Episode 210: The Only Time Virtual Assistants Should Take on Unpaid Clients

Full Episode Transcription:

[00:00:00] Arianna: Hey hey friends. Welcome back to the Ditch the Classroom podcast. Before we jump into today’s episode, it’s been a little bit since I reminded y’all, so I wanted to let you know we have a free workshop where you can learn all of the things you need to know about becoming a virtual assistant to see if this would be a good fit for you. In this workshop, I’m talking about all the different services you can offer as a virtual assistant and how to choose which ones sound fun to you. I’m talking about where to find those paying virtual assistant clients so you can replace your teaching income faster. And I’m talking about the top three mistakes new virtual assistants make so you can avoid those and seriously so much more. It’s packed full of goodness for y’all. It’s totally free. So make sure you go register for that at ariannavernier.com/free-workshop, or you can find that link in the show notes.

[00:00:58] All right, y’all. Today’s tip is one that I never recommend for my students and the Teacher Turned Virtual Assistant program, except for in one specific instance. I never, ever, ever want you to take on any virtual assistant clients without being paid first. Before you do any work, you need to be paid first except for this one instance, and that is when you are a new virtual assistant offering services that maybe you’re not super familiar with, you can offer to do testimonial work. Testimonial work is where you offer specific services to a handful of people in exchange for a testimonial from them. I got written testimonial instead of payment. I don’t recommend doing a ton of these, I would keep it capped at a maximum of three people, and I recommend setting a cap on the amount of work you will do for them.

[00:02:11] So if you are wanting to specialize in a website design, maybe you can offer to set up like a two page website for somebody along with a tutorial video, showing them how to like quickly make the other pages using, like duplicating one of the pages you already made for them. That would be fine, but building a full website for people, I wouldn’t necessarily do that because that could be a lot of work. Especially not like e-commerce where they’re selling products. If you’re doing like social media management, you could give them maybe five hours of free social media management work in exchange for a testimonial, something small, where they’re gonna still get a great win and they’ll give you that testimonial in exchange so you can post this, that you’re willing to exchange these services for three people in a Facebook group, and then you’ll be able to connect with the people who are interested via their dms and get that all set up. I do still recommend still utilizing a contract because you wanna make sure you have that in place just to protect you always just in case, and you just wanna have it in writing that they are expected to give you this testimonial. Because you’re not just doing this work for free. It’s usually an exchange for money, but in this case, it would be an exchange for testimonial so that you can then use that testimonial to prove to other businesses, Hey, I’ve done this before. This person is really happy with my work, and I can do it for you too.

[00:03:47] Okay, so again, with the testimonial work, you’re only gonna do it for a maximum of three people. You’re gonna set a cap on how much you’re doing for them, and you’re still going to utilize a contract. Again, this is the only, only, only time I encourage you to work with a virtual assistant client without being paid upfront. Every other time you should be getting paid. If not in full, at least 50% upfront before you do any work.

[00:04:20] And then the other remaining 50% halfway through the project. Okay. But this one instance, we’ll do the testimonial instead. So if you have any questions about this as always, come into our free Facebook community, facebook.com/groups/ditchtheclassroom. Drop your questions there. I’m happy to kind of talk you guys through how this works. But yeah, I hope this episode was helpful. I encourage you to go out there, network, land, those clients. You can do this. Even if you don’t have experience, you can 100% do this. You just have to believe in yourself.