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What made you become a virtual assistant?

I’m curious – what made you become a Virtual Assistant?

When you became a VA - what made you make the leap?

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The reason I’m curious is this: Various government papers and legislation at this moment, are trying to harness the power of the so-called “gig economy” (of which virtual assistants or freelancers would be considered part of).

Basically they want to put a whole load of red tape round it to stop big companies from exploiting naive contractors in order to avoid paying for pensions, minimum wages, travel time, tax contributions etc.  Which is fair enough… but it runs the risk of penalising those of us who are genuinely self-employed and want to work this way.

So I’m running this very quick straw poll to see why you became a VA – was this something you actively wanted to do, or something you were forced into by circumstances?  It’s totally anonymous, but it will provide an interesting insight into why we become VAs.

The government is currently doing some UK-wide consultations and it would be excellent proof that this isn’t an agenda being pushed solely from Big Bad Employers wanting to exploit people (think Uber or Tesco employing people on zero hours contracts), but rather that employment options don’t  currently offer flexible enough terms and employees are voting with their feet by becoming self-employed to gain the advantages we all enjoy.  (No “I want to be a VA so I can work in my PJs all day” is not a poll option!!!)

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What would also be very helpful:

  • Stories about how you’ve helped grow clients’ businesses – specifically ones where the business has gone on to employ actual staff
  • What made you opt out of being an employee?
  • Any exit strategy or pension plans that you have… is this something you’ve thought about?
  • Barriers to expanding your business – what could be done to help you?  Or is small beautiful?

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