70: How to Make Money From Home As A Virtual Assistant

What even is a virtual assistant—and how do you actually make money as one?

In this episode, I’m breaking down what a virtual assistant is, why it's one of the best (read: the best 😉) side hustles or online businesses you can start, and how you can actually use the skills you already have to make money as a VA by booking clients!

| LINKS |

✹ Take our FREE Discovery Your Money-Making Skillset Quiz
✹ Join Beginner to Booked VA™

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

You have heard people talk about making money from home as a virtual assistant, whether it's me or someone else on the internet, or maybe this is the first time you're even hearing about it. And if that's the case, welcome. But what does that actually mean? Like what is a virtual assistant? what does a virtual assistant do? We're going to be answering some of those questions in today's episode. I'm going to break it down for you and show you how you can make money from home using the skills you already have. Let's go. 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. Whether you're looking for a solid side hustle or you want to make your business your day job, this podcast is for you. We will discuss all things mindset systems, and strategy, as well as chat with other experts and people who have been where you are so you can stop feeling stuck and start taking action toward your goals. Building a business can be super overwhelming at times, but here you don't have to do it alone. So grab your coffee and let's get started. All right, well, welcome back to the You're Behind the Scenes BFF podcast. We took an unexpected break and If you haven't been following along, we ended up moving from Arizona to Idaho. And since we last posted an episode, we've just been through it with the move. We moved out in April and we are actually supposed to close on our house this This Friday, we signed papers, which is really exciting. And we're supposed to move in next week. And so it has just been a whirlwind and something had to give, you know, and that thing had to be the podcast for now. But we are back. And I'm really, really excited to be bringing back new episodes. In fact, we are actually going to start bringing bringing two episodes to you each week. So get ready for that. We've only ever done one episode a week or maybe one every other week. And we have decided that we're going to like really, really focus on podcasting for the rest of the year. So you're going to be getting two episodes a week from us and it's going to be really, really good. So if you have any episode requests, let us know what you would like to hear. And I would love to create an episode for you or get a guest on the show that you want to hear from. But today we are talking about what a virtual assistant actually is and how you can make money from home using the skills you already have as a VA. And I'm doing this episode because I think there's still a lot of people that don't know that this is a opportunity for them. And I really want to break it down for you and give you kind of a couple of different ways to at least start thinking about how you can make money as a VA. So when you think about the word assistant, right, virtual assistant, the root word of assistant is assist, right? And that's very, very important in this context. The definition of assist is to help or support someone in order to make a task easier or to contribute to the achievement of a goal. Okay. It can also mean to be present as a helper or to participate in a supporting role. So as a virtual assistant, your role is to assist your clients, which are typically other business owners by taking tasks off their plate and allowing for them to focus on the things that only they can do. Right. A lot of times when people are hiring a VA so that they can take, you know, tasks off of the business owners to do list so that they can focus on things like, um, Bye. Bye. which next week we're going to talk, or not even next week, next episode on Thursday, we're going to talk about exactly what those things could look like and how you can actually delegate stuff to a virtual assistant and how your clients can delegate things to you. But a lot of times it is just taking things off of their plate or things that keep getting pushed on the back burner and having like another person that can come in and take over. Why being a VA is, in my opinion, the best best way to make money from home, especially if you're looking for a side hustle, but also if you wanna do something full-time from home, is a couple of different reasons. There's really three reasons. Number one, it's a low barrier to entry, okay? You can become a virtual assistant using the skills you already have. This is what I am all about. This is what I talk about all the time, that no matter what your background is, no matter if you're a teacher, you're a nurse, you're in corporate, you're a stay-at-home mom, literally you can become a virtual assistant using the skills you already have. It's just a way of positioning your skills, making sure you have the right support and systems in place in order to get started. It's a low barrier to entry. You don't need fancy resumes. You don't need a specific degree. You don't even need experience in like administration. Okay. There are so many of the skills that you already have that will translate into supporting your other business owners. Hear me when I say that. It is so, so possible for you. And so that makes it one of the best ways to get started because you could literally get started today by helping a business owner take things off their shoe list. Number two reason is it's consistent and it's predictable a lot of the time, okay? Once you get a client, I always recommend, and I talk a lot about this in our Beginner to Book VA program, that you have contracts that are three months or longer, okay? So I always recommend your initial contract with someone be a three-month contract. And then obviously in your contract, you have cancellation agreements and clauses and all that good stuff where it is predictable typically when you will have clients and how much money you'll be making every month, Okay. Especially when you are pricing based on hourly retainers. So if you have a client that is, you know, booking you for 10 hours a month, you know that you are going to make X amount of money from that client every single month. And you know that those 10 hours are reserved for that client. And this is what I teach in beginner to book VA. Um, and we really hammer in on this because it's really, really important to, for me to let you know that it's possible for you to build an online business and make money from home and it be sustainable and predictable, which is so possible for being a VA. I had clients that I worked with for almost three years straight, you know, because the agreement that we had in place. And because a lot of times people, they don't want to hire a VA only to have to hire a new one in a couple of months. Like people are hiring VAs so that you can be with them long-term. And I know that's what you want as well, right? Like you don't wanna just be someone that has a bunch of client turnover. And so that is so possible with this. It's not something where you're constantly having to look for the next sale or looking for the next person to sign up. It is possible for it to be consistent and predictable and sustainable. And that's what I want for you. Also, it is very much in high demand, okay? I want to give you some statistics. So in 2020, there were about 4.4 million new businesses started in the US. Okay. In 2023, there were 5.5 million new businesses started in the US. That is a 56% increase overall since 2019. So 2019 to 2023, that was a 56% increase overall. What does that mean for you? Those businesses are likely to going to need VAs. And some of them are probably already looking. Okay. A virtual assistant is one of the first hires typically that someone makes, especially in online business. But also there's a lot of people who have brick and mortars and offer in-person services that might be looking to hire a virtual assistant. It really just depends. And so it's remembering that there are people that are starting online businesses every single day. And that not even online businesses, businesses, just businesses in general that are starting every single day. And what that means for you is that you have clients as long as people are starting businesses. And that's not going anywhere. I think it's just going to actually continue to increase. people are just going to continue to create businesses, whether it's online or in person, but I definitely think online business is just going to continue to increase as we can just do more things remotely and do more things online than really ever before. And so I think you're I think that's, you know, a huge benefit. It's in high demand. People are always going to need people to help support them in their business. They're always going to need support with their to do list. And that is what you are here for. Okay. Okay. So if this is all like, you're like, okay, cool. This is, this sounds like something I can totally do. I can make money from home as a VA. I've been looking for a way to make money from home as a VA. Um, I just didn't really know if it was actually possible, if it was a real legit thing. And I'm here to tell you it very much is. There are three things that really you need to do in order to become a VA. Number one, you need to identify your skill sets. You need to look at, okay, what are the skills that I have? whether they're hard skills or soft skills, which I'm actually going to talk about on Thursday's episode. So make sure that you come back for Thursday's episode, but you need to uncover and identify what your skill sets are. Okay. Number two, you need to look at how that translates to services and what you could use your skill sets for in order to help business owners. And I have some good So that's going to help you just get an idea and start to see what is possible and kind of get those wheels turning. And then step number three is putting yourself out there. Okay. Paying attention to the conversations of the people around you. There are so many times where I run into people or I hear people talking about how they are looking for an assistant or they just need help in their business or, you know, whatever it might be. And the topic about coming to like bringing someone on as a virtual assistant comes up. So make sure that you're paying attention to that. Also like letting people know what you're doing, right? Like literally telling people, yeah, I'm starting my business as a virtual assistant. You know, if you know of anyone who's looking for a VA or looking for support in their business, would you mind sending them my way? That is literally how I got my very first two clients. I sent a text to two of my friends and I just said, hey, I'm starting my business as a VA. If you know of anyone or you hear of anyone looking, Would you mind recommending me? Sending in my way. Turns out both of those people that I texted ended up actually needing VAs themselves. So that really worked out. And that is what is so possible for you as well. Also, social media is a great place to start putting yourself out there as well. That's just a tool that you can use in your tool belt. It's searchable. People are definitely searching for VAs on social media because Instagram has really become a search engine. there's a lot of SEO, search engine optimization that has started to happen. And so when someone types in virtual assistant, you know, profiles of VAs and contents about VAs, content about VAs will start to come up. And that is how they are finding a virtual assistant. So I'm not saying you need to post every single day on social media and you need to like market super heavy on social media. This is actually a topic I really want to talk about in the next coming in the next coming weeks, in the next few weeks or in the coming weeks. And I really want to kind of break down like how posting as a VA looks a lot different than how I think people think. using social media as marketing should look. So stay tuned for that. That's going to be a really good episode. I think it's going to help answer a lot of questions that you might have around social media. And there's been a lot of things that have updated over the last few years. So you might be surprised is my point. When you put yourself out there and you start talking about it, you might realize there's actually people in your life right now that are looking for VAs. I know gals that have gone through beginner to book VA, they've been hired by their realtor. A family friend has a business. They've been looking for someone to help take over some emails and some customer service or invoicing. You just never, ever know. So you just have to put yourself out there. So do me a favor and also do yourself a favor and go take the quiz. Go take the quiz. I think it'll give you a really good idea and insight into how you can use your skills to be a VA. Um, and I would actually love to hear what results you get. So after you take the quiz, respond to that email that you get with your results and let me know, and let me know if it hits, like, let me know if it's spot on because I would love to know. All right. That is it for today's episode. I hope that you learned something. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you did, I would love it. If you would leave us a review on Apple podcasts, or you can rate us on Spotify. Like I said, we're really trying to pour into the podcast and the more that people share about how much they love it, the more that it's going to reach the people that need to hear it. So I hope that you have a great rest of your day and we will see you back here on Thursday. Bye.