If you’re like most women I have the honor of supporting, you have (or want) an online business because you need a career that works better for your life. Yes money is important, but freedom and flexibility are just as if not MORE important. So that’s why my approach to online business is different. Because if the goal is to create a business that truly works for your life, then we have to consider your life in our business planning. We have to start with your unique CAPACITY. So what is capacity? It’s how much time and energy you can dedicate to your business. When I talk about capacity, I encourage you to consider the other factors in your life that require your time or mental energy, too. Just because on paper it looks like you can work 30 hours a week doesn’t mean you’ll have the mental capacity for it based on other places you’re spending energy outside of business. A few places you might be using time or mental energy outside your business that could affect your capacity in business: Self-care/health/wellness Childcare/care for others Mental health/therapy/healing work Other desires you have in life (you don’t have to use
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3 Surprising Things You Don’t Need to Start a Business and Get Clients
One of the most attractive things about starting a virtual support business is that unlike almost every other career, job or business – you really don’t need much to get off the ground and sign paying clients quickly. If you want to launch a Virtual Assistant business, the barrier to entry is low to nonexistent. But there are a few things that many people think they need before they can be a legit business owner. Here are three things you might think you need, or may have been told you need, to start your biz…but you actually don’t: 1. A Certification I did not have a certification in Virtual Assisting and didn’t take advanced courses to gain more skills when I started in 2017 and that did not hold me back from success in the slightest. But people think that the traditional path to success is college or certification first, and because of that, the same must be true for entrepreneurship and for the VA industry. Nope. Not even a little bit true. I mean, you can. But it would be an epic waste of time and money because you can literally Google and YouTube any skill you need to
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3 Sales Tips That Work Like a Charm for Virtual Support Providers
Let’s cut to the chase – what makes these sales tips I’m about to share with you work SO well?! They are potential client-focused versus YOU-focused. I see people miss the mark on this with their sales process all of the time. When you make it all about you, your services, your prices, what you can offer, you’ve completely forgotten that selling needs to be about the CLIENT. And when you’re client-focused, sales are sooo much easier! People want to know what’s in it for THEM. If you talk about yourself too much, they’ll turn their ears off – but so many business owners don’t even realize they’re doing it! When you want the sale so badly, you often forget to focus on the potential client. Turn that around and they’ll be much more likely to listen to what you have to say and eventually buy! So let’s talk about three sales tips that you can start doing now that are client-focused instead: Tip #1: Make a connection that has NOTHING to do with business Most people exist in their workday doing only business. Tasks are business-related, thoughts are business-related, conversations are business-related. So, if you come in with a
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My Best Tips to Becoming a Content-Writing Queen
Content creation is the achilles heel of online businesses. It’s the biggest thing most of my newer 1:1 clients and many of our START students get stuck on. Can you relate? Here’s the thing. You HAVE to write content consistently to market yourself, and in order to make that content work FOR you, it has to be meaningful to the people reading it. And I know how powerful baller-value content has been for my own business and my clients’ businesses. Keep in mind that writing content gets easier the more you do it, and you have to start and do it imperfectly so you can get better and better. Writing is a new skill for most people and it’s okay if it feels hard. Do it anyway. Let’s go over tips and tricks to help make you a content writing queen: Tip #1: Do not worry about filtering your value because you’re afraid to give too much away for free. Give your knowledge freely and openly through your curated content. People often think, “No one is going to pay me if I give them too much info for free…so I have to make sure I don’t give too much.”
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How to sign your first or next client as a VA or OBM
Aside from how to start an online business, the second most common question I get is, “How the heck do I find paying clients?!” What most people focus on doing to sign clients (that doesn’t work): Creating a logo Launching a website Re-writing their website copy 84285708 times. Why do we do this?! The tasks that REALLY help you sign clients are not the easy or safe ones. They’re the ones that work, yet people still avoid them because they’re new and uncomfortable. Side note: When I started my VA biz in 2017 and replaced my corporate salary in less than two months, I didn’t have a website or logo…just sayin. With that said, here are my 3 steps to ACTUALLY sign paying clients ASAP: Step 1: Market your business with a metric f ton of value that people want to read consistently Value is not “5 reasons you need a virtual assistant” or “2 ways an OBM can help you grow your business.” Value IS an easy IG hack, a Google drive tip, or a strategy lesson – something someone can use to make their business or life better right now (BEFORE hiring you). People are inundated with content
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3 Steps to Find Dream Clients
One of the BEST things about running an online done-for-you business is that if you’re good at what you do, you keep your clients for a looooooong time. Unlike most other online businesses (like coaching, ecommerce, course creation) where clients are served for a finite amount of time, your business model is set up so that, if you’re both happy in the working relationship, you can stay in it infinitely. This is the best news ever because it means in comparison to all of those other businesses, you have to market less, sell less and spend less of your valuable, precious time on client acquisition (and more of it actually doing work that makes you money). Because you have the ability to keep your clients for longer and have way lower client turnover, you spend less time on client acquisition-type tasks. Here’s what else this means. In order to reap the benefits of your business model and keep clients long-term, you have to know what clients are a fit for the way you run your business. Because if you keep taking on clients who aren’t a true fit, you WILL have high turnover and because of that you’ll be
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3 tips to growing your audience as a VA or OBM
You made the big, bold move and started your online business. Yay, you! Now, you know you have to have some sort of content marketing strategy for posting on social media. So you put something together and start posting to Instagram…and the engagement or results aren’t as quick as you’d like. This makes you second guess and change your strategy every other week and copy what every other Virtual Assistant or Online Business Manager is doing. Or, you stop showing up online consistently because you’re worried you don’t know what you’re doing. Sound familiar? If you’re only hearing crickets when you post, let’s go over my top three tips to help you get the ball rolling with your engagement: 1. Wait AT LEAST 90 days before you change your strategy and expect to see results. It generally takes around 90 days/three months to start seeing your content marketing strategy pay off…IF you are being consistent. That means every time you STOP posting regularly and RESTART again, you’re pushing back your results. No more of that! Let me tell you a story: I started doing 2-minute trainings on my Instagram stories in April of 2019. For the first 3-4 months,
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3 Missing Pieces in Your Online Marketing Plan
If you’re wanting to increase revenue, sign more clients, or launch more services, it’s time to take a look at your existing marketing plan and potentially shift some of your strategies to be in alignment with your goals. As James Wedmore says, “What got you here won’t get you there.” If you want different results, you need to do different things! Let’s take a look at what the missing elements in your marketing plan might be, and how to make those changes now for more Yeses from potential clients: MISSING THING #1: A SMART TARGETING STRATEGY You have to know who you’re talking to. If you are an online business manager, virtual assistant, social media manager, or any type of done-for-you service and you’ve created consistent revenue months, you’re officially scaling! YAY YOU! You’ve served enough clients now that you have the data, knowledge, and information to start more narrowly targeting new clients based on the clients you love serving. If you’re still newer with your business, your entire job is to gain as much knowledge, experience, and information by serving as many paying clients as possible. In order to give you the best chance at that, the beginning of
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4 Foolproof Ways to Get Results in Your Virtual Assistant or Online Business Manager Business
Here’s the truth: I don’t know of any business owner who is doing the things I’m going to talk about below and isn’t getting huge results. And every time I work with a client who isn’t getting results, we can 100% tie it to one of these key components missing in their strategy: 1. MARKET YOUR BUSINESS If you’re reading this and want to sign clients…START MARKETING YOUR BUSINESS CONSISTENTLY RIGHT NOW! This looks different for every business owner – there’s no right or wrong way, only the right way for you. But what’s true across the board is you need to be where your ideal client is + where you like to show up. Your ideal client is likely on multiple platforms. Pick the platform that YOU most enjoy because if you pick one you don’t have fun with, you won’t show up there. This could be Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, a referral network, personal/past professional network, in-person events…you have options. Some of my clients don’t use social media to market themselves, but they do have a solid referral network and system set up for it so that’s their marketing strategy. Here’s the kicker: It takes 90 days
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The 2 biggest things every Virtual Assistant should know
Whether you want to start a VA or OBM business, or scale an existing done-for-you biz with a new product or offering, there are two things you need to know that are crucial to your success at every level. Not only will knowing these two things shorten your path to clients, consistent cash months, and a sustainable, booked-out biz, but these short ‘n sweet tidbits will ALSO help you enjoy the ride along the way. I know you’re here for the business that supports your life and THIS is how you make that business happen. The 2 biggest things every Virtual Assistant should know: 1. You have to become comfortable being uncomfortable… and start BEFORE you’re ready. Pull up a chair, kids. It’s story time. When I started my VA biz back in 2017, I didn’t know how to have a VA biz (and do the work I wanted to do for clients) and I definitely didn’t know how to run a VA biz (and get clients, set up systems, and make consistent money). But you know what? I did it ANYWAY. Because I knew I wanted a better life and career for myself and for my family (that didn’t
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