Why is it so hard for virtual assistants to land clients right now?
I keep hearing this question. From people just starting out, and, more surprisingly, from people who have been in the industry for years. The only industry I can honestly speak about is my own, VA bookkeeping, so that's the lens I'm using here.
If you've been applying and applying with nothing to show for it, stay with me until the end. You may have been hit by the same factors I'm about to describe, and I'll share how you can reposition yourself to compete and win new clients again.
If this is the first time we've met: hi, I'm Kyle. I've been a VA bookkeeper for almost five years, and I also run a business focused on systems and software.
But before I get to the answer, let me tell you when I first started struggling to find clients myself.
Where I Started: A Banana Chip Factory and a Dream
Four or five years ago, before I became a VA bookkeeper, I was working in a banana chip factory. Whatever I could save from that job, I spent on courses and trainings about QuickBooks Online.
I already had some accounting background. I finished the Accountancy, Business and Management (ABM) strand, but I never graduated from college. I had no experience in accounting firms and no experience in back-office work. All I knew was accounting, and that I loved it.
Then I discovered that there was such a thing as a freelance, work-from-home bookkeeper.
So I tried. I saved up, I studied, and I earned my certificates, one for QuickBooks and one for the training I took. Then I resigned from my job so I could focus completely on the career path I wanted: becoming a VA.
And then came the problem.
I went two months without a client.
Two months of rejection. Two months of self-doubt. Two months of asking myself whether I should just go back to a regular job so I could earn money again.
Looking back, two months doesn't sound like much. But when you're in the middle of it, it feels enormous. I didn't have a family of my own at the time. Now imagine being in that situation with a family depending on you and no income for two months. That's a dangerous place to be.
The Pandemic Boom (and Why I Didn't Ride It)
It was already hard when I started, but the timing was interesting. This was during the pandemic, when work-from-home jobs exploded.
Businesses started outsourcing virtually. Part of it was cost-cutting, and part of it was safety. They needed their operations to keep running, so they hired virtual assistants.
To be clear, being a VA wasn't new. The true OGs of freelancing were already doing it around 2008 to 2010. But the pandemic is when it truly blew up, when people widely learned that this kind of work existed and could be accessed.
When an industry is just exploding, finding work should be easier. Supply and demand were still roughly balanced. The number of applicants roughly matched the number of businesses looking for VAs. Back then, if you had corporate accounting experience or a degree, you could find a work-from-home job very quickly.
I knew batchmates from back then who were a bit older, had accounting experience, and had degrees. They landed clients easily, and some of them are doing really well today.
Me? I had neither of those two things.
So even though I was right in the middle of the freelancing boom, the VA bookkeeping boom, I couldn't keep up. My credentials fell short. I spent two months applying and applying until I finally landed my first client. Then a second. Then a third.
Almost all of them were lowball offers. Almost none had proper contracts. Many of them eventually ghosted me, because their management was messy, their payments were unreliable, and they would just disappear without warning.
From Corporate Back to Work-From-Home
After about two years of experience as a VA, I got hired by a corporate company: a US logistics company with an office in Davao. I worked there in accounts payable for a little over a year.
But it was office-based, and I wanted to go back to working from home. So I started applying to VA agencies.
I got hired almost immediately. Honestly, I didn't overthink it. I just thought, "Wow, applying is easy now." I had my VA bookkeeping background plus my corporate accounts payable experience, and I found a work-from-home agency job right away.
I resigned from that agency after only about two months. The client wasn't the right fit, and the tools they used didn't match my expertise. I couldn't maximize my skills or execute the way I knew I could, so I left.
So I started looking for work again. And this is where things got strange.
When Passing Every Interview Still Wasn't Enough
I was hired around June. By August, after only two months, finding a client had become incredibly hard.
I had so many interviews. So many scheduled appointments. I passed almost all of them. Almost every one of them led to a final interview.
But I could never get through. It never reached the point where they became my client. I was never hired.
I was confused.
During that same stretch, while I had no client, I went all in on TikTok. I was going live constantly, engaging with people, and I ended up building a community. (Yes, we have a community! You can join it from the homepage of my website, kylenelsonomac.com, right beside the "Read the Blog" button.)
I was teaching people for free, mostly. I poured an enormous amount of energy into going live again and again, teaching about VA bookkeeping.
And again and again, I kept hearing the same thing: they were having a really hard time finding clients.
I thought to myself, "Even I'm struggling, and I'm already a VA bookkeeper with experience."
I thought I was the only one. But most of the people in my community, most of the people who listened to me, were struggling too. Even those with accounting degrees. Even those without accounting degrees but with accounting-related experience in the corporate world. They kept telling me the same thing: clients now want people with actual VA experience, and not just local experience.
I kept thinking about it. I reflected on it for a long time. Something felt wrong with the ecosystem. Before, it was balanced. If you entered the VA world and truly pushed, you'd eventually land a client. But over all those months, the same people who had no client when I first went live still had no client.
What was going on?
I thought about it for a long time. And I believe I finally found the answer.
It's not about AI. It's not about technology. It's not even about a person's qualifications.
The Agency That Couldn't Find a Qualified Bookkeeper
Here's the story that changed how I saw everything.
Someone I know runs a VA agency. One day, she messaged me asking for help finding a bookkeeper with admin experience. The role was bookkeeping in QuickBooks Online, plus facilitating operations and some admin work.
I had seen her job post too. She'd been looking for a while. After about a month or two, she messaged me again: "Do you know any bookkeeper with admin experience?"
I said, "That job opening has been up for a while. It's still not closed?"
What she said next surprised me, and I'll never forget it.
"No. This is already our third attempt. The first two bookkeepers we hired weren't competent. They weren't actually qualified. They couldn't handle the work."
Either they were doing the work halfway, or they genuinely didn't know what to do. They were always dependent on the client, and the agency kept getting bad reviews.
So I asked her: who were the people you hired? What was their profile? Were they new to the industry, or had they been around a long time?
Her answer: they were usually tenured. Long-time bookkeepers. Their resumes were long and their expertise looked solid on paper. That's how they got hired in the first place.
And I know that agency. They're strict. They have a real screening process.
So now I had two sides of the same puzzle:
On one side, my community, full of people who couldn't find clients.
On the other side, an agency that couldn't find the right bookkeeper to match with its clients.
What was wrong? What was the discrepancy? Why was this happening now?
This conversation happened earlier this year, in 2026, before the "-ber" months. I had been going live on TikTok since the year before. (I'm not really active on TikTok anymore.) Some people in the community did land clients, and I'm genuinely happy for them. But the majority struggled. And on the other side was an agency struggling to find the right match.
Here's what I see.
The Real Reason: Tenured VAs Stopped Upskilling
Many tenured VAs, people who have been in the industry for a long time, have stopped upskilling.
The desire to keep learning, to grow, to become more competent and more excellent, has faded.
I know this because I went through it too.
I reached a point where I thought, "I've been in this industry long enough. I don't need to study anymore. I know what to do. I know all the ins and outs. I've mastered this."
And when I was in that phase, I stopped learning. I stopped buying educational courses. I stopped attending conventions. I stopped building new connections. I stopped exploring the new technologies coming in, because I told myself, "I can learn that anytime. I've been here long enough."
That's when I became a lazy VA bookkeeper. And that's when I finally understood why I was struggling to close clients and find new ones.
I had become too comfortable in my position. Too comfortable being a VA bookkeeper.
That's when it hit me how much I'd been left behind. Think about it. The VA workspace is a massive industry. And bookkeeping on its own is also a massive industry. When you say "bookkeeper," you're covering almost every industry out there: real estate, e-commerce, retail, services, merchandising, inventory, and so much more.
It's that wide. So if you miss even one year of learning, if you stay stuck with whatever you knew five years ago, you will really be left behind. And clients will feel how incompetent you've become, to the point where it's obvious that you stopped learning the day you became a VA.
That's the reason tenured VAs are struggling to land clients. Believe me.
The Problem With Newbies: Listening Too Much to the Tenured
So that's the tenured side. What about the newbies?
Here's what I see: newbies are listening too much to the tenured.
The world has changed. The VA world has changed, dramatically. If the people who trained me five years ago are still using the same modules to train new VAs today, that's exactly why those new VAs can't close clients.
Think about it. If stopping my own learning for just one or two years was enough to make finding clients harder for me, what happens when a training uses a module that's five years old?
The VA world is incredibly dynamic. It's more dynamic than entrepreneurship. More dynamic than a country's economy. VAs are the ones who keep pace with technology the closest.
You've probably heard about automation. Vibe coding. Project management software. Accounting software. These are only now becoming popular here in the Philippines, because the Philippines tends to be late when it comes to technology.
But VAs already knew about all of these. We've been using them for a long time. Automation, coding, Zapier, Make, AI agents. Most people in the Philippines are only discovering them now, but VAs were among the first to experience them, learn them, and understand how they work.
So that's the reason newbies are struggling to find clients: they're learning from tenured VAs who have stopped evolving.
The Solution: Become Competent in All Levels
So what's the solution?
Whether you're a tenured VA or a newbie, build your own mindset and your own vision. Find out what's latest in the VA world right now and figure out what you need to learn.
If there's one word I want you to take away from this, it's this:
Be competent.
And when I say competent, I also mean competitive. Learn to the point where you feel like what you know is so advanced, so "out of this world," that the people around you don't even understand what you're doing. Because that is exactly what clients, employers, and foreign companies are looking for right now.
Your clients are foreign. Their technology is advanced. You need to keep up with them so you're on the same frequency and can actually close them. If you measure yourself against the technology level in our own country, you'll be left behind. So aim to be internationally competent. Keep pace with the international market and international technology, even if you're based in the Philippines.
And once you keep up with what you know, keep learning. Keep executing. Keep trying.
What I Did After I Realized I'd Become Complacent
It took me a long time to land a client again during that period. I told you I struggled. I only started landing clients again once I realized I had simply become complacent.
After that realization, I went back to studying:
I learned accounting firm management tools.
I learned how to use AI properly, in an ethical and responsible way.
I studied accounting technology more deeply.
I practiced how I speak, so I could honestly say I was becoming competent, not just coasting on what I knew five years ago.
And until today, I'm still learning. I keep learning.
Because if you stop learning, believe me, that will be the reason you can't land clients.
Competence Is More Than Technical Skills
Here's something important: everything you know becomes useless if you don't know how to communicate it.
That's why I keep saying competent in all levels:
Communication
Technical skills
Application
Effectiveness
Efficiency
That's what gives you your advantage as a VA bookkeeper.
Right now, a lot of VAs are getting lazy because "there's AI now anyway." No. Competence is what will set you apart, as a VA in general or as a VA bookkeeper.
And competence shows up everywhere:
Your resume should be sharp and professional, with the right keywords and the right structure. Not a pretty Canva template, but one that's ATS-friendly and follows a Harvard-style standard.
Your presentation should be polished, the way you speak, the way you present yourself, and how you package yourself virtually.
Your clarity should be obvious: what you believe in, what skills you have, and what you can actually offer your clients.
Competence is something you practice over and over. The moment you stop, you lose.
There's a lot of hiring out there, believe me. But only a few are truly competent. Be one of them.
Why This Matters for the Philippines
I'm telling you this because I don't want us to lose our standard.
Filipino VAs have a reputation. We're known for being good at English. We're known for understanding clients well. We're known for being easy to talk to for foreign clients.
If we lose that, what will be left for our country? What will happen to us?
So be competent. Keep getting better at your craft. Keep learning, and keep up.
Thank you for trusting me with your time. I hope you learned something from this one.
Want to join our community? You'll find the "Join Community" button on the homepage of my website.
To know more about my services, writings, connect with me here. Here's my website: https://www.kylenelsonomac.com/
God loves you, and I love you.
Always remember: Faith without action is Fiction.