She's all right when you get to know her. This is my podcast and it takes you from your restrictive toxic life limit in nine to five into a life on your terms, full of freedom and flexibility as a self employed virtual assistant. So whether this is your first introduction into the possibility of becoming a va, or perhaps you've been doing a bit of Googling already. I'm going to get rid of the overwhelm, rid of the self doubt and
show you that this life is possible. I've not just started this rodeo, you know, I'm Katherine Gladwin and I've been doing what you think is impossible since 2015. Shall we get started? So in this episode, I just wanted to help you kind of get out of the employee mindset. You know, the, what is it, 11 pounds 43 pence an hour or something. I, that might be
wrong. I should have checked before the, before I started this. But to just get out of the employee mindset, the get out of the people pleasing mindset as well, which is kind of what we do when we're an employee, because I, I don't know why, we're just so scared about losing our jobs, aren't we? And yeah, there's, you know, there's corporate ways of sort of we imagine we've got to be, you know, put on a posh phone
voice and things like that. We've all done it. We've all done it. Oh, hello, this is Ms. Gladwin speaking from Bodit and Scarpa. I just wondered. Yes. You've not paid your invoice yet. Is it okay to put that through straight away for me? Whereas when you're in business. All right, it's Catherine, you've not paid. I'm coming around with a card reader at 11. If it's not done by 10. But getting out of that mindset takes a long time and I know that for this
happens to a lot of EAs and it certainly happened to me. You feel guilty initially sending invoices. You're like, oh, I'm so sorry, I've got to charge you for allowing me to, you know, kind of work from home, doing things only I enjoy. And actually it's only for five hours, but that's all I even needed to earn this month. So, yeah, if you, if you could pay the invoice, that'd be great.
But having that mindset can hold you back from making the most money and it can also kind of make you not enjoy some of the clients that you're working with because even though you've put those barriers in your own way. They've taken them and they've lapped it up. And I'll explain a little more in a minute, but then you can sometimes, like, resent them. Plus, if you let your barriers down once, why can't you do it again? And they're going to keep pushing and pushing and
pushing. So I'm going to talk about how to make more money as a new VA. Ethically, it's things that established VAs are hopefully doing as well. So, first of all, one of the questions, first of all, and I really should put this in the VA starter guide. I'm not sure if I don't know why it's not in there. This is why in my Facebook group, I say with
complete honesty that no question is stupid. Because. And it doesn't matter how many times it's been asked either, because the more it's asked, the more it shows me that it is a pain point for you guys. But there was a question the other day and I think it started, this may sound a silly question and it is not, but about rounding up and rounding down, because I know that a lot of people are
confused by that at the beginning. And there's a way not to do it, which could make you lose clients and the way to do it. So, first of all, rounding up and rounding down, what does it mean? So as VAs, clients have to work with us a minimum of an hour a month. So that's the minimum. Even if they only take 15 minutes of our time, they're going to get invoiced for an hour. But you have to make that clear at time of booking that
needs to go on your booking form. If you've got the coffee clutch contracts, then you'll have a booking born with that. And it can go on there quite clearly. So how does that work? Right, okay, so let's think about this. So say you're working with this new client for a month and it's ad hoc, and in week one you do just 15 minutes work, and then in week two you do 30 minutes work and then that's it. It comes to invoice time end of the month
and you've done 45 minutes work. So because it's a minimum an hour a month, you round off up to an hour and you charge them for an hour. Now, sometimes what some people do is they are doing like say one day they've done just eight minutes work and they've done it on their timer and they're asking, should I round that up or down, and you shouldn't do anything with that. It is just. It's gonna go through as eight minutes
and you may do more work throughout the month for them. And then you add all of that together and if it comes to less than an hour, you round it up to an hour so that they're paying you a minimum of an hour. But if it goes over an hour, then you can round it up or down to the nearest 15 minutes. Again, that needs to be in your book, informal or in your contract somewhere
that you're going to do that. Well, I got a client that one of my associates works with and always it's something like 3 hours and 40 minutes, something like that. So I will always charge her for 3 hours 45. And then other times it might be 3 hours and 38 minutes and I'll round it down to 3 hours and a half, something like that. It's a kind of a give and take. But the boundary is that it's a minimum an hour a month and you only round up the whole total
of that month. So if you're saying to them it's a minimum of an hour a month, you cannot then invoice them on a weekly or a fortnightly basis. Because for the first, say like the first two weeks, you might do half an hour and then you'll round it up to an hour because it's a minimum of an hour a month. And then if you do in half an hour for the second two weeks of that month, you can't charge them because you've already charged them extra. Does that make sense? It's kind of difficult,
isn't it? So let me say that again. So it's a minimum an hour a month. Brilliant. Which means you need to invoice monthly. You cannot invoice weekly or fortnightly if it's a minimum an hour a month that you're offering people. Because if you do half an hour for two weeks, then you're going to bring it up to an hour for that invoice. And then if you're the next two weeks, do another half hour, you can't then bring that up to an hour because you're getting an hour yourself paid
for doing sodor. And it's outside of the terms of the business. So I hope that's kind of made that a little less muddy. It's so much easier to do it in writing and give written examples. So I think I'll do a carousel or something on Instagram to help with that. Maybe I'LL put that out the same time as this podcast. Okay. Some other ways to ethically make more money as a virtual assistant is to charge for calls.
I'm not talking about charging for discovery calls. However, I am going to say make discovery calls just 15 minutes because that is more than enough time. If you've listened to other podcasts or anything that I do, or you've got the BA Starter guide, then my advice is to not allow potential clients to book discovery calls until you've inverted commas, spoken to them via email or DM or however you've. You've got in touch with them to
find out a what it is exactly they want help with. Because if it's something you don't do, that discovery court is going to be an absolute. It's going to be more awkward than watching people on the Apprentice, isn't it? But you
need to find out exactly what it is they want help with. And you need to confirm that they know your hourly rate, because even though it's on your website, all of this is on your website, where they can probably book the discovery call nine times out of 10, they have not looked at your website. They've just seen the contact page, seen that your only option is to book a discovery call and they've booked it. And because they've not had any human interaction, they've not, in inverted commas, again,
spoken to you via email. There's no like allegiance. They're. They're not bothered if they don't turn up for the call because they've not built any kind of relationship with you already. So that's another way is to keep your discovery calls at 15 minutes, because if you were to give them more than that, you can give away so much and you, you feel like you want to pad out the call, you know, and give them more because they've booked
an hour or they've booked half an hour and it's. You've only done 10 minutes so far. And you know, if it does run over minutes, that's fine, just. But just keep the book in to 15 minutes and it shows that you value your time as well, that you don't just give away an hour here and there. And then when you have signed up a client, if they want calls, you must charge for those. Basically, any time you're spent doing stuff for a client is time you can't work for somebody else.
It's time you can't make any more money. So it must be in your contract as well and on your booking form that you charge for calls. Charging for calls as well also helps those that are like, can I have a quick call? Nothing's ever a quick call, is it? Because you've got to stop what you're doing, have a wee, get some water so that you need another wee straight after the call starts. And think about the call while you're on it. You know, you might want to look your
best as well. So you got to go and get ready. And then after the call, you've got to, you've got to just sort of decompress after it, think about if there are any actions from it. A quick call is never a quick call. It takes so much of your time and like I said, it is time that you cannot work for another client. It's time that you cannot earn money if you are not charging.
And it stops. Those people, those clients that think that a call will be easier than an email, once they realise that they will be paying for calls, suddenly they just got this ability to email really, really well. So yeah, if you, if, I mean, you may not even want to have calls with clients, you could, you could say in your, in your booking form that all communications to be by email. That's how I do it because I can't keep having calls,
you know, one call a week and I've had it almost. But also I don't enjoy them, you know. Hi, how are you? Yeah, I'm great, thanks. And you? Great, great. That's great. Now what? And I just, when I get on a call, I'm just like, right, so you want me to do. Okay, brilliant. I'll get that done by Tuesday. Bye. Gone. Don't want to talk. I don't want small talk. It's a waste of their time and it's a waste of my time. It's a waste of my energy as well, to be honest. I do sound like a diva,
don't I? But yeah. Another way to make more money as a virtual assistant, as a new virtual assistant, is to create packages. Now, with your hourly rate, whatever, it's set at 35, 40, whatever, you will know that you've only got so many hours in the day. And when you're starting, minimum of half an hour a day as well for your marketing. But with your hourly rate, you have got a set income ceiling. And although that income ceiling is absolutely phenomenal compared to employed
hourly rate, it is still a ceiling. But when you introduce packages into your business as well as the hourly rate, then your income ceiling can go through the roof. So, for example, when I First started adding packages to my business. My income doubled in that financial year. So as an example, what I used to do is I was a mailchimp partner and I used to set up mailchimp accounts for clients. I used to transfer their email marketing subscribers
from one piece of software to mailchimp. I used to set up automations for them, I used to write newsletters for them. And, and let me take the writing of newsletters first of all. So when you start working with a client to write their newsletters, it can take you a few hours to, you know, kind of backwards and forwards and getting it right, getting it in their tone of voice, completely understanding what they need. You also need the login details, which is easier said
than done when you've got two factor authentication. So in the beginning it could take about three hours perhaps to start writing a newsletter. But then as you work with them more and more, you can knock them out in half an hour because you know, you know their business, you know their tone of voice, you, you know their demographic and, and you just, you know what you're going to put out there. And yeah,
it's suddenly it becomes like 30 minutes work. And if you were charging on a timer on your hourly rate, you'd have to reduce
that invoice. But if you had a set package price for creating newsletters in this instance, then it would be the same amount every month that you're invoicing, which is not only great for you because you know what you're invoicing and you're also making extra money because you're getting quicker at things, it's also great for the client because they know what their expenditure is going to be every month or every fortnight, however often they want these newsletters
done. So what I used to do is I used to charge 90 pound a newsletter. So when I'd been working with somebody for a few weeks or a few months and I was churning out newsletters in 30 minutes, an hour instead of, I think my hourly rate then was 30 pound plus that instead of me charging them 30 pound, I was
charging them 90 because that was the package they had bought. So it is ethical, it's completely ethical because when you first start, like I said, when you first start working with somebody to do whatever it is, whatever service you're providing, you've got to get logins. I mean, you've got to go backwards and forward. Sometimes if they've not got a password sharing thing that, or somewhere that they keep up to date passwords,
they're like oh, could you try this, then? And you're like, no, that doesn't work. Work. Oh, put an exclamation mark on the end. No, that still didn't work. Oh, put a question mark on the end. No, that still didn't work. And you're locked out. In fact, you've lost your whole Facebook page now. But it's. Honestly, it can take
so long sometimes to set things up. Another thing, what I used to do is if I was setting up a template for somebody in mailchimp, you've got to remember these people either can't, won't or shouldn't be doing it. So when you've done that service, provided that task for them, if they've already agreed that price. So when I set up a template, it used to be £150 plus VAT. I'd probably charge more now, to be honest. It's something that they,
they, nine times out of ten couldn't. They were unable to do themselves. So me doing it is. Is priceless, it's invaluable. So that price is. Is worth it for them. And I don't know, setting up a template, I mean, sometimes it might have taken the whole 150 in. In terms of hours. What is that, 3, 6, 9, 12, 5 hours. Sometimes it would have taken the whole 5 hours to do because they're bloody slow getting me stuff or, you know, backwards and forwards, or they don't actually know exactly what they
want from it. And other times they'd have given me everything or I'd have perfected what I need to ask for. It would have taken me an hour. So that's how the income ceiling can be raised, is by introducing packages. Now, I know a lot of you have already got the how to create packages course, but, yeah, that takes you through to create packages. I've not long updated it either, and with
a few more examples. But you please appreciate I cannot give example packages for every possible service, otherwise the course would just take a million years to go through. But, yeah, it's. That is. I'm not saying don't have your hourly rate available for people, because we all know that people like to just do ad hoc work and sometimes packages aren't suitable for a potential client. But, yeah, it's something definitely to look into because that is what doubled my annual income in year two of
my business. Another way is to. I'm going to call it upselling, but that kind of sounds a bit sleazy. It's basically so somebody. You've got a client working with you. And you have noticed that they keep complaining about keeping their receipts in order, or I'm just trying to think of something off the cuff. So keeping their receipts in order, ready to give to their accountant at year end. And you think, well, they could probably benefit from having free agent.
And you could say to them, look, do you know there's a way that you can stop this stress of having to keep all your receipts or find them at the end of the year and what have you? If you set up free agent, you could say to the client and then photograph the receipts and send them to me, then we can save them in there and your client can access it that way. And they
also. You're also getting them ready for making Tax Digital. And. And you can say to them, look, it is free agent is X amount a month and it will for me to set it up, I charge you 200 pound. But over the long run, you've got to think how much time you're spending and you may even save money with your accountant as well. So you think
about things like upselling. I mean, don't be too pushy, but it happens when you're kind of working with a client for a little bit longer, you can start to see that, you know, oh, they're spending a lot of time there and that's something that I could do. Maybe they don't realise that I can do it. Or you could send like annual emails out maybe just before you go on holiday or something. You could be like, just to remind you, I'll be back on the 15th of September. And also just to remind
you of the full list of services that I offer. So when I come back, if there's anything else you want to add to my to do list, then it would be an absolute pleasure. So upselling, just, you know, like I said, don't make it sleazy. Don't make it sound like I want to make more money from you always make it sound like, well, what you are doing is making their lives easier and they're working with you on set tasks and projects or services. They may not realise or
they may have evolved over time. And when they first came to you, say, six months ago to help them with inbox management, they didn't need any help creating graphics in Canva, but because you're doing their inbox, they've got busier, they've no longer got time to create their own graphics in Canva and they didn't even know that you did it. So you can be like, hello, I can do that for you. Now, another thing you can do is to offer audits.
Not everybody wants somebody to do something for them or they haven't got enough money to pay for a virtual assistant just yet. So like, let's have a think. If you are doing inbox management or social media support, anything like that, you could, instead of doing it for a client, you could offer them an audit. So what you could do is you could charge, I don't know, 150, 200 pound to audit their social media channels. You know, as long as you state clearly what the objective of that
is and what the outcome will be for them. So if you are going to audit their social media channels, you could say, look, you need to put yourself out there a little bit more. There's not enough images of you, perhaps there's too much text in their graphics, it's too overwhelming. Their bio says nothing other than they
love dogs. And you could just do an audit of things that they could change on their social media platforms in order to become better at it, to appeal to their audience a little bit more, to bring in the right demographic. You know, maybe they're using the wrong hashtags and you're great with them. Some people do hashtag research and provide hashtags, but yeah, or if you're offering inbox management, you could do an audit of their inbox and you could say, look,
I've had a look at your inbox. Yep, you've got 23,452 emails. One, get a grip. Two, what you could do is create folders and filters and have them go into these folders via the filters. Now what I used to do, when I used to do similar things to this is not give them the, the whole, this is how you do it, but give them the what they need to change what would make their life easier. Because, you know, they may
not, may not want to do filters and folders. So if you go in depth saying press this, do that, do this, do that, then you could be wasting your time there. But instead, you know, tell them what it is that could make their lives easier and why you recommend it. And often what happens then is they don't implement it, they back and go, can you do it for me? Because you've shown your expertise. So think about
some of the services that you offer. I've just given two examples there. But think about some of the services that you offer and let's think about maybe some audits that you could, you could provide for these people, for potential clients, these people who Do I think I am. Now, something else that you could do as well is to offer training. Now, I don't want to make an assumption, but again, this is a kind of bit like employee mindset, because you probably think what you can do,
do, everybody can do. And they can, they really can. And sometimes people that can do it just want confirmation that they are doing it right. Like my email and diary management course is purchased by a lot of people that have been doing email and diary management in their corporate job. They just want to know that they've been doing it in a way that works virtually as well. So never think that everybody knows what you know. So training people and. And you might again
think, do you know what? It's going to take work away from me. But it is, it really isn't. Because more often than not people will either come back and go, do you know what? You can do it for me, or you'll get more and more opportunities to train other people and make more money. So training, again, it's not on your hourly rate. So if you're training people, I don't know, let's. Let me
just throw something out there. You're training people how to use Mailerlite, then you can charge, like whatever you choose. If you're doing it one to one, you could charge £200. Say, I'm just throwing some figures out there, I'm not looking at anything because I don't know exactly what you would include in that training. So if it's just down to login, then that's probably just a tenner. But if you're showing them a lot
of stuff, then it's probably 200 pound or something. For Mailerlite, if you're teaching 30 people, then you could reduce the price somewhat so that you know you again, you'll still make lots of money. If you're charging 30 people 20 pound, that's 600 quid, something like that. So, yeah, training people how to do certain things and you can do this on a call or you could
pre record something and sell it as a recording. Now, this might not be something that you want to do straight away, but it's something to consider for the future. And then also when you're training and you're promoting this training, you could then promote it to different groups on Facebook, different business groups, and offer to do the training in front of
their audience. Make sure you get paid for it, though. And then again, it gets your name out there further and it gets you known for what you do, which is really, really important. Like I've put in my book and in the VA Starter Guide, no one's interested in Janet who's a VA. People are interested in Janet who's a VA. That's bloody brilliant at Mailerlite. Now, that's only 30 minutes I've recorded there, but I think it's full of gems.
And once I take away the coffin that I've done in between because for some reason we cut a conifer at the weekend and I can't stop coughing now. Okay, I didn't cut it. I just held a branch while the other half held it. Big branch as well. Thought he's going to break the fence. Didn't, thankfully. So, yeah, once I cut out the coffin, and there was an instance as well where I shouted, can you get the doorbell? Might leave that bit in. Then we're probably not even. I don't know. It'd be interesting
to see. Anyway, if you're ready to reclaim your independence, then subscribe to this podcast because there is so much I'm going to give you. You've got to subscribe on your favourite channel. It says. What channel? I ain't going to be on the BBC, am I?