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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.

Laura Nicole: 0:34

Y'all know, or should know at least by this point, that I am always going to keep it very real and very transparent with you. One thing I want to make very clear is that you do not need a giant tech stack or a bunch of different expensive platforms to efficiently get started as a virtual assistant. I just recently had someone message me on Instagram who has already started building out her business, and she has been hearing from all of these other coaches in the space that you need to have like a full on CRM and you need to have a credit card processor and all this extra shit that I'm just like no, you don't Like. You literally don't have to have those things to get started and create an income doing this. Could you use those things and use those resources? If you want to? Absolutely, by all means right. Everybody's business is individualized. You get to make it look like what you want it to look like and how you want your business to function. But I need you to know that you don't have to go that route. There are so many simpler and free options out there that you can implement, especially when starting. And that's the answer I gave her in the DMs. I said look, sure, you absolutely can, but especially when you're first starting out, don't you want to keep every penny that you make that you can in your pocket? So why would we go pay for these extra platforms that require a monthly fee to have access to or use that credit card processor that's going to take a percentage of every single payment that comes in if you don't need to, right, if it's not a requirement.

Laura Nicole: 2:12

So in this episode I'm going to share for you guys my tried and true software recommendations for things like time tracking, project management, client communication and even accepting payments, which are all tools that I have personally used and loved for years. They're tools that I have recommended to the hundreds and hundreds of women who have come through the Superstar Assistant Academy, and the best part of them, my favorite part of them is that they all have free versions that work perfectly when you're starting out. Okay, we are going to start with time tracking. Right, if you have to track your time for a client, whether they're paying a straight hourly rate or if they purchased a bundle of hours, and so you need to keep track of when those hours are going to run out, I am going to recommend that you utilize Toggl T-O-G-G-L also. Just a quick disclaimer I am not like an affiliate or getting anything from any of these platforms for recommending them. They are just ones that I have used and like and recommend to new VAs.

Laura Nicole: 3:13

So Toggle is a really great platform for a lot of different reasons. Number one I love that it has both a web version, so like a desktop online version and also an app. Number two so it's really easy when you go to start work, to just click on it, select your project, hit play, and then, when you're done working, hit stop. It's as simple as that. You're able to add different clients inside of toggle tracking. You're also able to add different projects within clients, and so you can get really specific with tracking what work you're actually doing. You can also run detailed reports. You can select the time frame that you want to run it for, or the client that you want to run it for, or the project you want to run it for, and you can get the data in a timestamp format of a PDF or also in like a pie graph to kind of show how your time was split amongst the work that you did.

Laura Nicole: 4:03

But this platform Toggl Tracking has been my tried and true for all five years. It is the one and only tracking software that I have ever used. Another really popular option, a solid alternative, is one called Clockify. I know it's really popular and people have said nothing but good things about it. I just have not used it personally and then for our client communication. So where are we actually talking to our clients? How are we communicating with them about our projects?

Laura Nicole: 4:31

What I do, and what I have done for all five years, is just text with my clients. We exchange our phone numbers after we have signed a contract and then we just set boundaries at the beginning around what time we can text right, and not like a set like oh, you have to be available to text at this time. It's like when I signed with my new client recently. We just had a conversation. I said, hey, what's the earliest you would want me to drop anything over and what's the latest you'd want me to send anything. And we just kind of mutually agreed upon the hours, like what parts of the day we can send things to each other. And again, that doesn't mean that you'll get an immediate response. It just means that it's okay to send something in that timeframe. If you don't want to share your number, that is completely fine.

Laura Nicole: 5:18

There are really good messaging platforms like Telegram or Voxer and they essentially function the same as text messaging. They have pretty much all of the same capabilities, but you just make an account with them. You'd have a handle, kind of like you would on Instagram, instead of exchanging phone numbers. Sometimes, if you work with a bigger client who has more people on their team, they might prefer to use a platform called Slack, because it's really effective for bigger team and group communication, because you're able to have different chats within like one big project. Essentially and this is something that you can be open and up for discussion with each and every client and you want to do what feels comfortable and good for both of you. So pick the communication channel, set expectations, no matter what the channel is right, set expectations for when that communication can and should occur, and then you're good to go. We also need to have a way to track our projects right, like actually manage the projects that we're working on with clients. What are the tasks that we're doing for them? How are we going to keep them in the loop and keep ourselves on track, especially if you have more than one client and you need to be able to know where you're at on any of your assignments with any of your clients.

Laura Nicole: 6:33

There are several really popular options out there: Asana, trello, clickup, monday.com and, honestly, you guys, this is a scenario that you can't really go wrong. It's really just a personal preference for which setup and which platform you feel like helps you the most. I have tried three out of four of these project management softwares and my favorite hands down is Asana. You're able to organize your projects into workflows and it's very visual, which I know. Trello is also very visual, but I like creating my projects inside of Asana in boards, so I'll have a column that's like to do, a column that's in process and a column that's completed, and then anytime I have a new task that I need to complete. I put it in the to do column and you can like literally shift it from space to space to see where you're at on the project. You can put notes on it, you can type it. You can add a deadline to it. You can put notes on it, you can type it, you can add a deadline to it. You can tag someone in it. So if your client is also in the board, you can tag them with an update or a question. But it's a really nice way to very visually see where each project is at and what still needs to be done.

Laura Nicole: 7:44

And last but certainly not least, we have invoicing and collecting payments. How are we actually going to let someone know how much they owe us and then where are they going to send the money? And this is where I think I differ from a lot of the other advice out there in the industry. I'm going to tell you, to keep the shit simple. You don't need a fancy CRM. You don't need a full-on honey book. You don't need to get a Stripe account. Your clients can literally pay you through Venmo or PayPal, and those can either be a personal account or a business account. It doesn't matter, because you're still going to report your income on your taxes at the end of the year and you're going to get a 1099 from your client if you qualify for one, regardless of what avenue they paid you through.

Laura Nicole: 8:32

They do both offer business accounts as well. But one thing to note is that the personal accounts do not take any kind of percentage when you transfer the money from your PayPal or Venmo balance to your bank account. But if you have the business account, they do take a percentage. It's not a lot. I'd have to look. I don't even know anymore. Off the top of my head it's somewhere between like one and a half and two and a half percent. But again, it's like why? Why let that money go out the door every single time you get paid? If you don't need to and I believe to open a business account you have to have an LLC, and that's another thing right, like we don't have to go purchase an LLC, we don't have to do that to start earning income as a VA.

Laura Nicole: 9:16

But if you do want to have a business account, the PayPal business account is nice because it allows you to send invoices directly from your PayPal, but you can honestly, again, keep it so simple. You can go into Canva and pull up an invoice template and literally type in your information, download it as a PDF, email it to your client and then they can just send you that amount via PayPal or Venmo and put a note on the payment for what date range that payment covers. And you guys, I'm not just saying this, I literally practice what I preach. I have been doing this for over five years and I have literally only ever received payments from clients on Venmo and PayPal and I have never had an issue. And again, I want to help y'all yes, set up your business in a way that is going to function and work well and you will be set up for success, but also keep as much of the money you make in your pocket as possible.

Laura Nicole: 10:13

And all of these tools that I suggested have excellent free versions that you can start with and use that free version until you literally are forced to upgrade. And guess what, once you reach the point that you're forced to upgrade, you're probably making enough that you'll be totally fine paying the $10, $15, $20 monthly subscription fee, but I want you to keep that money in your pocket while you are building your income. If you are someone who finds it really helpful to have somebody who has been there, done this before, done it successfully, literally just tell you, hey, do this and then go do this and then go do this, and you genuinely know in your heart that you want to become a virtual assistant, that you are ready to take action and take this step and make this change happen in your life, to create more income and to build something that is flexible and gives you time freedom, then I say this with all the love in my heart but why are you not inside the Superstar Assistant Academy yet? Not only do I give you a step-by-step roadmap that is proven number one by me who's been doing this for five plus years, earning six figures, making insane money to support my family while getting to actually be with my family, but also hundreds of women have gone through this program and are now making money and quitting their nine to fives and actually enjoying the work they do and feeling appreciated by their clients and getting to be home when their kids get out of kindergarten, or going to that baseball game, or being at the random midday on a Wednesday performance at their kid's school.

Laura Nicole: 11:47

Every single step of the process is laid out for you inside of the Superstar Assistant Academy, including suggestions for all of these kinds of softwares we covered today, plus more insight on how to go about setting up an LLC, if you need to, insight on business insurance so you can make an educated decision.

Laura Nicole: 12:07

We give you templates upon templates. You'll get invoice templates, resume templates, contract templates I literally can't even list it all. But the point here, right the moral of the story is that the program is built and designed literally to set you up for success and to help you do this efficiently, because you can be a virtual assistant within 28 days. But to do that, you have to get the program and get started. So if you're ready to take this seriously and become a superstar virtual assistant, the link with all of the information you need is in the show notes.

Laura Nicole: 12:44

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.