Decide How Much Money to Earn

Although it might not seem like it, as Virtual Assistants, we really do get to decide how much money we can earn each year. We do this by deciding how much to charge, when we’ll get paid, who’ll we’ll work with and how many hours we want to be billable. In this episode of the RocketGirl Show, I'll show the steps on how to do this.

TRANSCRIPT

Hi everybody. I'm Belinda Wasser also known as RocketGirl today. We're gonna talk about how to decide how much money to make.

One of the best parts of being a virtual assistant is we actually get to decide how much money we want to make. Now, the one thing that we don't talk about
a lot or I don't hear people talk about is how we calculate. So today we're going to go into detail about how to calculate that and how to make sure you're on track.

Alright you need to choose an hourly rate. I know that there is a lot of angst and hand ringing and you know general stressed out in picking an hourly rate. So here's a guideline $25 to $35 an hour for general admin $40 up to as much as $100 an hour if you have a more specialized skill. The key to choosing an hourly rate is you have to believe it and you need to be confident.

I think a lot of times, one of the biggest challenges that people face as virtual assistants are really any small business owner or entrepreneur is the courage to ask for the amount of money that your services are worth. And I think we tend to undervalue ourselves. So really try to stretch beyond you know where you're comfortable and continue to raise your rates over time.

The next thing you want to decide is when you're going to get paid. Now, the way my business works, RocketGirl solutions is that people prepay for my time at either or ten-hour chunks, I call it. It's like a virtual debit card and what happens is I work the time that they buy. It's good for a year. And then, I let them know every Monday morning how much time they left and when it expires.

So what I decided was, I was going to get paid ahead of time, not after the work was done. So think about that, I know a lot of people will say nobody's gonna do that. No one's gonna do that but the people who have been in my classes, who adapted this method of getting paid have really not had any resistance. I've been doing it for 10 years. I've had over 200 clients and this is really not a big deal. And if one of your clients makes it a big deal, I would find out why. I know in my career, I've only not been paid one time and it was interesting because, the person said to me, what's the big deal about getting paid upfront and you know I should have asked him that question back.

What is the big deal about getting you know paid upfront and he never paid me and it was a sizable amount money. But I want you to get paid upfront if you can. Alright or think about it, think about offering that as a way of getting paid, but either way the point here is decide you know it's not like this person pays you on Tuesday and
this person pays you on Wednesday. You get to decide because you're the business owner right.

And then you want to figure out your schedule and how many hours that you're going to want to work. Alright so the reason this is important is, there is some math involved. Alright and we're gonna talk about the math. Hours times right equals revenue, so I'm going to give you a deeper example in a minute. But I want you to figure out what is your average hourly rate if you've got different clients at different rates, we you know we all do at some point in our career.

So I want you to look at your average hourly rate. Then I want you to look at how many you're averaging a week and then I want you to see how that's gonna work out into your hourly revenue.

So, here's an example, okay. So let's say you want to make $50000 a year. Absolutely doable, no question. And you wanna charge $25 an hour which you could probably bump up right away. Alright. So in order for that to happen, you will need to build 2000 hours a year, which is 41 hours a week, if you work 52 weeks a year so you can see right away because if you're new, I'll let you know that building 41 hours a week every week, it's not sustainable. Not for me anyway, I usually build between 35 and 37 hours a week, and the reason is because billable time is focus time. You know head down.

It's like you're at school and you're taking a test. You know that kind of concentration and it's hard to do that for 41 hours so here you can see and also you can't usually work 52 weeks a year you're going to want to take a vacation, take a couple days off, take a couple weeks off. You know, so make sure your calculations add up and then it's going to be important for you to make sure you work those hours.

So I want you to figure this out ahead of time, so you always know where you stand. So here's what I do. I look at, I use toggle and I track all of my time. When I do website Project management, it's a flat rate fee. I don't charged by the hour, however, I do track my time even if it's 5 minutes here 5 minutes there because I want see how did my hourly rate you know fair in that flat rate project.

So all of your time I want you to track and then I want you to watch your time during the week. So, you know I put my time in all day long and then I glance at it throughout the day. Like this morning I looked and I thought, 'Oh this is good'. It's you know 10 o'clock in the morning. I built two and a half hours. I started early this morning.

That's a good place to be and that might mean that I mean they're making up for some lost time this week. Or it might be that I hit that number and I can stop if I finish up you know all my work and hit my deadlines. So make sure you do the math. Make sure you know how to get to the number that you want at the end of the year so that you can know, really be clear on what you need to do to get there.

Okay, so before we get going today, I just wanna invite you to my free online classroom 'The Virtual Assistant Connection'. It's over on Facebook. You can just type The Virtual Assistant Connection in the search bar at the top. I'd love to have you. click the join button, lots and lots of information there about being a VA. Iif you're just thinking about a about being a VA, you're also very welcome. I'd love to have you.

The community is over 9000 members and they are supportive and you know, helping each other all the time. There are so many inspirational people in that group. It's really a thrill to be a part of it so come on over and check it out and also I'd love to have you follow us on Instagram and we are at the virtual assistant connection there as well. So I have a great rest of your day, I'm Belinda Wasser, RocketGirl signing off until next time. Buh bye.