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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 talk about something that absolutely needs to be understood by women who are pursuing virtual assistance as a way to make money from home, but is something that they often don't really want to hear, which is that when we're out there networking with potential clients, it truly is a numbers game. And I think when a lot of women first hear me say, like, hey, you actually need to go start conversations with like a lot of potential clients in order to land a client that's a good fit for you, they automatically get overwhelmed at the idea. I think even though women get into virtual assistance knowing that it's it's work and it's a job, it's not a form of passive income. I think just because of our society and how like accustomed we have come to things like really just kind of happening quickly that we have this misconception or this hope going into it that like we can just post a couple of things and a client will land in our lap.

Laura Nicole: 1:31

Or we can message, you know, 10 or 15 potential clients and we're gonna land one of them. Okay. But I need to show this to you from a different perspective because you definitely need to be networking and starting conversations with way more potential clients than you probably anticipated that you would need to. But I want to share this and talk about it because I see so many women get so disheartened and so discouraged when they don't sign a client out of those first 10 or 15 women. Whereas I'm looking at it like, dude, you've only talked to 10 or 15 people. Like that's not enough, right? Like, we can't take that as proof of like, oh, this isn't gonna work for me because you simply haven't talked to enough people. So it's not a sign that like you're bad at this or you're not gonna be a good VA or you're not gonna be successful at it.

Laura Nicole: 2:22

It truly is normal and it's expected. And so that's why I want to make this episode. That's why I want to talk about this topic because it's so freeing once you actually kind of know the data and the numbers and the logistical approach to networking, and you know, like how many feelers you actually need to put out there to have a good chance of landing one, because then you can separate yourself from the outcome, right? Because signing clients happens as a result of a series of touch points, right? There's not one magical conversation out of 10 conversations you might start, there might only be one or two that are actually like good connections with people. And maybe one of them turns into a discovery call. But there's also a really good chance that it could take you 25 conversations to find two good connections, right? Like there's not this magic number of like, okay, I've reached out to X number of people, which means I'm gonna get a discovery call, which means I'm gonna sign a client. It just does not work like that.

Laura Nicole: 3:27

We need to increase your odds of finding good, authentic connections by increasing the number of feelers that you're putting out there and conversations that you're starting. This is something that I have shared with the women in my superstar accelerator, my group coaching space. And I think it kind of put things in perspective for them and maybe like blew their mind a little bit. So I want to share it with you too. Now, this is like a little bit more business talk, right? But I think it's very applicable because a small business trying to get somebody to purchase their product is very similar to you as a virtual assistant trying to sign a client who's gonna pay you for your services. Okay, so there is a connection here, but I'm gonna explain it to you from like a small business owner's perspective. All right. So the type of client you'd be working with when they are trying to get people to purchase their product, their program, their coaching.

Laura Nicole: 4:20

The question that I pose to the women in my group coaching was for every hundred people that the business owner talks to, has looked at their website, shows interest in their product. How many of those do you think are actually converting into purchases? And a lot of their numbers were like 20, 25, 40, no. That would be great, right? Small business owners would be rolling in the dough if that was the case. But the actual number that's considered like a good conversion would be four. Four. Four out of a hundred is considered a really good, solid, healthy conversion. And so if we apply that to our conversations, right, we need to be getting out there and having conversations with more potential business owners than you probably think. Again, I talk to a lot of women who are like, I've been having conversations, nothing's coming from it. And then I'm like, okay, how many business owners have you reached out to in the last 30 days? And they're like, I don't know, like 10. And I'm like, well, bingo. Like that's the issue, right?

Laura Nicole: 5:27

So this is why it's actually good news, is because this is something you can control. You 100% have control over how many potential clients you reach out to and start conversations with and create connections with. It's not some like magical, mystical thing that you have to hope will come to you. This is something that you can take action on. And it's not something that has to take a huge chunk of your time. If you follow the 15-minute networking method that I teach you inside of the client magnet method or the superstar assistant academy, you can be reaching out to literally 10 new potential dream clients in 15 minutes at a time. So if you're giving it 15 minutes a day, five days a week, that's 50 outreaches that you have done, 50 conversations you have started in one week, which means you could be reaching out to 200 people a month. And that's assuming you're only doing 15 minutes a day.

Laura Nicole: 6:22

A lot of y'all at the beginning stage, you have more than that available to pour into the networking. We just have this preconceived notion. I think again, I know that if you're becoming a VA, you are not allergic to work, right? Like you're prepared to do it. But I think we forget that before we sign a client, our work as a VA is networking. And networking is a numbers game. And you have to increase your numbers of the amount of conversations that you are starting in order to find potential clients that you actually align with, potential clients who actually need help and need a VA, and people you can get on a discovery call. And even if you get someone on a discovery call, it's not a guarantee that you're gonna sign with them. That alone is a numbers game. You need to get more people on discovery calls if you can, because only so many of them are gonna turn into clients.

Laura Nicole: 7:14

I do not want this idea of needing to network with more people to feel overwhelming or intimidating because it truly does not have to be at all. But I do think that a lot of us kind of need a bit of perspective shift, maybe a little bit of a wake-up call of like, oh, messaging 20 people last month actually like was nowhere near enough, right? And you don't know what you don't know. So you might have been thinking, oh, I'm doing a lot, but now that you can see the conversion percentage and how many numbers you actually need to be putting out there, it's a good thing that you're learning this because moving forward, you can make sure that you're increasing that number. One thing I hear from a lot of women in terms of something that kind of holds them back from doing a lot of outreach or starting a lot of these networking conversations is they're like, I don't know what to say. Like, I don't know what to actually talk about.

Laura Nicole: 8:08

I don't know how to approach that conversation. And number one, you're always going to approach that conversation just like very human, you know, wanting to get to know another human. I always say when you're starting your initial conversation with a potential client, we're not even thinking about working with them or pitching them or any of that shit. Yeah, we're literally just trying to make a connection with another human who we think we would enjoy talking to. So let that kind of lift some of the stress off of you, right? Like your first message doesn't have to be perfect. We are definitely not cold pitching. We're not talking anything about our services in our first few messages. We are literally just interacting with them on a human-to-human level. And that's part of why this 15-minute method works, is because you don't need to sit there and overthink and type out a message 15 times before you send it. You can literally just say whatever comes to mind naturally when you go to reach out to a new potential client.

Laura Nicole: 9:05

But if you're wanting more guidance on how to actually move through these conversations or how to actually even like search on social platforms to be able to find the ideal potential client to be able to send them a message and start the conversation, I have the perfect resource for you. It is called the client magnet method, and it is a mini course I created that focuses specifically on teaching you this 15-minute networking method. First, we hope you get super clear on who your idle client actually is so that we know who we're looking for when we go to spend our time networking and implementing the method. And then I teach you how to actually go about searching on the social platforms, Instagram threads, Facebook groups to find that IDO client, how to start those conversations, how to maneuver those conversations to get to the point of offering a solution-oriented pitch, which I also teach you what that means and how to put together a solution-oriented pitch, as well as how to share your VA work with your personal network, because that's also a really big part of networking and finding clients.

Laura Nicole: 10:12

If you're listening to this and thinking like, um, yes, Laura, that's actually exactly what I need help with, then drop down into the show notes. You will see a link for the client magnet method. Go check it out. It is incredibly, incredibly thorough and helpful. And the women who have implemented it have been signing clients very, very quickly. And even if you don't grab the client magnet method to help you learn how to do this, just get out there and increase the number of conversations that you are having. If you had 20 last month and trying to jump to 100 or 200 this month feels like too much, then just do it incrementally. Do 50 this month. But I promise you the best way to increase your odds of finding clients to sign is by increasing the amount of conversations that you are starting.

Laura Nicole: 11:00

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.