^{This transcription was automatically generated. Please excuse grammatical errors.}

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

If you are anything like me, once you decide to go for something, you go all freaking in, and when it comes to starting your virtual assistant business, going from zero to 100 too fast can actually backfire. Today, I want to talk to you about something that doesn't really get enough attention. I feel like in the VA space, in the VA industry, which is being conscious of your capacity your capacity in terms of how many hours you can work right away, how many clients you can take on and I want to talk about why your capacity matters, how to protect it and how starting smaller can actually help you to ultimately grow into a more steady, sustainable income with happy clients and way less burnout. A lot of times, I see with women that when they start they have the urge to do it all right and go from zero to hero and they want to get out there and sign multiple clients as quick as they can, because you have that excitement right as a new VA, getting into a totally new industry, a new way to create income for your family.

Laura Nicole: 1:48

A lot of times we want to say yes to everything and everyone. We feel either like we have to prove to ourselves that, like, oh, we can actually do this. Look, I can sign three clients. People see the value in me. I can prove it this way. Or we feel like we want to capitalize on momentum. Right, if we sign the one client and then another option pops up. We want to capitalize and secure every client and every dollar that we can before it disappears. But if we go too fast with bringing clients on board and let's say, you start out and you're like I only want to work five to 10 hours a week because that's what you know you actually have the capacity for to handle. But then another client inquiry pops up and that's an additional five to eight hours a week and you convince yourself that you can handle it because you don't want to turn the client down and the money down, but now you have overbooked yourself, and when we end up stretching past our actual capacity and over booking ourselves, we are going to drop the ball. We are going to drop the ball, we are going to not give really solid quality work product to the clients that we have signed, and it's going to inevitably raise your stress level, but when you work as a virtual assistant, y'all this is your business. This is not a nine to five. You get to grow it intentionally, in a way that actually fits inside your capacity, so that you can build a sustainable long-term income in this.

Laura Nicole: 3:19

And when I say your capacity for what you can actually handle when you start out in this business, I am not just referring to the hours on your calendar. Your capacity is your actual energy that you can hold when you're working with clients, your focus, your ability to actually bring your best brain to the work when you are getting things done for your clients. Your capacity is your ability to serve and not just to serve your clients, though, but to serve them well, to serve them at the level and the value that they are paying you for, and we can always expand our capacity as we go right, but you will actually grow in a much healthier way that allows for this to be a long-term form of income for you if you focus first on quality over quantity and respecting your capacity to build a super strong foundation. I would rather you sign one client, or maybe two clients when you're first getting started and then just focus on serving the hell out of them. Focus on showing up for those clients in a way that they are just freaking floored. They can't imagine their business without you. They see your value and they want to hold on tight. They want to give you new responsibilities. They want to expand what you're doing for them. They will continue to extend your contract. They will rave about you to their biz besties. They will resign and extend contracts with you. They will refer you out if you are looking for additional hours. When you start small and we focus on quality and learning your client systems and learning their procedures and building trust with them and creating boundaries for yourself around your work, you will build so much confidence in yourself and what you are building, but in a manageable way.

Laura Nicole: 5:19

Right, this is not a sprint, this is a marathon. This is not a sprint to see how fast can I make the most money possible. It is the long game, for how can I create and grow and scale a long-term income to support my family? Your clients are going to remember how you made them feel, right, if you go hammer when you first start and you go out there and you sign four or five clients in the first couple of months and you feel like you're juggling a million plates in the air and you can't actually keep up and you're providing half-ass work pardon my French to clients because you're just running out of time, you are not going to be able to sustain that. You're not going to re-sign those clients. They're not going to be impressed with your work. They're not going to feel like you actually are delivering on the value that you promised them when they brought you on board In the beginning.

Laura Nicole: 6:20

Focusing on your service is more important than focusing on scaling and scaling quickly and now. That doesn't mean that we're going to be stuck in, pigeonholed right into working with just a couple clients for not a lot of hours and not a ton of income forever and ever. Amen, right, your capacity will grow. Your capacity will grow. Your capacity will change as you get used to doing this work with clients. As you find a rhythm in your life, of where the work fits into your days and you get more confident and comfortable in actually doing and completing the work for clients. You can always reassess, but you need to be aware and set intentional caps on your capacity, because being able to scale and create great income in this space is not always about doing more and doing it faster. It truly is about doing it better, doing it smarter and doing it in a way that serves the hell out of your clients so that they are a lifetime client.

Laura Nicole: 7:27

Inside of the Superstar Assistant Academy, my proven, streamlined, step-by step system, I can help you build a business that works for your life, for your capacity, where we focus on building strong foundations, signing aligned clients and growing at a pace that feels sustainable, while also getting to see your bank account grow. All right, if that is what you want, head to the link in my show notes. Check out the Superstar Assistant Academy. I would love to help you get started. 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 co-worker, who you know wants to start making a flexible income. I'll see you all next time.