time and energy.

I can’t tell you how many people I see and mentor who complain about not having clients and needing to get more clients–and then waste all their time and energy talking to and blogging for each other instead of their would-be clients!

You may have heard the phrase “wasted real estate” when experts talk about how business owners waste valuable website space with content that has nothing to do with anything when it comes to attracting clients and being of interest to them.

In the same way, you don’t need to be writing for your peers or for the industry. They are not your clients. If that’s what you’re doing, you’re wasting one of your most valuable pieces of marketing and networking “real estate.” If you are starting your business or trying to grow it and attract more clients and be of service to them, write your blog for them.

And my second bit of advice for getting over writer’s block is to get a target market.

(For those who don’t know, a target market is a specific field, industry or profession you focus your business support on.)

Of course you will be at a loss as to what to write about when you don’t know who you are talking to. When you try to write for anyone and everyone, you end up being interesting to no one.

This is yet another way having a target market helps you:  it gives you clarity, focus and direction. When you know who you are talking to, it’s easier to know or figure out what is going to be of value, use and interest to them. And this is what will help make your content far more interesting, useful and compelling.

A few other little blogging tips:

  • Make sure you have several ways for your target market to subscribe to your blog. First and foremost, use a service like Aweber which will help you build your list and automate the distribution of new post notifications to these subscribers. Make the subscription form your most prominent feature in your upper right sidebar (“above the fold”).
  • There will be people who prefer to subscribe by RSS or with things like Networked Blogs. Give them those options as well. However, if you are interested in building your list, you may want to feature those options less prominently.
  • Give your blog a title and/or tag line so that your target market knows instantly that your blog is especially for them.
  • Survey your subscribers periodically. Pick their brains. Ask them questions. Your blog isn’t just a way to connect with clients. It can also be an excellent research tool for getting to know them better and find out more about what their challenges and common goals and interests are in business–which is going to help you in your business and offerings to them as well as knowing what to write about for them.

Help! I’m Shy and Conducting Consultations Is Scary!

Posted by Danielle Keister on
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I’m holding a class on Consultations that Convert! on October 25 & 26, 2011. One participant writes:

“I’m definitely a shy one so just getting out there is a big step for me. Also, convincing small business owners that they don’t need to and shouldn’t be doing it all themselves is the other area holding me back. I guess I feel like I need a giant poster to hit them over the head with to show them why a lot of small businesses fail and how not to be one of them by utilizing my services. And then I start doubting mysefl, if I’m really all that. HELP!!!! I know they need someone like me. I know I can do it. So what’s wrong with me?”

Well, first, there’s nothing wrong with you! (But don’t go bonking anyone over the head, lol)

We all go through this when we first start out our businesses. It can be really scary and intimidating to put yourself out there, step outside your comfort zones and talk to what are essentially strangers.

Here are two quick thoughts that will really liberate you:

  1. If you are someone who is shy or introverted, having a plan–a process, a system–for conducting your consultations is going to be a HUGE confidence booster. It’s going to make things really easy and by leading your process, you instill a ton of confidence and trust in your potential clients.
  2. Conducting consultations is not about selling or convincing. It’s about drawing out and bringing to light and clarity that which your potential client struggles with and showing them how you can really help them. It’s all about the conversation. Once you let go of that idea, it will help you have more heartful, human-to-human connection in your consultations.

Of course, there are a lot of details and learning to fill in here which is why, if you struggle with conducting consultations and clients aren’t retaining you, I invite you to join us for my Consultations that Convert class on October 25 & 25. It’s gonna be a lot of fun AND most importantly, you are going to learn LARGE. Love to have you there!

PS: Midnight tonight is the last chance to save $50 on registation so be sure and register now!

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