Welcome to The Registry at AssistU! You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking for a talented, well trained, top-notch virtual assistant to support your administrative and operations efforts!

The Registry is a goldmine full of fabulous, independent virtual assistant business owners. Our virtual assistant search tool, referral engine and the process that runs them were created to be 100% about the clients looking for VAs. We wanted it to work for you, and it does, beautifully.

Like anything else good in life, it takes time and attention to get the most from it. It’s not hard, by any stretch of the imagination, but it does take your time if you want to stand a chance of ending up with great referrals from us (and why do it if you don’t want to do it right, right?).

To use it on your own, you have to know a few things to be smart in your search. You have to decide what you want in an administrative partner, figure out what you want to delegate, how much time per month you’ll likely need, and set your own expectations appropriately. You will then fill out a referral request in depth, conveying in the best way possible all that you’ve figured out so that the VAs reading it really get a sense of who you are and what you need so that they can, in turn, decide whether they may be a good match for you. You have to then screen the responses, consult with the VAs who interest you, decide who to work with, and move into the working-together process. If you think you’ve got that nailed and can do it well, we stand ready to receive your request on the next page!

If you have questions about working with a VA, or if you’re not quite sure that working with a VA is right for you, please read our Frequently Asked Question section. If you’d like more support, consider scheduling a session with our founder, Anastacia Brice, before you begin. We want you to have a great experience here and find an amazing Virtual Assistant to help you!

Whether or not you have specific questions or want to get some help before you begin, please be sure to familiarize yourself with our community and how we work. AssistU trained VAs are different than most people you’ll meet who use the title “virtual assistant,” and we want you to be certain that working with one of them is the right thing for you.

To that end, below is a bit of a primer, plus an overview of how The Registry works. If it sparks questions for you, just scroll back up to the top here and click into some of the resources we’ve mentioned. And if you’re good to go, just click that big orange button at the bottom, and you’ll be on your way to requesting a referral!

Here are the top things to know before you submit a referral request

• • The VAs in our Registry are the only ones in the world who have received intense, broad, and deep industry-specific training. Only those we’ve trained, who have passed a rigorous final exam (over a three-day period!) and who agree to run their businesses with high standards and ethics are in our referral service.

• • The VAs in the Registry are all business owners building successful businesses. They work with clients, not for them, in long-term collaborative relationships that their clients tell us are beyond compare! If you can’t imagine seeing your assistant as an equal—a professional and business owner in her own right, just like you, you probably don’t want a referral to an AssistU-trained VA. While other contractors will tolerate being treated as employees while being paid as contractors, our VAs will not. And honestly? You don’t want them to. You want someone who runs her own profitable business because it means she’s likely to actually be in business (and available to work with you) for some time to come. You want someone who knows a thing or two about a thing or two and won’t hesitate to step up and share it with you. You want to work with someone worthy of your time and energy investment. And that will rarely be someone you found in Asia, on Craigslist, employed by an agency and assigned to you, or on a freelance gig site. But you can find that person here. If you are using any sort of traditional hiring model (including wanting the VAs to look at a “job description,” wanting them to fill out a job application, telling them when they have to work or how quickly they have to respond, requiring them to do sample work or jump through extra hoops to get your attention), they’re not the right VAs for you and we won’t be able to process your request.

• • Also, because they own their own businesses, they work with multiple clients. To that end, they are unlikely to give a single client the lion’s share of business, and through our system, the max amount of time you can request is 30 hours/month.

• • The VAs in the Registry provide administrative, operations, and sometimes personal support across the board for their clients. They do not do work other professionals are better suited to do, like full-charge bookkeeping, and marketing. They also do not do piecework, project work, or only assist with just one area of your business (like bookkeeping, accounting, marketing, etc.). If you only want help with marketing, for instance, or bookkeeping, or help with an Internet newsletter, then you want a marketing consultant, bookkeeper, or Internet writer/publisher, respectively. If you’re looking for a proper sidekick to assist you with most/all aspects of your business administration and operations, and/or your life, and are interested in a long-term, collaborative relationship, an AssistU VA can possibly help you, and we’re happy to help you with referrals.

• • AssistU VAs want to work with you long-term. That’s a huge benefit to you because you don’t have to constantly find someone new, acclimate her to you and your business, and deal with the pain of that process. And the longer a VA supports you, the easier you’ll find everything becoming for you because she’ll have information and understanding that only comes with time and first-hand experience. Long-term’s an attitude and a commitment. In the same way that you don’t get married with the active thought that you’ll try it out and get a divorce if it’s not working, you shouldn’t go into the relationship with your new VA that way. Of course, the reality is that that’s exactly what’s so—if things don’t work out for you, you can absolutely get out of the relationship. But there’s an energy behind the intention that’s different. For that reason, our Virtual Assistants don’t do “trials”. So if you want a referral to an AssistU VA, please be willing to go into the relationship with the thought that it’s going to be successful, and long-lasting and that any challenges will easily be worked through. Thoughts do become things.

• • Our virtual assistants assist. They back you up and make it possible for you to do more, earn more, have more. Knowing that, you will want to manage your expectations. They are not coming into your life to directly contribute to your bottom line—that’s your job. They are not coming into your life to handle, for example, the vision and full-blown strategy for your marketing program (for that you’d want a marketing professional), although they may assist with it. Do not look to them for skills at levels they probably don’t have. Basic web work, possibly. Creating and implementing a full-scale branded web identity, no way. Know the kind of professional you really need and be realistic in your expectations. AssistU VAs are fabulous, they can adroitly handle anything you throw at them, but they are not, by themselves, all the kinds of business professionals you may need, wrapped up in one neat package.

• • Virtual assistance was never designed to be the low-cost alternative to hiring employees, but the efficient, effective, and convenient one. Like most other things, convenience comes at a premium. So does greater quality, which our VAs exude. The VAs in the Registry bill their clients at rates between $40 and $100+ per hour, with $60 being about the average. As you figure out what you want to delegate and how much time per month you’re likely to need, please be sure that you can easily afford to work with a VA, long term. If you can’t, working with our VAs isn’t for you, in the same way that working with customers who can’t afford you probably isn’t appropriate for you. In case you’re curious, the difference in fees has to do with the experience of the VA and the types of successes she helps her clients create. VAs who are expert with your profession, and our certified VAs are almost always going to have fees at the higher end of that spectrum. Please don’t ask any of them to negotiate their fees.

And here’s how The Registry works

On the next page is our referral request form. When you’re sure that you’d like to explore possibilities with our VAs, complete the form as thoroughly as possible. Your thoroughness helps the VAs who receive your information better assess your needs and decide whether it’s appropriate for them to respond to your request.

Because the relationship between client and VA is critical to the success of the relationship, we only make referrals to clients looking for VAs. We don’t process third-party requests for referrals, nor do we process requests where the third party plans to screen the VAs and/or do the interviews. Our VAs only interview with principals.

Once completed, our system sends your request directly to the manager of the Registry, who reviews it for completeness. If she has any questions for you, she’ll be in touch. Otherwise, she’ll send it through to the VAs who are an initial match. Those VAs review your request, and reply via email, if they think you might be an ideal client for them. Your request is active in our system for seven days. Once it closes, you will have heard from any VAs interested in talking with you further about the possibility of working together. From the time they contact you, it’s up to you as to which of them you wish to contact in order to enter their consultation processes.

Should it happen that you receive no responses, or a smaller number than you had hoped, it’s likely because of something you requested that, on the whole with everything you shared, led the VAs who received the request to be disinterested or to believe that the two of you wouldn’t partner well. That doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. As we are not an agency, the VAs aren’t our employees, and we don’t tell them what to do, they make all their own business decisions, including whose referral requests they reply to.

If it happens to you, and if you’re interested in seeing what you might do to get a better response, Anastacia Brice, our founder, is available to help you with her Registry Gold process, or with coaching and consulting through a Wise Help session. In order to respect the time of the AssistU VAs, if you put through a request on your own that gets no response or a smaller response than you would like, we don’t permit another request to be created and sent to the VAs within 60 days without your doing, at a minimum, a Wise Help session to help you understand what happened and how to course correct before you try again.

But if you find, as most often happens, that those who respond are awesome and amazing, choose the one with whom you best resonate. That’s a big key to building a relationship and to working in partnership with a VA, and that partnership will be the thing that allows you to take your business, and your life, to the places you want to take them. A VA can also help you understand how to build the relationship that will best serve you and your needs!

Terms of Use

The Registry is a service provided free of charge by AssistU. All of the VAs available to you here have been trained by AssistU, and have successfully completed our rigorous training program, including close to 200 hours of training and study specific to running virtual assistant businesses. Some have also earned one of the two highest certifications available in our industry, either the CPVA (Certified Professional Virtual Assistant) certification or the CMVA (Certified Master Virtual Assistant) certification. All of them have met, and/or exceeded our very high standards, and all of them agree to conduct themselves in an ongoing manner, in accordance with our Standards of Excellence, Practices, and Ethics Pledge.

We train and coach VAs to create businesses they love and feel great about. Because each VA has her own way of working and owns her own business, one “size” will not fit all, and you aren’t likely to find the right fit with a wide variety of people. It’s critical that you find the right VA for you. The most important part of working with a VA is the relationship created by the two of you, and that’s a very personal thing—something you have as much a part in, and responsibility for, as the VA does.

As a matter of due diligence in making any working relationship successful, it’s wise to choose carefully, taking the time to verify specific qualifications, abilities, and skills, and assessing the personality and chemistry to gauge “fit.” We urge anyone considering an AssistU trained VA to make the same kinds of assessments of any VA he/she is considering working with.

By using the referral request form on the next page, you affirm that you understand how our VAs and our referral service works, and agree to accept all responsibility for the results of your working with an AssistU trained VA. You further agree to hold AssistU and Anastacia Brice harmless from any and all claims which may arise as a result of the referral process or the working relationship you create with one of our graduates. Please be aware that we will not be able to process your request if two or more of our graduates have reported negative business experiences with you, your request is incomplete, or makes requests that fall outside the parameters and scope of our service.

“I have been blessed to find people who are smarter than
I am, and they help me to execute the vision I have.“
– Russell Simmons