Do the Math
Oct 19, 2026
When you’re just starting out as a Virtual Assistant, pricing feels like something you figure out later. After the first client. After you know what you’re doing.
I hear a version of this in every Launch Pad training I do: “I’ll figure out my pricing once I have a client.” Or “I’ll start low and raise it later when I’m more confident.”
But I want you to wait a sec. Choosing your rate is not a confidence problem. It’s a math problem.
Here’s how you do it:
- Start with the money you need, not the rate you think you deserve. Pick the annual number. Not a dream number, the real one: what it takes to replace the paycheck, cover the mortgage, pay for the thing you keep putting off. Write it down. In this example say your number is $50,000.
- Count your billable hours honestly. Not the hours you’ll work. The hours you'll be doing client work. If you plan to work 30 hours a week, figure 25 of them are billable, because the rest go to your own email, keeping your books and learning. Fifty weeks times 25 hours is 1,250 hours a year. That’s the number most new VAs guess too high.
- Divide. $50,000 divided by 1,250 hours is $40 an hour. That’s it. That’s your rate. It isn’t an opinion, and it isn’t up for debate with the voice in your head that says nobody will pay that.
- Say it the way you’d say your phone number. Not “I was thinking maybe somewhere around forty?” Just: “My rate is $40 an hour.” Then stop talking. The pause after the number is where new VAs panic and offer a discount nobody asked for.
- Check your billable hours every week. For eleven years I knew how many hours I’d billed that week. If the hours are short, the problem is visibility, not price. Don’t touch the rate. Go tell more people what you do.
One more thing, because I hear it every time: “I’ll start low to get my foot in the door.” Don’t. Over eleven years and more than 200 clients, every time I raised my rate I got better clients, not fewer. Starting low doesn’t buy you a client. It buys you the wrong client and a rate you’ll have to fight to raise.
The number comes first. Then the client. Not the other way around.
If you want to do this math with me, live, the next free VA Business Launch Pad starts November 5. Save your seat here.
