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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's 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

We need to bust a myth today, and this is a really big one and a really important one that I want to help you get clarity on because I think it is something that women hear a lot online, in their online searches, probably from a lot of other VA coaches, even. And that is the idea that you have to create a following of some kind on social media in order to be able to sign clients and be successful as a virtual assistant. And that is something that I flat out call bullshit on. Okay. If you have been around for any period of time, then you have probably heard me talk about the fact that you do not need to post on social media. You do not need to create content. You do not need to build a following in order to sign clients. You will use social media platforms, right, to have conversations and to network and to build connections with your idle clients, but you do not need to build a following in order to do this.

Laura Nicole: 1:42

And that is something that women ask me all the time because they think of online business culture, right? Where it's this constant like grow your audience, grow your audience. You need to increase the pool of people that are seeing you in order to actually have someone want to work with you. But you simply don't. You simply don't. I just want to take that worry and that concern off of your plate because the majority of women I talk to have zero interest in showing up on social media. Obviously, there are always some who are like, oh yeah, I want to create content. I want to have a business profile. I want to do those things. And that's amazing. Again, you've heard me say it's a resource, not a requirement, right? But I would say the overwhelming amount of you who I talk to have no desire to do this aspect of it, but you have heard in so many different places that you have to in order to actually make an income doing this. And it just couldn't be farther from the truth.

Laura Nicole: 2:40

Clients that we work with as virtual assistants, these online business owners, they're not looking for influencers, right? It's not social proof for you as a VA to have a big following, as it would be for the business owner themselves to have a following to tap into and sell their product to and increase their social proof, right? Like it's very, very different, even though we're all working on the internet. What clients are looking for is someone who is reliable, who can actually realistically help them in the day-to-day operations of their business. And most of your potential client connections, again, they're going to come from actually networking. So using those social platforms to network intentionally and start conversations. They're going to come from referrals, whether that's from someone in your personal network, or you do sign a client and then they refer you to one of their friends and they refer you to one of their business friends, from popping into places like Facebook groups to network or going into local businesses or going to local networking events if you want to.

Laura Nicole: 3:44

And again, just having conversations with other people, putting it out into the universe literally any and every time you can that, hey, I'm a VA. This is what I do, this is who I help. That is how you are going to actually sign clients in my world, in the way that I coach and have coached over a thousand women through my program to become virtual assistants. The very first thing that I have you do is figure out who your ideal client is. I want you in the empowered position where you know exactly what type of person you want to work with and what type of business you want to support, right? And if we are hoping to sign clients by amassing a following on social media, we have no clue who those people will be. You don't know who the people will be. You don't even know if they'll be business owners. If they are business owners, you have no clue if they'll fall anywhere near your idle client.

Laura Nicole: 4:37

So why would we want to waste our time trying to build that following that maybe 20 at best 30% might actually be people that we would consider wanting to work with, right? I always, I will say this, y'all, until I am blue in the face. I would always rather you take the time that you would spend on trying to create a reel or a post in an effort and a hope. I mean, think about this logically, y'all. You make a post, especially when you have a brand new account. You put 30 minutes into creating a reel and writing the caption and getting it perfect, and you post that bad boy, and it gets 247 views, maybe four likes, zero shares, zero saves, no follower. It's like, what did we do with that 30 minutes, right? I would rather you spend that 30 minutes actually going out and intentionally starting conversations and planting those seeds with businesses that you actually would be stoked to support.

Laura Nicole: 5:42

So not only is it a total myth that you need a following to do this successfully, I would actually argue that trying to and spending the time and energy attempting to build a following is actually hurting you. It's actually increasing the amount of time it's going to take you to land a client because your energy and your focus is in the wrong place. And not only is it in the wrong place, but it's going to burn you out. Like it just is content creation, y'all. Trying to build an audience and a following and trying to get your messaging right so that you hopefully are attracting more of the right people. Like it's not easy. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes a hell of a lot of patience, it takes testing things. And it's like you could have signed four clients by the time you get a hundred followers. You know, y'all picking up what I'm putting down here.

Laura Nicole: 6:32

There are so, so, so, so many virtual assistants out there who have no social media presence in a professional business format, who have signed dream clients that they are working with that they love, that they're growing in their responsibility, they're making more money, they're getting those referrals from that client to their business friends. It is so possible. And honestly, it will most likely happen faster if you are willing to sit down and accept and just say the following, right? Like, I don't, that's not an area of focus. That's not something I'm gonna pour time and energy into. I could rattle off a list of names for you right now of women inside of the Superstar Assistant Academy who have implemented my networking method that I taught them. And they have signed clients that they have worked with for years. They're continually adding to their roster. I have a woman who's out there right now. She has a full client roster of four dream clients, and her and her wife go on a cruise, like a 10 or 14-day cruise once a quarter. She just takes her computer with her and works while floating on the ocean. I have another student of mine who lives in New York City, and she actually did just start a business Instagram, but she didn't start it until she had a completely full client roster, to the point that she had to hire someone in to help her with all of her clients and $5,000 a month coming in in retainer. She built all of that without any sort of business platform.

Laura Nicole: 8:09

Another one of my uh students, she started, oh, let's see, probably nine, 10 months ago now. She just popped in on my TikTok live the other day and was like, oh my gosh, Laura, I just signed my third client. I'm at full capacity now. She also does not post on social media. And a girl in actually two women in our um superstar accelerator group coaching space both just landed new clients in the last like three or four weeks. And neither of those came from these women having a social media presence or creating content or building a following. I want you to focus, especially when you're starting out. I want you to focus on conversations, connections, and consistency. All right, the three C's conversation, connection, and consistency. That is what is going to actually move the ball forward and get you closer to signing not just any old client, but dream clients that you're stoked to work with and that you can work with long in the future.

Laura Nicole: 9:12

All right, I'm gonna go ahead and mark this myth as being busted. And if you are feeling curious now, even more so, especially knowing that you don't actually have to build a following, and you're more curious about what this path of becoming a virtual assistant could actually look like for you, I wanna invite you to my last live masterclass of the entire year on December 30th. In this 60-minute class, I will break down the big picture of virtual assistant work, what a VA really does day to day, what the flexibility looks like, and how women and moms are building income without being online all day, without building a following, without posting content, without cold pitching to strangers. I'm also going to help you start brainstorming the skills that you already have that could translate into virtual assistant work. And I'll give you three clear action steps that you can take right away to get started strong on your VA journey in 2026. By the end of this class, y'all, you will know, you will know whether virtual assistant work is a fit for you or not. If it's a fit for your lifestyle and your personality and your income goals.

Laura Nicole: 10:22

And you will leave with clarity instead of feeling stuck in that in-between of, ah, I think I might want to, but I'm not really sure, you're gonna be able to head into the new year either with having put this idea to bed, right? And saying, Yeah, no, it's actually really not for me, or feeling lit up and so excited of like, yes, this is what I want to pursue in 2026 as a way to make money from home. And I am all in. So if you are looking at your goals for 2026, if you are someone who writes out your goals for the new year and creating new income or just making more money in general, or having more time, freedom, and flexibility in your schedule is on that goal list for 2026. I want to help you make a confident, informed decision. And I would love for you to join me live for that class on December 30th. You can save your seat at the link in the show notes. It is the perfect way to close out the year with both direction and momentum. And I cannot wait to see you there.

Laura Nicole: 11:27

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 you all next time.