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Laura Nicole: 00:00

Welcome to Your Virtual Assistant Coach, the podcast for moms who want to make money from home on their own terms. I'm your host, Laura Nicole, a successful six-figure earning VA and coach who replaced my college professor salary in just five months back in 2020 after my daughter was born, and I have never looked back. I'm here to help you build a profitable, flexible VA business that fits into your family's lives so you no longer feel like you're living just to work. Let's dive in. 

Laura Nicole: 00:33

Okay, today I want to talk specifically to teachers. Okay, I want to talk to current teachers who are just wrapping up the school year, finishing out May Sember. The former teachers are currently feeling miserable in the classroom and don't want to go back in the fall teachers, as well as the I love teaching, but I need to make more money teachers. And I can't forget the I have no idea what else I would even do, teachers, because I have something to tell you and I need you to actually hear it when I say that you have been doing virtual assistance work for literal years. You just haven't been getting paid VA rates for it. You've been getting paid teacher rates for it. Okay, so here's what I want you to do. I want you to think about what a typical week looks like for you in the classroom. You're planning curriculum weeks in advance, you're managing deadlines, not just for yourself, but for 30 other people who definitely did not want to do their homework. You're communicating with parents, administrators, other teachers, and you're doing that very professionally and clearly, even when you're running on very little sleep and probably way too much caffeine. You're tracking students' progress, you're giving feedback, you're breaking a really big, overwhelming goal down into very small, manageable steps and making sure that your students are getting to where they need to be. 

Laura Nicole: 02:08

Okay, now let's shift. And let me tell you what online business owners are paying virtual assistants to do. They're paying for project management, for client communication, for operation support, for feedback systems, for deadline tracking. Does that sound familiar? Teaching experience directly transfers to virtual assistant work. The big picture planning, deadline management, priority setting, breaking down those long-term goals. And y'all, this is not just my opinion. Okay, this is the reality of what virtual assistants do every day. You have been doing it in the classroom for years, which means that it's a very, very natural shift for you to step into the virtual assistant space, whether that is to create supplemental income or to ideally completely replace your teaching income, because your time and your experience in the classroom has trained you and it has trained you well. And just in case any of you teachers are listening to this and you're like, Laura, this kind of feels like a stretch. I'm not sure that lesson planning is the same as project management. Okay, let me show you exactly what I mean by this. Lesson planning literally is project management. And y'all, not only do I know the comparison because of the VA side, but if you remember, I was a teacher. I was a college professor in higher education, but I still had to lesson plan. I still had to grade and give feedback and deal with administrators and manage an actual classroom full of 18-year-old kids. 

Laura Nicole: 03:43

When you are lesson planning, you are sitting down and mapping out an entire unit from start to finish with milestones and checkpoints and final deliverables of what the students need to learn and know by the end of it. That's exactly literally exactly what a VA does for an online business owner who has a launch coming up or a course to build. And that parent communication that you do, the parent communication, the administrator communication, that translates directly to client communication and customer service. Think about the last time that you had to write a very delicately worded email to a parent about their child's behavior or navigate a heated conversation professionally. You know how to communicate professionally and calmly and clearly, which means that you know how to communicate with customers and clients. And that's a skill that business owners are going to pay and pay well for. Because when you're the person forward-facing dealing with their clients and customers, you are the reputation of their business. And you have to grade all of your students' work. You have to create feedback systems, you have to refine those feedback systems. You've created those rubrics. You have found a way to keep things structured and at scale, truly, across multiple classes of kids. Business owners need somebody who can assess the work, who can track the numbers, who can look at ways to improve their procedures and be able to communicate not only the data that comes from the numbers that you're tracking, but also the things that need to be implemented and changed in their policies and procedures to make their business run smoother. 

Laura Nicole: 05:30

And to be really, really, really blunt with y'all, your soft skills are even more valuable than all of those hard skills that I just talked through. Because the fact that as a teacher, to be successful in the classroom, right, you have to be a quick learner. You have to be able to adapt to different details and different texts and different curriculums and different outcomes, which means you have to have a great attention to detail. You have to be extremely organized. You have to be a proactive, problem-solving critical thinker who's able to communicate professionally and connect with people on a human level, right? Those soft skills are literal gold as a virtual assistant. And you had those soft skills, but you have honed them over time while in the classroom. Every single one of them. Okay, before I keep going, I want to pause here really quick because I know some of y'all are starting to do this math in your heads, right? You're starting to map out your skills and seeing how these could translate to services and starting to think like, wait, could I actually do this? Could I actually create a new stream of income this way using all of these skills I already have? Obviously, my answer to you is yes. Yes, you absolutely positively can. And I actually built something specifically for you to help you get the ball rolling. 

Laura Nicole: 07:06

It's a four-day live workshop designed for teachers who really want to use the summer, your secret weapon, the summer, to get your VA business set up, right? Get your service set put together, get your resume ready, get out there and be able to start networking with clients so that you can have a client signed before getting back into the back to school chaos in the fall. It's just four hours spread over four days. And by the end of it, you will have all of your skills mapped out, your services defined, a professional one-sheet resume ready to send to potential clients, and the confidence to actually get out there and share it instead of letting it just collect digital dust. That doesn't do any good for anybody. The link for the workshop is in the show notes. So go check that out. I'll be here when you get back. And if you really want to capitalize on having this time over the summer to get a supplemental income stream actually producing income prior to August, I highly recommend grabbing a seat because spaces are indeed limited. Because I coach you directly during those four days. And I want to make sure everyone is getting top-notch coaching. Now I just quickly want to address something that I'm guessing is coming up for those of you who have already left teaching, and you're starting to think in your head, like, okay, Laura, but I left teaching. Like, does that mean I wasted all those years? And no, absolutely freaking not. Your years in the classroom built you truly into exactly the kind of VA that premium clients are looking for. 

Laura Nicole: 08:43

Online business owners who have teams, who have operations to run, they are not looking for a task rabbit. They want someone with the soft skills, with the brains, with the combination who can communicate and prioritize and think ahead and manage complexity without falling apart. You are allowed to take everything that you learned during your time in the classroom and use it elsewhere, somewhere that pays you what you are worth and gives you your life back. And again, for those of you who are still teaching, this is the perfect way that you can capitalize on your skills and literally just start stacking cash because you can use the same skills to make money two ways as a teacher and as a VA. And I have to tell y'all about Valerie because I literally get chills every single time I think about her story. She is a kindergarten teacher. She came into the Superstar Assistant Academy in November of last year. And she had hit rock bottom in her own words. She had hit rock bottom. She had she just fell for bankruptcy. She had just gotten out of a very long-term toxic relationship. She has two kids. And she had a lot of the doubts that a lot of teachers have. Do my skills actually have value outside of the classroom? Is somebody actually gonna hire me for this and pay me for this when I don't have direct experience working as a virtual assistant? She built her services around what she actually does in the classroom and what she has learned through her experience. And because of that background, she's able to justify charging $30 to $40 an hour. Not despite being a teacher, but because of it, because of how much experience it provided her. 

Laura Nicole: 10:37

Prior to stepping into the Superstar Assistant Academy all of six months ago, Valerie was in a place where she was trying to decide if she was going to pay the gas or the electric bill in any given month. And now she has a full client roster. She has matched her kindergarten full-time teaching salary. She's bringing in $3,500 a month. And she's literally just stacking the cash. She's in a position that she can choose if she wants to go back to the classroom next year or not because she has matched that salary. And I want you to just let that sink in for a second because Valer's not a one-off story. We have multiple teachers inside the academy who are either supplementing their teaching income or they have left and fully replaced their teaching income. And even I was able to replace my teaching income in about five months. And at my peak, working as a virtual assistant before I stepped into coaching as well, I made $147,000 in my second full year as a virtual assistant. Because this is real income. Whether you just want to supplement and bring in $500, $1,000, $1,500 a month, or you want it to be your full-time income, VA work is real sustainable income. And teachers are some of the best positioned people to step into this space and create this flexible income. There is room for you here. There is so much room for you here in this industry. There is a demand, a high demand for what you know how to do. And the only thing standing between you and your first client is the belief that your skills count. And they count, I promise you. I have so many business owner friends who tell me all the time that their teacher VAs have been some of their favorite people they've ever had on their team. 

Laura Nicole: 12:41

If hearing that and digesting all of the information I've shared today has sparked something in you, it's lit that fire a little bit. It's ramped up the excitement of like, okay, yes, I could really make this happen. I don't want you to just sit on that feeling. I want you to do something with it. I want you to take action on it, turn it into momentum. And listen, I know we are at the tail end of Maycember. You are tired. You are bone tired. I know that. But I also know that you have really big goals and that you have a prime opportunity of two months in June and July laid out ahead of you, that you finally will have some margin. You'll have some extra bandwidth. You'll have a little bit more energy and time in your days. I want to help you capitalize on this summer so that when you go back in the fall, you're not thinking like, oh shit, I wish I would have figured out a way to have a supplemental income. And so I would love, I would love, love, love. I would be so freaking excited to have you join my four-day workshop specifically for teachers, also, yes, subs, paras, admin, those of you who work in education and have the summer off. The workshop runs May 26th through the 29th. And by the end of four days, after having spent like four hours of your life over four days, you will have mapped out your skills, you'll have your starting service set, you'll have your resume, and you'll have built a ton more confidence up to get out there and actually start sharing it with potential clients. The workshop is super hands-on, it's very tangible, it's very action-focused. You're not just gonna come listen to me talk for four days. You are going to actually implement it. I'm gonna be the teacher, give you some homework, and then give you feedback on your homework. And the registration fee for this workshop is just $33. The link is in the show notes. Again, seats are limited. So if you want to snag one, I highly recommend grabbing one ASAP. And listen, if you know a teacher who needs to hear this episode, please send it to them. You may be the reason they finally give themselves permission to start. I'll see y'all in the next one. 

Laura Nicole: 14:56

Thanks for hanging out with me today on your virtual assistant coach. If you love this episode, be sure to share it with your best friend, your sister, or even your favorite coworker who you know wants to start making a flexible income. I'll see y'all next time.