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

The Holy Grail Client

Everyone in business has a picture of what their ideal client would look like.  Virtual Assistants are the same and one issue that comes up a lot amongst the VA”s I coach and mentor is where to find “The Holy Grail Client.”   I’d argue that the Holy Grail client doesn’t exist, or rather it does, but you can’t recognise it from the picture you have in your head of what you think he/she should look like.

Some Virtual Assistants specialise in particular “types” of client and we all talk about our “Holy Grail Client” that is going to turn up out of the blue and offer us heaps of fantastic exciting work and pay fabulous rates for our talents.  However, I wonder how many of us are passing up outstanding opportunities with clients that at least outwardly are perhaps a little less shiny than our Holy Grail ideal?

When starting a Virtual Assistant Business most budding VA’s will take any job that comes their way until the business is up and running and they can afford to be more selective about the clients they work with and the work they take on.  It’s usually about this time, on examining their portfolio of clients, most VA’s discover some of their clients have characteristics in common.  Either they all are authors/presenters/workshop clients, or they all have a technical or scientific interest, or perhaps most of them are high net worth entrepreneurs.  A niche, if you will, they are attracting.  This is also around the time most VA’s start creating the fantasy of The Holy Grail client and what they would look like.

When the “filtering process” begins and the Virtual Assistant becomes more secure in their business, they might start to weed out less lucrative clients and begin directing their attention towards the quest for more “Grail-like clients” that suit the niche they have created.  This makes good common sense.  However, a word of caution.  Sometimes the Holy Grail is right under your nose and you missed it.

Working with a Virtual Assistant is sometimes a scary proposition for a client and sometimes they hold back on the more exciting, interesting work till they feel confident their VA can handle it and also till they get more confident in delegating responsibility to a VA.  Like all relationships, sometimes the client/VA one needs time to blossom.  Make sure you are not discarding a client with more potential than was immediately apparent.

Some of the best paid and most exciting work I have done as a VA has come from clients that, at least initially, didn’t fit my Holy Grail client ideal.  It took time for them to see my potential as an assistant and also for me to see their potential and realise my ideal was right under my nose the whole time.

www.theexceptionalassistant.com.au

The Office Psychopath

This post is going to have a very personal flavor to it and is probably a little off the usual blog topics for a Virtual Assistant.

A friend came to me recently describing some issues she was having with a new employee at her company.  Issues that were to me, hauntingly familar.  This new employee was stealing her work and passing it off as her own, lying to her manager and colleagues, making unrealistic promises to customers and destroying my friend’s credibility and reputation within the company.  The new “star employee” was very good at destroying any evidence and positioning themselves always in the rosiest light with management.  My friend’s complaints were falling on deaf ears with her boss and her boss’s boss and she was seen as being petty and simply feeling threatened by a good performer.

Many years ago in my corporate life, I was unlucky enough to encounter  an  “Office Psychopath”.  What on Earth is an office Psychopath?  Let’s be clear here.  I’m not talking about the average pain in the backside or difficult person that you encounter in every office or life in general or a simple personality clash.   Not all difficult to work with/for people are psychopaths.  

It is estimated that true psychopaths only make up 1-3 percent of the population, so your chances of encountering one are pretty slim.  These people have very specific behaviours and characteristics that distinguish them from your average pain in the arse.  And the worst part… there is no cure.

An office psychopath is is cold, calculating and not able to feel any empathy for another human being, largely unable to distinguish between right and wrong.  Usually highly intelligent, they operate purely to satisfy their own pshycological gratification.   If you have been lucky enough to go your whole working life without meeting one, consider yourself lucky.  

The term was coined in a book by John Clarke entitled “Working with Monsters”.  A book I read after having worked with one.  If you haven’t read the book, get it.  It’s a fascinating read.  If you think you might be in the same boat as my friend definitely read it.  It will help you understand what you are dealing with.

John Clarke is a trained psychologist and criminologist by trade.  He now works as a consultant to corporations experiencing problems with suspected workplace psychopaths and repairing the damage just one of these individuals can wreak in an office.

If you think you might be working for one, I’ll offer you the same advice I gave my friend “Get out, get out now” .  The only “cure” for the situation is to leave.  These people destroy careers and destroy self esteem.  As painful as it might be to leave an employer you really like, you cannot win this battle. 

John Clarke gives much the same advice, as often by the time management wakes up to ‘who’ the problem is, too many good staff have left and the ones that stay are miserable.  If you are an employer who has staff leaving in droves and can’t understand why, maybe you need to read this book too.  You are probably going to need professional assistance to resolve the problem.

Now that I am a Virtual Assistant I have a lot more say in who I decide to work with.  Should I ever be unluckly enough to encounter another one I will give them a wide berth.  Sadly for my friend she does not have the same flexibility and she is looking for a new position.

To anyone else in the same situation, I wish you luck with your search.

www.theexceptionalassistant.com.au

The Death of Powerpoint

There was a time when, as a medium for getting your message across, Powerpoint was king.  I read an article recently that expanded on the idea that Powerpoint is dead as a presentation medium.  After reading it I had to admit, if it wasn’t dead it is at least looking a little sickly around the edges these days.

When I first started my Virtual Assistant business, I was churning out dozens of Powerpoint presentations every month.  Powerpoint was the bread and butter of my business and every client used one.  Now days I have to admit, it’s been a while since I have put one together.

Many of my clients are presenters and run workshops or speak at other peoples workshops and seminars.  A quick survey of some of them revealed what I had already suspected.  Hardly anyone uses Powerpoint anymore, or certainly not to the extent they previously did.  Why is this I wondered?

There is a term created for presentations where slide after slide of graphics and statistics are shown and the presenter just reads from the slides like cue cards.  It’s called “Death by Powerpoint” and it seems presenters everywhere are so conscious of subjecting their audiences to it, that other methods of getting your message across are now being trialed.

Many speakers are choosing to use their own personalities and presentation styles as means to hold their audience’s attention.  In an age of digital saturation sometimes it is refreshing to just hear a person speak. Props like the old fashioned white board and flip chart are still being used but less reliance is being placed on the need for a “whiz-bang, bells and whistles” Powerpoint .  One of my clients commented: “We’ve got Utube and other social media now to engage with people . “  It seems people don’t want to see more of the same when they come to a workshop they the want practical stuff.  Many of my clients are also doing more webinars now than face-to face workshops.  The overheads are lower and the attendance rate is much the same with the added bonus of being able to “package” your recorded webinar and use it again and again as a training medium.

So where does that leave me and my business of producing Powerpoint presentations?

Like all businesses, the Virtual Assistant industry is not immune to change.  It stands on the cutting edge of technology and there is nothing changing faster than technology at the moment.  Most VA’s are extremely “tech savy” and  as long as there are people in business,  there will be a need for an extra pair of hands in every business.  Changing and evolving are part of the territory.

 www.theexceptionalassistant.com.au

The Bad Debt

When most people picture a Debt Collector they usually have a mental image of a big burly bloke with a nickname like “Bruiser” or “Ox” who knocks on doors and demands payment.  However , the reality is far from this stereotype.

After five years in business I’ve only had to chase payment of my invoices once. That’s a pretty remarkable statistic in this day and age.  I think it must have to do with the mix of clients I work with.  Small business people tend to grasp the concept that cash flow is pretty important to a business.  When I do get a ‘late payer’ I have these very cute reminder stickers in a lovely non-threatening font that say:

"Your Account is overdue

Please pay us so we can pay our guy, who will pay the other guy,

 who will pay his guy, who will pay another guy and then they can pay YOU!"

I like them.  They kinda say we are all connected and let people know we are all in this together  - so look after each other!

But, I do remember the one time this didn’t work.  I’d send a reminder.  Nothing.  I’d make phone calls. Nothing.  My messages weren’t returned.  The longer the unpaid invoice sat there the more worried I became and angrier I was getting.  It just wasn’t fair and I didn’t know what to do about getting paid.  I had too much sweat and emotion invested in the debt.  Then I realised I needed a champion and I found one.  I called a professional debt collector.

My debt collector was a very quiet spoken and professional gentleman who asked me what steps I’d taken so far to recover my debt.  When I explained that I was not getting anywhere he said he’d be happy to chase the debt and if he was successful his fee was 20% of my outstanding debt.  If he was not successful then there would be no charge for his time and I’d be no worse off than I currently was. ( I think most people would agree 80% of your money is better than no money at all.)

I’m happy to say that after no more than a stern phone call from my Debt Collection Agent to my wayward client, I had my money the very same day.  Outstanding effort! 

If you have a client with an outstanding debt don’t make angry phone calls and fume over it.  Call in a calm and reasonable professional who will get results and can handle your case without emotion.  And leave the “Bruisers” of this world for movies and sit coms.