What to look for
If you’re a newbie VA, one of the first things you’ll look at is finding the best virtual assistant course, coach or mentor.
What to avoid in a Virtual Assistant Coach
The right virtual assistant coaching, mentoring or training can be very, very good, and there are some extremely competent trainers, coaches and mentors out there who will shortcut your journey to running a successful VA business.
Unfortunately, there are also some poor coaches, trainers, and mentors out there that, quite frankly, are not up to scratch, and sadly, we get complaints about this on a regular basis. Nobody wants to spend large amounts of money on something that will not benefit them, so here are a list of questions you need to ask when looking for training, coaching or mentoring. These will go along way to ensuring you find training that will help you to start, grow and thrive in business.
So, here are some questions that you should be asking yourself and your potential trainer, coach or mentor:
Question 1: Where is the virtual assistant training based?
This may at first glance seem utterly unimportant because being a virtual assistant, you’ll be used to working virtually, doing online webinar sessions and phone meetings. But if they are based outside of the UK, or if they have based their course on an American template system, you’ll get into trouble very quickly if you use their contract templates.
Our legal system has significant differences in subcontracting which will affect both your client contracts and your own VA subcontractors. You could end up being classed as an employee or employer unless the terminology would stand up in a UK court of law, leaving you liable for National Insurance contributions, extra tax, heavy fines or declaring the whole contract null and void. Always ask whether it was drafted by a UK lawyer or whether it was adapted from a US template.
Question 2: How many hours do they think you need to work a week in order to replace a full-time employment salary?
This is a somewhat loaded question, because it tests two things: how honest they are and how realistic they are. Now from experience, we know that starting a virtual assistant business from scratch, you need at least 15 hours a week (non-billable hours) to work on your business and that some of those hours have to be in the traditional 9-5 Mon-Fri working week depending on the type of work you are undertaking.
You need some of that time to be in working hours because you’ll need to do things like go to the bank, the post office, and speak to clients working traditional hours. Even if you ignore the client side, you need to have time to develop your business plan, do research and market your business.
Good virtual Assistant trainers, coaches and mentors should focus on helping people to create a proper business, if they aren’t going to be upfront about the time commitment involved then you should . They will say you can scrap childcare and replace a full-time salary easily.
Some helpful statistics: According to the UK VA Survey 2024, 44% of virtual assistants earn over £30k per year, and the average turnover for those working less than 10 hours a week is just £13,672. That’s not to say it’s impossible to earn more money on less hours – but just that it’s unlikely according to the industry standard.
Question 3: How long has this person been a virtual assistant?
We cannot stress how important experience is when you are a trainer, coach or mentor – it is literally everything! So, this is a key area to check when looking for a good trainer, coach or mentor.
If they say they are currently a VA, go look at their website, look at their testimonials, look a their service offering and their longevity? Do they have active social media accounts? You’ll often find that those who aren’t active as a VA will have out of date social media or concentrate a large chunk of their marketing on selling their VA courses rather than snagging new clients. The virtual assistant industry moves very fast – out of date knowledge will wreck your new business and this is why it’s important that a trainer either stays up to date by attending industry events, CPD (continuous professional development), etc or continues to work as a virtual assistant.
It is preferable that they’ve spent at least 5 years being a VA themselves – otherwise how do they know what marketing strategies work for virtual assistants? Or what you could realistically make in profit? Or how to stay in business long term? What range challenges you may encounter along the way? Or the practicalities of hiring a subcontractor for client work? There’s industry specific knowledge they will only gain by doing it themselves. Check on LinkedIn that they have at least 5 years of being a VA.
If they are good at being a virtual assistant, they could make money in their business too, a good trainer will be more than happy to tell the story of their journey and answer why they went into training, coaching or mentoring. Drill down and get the real story.
You don’t have to have been a virtual assistant to offer VA training – but you do need to have industry specific knowledge in order to claim you are offering a specialist virtual assistant course – and a lot of established trainers assume that rules that work for other industries will work for the virtual assistant industry – they don’t. (We’ll come onto how you test industry knowledge later!)
Question 4: What’s included in the fee? Are there any hidden costs like travel, accommodation, books, software you need etc. Are they happy to give you a synopsis of what is included in the course?
Fairly obvious question, but often newbie virtual assistants assume that if they buy a virtual assistant specific course or virtual assistant training system, it’ll cover everything they need to know about working as a VA. That’s a tall order, but as a minimum you should expect them to cover:
- Business set up – picking the right format, what you legally need to do in terms of notifying HMRC and bookkeeping, T&Cs/insurance/website legal requirements/ IR35/client and VA contracts.
- Equipment required including back ups, phone lines and websites.
- Marketing and sales, including examples of at least 10 different proven strategies, how to identify a niche, planning and budgeting.
- Industry etiquette.
- Signposting to supportive industry and legal information.
Don’t be fobbed off by them saying that you’ll get ‘X’ number of webinars or ‘Y’ telephone calls – you need to know exactly what you are buying.
A noted sales trick is for them to say that you’ll be getting thousands of pounds worth of materials in the course or you can ‘add six figures to your income in six months’ – don’t be afraid to ask for advice on social media from other VAs – you’ll get some honest answers from the real virtual assistants.
Question 5: What qualifies them to be a VA Coach?
Even the very best virtual assistant might not be a great teacher – it is actually a very different skill set. It is perfectly ok what teaching or coaching qualifications your potential virtual assistant trainer/coach/mentor has.
Be sceptical of those who claim to be “experts”. Is anyone ever really an ‘expert’ of an industry that is this fast paced? (Possibly a question for another time).
Being a VA is not just about time served, the industry reputation you have or your skill set, it’s about those things taken holistically to give an overall picture. To paint a picture a virtual assistant may have great skills, but isn’t very good at making money. There are virtual assistants who have been in business for many, many years offering a service but don’t know how to run a proper business, but somehow muddle along. Some virtual assistants attend every course going, and still can’t deliver a piece of work on time. Offering a course on being a virtual assistant should be about getting all those elements correct – and it’s a tough order to be able to find someone who understands all those concepts well enough to teach them.
Question 6: Ask some innocent questions
Good trainers, coaches and mentors will not have a problem with you asking some questions before purchasing, and if the knowledge and skillset is in place, they will know just how to answer them.
Do they recommend specialising in just one niche?
Most marketing professionals will tell you that you should specialise in just one niche because it’s easier to market to just a small sector of business. Whilst having a speciality can be good, it’s not what you should aim for overall in your VA business and there is a very good reason for this.
If you specialise in just one industry and it suffers an overnight crash (e.g. property circa 2007/2008 or hospitality in 2020 due to Covid) you will be left without an income.
It is good practice to make sure you market to two or three different niches, ensuring that your risk is spread throughout different industries and that you have no more than 50% of your income coming from any one sector or client. This is a relatively well-known industry standard, particularly post-Covid and if your virtual assistant trainer/coach/mentor hasn’t worked as a VA themselves they may not even be aware of this, but it’s about future-proofing your business.
What would you recommend if you get asked to offer a service which you don’t offer?
Again, a nasty little trickster of a question! The rogue trainer/coach/mentor will tell you to say to the client that you can do it and then subcontract it to another VA who does offer this service. A seasoned virtual assistant will actually have dealt with the reality of subcontracting and know that the correct answer to this dilemma is to recommend another virtual assistant who can help.
The reason being: If you don’t offer the service, you won’t be able to check the work has been done properly or know if the rate charged is realistic or help if the subcontractor lets you down. Also, should your subcontractor let you down, become ill or not know how to do it – it’s your name that gets dragged through the mud if this outsourced piece of work is not up to scratch or takes much longer to turn around than it should have done. Therefore most virtual assistants would not outsource a piece of work that they aren’t able to complete themselves. They can still make money on a referral fee from the VA they recommend, but they won’t be overseeing the work.
Do you charge clients for matching me with them?
If the virtual assistant trainer/coach/mentor is charging the client a fee, they are effectively working as an employment agency. Employment agencies cannot charge people for being on their books – it is illegal! So if they are charging you to get qualified and then charging the client too, do you really want to be taking business advice from them? Report them and run fast, taking your money with you!!
Question 7: Do you need the whole course or is there an option to buy individual subjects, group coaching or online training which may reduce the fee?
Ask if there’s an online or group coaching option as it may well be cheaper, this is particularly beneficial if you have previous knowledge of certain areas and only need to learn about certain areas. If they have supporting books, it might be an idea to read them first to see if you like their style of teaching.
You may only need a small section of the course – ask if you can buy it separately.
Question 8: Can they give you testimonials which you can check?
The strength of the course has to be measured by the results that the participants get from it. Virtual Assistant trainers, coaches and mentors will be somewhat hampered by confidentiality, so asking them for details of past course attendees may not be an option, but you could always ask on social media whether anyone else has done the course and if it helped them in their business.
The best testimonials to look at are those found on sites like LinkedIn, Google, Yell, TrustPilot, etc, as these are harder to falsify, especially in great number. Be guided by these ones rather than the testimonials on the trainer’s website.
It is worth asking if trainers offer paid commission for recommending the course – if they do, ask yourself whether that will sway the testimonials you are reading. It may be a red flag, it may not be – but it’s something for you to think about.
Question 9: Do SVA list them as an Approved UK VA Trainer?
In 2018, after receiving more complaints in a single year about virtual assistant trainers than we’d had in the preceding 10 years, we decided to do something about dodgy virtual assistant trainers, coaches and mentors. We invited a range of trainers and experienced Virtual Assistants to take part in an open forum to discuss this issue, and we came up with a number of things to tackle it. This was not a naming and shaming exercise, but a real effort to improve the standard of what was being offered.
Firstly we created a best practice guide for the VA trainers. And secondly, we offered a free listing for VA trainers who were able to comply with those guidelines. (Similar to the free scheme we run for Approved VAs).
The SVA was set up in 2005 so that new virtual assistants could avoid the pitfalls when starting up and make their own business a credit to the industry as a whole. If you are thinking about paying for virtual assistant training coaching or mentoring, please don’t be afraid to research or ask the above questions.
Find out more about how to find a good trainer, coach or mentor in our eBook.