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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: 0:32

Probably the most frequently asked question that I get from women when talking about virtual assistants is where do I find clients? Where do I find clients? Where are they? How do I actually go about finding them, talking to them, signing them and creating an income for myself? And I wanna make it very, very clear that you do not need some huge following you do not to be showing up on social media every day. You don't need to be out there running ads or trying to go viral on Instagram or spending hours upon hours scrounging freelancing sites just hoping to find an actual posting. That's not trying to offer you $5 an hour, because, in reality, most often, your first client is going to come from intentional relationship building, not random DMs, cold outreach, spam to somebody on Instagram or signing with some VA agency that's going to take 50% of your rate from you. So where do you actually go to find your clients?

Laura Nicole: 1:37

I want to let you know that there is so much power in your personal network, your friends, your family, your co-workers, all of your mom friends at school, your PTA group when you share with people that you know that are in your personal network. Just share from a place of excitement about what you're doing. Tell them about this new virtual assistant venture that you're starting up and how you're so excited and the types of clients you want to work with and how you're so pumped for the time, freedom and flexibility this is going to give you with your family, while still actually earning an income to support your family. You're not asking them to hire you. You're not asking them to buy anything from you. You're literally just sharing about something that you're doing that you're so fucking excited about and asking them to just connect you if they happen to know someone who could possibly use your services. Now I have women tell me all the time when I tell them this tip.

Laura Nicole: 2:32

I have so many women who kind of try to rebut it a little bit and kind of push back on me, right, and they'll say but Laura, I don't have a personal network, which you know people, I know that you do. You're not a recluse, you talk to other humans, so you do have a personal network and it's not really that likely that you're actually going to work with the person who's in your inner circle. So it's okay if your direct personal network, the one step out from you, if they're not small business owners, because you don't need to be working for them specifically, but they may know someone who knows someone, who knows someone, and that is the person that you get connected with and ends up being your client. There's a massive ripple effect that can happen there, but it can only happen if it starts with you telling your friends, telling your family, telling your book club about what you're doing, you telling your friends, telling your family, telling your book club about what you're doing. The other way that I really encourage you to focus on finding your clients is through actual proactive networking using social media platforms, and I said at the top of this episode that you do not have to be showing up on Instagram and selling and being forward facing and talking on camera all the time and I mean that. But that doesn't mean you're not going to use the platforms. You can use the platforms to seek out the accounts of your ideal client, to interact with them and connect with them. So when I say social media, I'm referring to Facebook, instagram and threads On Facebook.

Laura Nicole: 3:59

We are going to be looking for groups that are full of small business owners and entrepreneurs, to be looking for groups that are full of small business owners and entrepreneurs, ideally ones who are in the industry that you are really wanting to support. Maybe that's realtors or wedding photographers or business coaches or moms in the health and wellness space, right? So you're going to look for groups that align with those actual industries. And then, when you get in those groups, you want to do like an intro post that's about you, just kind of sharing some fun facts about you and what you do and what you offer, with a picture of yourself. I always want you to put a picture of yourself on your intro post because people will see you and see your face and they'll connect with you more.

Laura Nicole: 4:40

One really important note in Facebook groups whenever you're posting in there, you do need to be really careful of the rules of the group, because every group will have different rules and a lot of them have very specific rules about, like, not marketing or not selling your stuff, and so that's why doing an intro post is kind of a little bit of a way around that rule, because you're not explicitly selling your services or anything like that. You're just letting people know who you are and that you're happy to be there, and then you are also going to be in that group, in the groups that you find on a consistent basis, seeking out posts from other business owners, that you can get into the comments and provide value to them, be helpful, answer questions, make connection and then ideally those conversations will go from the comments into the DMs. And then we have Instagram, where you can absolutely use your existing personal account. But if you want to create a business account, you can also do that. I know a lot of women, even if they're not really wanting to have like a full on business Instagram, they'll still start a new one and just post like nine things on it to get the grit like one grid screen full, because their personal account has their kids and stuff all over it and they just don't want that forward facing to potential clients. But either way, whether you use a personal one or create a new one, you're going to use Instagram to again be seeking out those business owners who are in the industry that you want to be working with so that you can connect with them. I want you to find their accounts, follow them, get on their email list and then interact with their content. My favorite little tip for this is that when you interact with a person's Instagram stories, your reply is going to go directly into their DMs, so you can absolutely still post on something on their feed you know a carousel or a reel but you definitely also want to be responding to their stories so that it goes directly to the DMs and they're more likely to see it and engage.

Laura Nicole: 6:41

Now, the whole point of creating these connections is not to be pitching these clients right off the bat. We're not going to follow them and then go spam like 20 of their posts and then pop in their inbox and say hey, I'm a virtual assistant, I'd love to help you, because I can promise you 10 times out of 10, if you do that, you're going to get deleted, blocked, ghosted. It is not going to work the way you might think it is. We are focused on building connections and building relationships with these potential clients, so that we can get to know, number one, if we'll even be a good fit together and there's someone you'd actually want to work with and support. And number two, so you can get some ideas for what they actually need help with in their business, so that when you go to pitch them, you can come to them with a solution and with ideas for how you can already help them instead of just saying, hey, can I help you? What do you need help with?

Laura Nicole: 7:32

And then I don't know if y'all are on Threads, but Threads is the sister app of Instagram and it's basically a new Twitter, essentially like it's all just copy based. There's really hardly any pictures or videos. People sometimes will post those, but it really is just people are posting what they call them threads and they literally are just like when people used to tweet, right Like it's. It's the same setup and if you have an Instagram account, then you automatically have a threads account because they're linked. So go check that.

Laura Nicole: 8:04

Make sure you download the Threads app, because Threads is absolutely busting at the fucking seams right now with small business owners and Threads is a really cool space to be in because it's a lot less curated Like it's very conversational, it's very casual and it's cool when you're following business owners and the people who you are really excited about as potential clients, because on Instagram you're gonna get like the more curated side of them where they're marketing and they're selling, and then over on Threads it's like you get an actual view into more of their personality and into the behind the scenes of their business. So it's really kind of a cool juxtaposition. And the really cool thing on Th is that you can absolutely engage with their content and get in the comments, just like you do in a Facebook group, and offer value and you know positivity and congratulate them and be excited in their comments. But also there are so many business owners who just straight up post to their threads that they're looking to hire a virtual assistant. Like right now, with the way my algorithm is on threads, I cannot open the app and scroll more than two or three scrolls without seeing at least one person who's just straight up posting a thread about the fact that they're ready to hire a virtual assistant. So the possibility of threads is really endless and I just love it because it's a lot more casual and like less pressure and less curated. So if you are not there yet, you need to be there, like yesterday.

Laura Nicole: 9:28

And then the fifth and final place that I want to share with you, right now that you can be out there trying to find clients, is by utilizing referrals, which is kind of like a separate extension of your personal network. Right, go back to any past employers or co-workers. Or if you are a virtual assistant who's had clients in the past or actively has a client now, ask them for a referral, see if there's anyone that they know who also could use your help. Because a really cool perk of utilizing your personal network whether it's just family and friends or it is, you know, your boss at your last job that you used to love or a client that you had is that when they make a connection for you to a new potential client, there's already this built in level of credibility and trust, like you already are entering that interaction with a leg up compared to when you're starting from scratch networking with someone on social media. So I definitely want you to be leaning in to those possible referrals from people that you know and also sharing with your family and friends, because that built-in trust is just something you can't really put a value to.

Laura Nicole: 10:34

And, as always, I have a little mindset nugget for y'all, because if you haven't caught on at this point, your mindset when it comes to starting your virtual assistant business matters so much. And what I want to tell you is that you cannot wait to start networking until you feel “ready”. Number one, because you're never going to feel 100% ready, if I'm being completely honest with you. And number two, because this form of networking, in this way of finding clients that I have shared with you, it takes time to build these connections. It's worth it to take the time to build those connections, because building these connections with aligned clients is how you're going to build a steady, stable income for yourself, because you'll be signing clients that you can grow with them in their business. But the connections do take time.

Laura Nicole: 11:23

So once you know who your ideal client is, get out there and start having conversations and start making connections while you're building the foundation of your business in terms of your services and your rates and all of that. I mean you are a woman, after all, so I know that you can multitask, so I know that you could multitask here too, and be connecting, while also building your business in the backend. Because, just to lay it out really, really clearly, right, you cannot land and sign a client if they don't even know that you exist. So I want you to get out there and start implementing everything that I just taught you and start building those connections. We dive into all of this and so much more and so freaking in depth inside of my mini course, the client magnet method, which was designed to teach you how to network really intentionally and strategically with your ideal clients in a way that makes it an absolute fucking no-brainer for them to hire you. It is incredibly thorough and is going to teach you how to network intentionally so that you're also not making networking like a full-time job.

Laura Nicole: 12:29

Right, I know that you are so busy and so, inside of the client magnet method, I teach you my 15 minute networking method that allows you to do your networking with an actual plan so that you can be super fricking productive for those 15 minutes and then go about your day. This mini course is perfect, whether you're trying to sign your very first VA client or you're wanting to expand your roster and increase your income. As always, I will drop that link for you in the show notes. So go grab it and let's turn you into a client magnet. Thanks for hanging out with me today as 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 you all next time.