I don't understand why nobody talks about it more for VA work. I was spending so much time doing research for my client by going through multiple websites and copy pasting information. Someone told me to try Perplexity, and it literally pulls everything together with sources in one place. Is this actually reliable enough to use for real client research, or is it just good for quick lookups?

It starts with a small one you said yes to without thinking. A client asks you to 'just quickly' do one extra thing. You do it. Then it happens again. Then it's expected. Then you're doing 30% more work for the same rate. The fix isn't a long contract clause. It's one sentence: ' Happy to take that on — want me to add it to next month's scope or swap it with something current?' That single response protects your time while training the client.

How are you guys organizing client passwords/login stuff safely? One client keeps sending me passwords on WhatsApp and I feel like that’s probably not the best setup lol. I’m still pretty new to VA work so curious what people normally use.

You have to decide that yourself — and then back it up. What worked for me was keeping a running doc of wins. Time saved, problems solved, revenue influenced, systems built. Every month I added to it. When the conversation came, I wasn't guessing at my value. I had receipts. Start that doc now even if a rate raise feels far away.

Not full developer-level stuff, but things like Zapier, Notion automations, Airtable workflows, etc. I had two discovery calls this week where they casually asked “you can automate that right?” 😭 Feels like the baseline skill set is shifting fast.