Why Aussie VAs are afraid to charge their worth and how this is detrimental to the VA Industry

1. Competing with offshore VAs.

This is not a competition. Offshore VAs (usually your Indian and Filipino VAs) are very different to Aussie VAs. And to be honest, if you can’t see any difference between what you’re offering and what a cheaper offshore VA through an agency is offering, you need to find a new career.

As Aussie VAs, you simply can’t survive on the rates offshore VAs charge. Luckily for you, what they offer and how they offer it is easy to distinguish yourself from. But you need to be excellent at what you do and have an epic amount of ‘give a shit factor’. 

Offshore VAs can be an amazing asset to a business. They can take the ever-growing list of repetitive tasks and complete them for a lower rate. They are usually friendly, kind-hearted people who want to support their clients.

What they don’t do overly well is think outside the box and take the initiative, rather they do exactly what’s asked of them. This is what makes you different.

On top of being fabulous at the speciality you’ve chosen (see point 4 if you don’t have a speciality) you need to:

• Be able to work on tasks that have room for interpretation - if there is decision making and ways to change or move within a task, you need to be able to handle that professionally and strategically.
• Be able to see, suggest and implement ideas for streamlining and improving results - even if this means the client won’t need you anymore.
• Be able to brainstorm development ideas with your clients.
• Be able to identify opportunities for growth in various areas of the business.
• Show leadership by setting and maintaining strong standards and boundaries.
• Understand the psychology of being self-employed and how that differs from being employed - your client can only succeed if they show up and deliver, just like you. 

These things are incredibly valuable, and the longer you are in business, the better you will get at them. You’ll find that some roles you’ve had in the past will have naturally developed some of these skills - bring them to the table.

2. Comparing your price to what you earned as an employee

"When I started my business, I knew nothing about setting prices - so I looked at the hourly rate at my last corporate role and dropped it by something like 25% because I was ‘a beginner’. That meant I was starting at $30/hour, totally undervaluing the skills and experience I had and the support I was providing to my clients. It’s my biggest regret in my business because it set me up for YEARS of struggling before I fixed it.’"  Tahlia

I see this all the time. People basing their business pricing on what they earned in the job. At no point do they factor the costs below into the cost of their employment because they weren’t the one paying it.

• Office equipment including desk, chair, stationary, postage, printer, fax (yes some of us remember them!), phones, internet, office cleaning supplies , toilet paper, kitchen supplies, electricity, heating and cooling and phone connections.
• Insurances for all onsite staff and all visitors, including public liability, indemnity and probably tech insurance.
• Software programs and all software security programs.
• Designers and branding experts.
• Tech support staff - actually all of the staffing roles around you allow you to deliver what you are delivering.
• Training and team building for all staff in all roles.
• Advertising, including all networking opportunities.

These are just off the top of my head and there would be much more depending on the size and type of the company. 

So if you looked at replacing all of these items in the running of your own business, including your own training and your team building activities, you’d be hard-pressed to walk away with more than a dollar a week at the price many VAs are charging out.

Not to mention that people, like Tahlia above, cut the price even more because they are new. We will look at this further in the next section.

They compare their pricing to an employee and think they don’t have to pay for equipment, insurance etc - and yes I did this in the beginning too -, but the truth is your pricing SHOULD be covering all of your expenses. And the client covers these expenses PLUS what you want to walk home with. It’s called running a business. 

There are loads of benefits to using a contractor, but the hourly rate isn’t one of them. 

Yes, you can select how many active hours you are using, and yes, you can avoid having to abide by employment rules and regulations and having to do payroll and all the fun that entails . You can even avoid SEEING your contractor and having to manage the logistics of their day-to-day operations. But you are still paying for all of that to be delivered.

So how are they doing it? Because some people are charging low rates and they ‘look like’ they are making it work.

The risk is that those people are cutting corners on things like equipment, training, design, networking and insurance. They take the money they should be using on those things, and they pop in their pocket so they can feed their families. This is exhausting and often leads to burn-out, lack of cash flow, feelings of frustration and even anger. 

In the long run, this never plays out well. We NEED to build our community and our brand, we need to ensure we have the right equipment and software that delivers the best outcome. I’ve seen VAs waste days of potential work and growth, searching for free software programs because they aren’t charging enough to pay for software programs that have a price on them. 

At the end of the day, if we aren’t a registered charity, we need to be charging enough to deliver the best outcome and to be living the quality of life that makes you want to keep showing up each day. 

3. Lower rates because they are new.

“I shudder at the fact I charged $25 for the first year and then $33 for a year after that. No fucking wonder it took me so long to make a profit and years into this, I’m still trying to balance costs vs income to make it stable.” Sarah

This one is really heart-breaking. I honestly think that you should only charge less when you are delivering less. So if I see your pricing is low, I assume your delivery is low too.

Recently I even heard about another VA Trainer here in Australia encouraging prospective clients to negotiate the rate of the VA they’d been connected to via a joblead process. This made me feel sick to my stomach. 

Many VAs start their business with incredible skills. Just like someone who starts their own podiatry practice - they know feet! They know feet inside out and back to front. Should they be less worthy because they are new to business itself? No! These new VAs are only new to their own business - they aren’t new to the service they want to offer.

So if you have experience in the service you are offering, price accordingly. It has nothing to do with how long you’ve been doing that thing within this new structure. 

If you are wanting to start a business as a VA and you have no experience delivering the service you want to offer, then stop right now, turn around and go and learn it. 

• Do a course.
• Get a job where they are happy to teach you. 
• Start networking.

When a business owner hires a contractor, they don’t want you experimenting on them. I can only assume that cheap-ass clients are getting just that when they work with low-cost Aussie VAs. Neither party is a winner, and it’s shit for the industry. 

If you start your business and you’re great at the thing you are offering, and you are also capable of delivering the points in section 1, then charge what you are worth - not a cent less. And sure, increase the price as you grow because we all know you’ll get even better over the years. 

4. Being unclear about the service offering

If I opened a cafe and was offering ‘food’ without a clear and precise menu, people would be appropriately confused. If you don’t know what you’re offering, no one else will either.

When you start up, you may feel like you are offering more ‘general support’ while you find your feet. This is ok temporarily.  

There are definite consequences to being only a ‘general support’ provider.

1. People don’t know what pain you ease, so they don’t really know if you can help them.
2. People don’t value what you do because it’s vague and doesn’t sound valuable.
3. You get asked to do a million different things by each client and are constantly having to adjust to cater to them all.
4. You struggle to market what you offer because you don’t know what it is or who needs it. hint: if you offer ‘business services to small business owners’ this means you.
5. You get ripped off more often because people know you don’t know the value of your offerings  so they know they can mess with you - yes these people exist and they will find you.
6. You find yourself competing with offshore VAs who can do what you do for less money.

General admin support can be delivered at a high level but you just need to be clear about WHO you can support, WHY bringing you on will ease their pain (don’t tell me their pain is ‘not enough time’ - that’s not good enough) and of course, HOW you deliver the super important points in section one (get them tattooed on your arm if you need to). Offering ‘general support’ is too vague. You need to figure out exactly what your business is about. 

Another issue with charging low rates is that you likely won’t chase someone who doesn’t pay their bill. A dodgy client will always test to see if you’ll bother chasing the overdue invoice or even if you’ll cease work when their invoices become overdue. They will push and push until you crack.

My tip is to use the Collectmore app and chase EVERY LAST CENT. If my phone company will shut my services down if I pay late, they’ll hunt me down if I don’t pay my $50 bill, then you should too. 

One of the big issues with Virtual Assistance and pricing is the ‘General Administration’ providers trying to convince everyone that VA work is all about admin.

It’s not. 

It’s much more than that. From admin to website development or maintenance; bookkeeping to graphic design; social media management to copywriting. None of that is general. But all of that is Virtual Assistance.

All of these areas are specialist when done at a high level. When you add the points from section 1 you become invaluable. And invaluable people don’t charge peanuts. 

To finish, I want to share with you my pricing for my ‘general admin’ services back in 2004. Before I do, I want to point out that the dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.79% per year between 2004 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 68.55%.

How many of you are still charging what I charged as a newbie, who didn’t know the problem she solved, who charged less because she was new, in 2004?

One more thing...

Surround yourself with people who see your worth and remind you about it.

Surround yourself with people who lift you up and inspire you to create something strong and unique. If the people around you aren’t telling you you’re worth it, or if the prospect clients are saying you aren’t worth what you want to charge - they aren’t your people. 

You are not a tree. Move. 

Move toward those who will help you achieve your unique version of success.

If you’re looking for a tribe who will lift you up, make sure you check out our Virtually Yours Membership