The Big Fish

In the beginning of my own Virtual assistant business many of the first jobs I was hired for were relatively small and not what you would call big money earners.  Then, I landed the BIG FISH client.

My Big Fish Client was great to work for.  I liked them a lot and they were very happy with the work I was doing.   Their bank balance was growing and as they hired me for more and more work, so was mine.  This was it.  Here was the income I’d been waiting for. Life was good!  Then, ……they left...

What!  NO!

It was nothing I’d done.  Their business had simply reached the tipping point where they were ready to hire permanent staff.   I’d been a reliable (and essential) stepping stone to their continued success.  A role the Virtual Assistant is uniquely placed to fill for growing businesses.   I’ve exaggerated a little bit here.  My Big Fish didn’t leave me completely.  I still do project and overflow work for their company but the day to day, income generating workload I had come to rely on was gone.

This was a very important lesson in the development of my VA Business.  I realised very quickly that I had become too reliant on a single stream of income and what was missing in my client folio was diversity.  I’d also put much of my networking and lead generating activities on hold.  I already had a BIG FISH.  What I hadn’t planned for was the departure of my BIG FISH.  There should have been a number of BIG FISH and a number of LITTLE FISH to balance out my folio and I should have been positioning myself for the next one.

Obviously,  I did recover from this downturn.  It was a good lesson to learn and now I try not to let my marketing slip when things are cruising along. Enjoy the success of the big fish but realize change is inevitable and you want to minimize the impact should your big fish swim away.

www.theexceptionalassistant.com.au