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Virtual assistants have always been recession-proof. When businesses tighten their belts, smart business owners do not let go of good support – they lean into it. They outsource more, not less, because they cannot afford to get things wrong and they need people around them who know what they are doing.
But here is what is different in 2026.
We are not in a formal recession, but businesses are struggling. Costs are up, confidence is fragile, and clients are scrutinising every invoice. And at the same time, AI has arrived and it is not going anywhere. The combination of those two things is creating a pressure in the VA industry that we have not seen before.
And it is showing up in the questions VAs are asking me.
“How do I get clients to pay me what my skills and experience are genuinely worth?”
“How much should I charge for strategic support, not just task delivery?”
“How do I talk about what I offer with confidence, without feeling like I am pushing something on people?”
“How do I help potential clients understand what I can actually do for their business before they start worrying about the cost?”
“How do I stand out when there are hundreds of other VAs offering what looks like exactly the same service?”
“How do I stay relevant and in demand when clients think AI can just do everything a VA does?”
If any of those questions have stopped you in your tracks, you are not alone. I hear them every week. And the honest answer is that they all point to the same root problem.
Most VAs are not positioning themselves as essential.
They are positioning themselves as available.
And available is easy to replace. Essential is not.
For years, the model has been straightforward. A VA offers a set of tasks, charges an hourly rate or a retainer, and finds clients largely through word of mouth and referrals. And for a long time, that worked well enough.
But that model is under pressure from two directions at once.
First, AI tools are genuinely capable of handling a significant chunk of what used to be considered standard VA work. Scheduling, drafting emails, basic research, data entry, social media scheduling – clients are starting to wonder whether they need to pay a VA for tasks they think a tool can do for a few pounds a month. I know this is hard to hear – AI will not replace you though – it will be a tool in your VA Toolbox.
Second, with businesses watching every penny, clients are asking harder questions before they commit. They want to know exactly what they are getting, why it is worth the price, and why you specifically rather than someone else.
If your answer to those questions is a list of tasks and an hourly rate, you are making it very easy for them to say no, or to shop around until they find someone or something that is cheaper.
The VAs who are thriving right now are not the ones doing more tasks for less money. They are the ones who have shifted how they think about what they offer, how they talk about it, and how they show up in front of the right people.
That shift comes down to two things. How you position yourself. And how you build the relationships that turn into long-term, high-value clients.
Positioning is not about having a fancy tagline or a beautifully designed website. It is about being crystal clear on who you help, what you help them with, and why you are the right person to do it – and then making sure the right people see that message consistently.
The 7 P’s of marketing have been around since the 1960s. The original four – Product, Price, Place, and Promotion – were introduced by E. Jerome McCarthy in 1960, and the framework was expanded to seven in the 1980s with the addition of People, Process, and Physical Evidence. It has stood the test of time because the fundamentals of how businesses attract and retain customers have not changed as much as we like to think.
What has changed is the context. The 7 P’s were built with product-based businesses in mind. When you are selling something you can hold in your hand, the model is fairly straightforward. But when you are selling a service – your expertise, your time, your judgment – some of those P’s need thinking about differently. And that is exactly what most VAs have never done.
I am a firm believer in, if it is not broke – don’t fix it.
So let us go through all seven with a VA business lens.
Product. What do you actually sell? Not a list of tasks – what is the outcome you deliver? A client does not buy “inbox management.” They buy back their time, their headspace, and their ability to focus on the work that actually grows their business or freeing them up to do something else that is important to them. When you start describing your service in terms of outcome rather than output, the conversation about price changes completely.
Price. Are you pricing based on the value you deliver, or based on what you think the market will bear, or worse, what you think you are worth? These are three very different things. A VA who helps a business owner free up ten hours a week so they can focus on revenue-generating activity is not worth £15 an hour. Price needs to reflect the result, not the time. Check out the SVA annual survey to see what pricing other UK based VAs are charging if you are not sure what to charge.
Place. Where are you showing up, and is it where your ideal clients actually are? Scattering yourself across every platform is exhausting and ineffective. Showing up consistently in the right place, in front of the right people, is what builds visibility that leads to enquiries. I generally recommend having a LinkedIn presence and at least one of the Meta social media channels (Facebook, Instagram or Threads) depending on where your clients are hanging out to find their clients.
Promotion. How are you communicating what you do? Are you educating your audience, sharing your thinking, demonstrating your expertise? Or are you posting when you remember to and hoping someone notices? Promotion is not about selling all the time. It is about being consistently visible and useful so that when someone needs what you offer, you are the person they already trust. Have you created either content buckets or pillars to help you market your business?
People. Who are you serving, and who do you want to serve? The clearer you are about your ideal client – their industry, their challenges, their goals, their frustrations – the more precisely you can position yourself as the solution they have been looking for. Most VAs think about their ideal client in terms of demographics – job title, business size, sector. But psychographics matter just as much, if not more. How does your ideal client think? What keeps them up at night? What do they value? What kind of working relationship are they looking for? When you understand both, your marketing stops feeling generic and starts speaking directly to the right person. Generalist VAs can and do succeed, but specialist VAs command higher rates and attract better clients more easily. And do not overlook yourself as part of this P. The way you show up, communicate, and build relationships is part of your offer.
Process. How do you deliver your service, and does that process reflect the professionalism and quality you want to be known for? A well-defined process is not just good for your clients – it is a key part of your positioning. It signals that you are not winging it. You know what you are doing, you have done it before, and you have a clear way of making it work. Clients pay more when they can see that working with you is structured, predictable, and professional.
Physical Evidence. This is the proof. In a service-based business, a potential client cannot see what they are buying before they commit, which means they are looking for every signal that tells them you are the real deal. Testimonials, case studies, your website, your LinkedIn profile, how quickly you respond to an enquiry, the quality of your proposals – all of it is physical evidence. It either builds confidence or quietly undermines it. Most VAs significantly underestimate how much this matters. If your online presence does not reflect the quality of work you actually deliver, that gap is costing you clients.
Work through all seven honestly and you will start to see where the gaps are. Most VAs have a pricing problem that is actually a product problem. Or a promotion problem that is actually a people problem – they are showing up in front of the wrong audience. Or they are losing potential clients not because of price, but because their physical evidence does not back up their claims. The 7 P’s help you identify where to focus your energy rather than trying to fix everything at once.
Positioning is what makes you attractive when the right person finds you. But you still have to make sure the right people find you – and that takes deliberate, consistent action.
This is where two of the most practical tools in your business come in.
Your Dream 100 is exactly what it sounds like. A list of 100 people – potential clients, referral partners, collaborators, communities – who, if you built a genuine relationship with them, could transform your business.
The Dream 100 was originally developed by Chet Holmes, author of The Ultimate Sales Machine, and has since been adopted and built upon by some of the world’s leading business growth experts including Russell Brunson. It is used by everyone from solo business owners to global enterprises – the principle works at any scale.
Not a cold outreach list. Not a spray-and-pray approach to finding clients. A deliberate, relationship-first strategy built on the understanding that most high-value clients come from warm connections, not cold pitches.
The process is straightforward. You identify your 100. You show up consistently in their world – engaging with their content, adding value, being a genuine presence. You build the relationship before you ever need to have a commercial conversation. And when the time is right, the conversation is easy because they already know who you are and what you stand for.
Dream 100 works because it shifts your mindset from hunting for clients to cultivating relationships. And relationships, done properly, compound over time. One strong connection in your Dream 100 does not just lead to one client. It leads to referrals, introductions, collaborations and opportunities you could not have predicted.
Knowing what to do is one thing. Actually doing it consistently when you are also running a business, serving existing clients, and managing everything else life throws at you is another matter entirely.
The Momentum Hour is your solution to that.
The Momentum Hour draws on the principles behind Kelly Roach’s Miracle Hour, a concept from her influential book of the same name that has been embraced by business owners and entrepreneurs who are serious about sustainable growth. Kelly Roach’s work itself draws on the broader philosophy of intentional, focused time championed by Hal Elrod in The Miracle Morning, which has been adopted by millions worldwide. The idea at the heart of both is simple but powerful – protect a dedicated block of time each day for intentional, focused activity rather than letting the day pull you in every direction. At VACT we have taken that principle and applied it directly to business development, creating the Momentum Hour as a practical daily discipline specifically designed for VAs who are serious about growth.
A protected block of time – one hour, every working day – dedicated entirely to the business development activities that move the needle. Working your Dream 100, creating content, following up on enquiries, commenting on social media posts and anything else that builds your visibility and your pipeline.
It is not a task list you do when you have got a spare moment. It is a non-negotiable part of your working day that you protect fiercely.
The reason most VAs struggle to grow their business while serving clients is that business development only happens in the gaps. And the gaps are never big enough. The Momentum Hour solves that by making growth a daily habit rather than a reactive scramble when client work dries up.
One hour a day, every day, focused on the right activities. That is what consistent growth looks like in practice. If you cannot do one hour a day, I totally understand that – so let’s make it one hour several times a week. Please don’t say you will do it on a Friday afternoon, I know you won’t – client work will come in and you will prioritise that over your own business. Every VA, I have ever met, does it!
At the start of this blog I listed six questions that I get asked on a regular basis. Now that you have the frameworks, let us look at each one properly.
This is almost always a Product and Price problem. You are either describing what you do in a way that undersells the outcome, or you have set a rate based on what feels comfortable rather than what the result is actually worth. Go back to your Product P and rewrite what you offer in terms of what changes for a client when they work with you. Then look at your price through that lens. The two have to align.
The answer is not to stop charging by the hour – hourly rates and packages of time work perfectly well for a VA business. The real question is whether your rate is right for you. Too many VAs set a number based on what they think the market expects, or what feels safe, without ever properly working out what they need to charge to make their business viable. Your rate needs to take into account your experience and the expertise you bring, your turnaround times and the premium that speed and reliability commands, and your actual business expenses – because if your rate does not cover your costs and leave you with a proper income, you do not have a business, you have an expensive hobby. Strategic support should sit at the higher end of your rate card, because you are not just doing tasks, you are bringing your thinking and your judgment. Price that accordingly.
Your Dream 100 work will help here too – when you are building relationships with the right people rather than chasing anyone who will have you, you naturally start having conversations with clients who understand and expect to pay for expertise.
This is what Dream 100 solves. When you have spent time building a genuine relationship with someone, showing up in their world, adding value before you ever mention what you do, the conversation about working together does not feel like selling. It feels like a natural next step. You are not convincing anyone of anything. You are simply talking to someone who already knows you, already respects your work, and is already wondering whether you might be able to help them. Confidence in selling comes from the quality of the relationship, not from perfecting a sales script.
This is your Physical Evidence and Promotion P’s working together. Your content, your testimonials, your case studies, your online presence – these all do the heavy lifting before anyone gets on a call with you. If a potential client has read your content, seen evidence of results, and watched you show up consistently and knowledgeably over time, they arrive at that first conversation already sold on the concept. Price is only the first question when value has not been established. Your Momentum Hour is how you make sure that evidence is being built and shared every single day.
They are not all offering the same thing – they just all sound like they are. This is a People and Process problem. Most VAs describe their services in identical terms because they are focused on the tasks rather than their approach, their personality, and their way of working. Ensure your are sharing your core values and what you stand for. Remember, your Process is part of your differentiation. The way you onboard a client, the way you communicate, the structure you bring, the standards you hold – none of that is the same as the VA down the road. The job is to make it visible, not keep it hidden behind a generic list of services.
AI can handle tasks. It cannot handle relationships, judgment, accountability, or strategic thinking. The VAs who will feel the AI squeeze are the ones who have positioned themselves purely as task-doers. The VAs who will thrive are the ones who have used the 7 P’s to position themselves as essential partners, and who are using Dream 100 and the Momentum Hour to build the kinds of relationships where a client would not dream of replacing them with a tool. Relevance is not about keeping up with every AI development. It is about being so embedded in your clients’ businesses, and so trusted in your thinking, that the question never even comes up.
The VAs who will still be thriving in five years are not necessarily the most talented or the most experienced. They are the ones who have identified their goals, created a business plan, who take their positioning seriously, invest in the right relationships, and show up consistently enough that when a business owner needs the kind of support they offer, there is no question about who to call.
The questions at the start of this article – the ones about charging what you are worth, standing out, staying relevant, selling without feeling pushy – they all have answers. But the answers are not found in doing more of what is not working. They are found in getting clear on your positioning using the 7 P’s, building relationships with the right people through your Dream 100, and creating the daily habits that keep your pipeline moving with your Momentum Hour.
The VA industry is not dying. It is evolving. And the VAs who evolve with it – who step up from task-doers to trusted strategic partners – are the ones who will be in the highest demand, commanding the best rates, working with clients who genuinely value what they bring.
The question is whether you are ready to make that shift.
If this blog has resonated with you, the next step is straightforward.
The VACT VA Membership gives you the tools, the training, and the community to put everything we have talked about here into practice. The 7 P’s, Dream 100, the Momentum Hour – these are not just concepts. They are frameworks you can implement in your business right now, and the Membership is where you get the support and accountability to actually do that, consistently, without having to figure it all out on your own.
It is practical, no-nonsense, and built specifically for VAs who are serious about building a business that works.
Find out more and join here: vatrainingacademy.co.uk/services/membership/
And if you are at the stage where you want to scale – where you know what you need to do but you want dedicated, one to one support to get there faster – you can upgrade to one to one coaching. This is for VAs who are ready to move quickly, think strategically, and build something bigger.
Find out more about one to one coaching here: vatrainingacademy.co.uk/services/coaching/
Amanda Johnson is not just a mentor; she is a catalyst for transformation in the Virtual Assistant industry, helping professionals not only start but scale their businesses to new heights. Her dedication to her clients’ success is matched only by her commitment to integrity, honesty, and empowerment.
We’ve given VACT’s VA Training Academy® a makeover, but your favourite resources are still here.
Check it out, update your bookmarks, and let us know what you think of our new look – we’re excited!
Be sure to explore our updated courses and free resources too. We’ve got awesome new stuff coming that you won’t want to miss.
Thanks for joining us!
We’ve given VACT’s VA Training Academy® a makeover, but your favourite resources are still here.
Check it out, update your bookmarks, and let us know what you think of our new look – we’re excited!
Be sure to explore our updated courses and free resources too. We’ve got awesome new stuff coming that you won’t want to miss.
Thanks for joining us!
