Is Being a Virtual Assistant Hard? (What a VA Actually Is, and Isn't)
I need you to know that when someone asks, "What do you do?" I actually don't start by saying, "I'm a Virtual Assistant." People can get confused and think that I'm either the human behind that cute little chat box that pops up when you go to your insurance company's website, or an on-call personal assistant who answers phone calls and manages their whole inbox and life.
Here's how I answer the question about what I do: "I provide email newsletter support, admin support, and social media management for small businesses. I work completely online from home, and I love it! It's called being a Virtual Assistant." Do you see what I did there? I led with my services. It's more concrete for people (and truly, more helpful for YOU to understand what a VA does when I describe it that way!).
A Virtual Assistant (VA) is a remote assistant who can provide different buckets of support to business owners, like admin, creative, or technical support. To put it simply: a VA is a behind-the-scenes partner. Someone a client can trust to take care of the details so they don't have to do it all alone. A doer. A completer.
I recently had someone ask me “Is it hard being someone’s assistant?” and there’s an assumption I need to address there. Being a Virtual Assistant is not the same thing as being someone's personal assistant. That's something I've needed to name out loud for some of my clients. I complete projects, and I do recurring tasks that clients need throughout the month. I am only available a certain amount of time throughout the week. At the very beginning of every client relationship, I provide my office hours. I work on my own flexible schedule, and I communicate deadlines clearly, along with when clients can expect to hear from me. It's important for clients to know that I'm not available to them endlessly. This is one of the reasons that designing a solid onboarding process is super important! You can read more about that here.
In June 2024, I didn't have an onboarding system. I had just found my first person to say "yes" to my Virtual Assistant services, and in return, I was saying "yes!" to every single thing she asked of me. I was excited and eager and hungry to learn. I'm grateful for that experience! But I unintentionally allowed myself to become an on-call, always-available bestie to her instead of the professional Virtual Assistant I'd set out to be. I did all kinds of things: emails, social media, forms and surveys, graphics, templates, planning partnerships, research. It was too much! And I accidentally became her thought partner, the person she'd send long audio messages to. That would be just so lovely if we were simply friends, but we had a professional relationship. One that I had failed to define in any way. She was behaving in a way that made complete sense. I simply hadn't taught her how to treat me!
If I would’ve continued working with her in this way, I would’ve been saying “Man, being a Virtual Assistant is so hard.” But I have good news! With this client, I started small when it came to setting boundaries around my time. I started saying things like, "I can get that to you by the end of the day tomorrow," when my response before had been, "Okay, I can squeeze that in today!" Occasionally I would even (gasp) say “No I won’t be able to take that on.” I started designing agendas for us and sending them ahead of time. That gave me more influence over how our meetings went. The agendas had built-in reflection questions so she could have enough space to voice her experience, but I could also tell her the kinds of tasks I would prefer working on.
Let's fast-forward to today. It's August 2026, two years later. I have a client who hired me for email newsletters. She's a realtor. The format for her newsletter is the same every month. I research events in the area. I created a bank of home maintenance tips to pull from. She provides the introduction note and the other blocks (new listings, organizations in the area she'd like to highlight, etc.). I drop everything into the template, get it all into Mailchimp, send it, and it's done. It's hard to describe how amazing it feels when I hit that send button and know that I do not have to think about this client or this work again for WEEKS. Most teachers never get to experience that finite, "it's done and I don't have to consider it again" feeling.
So is it difficult, compared to the work I've done as a classroom teacher? Not at all! This work matters, but it doesn't carry the same weight that teachers carry. For me, it's been incredibly nice to check off organizational tasks for a business owner, knowing I'm helping them breathe a little bit and further their mission of helping people. It's good to want to change the world, which is how most teachers feel when they work 60+ hour weeks and carry the heaviness of so many of their students' emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing, in addition to their kids' educational needs. But as a Virtual Assistant, the mental and emotional load is so, so much less than the load I carried as a teacher. I have to say this, y'all: it's just not that serious.
So, to really bring this home for you: no, being a Virtual Assistant is not "hard." But you choose your hard, right? It can feel hard to put yourself out there and risk rejection to get clients for the first time. It can feel hard to do something you've never done before and second-guess yourself along the way. You know what's harder? Getting to the classroom at 6:30 a.m., two hours before contracted hours, and then staying two hours after contracted hours, just to lug a huge bag of work home with me. Papers to grade, two parent messages to respond to, an IEP meeting in the morning, past-due SIP data that I need to input, a tricky student behavior plan to problem-solve, and a special after-hours event that I need to prepare for next week. The invisible load teachers carry is so. much. harder. than. this. VA. work.
In my life, it was harder to feel as though I didn't have the freedom and flexibility to be the person and mother I wanted to be while I worked within the constraints of the school system that employed me. Virtual Assistant work gives me flexibility and breathing room that I could've never had as a teacher.
