The difference between £500 and £5,000 months is often what you choose to focus on

She's Alright When You Get To Know Her - UK Podcast for Virtual Assistants

The episode explores the psychological transition required for Virtual Assistants to move from an employee mindset to a successful business

Key takeaways

• A true business must be focused on generating profit, whereas a hobby is simply an enjoyable activity.
• Every working hour should be valued at your specific hourly rate to prevent 'lifestyle creep' from eroding revenue.

Main topics

• Employee vs. Business Owner Mindset
• Profitability and Pricing Strategy

Notable quotes

Your business is not a hobby.

Conclusion

Success as a VA depends on reclaiming professional autonomy and treati

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) She's alright when you get to know her. This is my podcast and it takes you from your restrictive, toxic life limit in nine to five into a life on your terms, full of freedom and flexibility as a self-employed virtual assistant. So whether this is your first introduction into the possibility of becoming a VA, or perhaps you've been doing a bit of Googling already, I'm going to get rid of the overwhelm, rid of the self-doubt and show you that this life is possible. I've not just started this rodeo, you know. I'm Catherine Gladwin and I've been doing what you think is impossible since... Shall we get started? Speaker 1 (0:37) Before anyone gets too excited, this isn't a podcast promising that you'll go from £500 a month to £5,000 a month overnight. But I do think that the difference between the two is often what we're choosing to focus on every day. This podcast is more about how to move away from the employee mindset and into the business owner mindset. And I promise you, by the end of this episode, you will have one thing that you can change immediately. that's going to make a massive difference. I had four podcast episodes that I wanted to do next. I couldn't really decide which one I wanted to do next. So I put it in the Facebook group. If you're not yet in my Facebook group, come on over. But you've got to answer all the questions and agree to the group rules. Otherwise, I'm not letting you in. Sometimes it takes the piss. People just think they can get in without answering the questions. They're there for a reason. Anyway, so I put four ideas for... my next podcast episode. And this one, it was second choice, almost first choice, but second choice. And it's how to get that business owner mindset, you know, how to stop thinking like an employee and start thinking like a business owner. Because it is completely different. I mean, as an employee, we hate the boss, don't we? We're like, why should he be getting £125,000 a year when I'm only getting £25,000? Whereas you're now the boss. You can't hate yourself. You're just going to give yourself all the money anyway. But you've got to kind of look at things from that once hated manager's point of view. And you start to realize, ah, that's why he was a shit. So I'm going to give you a few tips about how to get into the business owner mindset. It doesn't happen straight away. Of course it doesn't. We need to. you know, retrain our brains, if you like, and think of things so much differently. But there's going to be some things in here because it took me a little while to master it, understand it, and to adapt and not feel guilty about certain things. So I'm going to give you a few things that you might not have even considered because you, you know, we do this, we go on this journey for more flexibility and more freedom, but it can easily happen that we don't get any of those and there's just a few tiny little tweaks that we need to make in our day to day that I know that I used to do it and you might be doing it too or you might do it as you get through your you know see you later nine till five and straight into your virtual assistant world so these things could put a stop to it straight away The first thing I want to say is thank you to the person that came up with lots of different ideas for this podcast. I did email her back and ask if I could include her name to thank her for it, but she didn't get back to me. So if she does listen to this and emails me, I will credit you in the show notes. Thank you. So many people come up with ideas or questions they want me to answer in the podcast and They very rarely say that they are happy for me to mention them. So if you are somebody that's got a question and you want me to answer it in an episode, then email podcast at katheringladwin.co.uk and let me know whether you want a shout out as well, because I'm more than happy to do that. Now, the first thing I want to say is your business is not a hobby. They're two different things. A hobby is... Something you, I was going Speaker 2 (4:17) to Speaker 1 (4:17) say something you enjoy doing, but your business is going to be something you enjoy doing as well. But a hobby is, you know, getting the sewing machine out, painting, drawing, collecting things, scrolling through Vinted and buying dresses that won't ever fit. And then you end up putting it back on Vinted again a few months later or giving it to your mum. And a business is something that makes a profit. You have to always be making a profit. It's going back to, you know, you hate your manager at work or you hate the big boss. He pays himself far too much money or that charity boss that's paying himself £150,000 a year. Yes, but he is doing so much work to bring in profit, to keep the business or the charity going, to keep people donating, to keep people buying, to keep the... manufacturing line going and having to, you know, costs have increased since the pandemic, haven't they, for raw materials and things like that. You have to constantly be thinking about the profit and increasing the profit so that you're ready for any increase in software costs for, you know, from our point of view, or increase in insurance or the ICO registration. You know, they put that up, didn't they? What is it, £52 a year now? And you don't even get a Parker pen. Or one of them fuzzy things that you can stick on the tap of your laptop of your laptop. Do you remember them with the googly eyes? But you're thinking of it as a business and always remembering you need to make profit and not be apologetic for that either. I mean, if someone asks for a discount, the answer's no. Speaker 1 (5:59) And I stopped talking there for a reason because it doesn't need any more words. No. You're not getting a discount. I'm not out of date milk. That's a good one. I've not used that one before. But yeah, you can't phone your gas company and say, you know, the standing charge is a bit high, mate. Can I perhaps have a discount on that? No, you can't. I charge you what I want. I charge you what I'm worth. And that's the same for you. It need to be. thinking about profit. And I start with that because it leads on to the next bit and a few other bits within this podcast as well. Something that I kind of had to teach myself probably after a year was that every hour has a value. So if your hourly rate is £35 an hour, I mean, back then mine was £25 an hour. I had to look at every hour as 25 pound. So one day, we're no longer friends, right? Because my working life became wonderful. I never used to boast about it at all, but she could see that I was, you know, not as stressed as I was when I was working. And she decided to ghost me and the friendship ended. She quite liked my life when I was stressed and struggling with the brain tumor and, you know, a single parent and that. Yeah, she wanted me to look after her child so she could go and have her eyebrows waxed. And I was like, no, sorry, I can't do that. And she was not happy at all. Well, you work from home. Yeah, work. You know, being the operative word, if I'm looking