When you’ve only ever been an employee and received a monthly salary, it can be challenging to know what to set as your hourly rate in your Virtual Assistant business.
You may find yourself doing market research and comparing yourself to other VAs or telling yourself ‘I can’t charge that’, ‘no one would pay that’, etc.
Money is something that is often not talked about in society and is very much linked to our self-worth. We base our beliefs around money on the experiences we had in our childhood, how our caregivers and society perceived money.
I talk about this in my FREE guide ‘5 ways for Assistants to uncover hidden money blocks and launch their Virtual Assistant business’.
In this blog I’m going to address three ways you can establish your hourly rate.
Comfortable vs Uncomfortable
One way to test what to set your hourly rate is to follow the feeling in your body. I know it sounds a bit crazy, just stay with me as I share this valuable exercise with you.
If I were to ask you, how would it feel to charge £20 an hour what would you say? Does it feel comfortable or is it creating a feeling of dis-ease in your body? If it feels comfortable, great, we have your starting point!
How about £25 an hour? Does that still feel comfortable or is there a level of discomfort in your body? Maybe you’re feeling some slight fear or anxiety in your stomach or chest. Listen to your body and pay attention to what it tells you.
Then you go to the next increment, let’s say £30 an hour, although you can go up in smaller increments. Again, ask yourself how it feels to charge this as an hourly rate. If it’s feeling really, stretchy and uncomfortable go back to the figure that feels comfortable but a bit stretchy.
That’s your hourly rate!
As you might have gathered, you’re tuning into your body and how you feel with the different hourly rate options. Know that as you grow in your confidence, experience and skills you may decide to up your hourly rate.
Knowing your worth
When setting your hourly rate stop thinking about how much you think someone will pay (because you can never know) and instead think about what all your skills and experience are worth to your clients. What is the transformation you are going to bring to your client’s business? How much is this worth?
Ultimately, when choosing your hourly rate, it all comes back down to self-worth and belief in your abilities to support your clients and give them what they need.
This is a great opportunity to dig into your money story and the limiting beliefs that are coming up for you. Challenge your beliefs and look for the evidence. Remember your brain is always going to try and keep you safe and stuck in the familiar.
But you are worth more than that. You are worthy of charging and receiving clients in your Virtual Assistant business. Don’t give away your time and services for free. Place a value on the service you offer and charge your worth.
Your net worth is related to your self-worth.
You are the expert
I’m going to take a wild guess and say that if you’re thinking of building a Virtual Assistant business then you’ve got at least 10 years + of Assistant experience under your belt.
With all learnings we go through the four stages of competence.
- Consciously incompetent
- Unconsciously incompetent
- Consciously competent
- Unconsciously competent
This means you’ll be unconsciously competent at providing support services and are the expert in what you do. Your clients will be hiring you for your expertise and being at the unconsciously competent stage you’ll be able to get the task done typically 3 to 4 times quicker than your client.
Take a moment to think about the kind of hourly rate your client maybe charging their own clients. When you look at it from that perspective you are not only saving your client time but money. So, you can easily charge £30 or £35 for your services because you are charging them for your years of experience and training.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog and if you’d like to dig deeper into your money mindset and discover your money story do make sure to down my FREE guide on your hidden money blocks. In the meantime, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, in my Facebook community or visit my website at www.suzieflynn.com.
