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Laura Nicole: 0:02

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. If you've been wondering, could I really do this, could I really become a virtual assistant, then this episode is for you and I'm so glad you're here.

Laura Nicole:0:40

Something that you are going to hear me say really often and on repeat is that when you become a virtual assistant, you are not starting over. You are simply switching lanes. You don't suddenly have zero experience. We are just taking your experience and your skill sets and we're shifting them into a new path. So today we are going to talk about three things that I constantly see in successful VAs, especially in moms like you, and it's not because of your resume, it's because of who you are.

Laura Nicole:1:11

Sign number one that you would be an amazing virtual assistant is that you're the person that people go to when they really need to get things done. You're the hey. Can you help me with this friend? You're the default planner. You're the fixer At work and at home. People trust you with the details because they know that you are going to follow through, be thorough and do a fantastic, freaking job. At work, this might mean that you're the one who handles schedules, or you're the one in charge of organizing all the files and records and making sure that everything has a home and actually is where it belongs, so that when someone goes to find it it's there. Maybe you're the one in meetings who's always taking notes, or when a question comes up about a detail on a project, everyone at the table's heads slowly turns and looks at you because they know you're going to have the answer at home. This might look like keeping your entire family calendar organized, remembering when registrations are for sports or for summer camps, or when each of your kids are due for their six-month check-in at the dentist, keeping things on a daily basis running smoothly, making sure you have the food that you need in the house or the treats for your kid's birthday to take to class, and even, on a bigger scale, doing things like planning vacations right. We're in the midst of planning a vacation right now, and guess who is the one who's researching Airbnbs and hotels and booking flights? Spoiler alert, it's me. It's mom at work. Sure, you're getting compensated for these things, but the way that you handle them for your friend circle or your neighborhood Facebook group or your daughter's Girl Scout troop, you just haven't been getting paid for that. Yet If you have ever said, just give it to me, I'll do it faster, and you also know in your brain that you're definitely going to do it 10 times better as well, then you are already halfway there.

Laura Nicole: 3:02

Sign number two that you will make an amazing virtual assistant is that you care about doing things right. You're the one who catches the typos, who's organizing the pantry so that your littles can actually find the snacks they're looking for. You color code the calendar so you know which person has which events on which days at just a glance. You're triple checking forms, making sure registrations are done, and you're consistently paying attention to the details, whether it's in your meal planning or in your group text message, in the budget spreadsheet that you create or in the Amazon orders you put in to get all of the supplies for the neighborhood picnic that attention to detail. Business owners crave it. They crave it. It is not just like a cool mom trick, it's a literal client magnet. If you are someone who values efficiency and accuracy and structure, even if it truly just feels like second nature to you, then virtual assistant work will genuinely be such a natural fit for you. Va work definitely is not about perfection, but clients absolutely love when someone is super thoughtful, super thorough and super proactive and you, my friend, are all three Sign number three that you will be a fantastic virtual assistant is that you are willing to learn a few new, simple tools and you're definitely not afraid of Google.

Laura Nicole: 4:31

I tell women all the time that you do not have to be a tech wizard. You do not have to be incredibly tech savvy to be successful at this, but what you do need is to feel comfortable and proficient on your computer. You need to feel comfortable and confident opening a Google Doc or creating a new sheet, utilizing email, doing things like moving them into folders or adding a document to an email or adding a link to an email, maybe adding a new event onto a digital calendar or creating really simple graphics or newsletters inside of Canva. And if you don't know how to do something on the computer, being comfortable going to YouTube University and finding a quick tutorial that you can watch to figure it out. What matters here is not that you have a gazillion skill sets and you know all these different softwares and programs. What matters is that you have the willingness to learn and that you are willing and open and happy to be trained by your clients to learn their systems and their softwares. Because, yes, you are an independent contractor as a virtual assistant, you're not their employee, but you're still going to get trained by your clients. They are not going to just throw you in the deep end and tell you to figure it out right. This business is their baby. They're going to show you how they want things done. So you do not need to know it all up front, but you do need to be coachable and able to learn quickly when they teach you, so that they're not repeatedly teaching you the same thing. So when your brain starts trying to trick you into thinking that you don't have enough tech savvy, I need you to remember that if you can follow a YouTube tutorial or you can explain new tech to your grandma, then you can learn the tools you need to really start making money from home.

Laura Nicole: 6:18

There is one thing that I know to be true about you, because you are here and you are listening and you are so interested in this avenue of creating income for your family, and that is that you love helping people. You have a servant's heart. You probably get so much satisfaction and fulfillment out of making other people's lives easier, but you've also probably reached a point, especially at work, where you're done doing it on everyone else's terms. You are always the one who shows up and helps out and takes care of things, but you've also just reached a point of burnout from always putting others first, with zero flexibility for you. I know that you want meaningful work. You want to have that fulfillment and be of service, but you don't want to be doing it at the sacrifice of time with your kids and time for yourself. Being a VA will be such a good transition for you, because it allows you to serve and support other people and fill your cup in that way, while also building an income for yourself that protects your own peace and your schedule too, so you don't have to sacrifice your sanity or your family time.

Laura Nicole: 7:26

One last important thing that I want to note for you is that clients are going to hire you for who you are more than for what you can actually do, and what I mean by that is that your soft skills, your personality traits, your characteristics, those intangibles, those are the things that clients are really putting a lot of their emphasis on, much more than looking at a list of computer programs. You know, because you can learn the tech, you can learn their systems, they can teach you those things, but they cannot teach you the soft skills. They are going to be so appreciative of your ability to stay calm, to communicate clearly, to ask smart questions, to care about your work, to care about their business. That is your superpower. Just by being you, you are already 70% of the way there to becoming a wildly successful VA. And when I say 70% of the way, I mean it. It's not just some number I pulled out of thin air because it sounded good. It's based on countless conversations that I have had with fellow business owners which would be your client about how much they emphasize potential VAs hard and soft skills when they are looking to bring somebody into their team.

Laura Nicole: 8:42

Clients are not looking for just a task rabbit to come in and knock things out. They're looking for a missing puzzle piece to their business, and you just being you is what makes you the right puzzle piece. If any of these signs have made you go, oh, that's me. I feel like she's describing me. Then I want you to hop down in the show notes and grab my free career switch cheat sheet.

Laura Nicole: 9:06

It's designed to help you connect the dots between what you already do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, both at work and at home, with what services clients are looking for from a virtual assistant, because you don't need to become someone else to get started. You don't need to go do 18 certifications in different computer programs. You don't need to learn just one more thing before you finally take the first step to start. You just need to see your skills and your experience and your soft skills for what they really are superpowers. Thanks for hanging out with me today on your Virtual Assistant Coach. If you loved 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 you all next time.