The Virtual Assistant School | Start a Side-Hustle, Make Money From Home, & Grow Your Online Business

67: 5 Myths About Becoming a Virtual Assistant [RE-LISTEN]

• Kate Scholtes

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We are back from our holiday break and because we have so many new listeners on the podcast, we wanted to share a popular episode from back in 2023 to bust some myths about becoming a virtual assistant!

For an industry that's been around for many years, being a virtual assistant still to this day has many assumptions that simply aren't true! 

Let's talk about that age-old misunderstanding about being available 24/7 for your client. (Sounds exhausting, amirite?) Or is it even possible for VAs to make good money? Should you take just anyone and everyone as a client when you're just starting out? 

In this episode, we are going to debunk some of those myths and get down to the nitty-gritty of exactly what being a virtual assistant is all about! 🎧 


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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to your behind the scenes BFF podcast. I'm your host, Kate, and I'm a teacher turned entrepreneur, mom of two, and I help women build businesses as virtual assistants so they can create a life they love and a schedule to match. In this podcast, you will learn tangible tips on how to start and grow a successful business as a VA and one that's in alignment with your goals and priorities. So grab your coffee and let's dive in to this week's episode. Hello and welcome back to your behind the scenes BFF podcast. I am so happy that you decided to click play on today's episode because we are going to do some myth busting and I'm really pumped about it. I think there's a lot of misconceptions and just myths around becoming a VA or what it looks like to be a VA. So I want to really dive into that today. But before we do, we are going to do this month's podcast review giveaway. So if you're new around here, once a month I randomly choose a five-star podcast review to share, and then that person gets a$20 Starbucks gift card from me. It's not sponsored by Starbucks or anything like that. It's literally just a thank you for listening to the podcast and taking a couple of minutes to write a review. The podcast is my favorite platform to create content on. And when y'all take the time to write a review or share the podcast on social media, it really does mean the world. I know that everyone says that, and everyone, you know, asks you to do those things, but it really does mean a lot. Podcasting takes up a lot of time. Um, but I think those of us who do podcasting and we stick to it, we actually do really, really love it. Um so it just means a lot when we see that other people are, you know, liking the content that we're putting out there as well. Um, so anyway, here's our podcast review of the month. This is actually from Danny, and it's so awesome because she was one of our VA roadmap graduates or is one of our graduates. Um, but it says, it gives me the confidence to start. Kate, her podcast and her course have given me the confidence to start my business as a VA with a toddler while working a full-time job. That's saying something. Through her content, I have learned how to take my skills from professional experience and build them into services for my business. Thanks so much, Kate. Thank you so much, Danny, for reviewing the podcast. And I am so proud of you for launching your business and investing in your education, both your money and your time to help you build your business. I know that it has definitely not been easy, and I'm just so proud of you, and I appreciate you being here. Okay, so for this podcast episode, like I said, we are going to do some myth busting. Virtual assistants are not brand new. This industry has been around for years, but I feel like there is still a lot of people who don't really know what it is or what goes into it. Sometimes, if you're not in the online business space, like a lot of this can feel like random. Like, is it is it actually real? Or like what goes into it? And with that, you know, comes a lot of assumptions and misunderstandings. And one of my goals is to pull back the curtain and show the behind the scenes of how it all works. And what better way to do that than talking about five myths that I have heard or even I had around being a virtual assistant. So diving right into myth number one: you can't make good money as a virtual assistant. Honestly, this myth makes me giggle a little bit because it is the furthest thing from the truth. But I also think it's important to understand or define what quote good money means to you because that can look different for everybody. And I always say that, you know, when when it comes to business or being a virtual assistant, but really just business in general, um, your income goals are going to be different than other people's, you know. So if you're looking to bring in an extra$500 to$1,000 a month, you know, making VA, being a VA your side hustle, then that is possible to do, like 100%. I actually have a podcast episode that is episode number 11, where I talk about how to make an extra$1,000 a month as a VA and I break it all down for you, as well as on my Instagram. There's a highlight that says mini money lesson. It's a mini dollar sign lesson. And I talk about exactly how to make an extra thousand dollars a month. And for some people, that is, you know, quote, good money because that's what their income goal is. If you want to make a full-time income, let's say like$40,000 to$50,000, then that is possible for you. And that would be, you know, maybe that person's definition of quote, good money. If you want to have a six-figure business, then that is also possible for you as a VA. The reason that there's such a wide range for how much you can make as a VA is because number one, you set your own rates. Number two, you determine your own services. And some services you can charge more for, and some you charge less for. It really just depends. But then number three is that you know, the way that you scale your business is going to be like directly correlated with your income goals. And so everybody's income goals are different. Some people just want to work as a VA on the side to bring in a little extra money for whatever reason. Maybe it's to pay off debt, maybe it's to help out with bills, maybe it's to um, you know, save more, whatever the case might be. Or some people want this to be a full-time thing and they want to scale from there. I also think that sometimes becoming a VA can be a stepping stone. So maybe you start out as a VA and find that you really love copywriting. So then you learn more about copywriting and then you become an expert in that area, and now you're a copywriter and you can charge premium rates for your service. Or maybe you scale to like an OBM, which is an online business manager, which is what actually what I did. I be I was a VA, then I became an OBM, and now I have become a mentor. So starting a business as a VA can either be the thing that you do forever, you are always offering VA services, or it can be the thing that really just gets you started and it's just the beginning. Regardless, there's a thousand ways to hit your income goals. So this myth is just silly, you know. And I think that like any business, it really just depends on how much work and effort you put into your business, and you're going to see the benefits of that if you are doing all the things that you need to do in order to see success. The next myth is you have to be available to work 24-7. I definitely think this myth comes from the name assistant and what society portrays assistants are in movies or pop culture and that kind of stuff. Maybe even what people's jobs at the corporate level look like if you're an executive assistant or um, you know, some other type of assistant in your corporate job. But contrary to popular belief, you do not have to be available at all times to have a successful business as a VA. And you have complete control over what your schedule looks like as a VA because it's your business after all. You decide how many hours you work, you decide the times that you're available, and ultimately you decide what clients you bring on. So you can build your business around a schedule that feels really good for you. When I first started my business, I decided I didn't want to work on weekends, and I also did not have child care for my then 17-month-old. So when I was bringing on clients, I just communicated that. Like from the very beginning, before any contracts were signed, I let them know that I worked during nap time and sometimes after he went to bed. And I gave them what hours I was available, what hours my communication hours looked like, like when I would be on Boxer or email, all of that kind of stuff. Being a VA doesn't mean that you have to be at the mercy of your clients. You are a business owner too, and it really should be a 50-50 client and provider, like service provider partnership. Um, and I think that's really, really important. And I think that's just like a mindset shift that has to happen industry-wide. And I do think that that's happening. And I think the more people that set those boundaries and those expectations in their business, the more people are gonna understand what that looks like. You are allowed and encouraged to set boundaries in your business, but you also have to communicate those and make sure that you enforce those boundaries as well when you're bringing on new clients, whether it's your day-to-day schedule or you know, maybe you want to take a vacation or take time off, it's all possible working as a virtual assistant. I am actually taking a week off in July, so like the whole first week of July, and like starting on, I guess, June 30th, and then until July 6th or 7th. And I just communicated with my clients that I was going to be out of the office that week and what they wanted it to look like on their end. Like, did they um, you know, want the autoresponder on the email to be changed? Um, should I, you know, do stuff ahead of time, what all needed to get done ahead of time? And so I proposed basically like all the things that I know are going to have to get done that are kind of like our weekly recurring tasks, just said, like, hey, I'll get you know this stuff done ahead of time so that we don't have to worry about it that week. And then in terms of um the email inbox, which is something that I check every day for the two clients that I still have, and which if you haven't listened to any other episodes, I still work with two clients. I've been working with them for over a year. I am their OBM, so it's definitely like a step up from being a VA and I manage pretty much the whole back end of their business, which take it takes a lot of responsibility, honestly. But we just communicate really well. So one of my tasks is to manage the customer service inbox, and they both get a lot of emails every day. So we just talked about it and we were like, hey, you know, I'm gonna be out of town. What do you want this to look like? Here's what I would really like, but you know, I'm open to something else. And they were both, they're both so great. And they were like, Yeah, let's just turn the autoresponder on that says, you know, we'll be out of the office for the holiday and we'll be back in office on this day and we'll start responding to emails. So that is basically what it looks like to take on, you know, or to take vacation as a VA. It's literally just communication, it's just like any other job, you know, communicating expectations, communicating that you'll be gone, communicating what that will look like. And it's great. So I'm really looking forward to having a week of no work, like completely out of office. I doubt I'll even be on Instagram that much, except for maybe like sharing photos of my family, because we are going back to Colorado, which is where I am from, where I grew up, and the 4th of July in my hometown is so much fun. So I just really wanted to take a week off and spend that time with my family and not have to worry about checking emails or any kind of projects. Because at the end of the day, like becoming a VA and starting this business, starting your behind-the-scenes BFF, even it really has always been about freedom and flexibility. And if I wasn't able to take vacation or have flexibility to spend time with my family, then it would have never been a good fit. Okay, so the third myth, I was counting how many myths we have. The third myth that we are going to dive into is you have to work with anyone and everyone. I think this is a myth that people have when they're first starting their business, no matter what it is, because when you're just starting out, you're wanting to just get clients, right? And it's easy to be like, oh, I just want to work with anyone and everyone because I want to start making an income, right? But there are some pretty big cons to working with just anyone. Having an ideal client in mind when you are just starting out is really important because you are going to be working so closely with this person. Have you ever worked with someone, whether it's in a job or maybe in school when you had to do a group project or whatever the case might be, and you just did not vibe well with that person. And it kind of made the whole experience sour. If you don't mesh well with someone, especially a client, it's just a recipe for burnout and like just headaches. And it's not going to do anyone any good. So make sure that you have thought out what your ICA is or your ideal client avatar because that's really important. Some questions that you could ask yourself to help you identify who you want to work with is you know, what are their values? Where are they at in their business? Have they just started their business? Are they about a year or two in? Have they been in business for a while? What is their personality like? Are your rates within their budget? What are their hobbies and interests? There's so many questions that you can ask yourself. You can also ask yourself, what industry are they in? Um, we're gonna get a little bit more into that in the next myth, but you're just gonna want to ask yourself questions on like who are the people you want to work with, because you don't want to work with just anyone and everyone. I promise you that. So the next myth is on the flip side of this, which is the myth that you have to niche down in order to be successful. There's this idea that in order to be successful, you have to have a niche. I have a whole episode on this, which is episode number three of the podcast. So I will link that in the show notes and in the description below. But I really don't think that you have to have a niche in order to be successful as a VA. And I don't really think that you should have a niche when you're first starting out, unless, of course, you're really, you know, set on something. I think that it's a great industry and opportunity to figure out what it is you like doing, who it is you like working with, and niching down right away can really take that away from you. One of my best pieces of advice if you're just starting out as a VA is to try a variety of services and work with a variety of clients so that you can really figure out what it is that you're good at and what it is you actually enjoy doing. Now you're probably thinking, well, Kate, you just told me not to just work with anyone and everyone. So, you know, is this just contradicting itself? And no, I think that you can still have an ideal client and not have a niche because I think that there's more than just like what industry are you in or what service are you providing that goes into having an ideal client. An ideal client is like who the person themselves is. Um, I think that it's important to think about, like I said, those things with values and their interests and their personalities, because you could have someone that's an ideal client that is a coach or creator, and then you could have someone that has like the same values, the same personality, the same um, you know, overall characteristics, but they're a photographer, you know? And so you're that's that's two totally different niches, and then you could also be providing two totally different services, but the ideal client aspect is the same. So it's a little bit different in my opinion. Um, and I just don't think that you have to niche down in order to be successful. Now, I do think there's a time and a place to niche down, which I talk about in episode number three, and I think that's when you're when you're really like tapped out in terms of scaling. So I think there comes a point when you have to start to niche down, whether it's in industry or services in order to scale your business, but I don't think that comes for a while. And I also think that that naturally kind of happens as you start to progress in your business because you start to figure out who you like working it with, what services you like to provide, all of that good stuff. Okay, the last myth we are going to talk about is the myth that you need to be an expert in every skill to become a virtual assistant. So there are really two parts to this myth: being an expert in general, like being an expert as a VA, or being an expert in every skill or every service that a VA offers or could offer. So, first let's talk about just being an expert in general, because people sometimes wonder, well, like how am I going to get hired as a VA if I don't have any experience, if I'm just starting out? And I want to remind you that everyone starts somewhere. I gave this example when I was talking to our um VA roadmap live cohort. And I said, you know, when you graduate college, so for example, like I graduated with my master's in education and I was going to find a teaching job. Um, my masters also gave me my teaching certification. So I was ready to go get a teaching job, and I would go to like these hiring fairs where they were hiring teachers, and I would interview and I'd talk to people in the district, um, principals, all kinds of admin people. Um, I had a couple of interviews. I think I only interviewed at like two places, maybe not even two. I don't really remember, besides the teaching fairs. So I would go to these teacher fairs, and then I'm pretty sure I had like one or two, you know, actual interviews at a school. And the school that I ended up going to and I ended up teaching at my first year was in California, and I graduated in Colorado. And when I got hired there, you know, I was a first-year teacher. I was still, I had just graduated my teaching licensure program. I was going to graduate with my master's like that following semester. I had one class left. And they were hiring a first-year teacher with no classroom experience outside of college, and they did it anyway. And why did they hire me? Not because I had experience. I guarantee they interviewed more people that had more experience than me, but they hired me because of who I was, because of like my characteristics. Like I was saying with Ideal Client, you know, they hired me because of the person I am, because of the way that I presented myself, because of my willingness, my willingness to learn, because of my eagerness to um, you know, be in education and the the impact I wanted to make. And so they saw past that experience, that lack of experience, I should say, and hired me for other reasons. And I think that's what's important to remember is that you know you can teach someone anything, really. You can teach people skills that they need to know in order to do the job. But you can't teach people, you know, how to be a good human. You can't teach people great communication all the time, you know. Um, you can't teach people like certain skills that are related to their personality type or um, you know, just the person that they are. So you want to like people want to make sure they're hiring based on like, are you a good human over like have you answered people's customer service inbox emails before? You know, they can teach you how to answer those customer service inbox. I hope that's making sense. I'm hoping that's giving you some sort of an example. But everyone starts somewhere, is my point. And I do talk more about this in episode seven of the podcast, which is how to build trust with clients when you're just starting out. So make sure to check that out if this is something that holds you back specifically. Okay, and then we get to the being an expert in everything as a VA. And you just you don't have to know and do everything, you know. The first thing that you need to know is that your clients who bring you onto the team will show you how to do tasks they want you to do. They will either have an SOP, which is a standard operating procedure, they'll either have that like recorded and in a library or some way for you to access that, or they'll show you, you know, on a call even. So they're going to teach you what you need to know in order to do the tasks that they want you to do. And then if you specialize in services, obviously you're going to want to continue your education and make sure that you're figuring out um, you know, the details of that service. So if you want to offer social media management, you're going to want to learn about social media management. And um, maybe you're learning via podcast or YouTube or you're um taking a course all about how to be a social media manager or offer those services. Um, you know, there's always a way to continue your education and become an expert. You don't need to know everything right away, especially because you might not even know what services you want to provide. I talked about this in my niching episode, so episode number three, um, that I actually thought I was going to lean more towards the social media management management, the social media manager side. And I just found out that I like did not like it. I really didn't like providing those services. It wasn't for me. And so um I would have never known that if I didn't try other things, and I wouldn't have known that if I didn't try that as well. So you don't need to be an expert in every single skill or every single service that you know you're going to offer or could potentially offer as a VA. Another resource that can help you become an expert and help you create like a solid foundation in your business is our VA roadmap. Quick little shameless plug for that because it is our signature program that teaches you everything you need to know in order to start and grow your business as a VA. Everything from identifying your ICA, your ideal client avatar, determining your services, how to market and find clients, how to manage your time, how to scale, and so much more. Plus, with your enrollment, you get the option to enroll in our BTS BFF monthly membership, which has a variety of perks, but one of them is that we have guest experts that come in and train on certain services, tools, tech, all that good stuff. So I know the rest of this year we have trainings lined up from people to teach you how to use Canva, how to use Flowdesk or other email marketing tools, um, Kajabi, trying to think of some other ones, social media management, um, Dub Sato. So it's just a really great resource for like continued continued education. So after you take the VA roadmap, you're going to still continue to get that support and education you need in order to scale your business. If you're interested in the VA roadmap, I will put the link in the description below, or you could head to your btspf.com slash VA roadmap. And um, we have the self-paced self-paced, wow, words are so hard today. Self-paced version available. So you can sign up and you can get started right away. So, anyways, no, you do not need to be an expert in everything to be successful. It's rare that people are experts in anything, honestly, when they start as a VA. What's most important is that you are willing to learn and work on the skills necessary to provide your clients with a great experience. All right, so that is all that we have today. I hope that this helped you. And if you could take just one minute to leave a podcast reading and review, I would super appreciate it. Like, truly, truly, truly, I'm not just saying that. Um, and if you want to share the podcast on your Instagram stories, make sure to tag me so that I can share it too. I really love seeing like where you're listening to the podcast and even what your takeaways are. So that was Five Minutes All About Becoming a Virtual Assistant or what it looks like to be a VA. If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to reach out. And I will see you in the next episode. Bye.