81: $0-$4k in 1 Month as a Virtual Assistant and SAHM

Ever wondered if you could really make money as a virtual assistant while being home with your kids? In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on exactly how I booked over $4,000 in monthly retainers within weeks (working just 2-4 hours a day during nap times and after bedtime), the simple text message that landed me my first clients, and even exactly what tasks I did for those first few clients in the beginning!  

| LINKS |

✹ Join our waitlist for Beginner to Booked VA® and get $200 off your enrollment!
(Doors open 1/12 for the waitlist!)

✹ Take our FREE Discover Your Money-Making Skillset Quiz

✹ Want to send us a voice note with a question you have or a win you want to share?! Click here!

| RELATED EPISODES |

71: What Does a Virtual Assistant Actually Do? (And Why You're More Qualified Than You Think)

73: Your Fear of Being Sales-y is Why You Aren't Making Sales

78: "Should I Charge Hourly or Package My Services as a Virtual Assistant?"

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

In the spring of 2022, I was six months pregnant with my second baby and I had a 17-month-old toddler on my hip. And I decided to start a business as a virtual assistant. I didn't know exactly how I was going to do it, but I knew that I wanted to make money from home so I could be at home with my babies. So I would just figure it out. A couple weeks later, I had booked over$4,000 a month in client retainers. And that was the start of the your behind the scenes BFF you see today. In this episode, I'm going to walk you through exactly what these first steps looked like for me and how they shaped how I support moms just like you who want to get started too. Let's dive into this episode. Welcome to the Virtual Assistant School podcast. I'm your host, Kate, a teacher-turned entrepreneur, mom of two, and I teach women how to use the skills they already have to make money from home as a virtual assistant. Every Tuesday and Thursday, you'll get step-by-step strategies, behind-the-scenes insights, and hear honest, unfiltered conversations about making money and growing an online business so you can stop feeling stuck and start taking action toward your goals. Whether you're looking for a flexible side hustle or want to take your business full time, this podcast is for you. Building a business or starting something new can be super overwhelming at times, but here you don't have to do it alone. So grab your coffee or make another cup and let's dive into this week's episode. Hello and welcome back to the Virtual Assistant School podcast and happy new year. Wow, 2026. I'm here for it. I'm feeling so ready. I took the last couple of weeks off-ish of work and really the week of Christmas, I was totally off work. And then the week of New Year's, I worked just Monday and Tuesday, and I'm feeling really refreshed and ready for the new year. Also, if you listened to last week's episode, I'm taking a break from Instagram for the month of January. And let me tell you what, I'm loving it so far. I am just five days into my break and as I'm recording this podcast. And I feel like I have so much more energy and creativity. And I also started doing things that I feel like I haven't had the capacity to do, like learning embroidery. And I actually also made marinara sauce from scratch, but that was because we didn't have any marinara sauce and we needed to make spaghetti. And I figured, you know what? I bet I can figure out how to make this from scratch. And so I did. So maybe that was an Instagram break, you know, plus maybe it was just I didn't want to go to the grocery store for one jar of marinara. No one will ever know. But I don't know. I just feel like I have so much more capacity, which was one of the reasons that I wanted to take this break. I absolutely miss you guys. I miss chatting with you in my DMs and whatnot. So before we jump into this episode, I did want to let you know that we have this really cool feature for the podcast now where you can send me a voice note. I figured this would be fun if you are someone who has questions about becoming a VA. We're actually going to do a VA QA coming up later this month. Or if you're someone who wanted to share some wins from listening to the podcast or going through our programs, all that good stuff, I'm going to drop that in the description for you below to check it out. But let's dive into this week's content. Okay. I'm sharing all about how I started my business as a VA while I was pregnant with my second baby. My first was 17 months old and I was home full-time with him. So I didn't have childcare. And I figured this would be helpful so you can see how you can actually make really great money as a virtual assistant just working in the pockets of your day. Okay. So my very first business, I was in network marketing. Okay. That is the business that I started when I was a teacher. It's what allowed me to leave teaching initially. Um, I did that business for four years. And then when I became pregnant with my second, so this was like end of 2021, I really started to feel this pull to pivot. And in the beginning of 2022 is when I started to make that change because I really wanted a change of pace. I actually decided that I didn't want to be on social media all that much and I wanted to be more behind the scenes. I wanted to be able to just like do some work from my laptop while my babies took a nap, um, all that kind of stuff. And so I decided to become a virtual assistant and I ended up actually deleting my whole previous account, which had like 30,000 followers. And I started a brand new one, which is the Instagram that I have today. And I just started fresh, you know. I had an idea of what a virtual assistant was because I had actually had one in my network marketing business, but I didn't have a ton of experience in platforms and doing certain tasks for people, like in the online business space. But I knew I could figure it out. I knew that if they could show me how they wanted things done or tell me exactly what their expectations were for something, I could easily do it because I'm a quick learner and I was really eager to figure out another way for me to make money from home so I could be at home with my kids and not have to go back to teaching and still, you know, provide financially for my family. So I started down the Google rabbit hole, which was hard because there's a lot of conflicting advice and honestly really outdated content and videos. But before I had any system set up or really much of anything figured out, I texted two friends who are in the online business space and I just let them know what I was doing. And I just said, hey, I am starting my business as a virtual assistant. If you hear of anyone looking for support in their business, would you mind sending them my way? I had no idea if these people that I texted needed a VA. I figured they already had one, but I knew that they had connections. I knew that they knew other people. And I figured the more people that knew what I was doing, the better. So that as people could hear about it, then you know, they could refer me. And that is something that I've talked about on the podcast as well. Like the, I think it's our fear of selling episode, which I'll link for you in the description below. People can't hire you and pay you if they don't know what you're doing. And so my mindset is like, okay, well, people are just gonna know what I'm doing. And if they need support or they know someone who needs support, then they know where to find me, you know? And so I did that. Turns out that both of those people I had texted actually needed a new VA. And so those ended up being two of my very first clients. I also posted to my Instagram, which at the time was a smaller following, right? I started from scratch on this new account. And I again just said, like, hey, here's what I'm doing. If you're someone that's looking for support or you know of someone, like I would appreciate you sending them my way. And I did get a client from that as well, who was someone that I had known, like through my network, like it was a friend of mine. And then I also saw someone on Instagram post that they were looking for a VA. So I applied for that, and that's how I got that client as well. So that's really how I got my first few clients. And my first month, I brought in just over$4,000, which after taxes was about how much I took home as a teacher. And I was only working like two to four hours a day, Monday through Friday. So significantly less than I was ever working in the classroom. And I was doing it in the pockets of my day. Again, I was home with my toddler and I was pregnant. And so I was just working during nap time and after he went to bed. Maybe sometimes if my husband happened to have a weekday off, you know, he could take over for a little bit. But it was two to four hours a day, but like sporadic. So it was like an hour here, half hour here, 45 minutes here, you know, and it just really depended on how that day went. And so only working between two to four hours a day, Monday through Friday, and earning about the same as I was as a teacher that first month was huge. And then it just continued to grow from there. And with these clients in particular, I did a mixture of kind of like different package options. I was doing different things for them. Each person kind of had a different focus for their business. And so I did a mixture of hourly retainers and packages. I'll link the episode about pricing if you're curious about that. We go into depth with that in our program, Beginner to Book VA, but I do have an episode where I talk about like the different ways that you can price your offers. So I'll link that for you as well. But my task just looked different for each of the different clients. Okay. So I'm just going to share with you a little bit about each client that I at the time was working with, what their industry was, what they did, and some things that I did for them. So the first client was a course creator and a productivity coach. And I helped her with customer support emails, managing her CRM and like invoicing podcast guest like workflow, inviting people to be on the podcast using templates that she gave me. I did some membership and community management. So that looked like accepting and removing members from the group, reviewing payments. I helped turn her podcast scripts into blog posts, reformat old blog posts, schedule social media posts, and any really admin-related kind of one-off tasks. And so at one point I actually grew into more of her OBM and I did a lot more tasks than that with her just business in general. But when I first started as a VA, those are the VA tasks that I was doing. Okay, so number two, client number two, she is a consultant and a coach. For her, I did customer support emails, I did outreach emails for speaking engagements, text community support, some support with her webinars, helping her do any kind of admin-related one-off task, calendar management, all that good stuff. And again, like all these things are things that she was doing or wanted to do, and she had the processes and she just showed me how to do them. So then she didn't have to do them. Okay, client number three was a health and wellness coach. I helped her turn Instagram posts into blog posts. I helped her with membership and community management, like accepting new members, removing them, reviewing payments, all that good stuff, some affiliate management. I did some outbound marketing for her to be on podcasts. And then again, any admin-related one-off tasks. And then I also had a client who was a photographer and a course creator. And so I helped her with getting emails scheduled. I helped manage some company operations, helped with webinars and classes, assisted in retreat and event planning. Um, and again, any admin-related tasks as well. I also forgot to mention that that last client, that photographer, she actually was someone I met at an event and told her that I was a VA and that's how we got connected and how she hired me. So that was another way that we met. And another way that you can book clients is just in your everyday life, like whether you go to events, whether you're networking, all that good stuff. So I wanted to just mention that as well. But hopefully that gives you kind of an overview of some of the things that I did for clients and their industries. Again, I didn't really have much experience with any of that when I first started. But they had the processes in place and they knew exactly how they wanted to do them, which is the whole thing with having a VA, is you have to have the processes and then they hand us the processes. The client gives us the processes for us to do them. And so you're not having to come up with that, you're not having to know that, all that good stuff. So that's why being a VA is like the best side hustle because you get to learn as you go, and your client's gonna tell you exactly how they want things done. Okay, so for my work schedule, I mentioned that I was just working in pockets of my day, right? Like a little bit during nap time, a little bit during bedtime or after bedtime, and a little bit just here and there if my husband was home. Okay. Again, that all really added up to between two to four hours a day, just depending on the day. Because if you're a mom, you know that every day looks different when it comes to nap times. And sometimes I didn't work after, you know, my son went to bed because I was tired. So it just kind of depended on what was on my to-do list for that day and just what everything looked like. Eventually, we did get a gym membership that had childcare. And so it was two and a half hours of child care a day. And this was, I want to say, like four-ish months into my business. No, it was like maybe two or three months to my business because it was like my last month or two of pregnancy. And so we got that gym membership and it was nice because I could go do like a 30-minute workout or walk on the treadmill or whatever. And then I could go work for two hours, and that would give me like designated work time. They had like a co-working space at this gym and like a lounge area. So it was definitely a hack. If you have, um, we went to lifetime. So if you have like a lifetime near you or um another type of gym that has childcare, it is so, so clutch. And it was a really affordable way to get two and a half hours a day of child care. It's like I always tell people, it's an expensive gym membership, in my opinion, when you look at all the other gym memberships out there. Like lifetime is definitely up there. However, it's really affordable childcare. So it kind of just depends on how you looked at it. For us, we looked at it more as like child care and like something to do because we could go work out, we could go play pickleball, we could, my husband and I would literally take the boys so that we could go play pickleball for like a date night. They also had events. I also got my nails done at the salon at this gym so I could have childcare while I was getting my nails done. It was a whole thing. I honestly miss it so much. They apparently are building one here, um, like 20 minutes, 20 minutes or so away from me. But I don't think, I don't know if it's gonna have like all the same things. And I actually think the membership's gonna be even more expensive, which I'm like, oh, I don't know if that's gonna be worth it. Um, because we do actually have preschool now. And the and one of my boys is gonna be in elementary school next year. So we'll see about that. But it is definitely worth looking into if you are looking for some more like consistent opportunities for childcare, just to like work on your side hustle or work on your business that you're doing very part-time, all that good stuff. Um, and then after that, and kind of in conjunction with the membership, we ended up as the boys got older and kind of stopped napping, and that kind of started getting harder, especially as my business grew. We had a babysitter that would come um a couple mornings a week during the day. And so I would just be in my office and she would hang out with the kids, and then lunch and nap time would happen, and that's when I she would feed them lunch and then I would put them down for a nap, and then she would leave. So that was really helpful. And now we have part-time preschool because they are five and three now, and um, my five-year-old is gonna be in kindergarten next year, and then my youngest is going to go to kindergarten the year after that, which is crazy. So I've worked my business in like every iteration of what childcare has looked like, and it's just changed depending on what we needed in that season, you know? So what's really cool about being a VA is that you can do it in as little as an hour a day, right? I didn't work on the weekends because I didn't have to and I didn't want to. That was kind of like a boundary that I set. But if you work full time and you want to get started, like maybe a couple hours on the weekends is something that you can do. Or maybe it's yeah, after bedtime or um in the mornings, whatever that could look like for you. It's very flexible and you just do what you can with what you have. Okay, so if you're listening to this and thinking, you know what, I want to do this too. But where do I even start? I have a couple of tangible action steps for you. Okay. Number one, reach out to your network today. Seriously, don't wait until you have everything figured out, just like I did. I literally texted two friends before I had the systems, before I had anything on a website, before I really felt ready. And I just let them know what I was doing. Okay. You'd be surprised at how many people need help, but they haven't found the right person yet, or they don't even realize that being a virtual assistant or having a virtual assistant is an option. Second, identify what skills you already have that businesses need. Here's the thing: you don't need to be an expert in a million platforms. I wasn't. I just knew that I was a quick learner and I was eager to figure things out. And if you want help discovering your money making skill set as a VA, we actually have a free quiz to help you figure exactly what that looks like out based on your natural strengths and your experience. So I'm gonna link that in the show notes for you and in the description. It takes like two minutes and it's going to give you some clarity on where to start and give you some ideas of what that would look like for you. And third, commit to just one hour a day to get started. That's it. You don't need to quit your job. You don't need full-time childcare. You don't need to work on the weekends if you don't want to. My very first month, I was making over$4,000 as a virtual assistant, working during nap time and after bedtime. One focus hour a day is enough to get started. Even if you just look at it as one hour a day and you are gonna do that for an entire month, that's anywhere from like$750 up to like$1,200. Just with that, depending on your prices and your rates and all that good stuff. It is enough to start building your VA business while you're working full-time or while you're at home with your kids. So if you're thinking, okay, that's great, Kate, but what about all the steps in between? I don't want to spend hours on Google trying to figure out my systems or how to price my services or if I need a contract, because you do, by the way, you do need a contract that is attorney drafted. Then I want you to jump on the wait list for being a book VA, if that is you. The whole reason that I created being a book VA was because when I started sharing that I was a VA and what I was doing, people were asking me, like, how I did it. How do you become a VA? What does that look like? And I wanted to help people save time and achieve their goals faster so they didn't spend so much time in the Google rabbit hole like I did. I wanted to give them the support that I didn't have. Coaching, someone to ask questions to, a community of other women that are doing the same thing. Starting something new can be challenging, but it makes it a lot easier when you have people around you to help. Okay. So I'm gonna drop the link for our wait list for Beginner to Book VA because doors open next week to the wait list. And when you're on the wait list, not only do you get access next week to enrollment, but you also get$200 off and three months free of our Your Behind the Scenes BFF VA network membership, which is where you will find continued support, additional training, and we actually connect you with business owners who are looking to hire a VA. So if you're interested in that, again, doors open on January 12th, which is next week. And I can't wait to see you inside. It's gonna be such a good cohort. Okay, so that's all that I have for you today. How I went from making zero dollars as a virtual assistant to just over 4,000 in one month working between two to four hours a day as a stay at home mom. So I am so excited about 2026. I'm so excited for all of you that are going to start your business as VAs and also grow them this year. I'm so excited about this podcast and being able to serve you in this way. So I hope Hope you have a wonderful day and I will chat with you in the next episode. Bye.